by Smith, S. L.
“But,” Isherwood said, not wanting to leave the topic so soon. “I have been thinking about the island. If it weren’t overrun with zombies and if the I-10 weren’t running across it, it could really be a good spot.”
“No, it’s fine, Isherwood. Really.” Glenn said shaking his head.
“Sure, I get it.” Isherwood said, looking to each of the faces at the table. “Returning to the island is the last thing that any of us want to do right now, but who knows what kind of situation we could be forced into at any second.”
Seeing no protest, Isherwood continued. “The island could be made useful again if we did something about the interstate. If we blew up the bridge approaches on either side, we could seal off the island. It’s like in that movie – you know, where they blew up the Brooklyn Bridge to seal off Manhattan island? Anybody see that one?”
“Oh yeah,” Micha said. “Uh, that was – uh, Legend. I Am Legend.”
Aunt Lizzie frowned. “Sure it wasn’t Godzilla?”
“No way,” Justin was shaking his hands. “You’re thinking Dark Knight Rises. They blew up like three New York City bridges in that one.”
“Okay,” Isherwood sighed. “So this apparently happens in all the movies.”
“I think it was World War Z, actually.” Patrick said suddenly.
“Whatever!” Isherwood blurted out. “You get the point. It could probably work for Whiskey Bay, too. But nevermind, we’re getting way ahead of ourselves.”
Justin tapped Patrick’s shoulder and winked at him. “No, we’re all thinking 28 Weeks Later!”
Isherwood erupted. “That was freaking London! Okay? Obviously not Manhattan. And God help you if any of you say Muppets Take Manhattan. I’m gonna freakin’ lose it.”
When the red finally faded from his vision, Isherwood realized they were just joking with him. They were all still laughing, and Isherwood couldn’t help but join in. “Jerks,” he said, laughing.
“What the heck was I talking about, anyway?” He continued rubbing his head. “Gran, what’d’you put in this coffee?”
“I didn’t put anything.” A sweet voice came from the kitchen. “But your friends could’ve poisoned it, and I wouldn’t have known, dear.” Another round of laughter broke out.
Glenn finally put the group back on track, asking Isherwood what the plans were for tomorrow and the upcoming week. Isherwood thought for a moment as the laughter died down. “There is, actually, a project that I think you, Glenn, and maybe Justin, too, would be uniquely suited for.”
“What’s that?” Glenn asked. Both he and Justin leaned forward in interest.
“Bullets.” Isherwood said matter-of-factly. “Ammunition. Padre’s got about forty pounds of gunpowder stashed away in Morganza with all the other tools and a bicycle generator to boot. And, there’s plenty more for us to scavenge from the Brooks Plantation. I think we should bring all of that here, where we’re the safest – at least hypothetically. I wouldn’t mind hiding caches of guns and ammo around the area, too. Justin, maybe you could be in charge of gathering up all these materials and getting them inside the St. Mary’s fences?” Justin nodded in response. “Good, that’ll be good. Once it’s here, I’m sure that, between you, Glenn, and Padre, we can get the bullet factory up and running. In the meantime, Glenn, I’d like your help designing a way to make all the neighborhoods surrounding the church into pasture land – well, grazing areas. We could convert one of these actual houses into a chicken house. We have way more consumer goods and housing than we know what to do with. We need to find ways to make it all usable.”
Glenn was looking at him with a note of suspicion. “Grazing cows in backyards sounds pretty radical, honestly. But, we’ll see if this dog hunts or not.”
“Great, that’s all I can ask.” Isherwood said excitedly. “Plus, we’re gonna need all the domesticated animals we can find. Between the zed heads and being locked in their pens without food, I’m guessing we’re already too late. But we’ve still got a shot at finding more cattle and chickens, as well as maybe some horses, pigs, ducks, etc. We could also try domesticating some of the wild stuff, like rabbits. We need it all, not to mention seeds. Or else, all of mankind’s advances in agriculture could vanish within a season.”
Isherwood watched as their eyes widened. Many of them had obviously not put Isherwood’s drive to restore agriculture into the broader context. Glenn and Uncle Jerry were both nodding strongly. “This isn’t just about eating, though that’s obviously important. This is about every advance we’ve made since the plow. This is thousands of years of mankind’s genius. We can’t just let it all disappear.”
“If you start bringing me more of those tractors from the John Deere store and even the Kubota dealership,” Uncle Jerry said. “I’ll make sure they’re all maintained until we have use for them.”
“The boys and I can start widening the walls to include more pasture land,” Glenn added. “And start scouting out more livestock. But we’ll need plenty of feed. We can bring in some loads of hay while we’re at it.”
“Just do your best to conserve the gas.” Isherwood said. “We’ve got about seven gas stations in the area. We’ve been lucky so far. It was the cities that ran completely out of gas. Each of the stations is about half full, or so we’ve estimated. Actually, wait. No.” Isherwood said, stopping himself. “Don’t conserve the gas. The gasoline won’t be good for anything in another month or so. Use it while we still can, let’s have a burst of building, but conserve the diesel.”
“About the feed, the chicken feed and the rest,” Glenn began. “While it’s still summer, we should hold off on using up whatever feed is available. Chickens can forage if they’ve got enough room, ducks, too, and the cattle can graze. We’ll need to store up the feed come winter.”
“Yes!” Isherwood said excitedly. “That’s right on, Glenn. And what’s more, I think this will be one of the harshest winters we’ve ever had.”
“All the fires,” Justin said nodding.
“Right. Exactly.” Isherwood continued. “So much of the world we knew went up in smoke. Back when the plague was spreading like wildfire, it was utter chaos. People just straight up lost it. Whole cities burned down. All that ash in the sky – it’ll be like when Krakatoa or whatever erupted back in the eighteen hundreds. World temperatures fell a couple degrees and weather was messed up for years. But this might be even worse. Remember the reports that were coming out of Afghanistan and Pakistan?”
“And China and Taiwan, too.” Patrick added. “Nuclear bombs.”
“Right,” Isherwood said. “And the bombs we have nowadays – had – are exponentially more powerful than what they dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I wouldn’t be surprised if we get snowed in this winter. Sara, you’ll at least have cause to celebrate.”
Her brow wrinkled first in confusion, but the wrinkles quickly melted away. “Snow scenes.” Sara said, her eyes growing wide. Having grown up in Louisiana, Sara had come to think of snow as more of a legend than a reality. It was the stuff of elves and fairie folk, not real life. Glenn and Missy had taken the kids on annual summer trips to Colorado, when the snow had nearly completely receded except in the mountain passes.
“All I can say is, it may be a very long time until our species can live farther north than Louisiana.” The thought hung heavy in the room. Isherwood was suddenly aware of the grandfather clock ticking away in the corner of the room.
Glenn pushed his ceramic dinner plate off his placemat, so that it rested at an odd angle. He leaned forward into the space he had created and crossed his arms in front of him. “Didn’t you say something about zombies coming out of the river?” He asked.
“Oh, right.” Isherwood sighed. He leaned back against the cypress wood mantelpiece, trying to get comfortable before he launched into the story. He wasn’t able to find a perch fast enough, so Patrick launched into the story without him.
“The rags were waving like tattered flags along the barbed wire fences. That w
as the first sign that something was very, very wrong.” Then, growing more excited, “It was just like a scene out of MacBeth. You know, ‘Till Birnam forest come to Dunsinane’ and all? Anybody? Nobody?”
After an extended pause where Patrick looked bug-eyed from person to person, Micha finally spoke up. “Oh, yeah, yeah. But you mean Lord of the Rings, right? With the ents or huorns or whatever at Helm’s Deep?”
“Yes, yes. Thank you.” Patrick said with relief. He had long been pained by classrooms of high school students who seemed practically illiterate. “Well, sort of. That’s where that scene came from. Tolkein took that from Shakespeare, see?”
“Anyway,” Justin interrupted. “Here’s the important part. We figured out a strategy that day that saved all our butts and could turn everything around.”
“Assuming we have enough ammo,” Isherwood added.
“Right. Yeah, exactly.” Justin said nodding to Isherwood. He then launched into a detailed description of their new strategy for mounding up the zombies.
“Oh yeah.” Micah interrupted eventually. “Isherwood was doing that at the top of the boat ramp – using their numbers against them to make barricades of their bodies. It really works.”
“Bet your butt it does.” Justin nodded.
“So yeah,” Isherwood jumped back in. “The river could just lay huge masses of zombies at our doorstep whenever. And that’s pretty bad. This is a problem that we can solve with enough bullets and sturdy walls, but I’d rather find another way. I have something, which should at least help the situation, if not completely solve it. Maybe it can give us a little breathing room, anyway.”
“Well?” Chelsea, Justin’s wife, said. “What is it?”
“Don’t you remember?” Sara smiled. “I was telling you about this.”
Chelsea gulped. “Oh no. The chicken plan?”
“Oh, yeah!” Justin chortled. “The chicken plan. That’s how we got the idea to dangle the boat and ourselves from the pipeline as bait. I remember now.”
“You did what?” Gran and Sara interjected simultaneously.
“Nothing, nothing,” Isherwood said, bowing his head.
Patrick rocked Isherwood back and forth by his shoulder. “Oh, I’m happy to tell this part of the story. Listen to this. Padre shot a grappling hook over the pipeline. Then, we let the boat drift downstream, see? Isherwood caught hold of the line. It was creeping upwards, pulled by the boat, right? He rode it up to the freakin’ pipeline, like Barnum & Bailey or something. Then, he used that line to tie us to the pipeline. The zombies were just spilling into the Pilot Channel trying to get to us. It was the darnedest thing you’ve ever seen.”
“Did you really?” Eli was staring up at Isherwood in awe.
Glenn was astonished. “That’s how you got ashore. That’s nuts.”
“Mercy.” Gran said, slumping down into a seat against the wall.
“So,” Isherwood said, trying to move the conversation forward. His face had reddened in embarrassment and was now hot to the touch. He had never been very good with compliments or attention of this kind. “So, that’s what I intend to do with the chickens in the river.”
The heads of everybody in the room, even Sara who helped him think of the chicken plan in the first place, spun toward him, bewildered.
“Oh my,” Gran said, sounding suddenly exhausted. “I think I’ll just take my chances with the zombies.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: FENCE DUTY
Padre led morning prayer instead of Monsignor. Both were noticeably weary. Monsignor nodded off before the reading of the first Psalm. Isherwood scolded himself when he realized that he had forgotten all about the feral girl from the Brooks Plantation. Padre and Monsignor must have been up all night with her. He was slowly coming to realize that his own dreams had been disturbed throughout the night. There had been noises in the night that he had dismissed as dreaming. Animal noises.
The other side of the church, now mostly the LaGrange family, was seated together and reading from Psalm 91:
“You will not fear the terror of the night,
nor the arrow that flies by day,
nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.”
On his way to the main church building, Isherwood had noticed that a heavy concentration of zombies had accumulated at the church fences over the night. Now, he realized why. He was beginning to worry what they had brought back with them. She might be sort of a beacon for the dead, he thought grimly. God knows how far those noises traveled. Or even how they traveled.
Isherwood’s side of the church took up the next round of verses, reading together:
“A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand;
but it will not come near you.”
They must have finished the job, Isherwood thought. At least for now. He wouldn’t notice until breakfast that Gran was absent from prayer. Monsignor had asked her and Aunt Lizzie to attend to the feral girl. They had been waking her up every few hours to feed her broth.
About this point, Isherwood began to notice the words of the Psalm being read. Padre, he figured must have picked the Psalm based on his night’s work. Isherwood’s side of the church was again reading together:
“Because you have made the Lord your refuge,
the Most High your habitation,
no evil shall befall you,
no scourge come near your tent.”
The LaGrange family took up the response. They were on the right side of the church, as one faced the altar. The family typically sat on the left side of the church, but had shifted for some reason. This side of the church was lined with stained glass windows depicting the Joyful Mysteries, while the left side, the side with the tabernacle, had windows depicting the Sorrowful Mysteries. The Glorious Mysteries stood tall above and behind the altar before the roof sloped into a dome. The Resurrection window had been donated in honor of Gran’s aunt, an Ursuline nun named Sister Saint Vincent de Paul who had died nursing to the infected during the influenza epidemic of 1918.
“For he will give his angels charge of you
to guard you in all your ways.
On their hands they will bear you up,
lest you dash your foot against a stone.
You will tread on the lion and the adder,
the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot.”
Isherwood suddenly realized then that this was no ordinary Psalm. It was an exorcism Psalm. This was likely not the first time it had been read in the church this morning, either. He took heart at the words and repeated them in his mind, trample the serpent under foot.
Good God, Isherwood thought to himself. What is about to happen?
*****
Gran and Aunt Lizzie were absent from breakfast, and the breakfast menu was noticeably altered. Aunt Tad had taken over kitchen duties. She had made a traditional LaGrange breakfast in honor of her brother, Glenn’s, homecoming.
Isherwood was poking around at his breakfast, as were many of the others. “Egg gravy,” he whispered to Justin, Patrick, and Padre. They were all staring at him in expectation of an explanation. Their grits had been served topped with brown gravy. Raw eggs had been dropped into the brown gravy to cook. Justin kept lifting up bits of egg in his fork and letting them slop back onto the pile of grits in his plate. He did this while staring at Isherwood in silent scorn. Glenn and half or more of the LaGranges were oblivious to all this as they devoured their breakfast. After Gran’s feast from the day before, Isherwood just wasn’t desperate enough to eat the egg gravy. He scraped the gravy and egg fragments to the side of his plate and ate the grits. He knew that today was going to be a busy one. Lunch would be a ways off and probably consist of only a Power Bar and water.
They had decided that Glenn and Uncle Jerry would work on the livestock and wall-building projects. Jerry would show his brother-in-law the progress of their farming operation, as well. Just
in and Padre would start work on machining ammunition. Padre felt the need to check on his post at St. Anne’s, as well, and needed to bring word of Marshall’s death to those that remained. Micha and Eli would be loaned to Isherwood and Patrick, who were to start searching for barges or other watercraft that could support coops for poultry. Isherwood’s chicken plan was about to be tested.
But first, the walls needed to be cleared.
*****
By this time, they all had assigned wall sections. It was best that they were evenly distributed along the walls when they came out from cover. Most of them were assigned to short wall sections near the church, where most of the zombies tended to congregate. Those that were better runners were assigned longer sections of fence behind the Church Office and the Adoration Chapel and around the back lot. They mostly used hunting knifes to stab the zombies through the iron bars of the fences. Some of the shorter people used machetes or homemade spears that they plunged upward into the skull through the neck and behind the jaw.
Scattering everybody around the fence prevented too much weight from being pushed against any single section of fence. It also kept the zombies from shifting around the fence too much and getting overly agitated. The ladies had developed this process while the men had been away. They found that a quick wall-clearing resulted in less moaning and less moaning meant less zombies to clear the next day.
Isherwood, Sara, Aunt Lizzie, and Gran were all assigned to the same section of fence. This usually meant Sara cleared the fence herself, as Gran and Aunt Lizzie were usually busy taking care of the little ones. Gran and Aunt Lizzie were gone again today, too, tending to the feral child that Padre and Monsignor had spent all night exorcising.