Just Trying To Stay Alive: A Prepper's Tale

by Michaels, Brian

  “I didn’t think about that,” Emma replied, “But what could they be up to now and how bad could it be, everyone is dead.”

  “Maybe they are out collecting samples of the dead to take back to the lab to study,” Katie added.

  Now it was my turn to say, “I didn’t think about that, but surely with how many of the dead that are roaming around out there they wouldn’t have to fly into town to find a dead body to study.”

  It made me stop and think as I asked myself why I hadn’t thought about that first? After all, I was the one that didn’t trust the government and had tried to educate my family on all the things the government had screwed up over the years.

  I wanted to say that the idea of the Army out collecting samples of the dead to study was not very likely, but I couldn’t say it because with everything else we had witnessed, there was a better than average chance that what Katie said was what they were doing.

  “I was wondering if we might be able to get their attention and get some help?” Emma sighed then looked disappointed. “But I guess it might not be such a good idea until we can figure out what they are up to.”

  “We might not ever see that helicopter again,” Katie replied. “We didn’t expect to see anything out there except the walking dead.”

  “But if we could determine what they were doing and find a way to contact them, we could possibly use their help,” Emma said, “They have more guns than we do and they could get us out of here in their helicopter.”

  “Or they could take us to the laboratory and turn us into guinea pigs,” Katie added dryly. “They would probably want to dissect us to find out why we hadn’t turned into one of the walking dead like everybody else.”

  “But I would like to know what they are doing,” I added. “If we could determine what they are doing it might give us an idea about what is happening outside our neighborhood.”

  “Like what?” Emma asked.

  “Like maybe there could be areas outside of town that haven’t been infected with whatever turned our neighborhood into this nightmare,” I replied. “Remember our power went out before we had learned what all had happened. We heard this was spreading, but maybe they had found a way to stop it and conditions are better outside of town.”

  “That would be nice,” Emma smiled. “Do you really think that could be the case?”

  “No, not really,” I replied. “At least not from what I’ve seen, but I would still like to know what they were doing. It might give me some ideas on what to expect next.”

  “Maybe the helicopter will come back and get closer next time so we can get a better look at what they are doing,” Emma suggested.

  “If they are operating in this area, they have to be communicating with a base somewhere,” I said as I began studying the layout of the attic. “I bet I might be able to use the CB to intercept their communications.”

  “But the CB is down stairs,” Emma said. “We can’t get down to the garage with the dead in the house.”

  “Maybe we can,” I replied.

  “Logan, come give me a hand,” I called out.

  Logan fired his rifle one more time, turned and crawled over to our side of the attic.

  “What’s up?” Logan asked.

  “I need you to help me get the CB radio,” I replied.

  “You aren’t going to try and shoot your way into the garage?” Emma asked looking concerned. “That would splatter the downstairs with blood and (she stopped for a second before she continued and a pained expression spread over her face), body parts all over the place. You couldn’t get to the garage and back without getting it all over you. It wouldn’t be safe, you would get infected!”

  “No, I have another idea,” I replied. “Katie use the scope and keep a lookout to see if that helicopter comes back. Emma, you keep Katie company and keep an eye on that trap door.”

  Emma and Katie crawled over to the vent where we had seen the helicopter a few moments ago and I led Logan over to the far corner of the attic.

  I could see Emma watching me, wanting to know what I was planning, but also to make sure I wasn’t planning to go down the trap door where the dead was waiting.

  When we reached the far corner where the angle of the roof met the floor, not giving us much working room, I turned to Logan.

  “I think if we can dig through the plasterboard here, it will open a hole in the garage ceiling where I can drop down into the garage and get the CB.”

  “How are you going to get the car battery up here?” Logan asked then added, “those things are heavy.”

  “I think the jumper cables will stretch from the car battery up this far,” I replied. “At least I hope so, I want to leave the battery hooked up in the car just incase we need to make a fast getaway.”

  Logan nodded, I could see the wheels turning in his head as he thought things over.

  I pulled the pen knife out of my pocket and started cutting into the soft plasterboard between the rafters where the attic floor walkway ended.

  It would have gone a lot faster if I would have used the butt of Ryan’s rifle or kicked at the plasterboard with the heel of my shoe, but I wanted to do this quietly and not alert the dead in the house to what I was doing.

  If the dead broke into the garage because they were attracted by the noise, getting down into the garage now or later may no longer be an option.

  We didn’t have many options at this point as it was and I didn’t want to reduce our chances trying to do something that may not work. I knew the military had their own frequencies for communications and chances were that even if I could find what frequency they used, their communications would be scrambled and unintelligible.

  My efforts might work, but if it didn’t, I knew at some point there was a very real possibility that we would need the car to get out of here and I didn’t want to screw things up and lose the use of the car.

  So I took my time and slowly cut a six inch square in the plasterboard until I could get my knife under the square and lift the square up into the attic.

  I leaned forward and put my eye down to the hole I had just made. I moved my lantern closer to the hole to shed some light down into the space below.

  A blue color reflected back at me from four feet below.

  “We’re right over the back corner of the roof of the car,” I said. “I think this is going to work.”

  I took my pen knife and started to enlarge the hole until I had a two foot by eighteen-inch hole, limited by the eighteen-inch distance between the rafters.

  I slowly lowered the lantern down through the hole until a heard a soft metallic clink when the lantern touched the car roof.

  I cautiously let go of the handle and pulled my arm back up to the attic, then leaned down to look through the hole to see the interior of the garage.

  “I’m going down,” I said to Logan. “You wait here and I’ll hand the CB up to you. Just set it on the rafters then I’ll connect the jumper cable to the car battery and hand the other ends up to you. Clamp one to the rafter on the left and the other one to the rafter on the right. Electricity doesn’t travel through wood, so they will be fine there, OK?”

  “OK Dad,” Logan replied. “Do you need me to help lower you down into the garage?”

  “No, the roof of the car is just a few feet below the hole,” I said. “You just be ready to grab the CB.”

  I crawled backwards to the opening and lowered my legs down the hole and felt around with my feet until I felt them touch the roof of the car.

  After finding solid metal below, I lowered the rest of my body down into the garage until I found myself on my hands and knees on the roof of the car beside the lantern.

  I started to look around the garage but froze when my eyes landed on the inside garage door, it was hanging open about a foot into the garage.

  I held my breath as the sound of feet dragging across the floor inside the house, accompanied by the sound of groaning and bodies bumping into walls filtered into the garage
and echoed around me.

  “Thank God I had cut the hole to the garage quietly,” I thought, “or I would have had a garage full of the dead waiting for me.”

  I took a quick glance to my right and then my left before returning my gaze back to the open garage door.

  I could feel my muscles tense as I stared at the door, expecting a mob of the dead to come bursting into the garage at any moment.

  I knew I had to close that door fast, but my muscles were poised to get me back up into the attic at the first sign of any motion coming into the garage.

  My thoughts were now more concerned with keeping the dead out of the garage than with getting the CB, because if they were able to keep us from getting to the car, I could feel the walls of our prison squeezing in tighter around us.

  I looked up at Logan and put my finger to my lips to signal for him to remain silent, then I pointed towards the door to signal where I intended to go.

  I knew Logan could see the fear written all over my face as his expression turned from one of curiosity to concern.

  I slowly slid down over the windshield and off the left front fender and as silently as I could, dropped down to the floor.

  I couldn’t understand why the garage door was open like that, I was sure when I had left the garage the last time I was here that I had double checked to be sure it had securely closed.

  I was also surprised to see that with the door open like it was that the garage wasn’t full of dead staggering bodies, the dead didn’t walk as much as they stumbled around.

  Just by the way they stumbled and bounced off everything around them I would have expected at least a half dozen of them to have fallen through the partially opened door and ended up on a pile on the floor in front of the car.

  “Maybe we just got lucky,” I thought as I inched closer to the door. “Just hold out for a few more seconds.”

  I held my breath, my eyes locked on the door as my body nervously inched closer to the door.

  The thumping of my heart in my ears drowned out all the other sounds as I approached the door.

  I reached out my hand to push the door closed as silently as I could when the loud explosive sound of a gun shot echoed off the walls inside the garage scaring the hell out of me.

  I couldn’t hear anything as roar in my ears made me temporarily deaf, but I caught a motion out of the corner of my eyes that made me turn to look behind me just in time to see a headless body collapse to the floor a few feet behind me.

  The body’s head was splattered across the workbench and over the wall behind me.

  I looked up at the ceiling above the car as more motion caught my attention.

  I looked up just in time to see Logan’s head and arms hanging down through the opening as he fired another shot, this time in my direction.

  It had only been a second since Logan’s first shot startled me, but I knew where his second shot was going.

  I turned and rushed at the door as another headless body fell into the garage through the now wide-open door.

  Three more dark grotesque dead bodies appeared in the light from the lantern that now flowed into the beginnings of the living room.

  They were making a frantic effort to stagger through the garage door as I collided with the open door and shoved it closed, or should I say as I shoved it almost closing the door except for the hand and foot that was trapped between the door and the frame keeping it from fully closing.

  I kicked at the foot with the bottom of my shoe until the foot broke off at the ankle and rolled into the garage, landing under the front bumper of the car.

  After throwing myself against the door two more times, the hand also broke off from the arm and fell to the floor, finally allowing the door to close and the latch to engage.

  My ears were still overwhelmed by the loud whistling sound from the two gun shots, but I was able to hear the distant sound of Logan calling out to me.

  I turned quickly to look behind me, expecting to see another body coming at me out of the shadows created by the lantern sitting on the roof of the car.

  But instead I saw Logan crawling down on top of the car.

  I looked around the garage to be sure there wasn’t any other surprises waiting for us in the garage, then I called out, “Logan, stay in the attic.”

  Logan looked at me curiously from the roof of the car.

  “Go back up in the attic,” I said again. “I can’t hear very well right now, but I’m fine. Thanks, but just stay there.”

  I gave Logan the thumbs up sign, he looked confused but signaled back and crawled back up through the opening.

  I quickly grabbed a hammer and a handful of nails and started driving nails into the sides of the garage door.

  “No use being quiet now,” I said to myself. “They already know I’m here, I just need to secure this door.”

  The pounding of dead hands and heads against the other side of the door were louder than the sound of me driving nails into the door with the hammer.

  When I had used up my last nail, I quickly moved over to the end of the work bench where the CB sat, picked it up and walked over to car and pushed the CB up to Logan.

  The CB was heavy, but not heavy enough to make it too difficult to get it up into the attic.

  I was glad that I didn’t have to try and lift the heavy car battery over my head in an attempt to get it up to the attic too, I don’t think I could have managed to lift it that high with the way my body was shaking at the moment.

  I reached inside the car and pulled the lever to disengage the hood latch, raised the hood and attached the clamps from the jumper cables to the positive and negative battery terminals.

  I carefully handed the other end of the jumper cables, one at a time, to Logan which he secured to the rafters.

  I took a deep breath and looked around the garage, at the blood and two gruesome dead bodies that laid on the floor.

  Then I noticed the bloody foot prints, the blood I had been tracking around the garage as I moved about closing the door and getting the radio up to Logan.

  I suddenly became very concerned as I began to look myself over. My shoes were bloody and there was blood splattered over my pants and shirt.

  I carefully unbuttoned my shirt and let it slide down my arms and fall on the floor.

  I then undid my pants and let them slide down to my shoes.

  Using the inside of my pant legs, I slipped my feet out of my shoes.

  After looking myself over and deciding that there wasn’t any blood on my skin, I crawled up on the trunk of the car, to the car roof and pulled myself up into the attic.

  When I reached the attic, I was met by three faces with large eyes and a scared look on their faces.

  My ears were still ringing, and I couldn’t clearly hear the questions that were flying my way, but from my lip-reading ability I think everyone was asking what had happened to my pants.

  Katie gave me a hug as Emma ruffled through my duffel bag and handed me my spare pants and a shirt.

  “When the ringing in my ears stop, I’ll tell you what happened,” I grinned. “I just need a minute.”

  I sat down on the attic floor, breathing heavily as I thought about the close call I just had.

  I was not feeling as confident about our situation as I had been feeling only a few minutes before.

  Chapter 18

  It took a few minutes for my hearing to return and the ringing in my ears to stop.

  Logan had filled in Emma and Katie about the gun shots, but they were all waiting to find out what had happened to my clothes.

  The first thing I did was to thank Logan.

  “Nice shooting,” I said smiling as I looked at Logan. “I never saw him coming. I guess I was so focused on the inside garage door when I saw it was open that I forgot about everything else. Where did he come from?”

  “He came out from behind the car,” Logan replied. “I was watching you and didn’t see him until he was almost on you. I didn’t think I had
enough time to warn you, so I shot him before he could get close enough to bite you.”

  “When Logan shot his rifle, it almost scared me to death,” Emma said. “You wouldn’t believe what ran through my mind when I heard that gun go off and saw Logan aiming the rifle down through the opening to take another shot.”

  “It scared the hell out of me too,” I replied.

  “When I saw that other one push open the door and come staggering into the garage, I shot it before I realized what I was doing. I hope that was OK?,” Logan added.

  “Thanks, you did real good down there, that was a close call,” I sighed. “I didn’t realize you could shoot so well.”

  “At that range I couldn’t miss,” Logan replied looking embarrassed yet proud.

  “You need to be more careful,” Emma said looking upset. “I should have never let you go down there, this is crazy. And why were you running around down there almost naked? What was that all about?”

  “I was just about to climb back up on the car to come back to the attic when I noticed all the bloody footprints that I had tracked through the garage,” I replied. “When I looked at my clothes, I saw I was splattered with blood, so I decided I had better get out of my clothes before the blood soaked through to my skin.”

  “You’re lucky we all packed some extra clothes when we moved up to the attic,” Emma said, “but I think you forgot to bring up other shoes, I don’t know what you’re going to do now. And before you say it, no, you’re not going back down to get other shoes.”

  “Katie has a huge bag full of extra shoes,” Logan spoke up.

  “But I don’t think her shoes will fit you, besides you would look funny wearing pink high heels.”

  “Fortunately for me she has little feet,” I smiled. “I think I would rather run around in my stocking feet than wear heels or those pink tennis shoes of hers.”