Deadfall: Survivors

by Richard Flunker

  And let me get to the residents. My father met the “leader” of this tower on his way south out of Pittsboro, and together they had begun the conversion of that tower. My father had only stayed for five days before he left, but the basics were all set in.

  The man called himself Colonel Banders. Yes, sounds just like Colonel Sanders, the Kentucky Fried Chicken guy. He made a point of saying that, too. He was even attempting to grow out the equivalent facial hair. He seemed like a normal guy, except for the fact that he was the only male among all the residents. It was him and seventeen women.

  It was truly a bizarre situation. They were all clearly very welcoming, and none of the women gave even the barest hint that they were being forced to stay there, or that there was any abuse of any kind. In fact, it was quite the contrary. As some of them explained to us as we got the tour, it had been their decision to make this tower into their own backwards harem. See, according to them, the women held the power here, not Colonel Banders. His only duty was to bed one of the women every night, on a random order they had set up. I still remember his smile as they told us that tidbit, that worn out smile of someone who was tired, but loving every moment of it.

  We stayed for only a few hours, until they confirmed they had sent further messages down the radio stations.

  We ended up spending the night at another tower, just north of a town called Pinehurst. This was a more “normal” set of residents, just families that had banded together to survive. The original woman that had been helped by my father to start up the tower, had died a month ago, but everyone spoke of what she had mentioned about my father. This tower was a large one, one of those very tall, white towers, shaped like a hot air balloon, smooth on the outside. Again, this one had a staircase on the inside and a very large fenced area, which the people had already converted to growing vegetables and crops. There were about thirteen families here, and some individuals as well, totaling a hundred and nine people. It was quite a substantial number, but they made it work inside of the tower. Again, nearly all of their time was spent outside of it, especially as the days grew warmer. They knew that the hottest days of the summer were going to pose a problem, but they were working on a solution.

  They had managed to clear the pipes that had once brought water in and out of the tower, and were instead going to use that system as a natural ventilation system. They had vents cut out and installed on the top of the tower. The hot air inside would rise up to escape, pulling cooler air from deep within the water pipes deep underground. While it wasn’t air conditioning, it would help keep the tower livable, especially at night when they were inside sleeping.

  On a side note, they had a rather large and interesting collection of golf carts, which they kept charged up by an impressive solar array they had bolted on to the top of the tower. They had salvaged solar arrays of all different sorts from construction sites, random utility poles along highways, and any house they found that had any.

  It was here that evening, while we ate and we exchanged our stories that we heard of two other towers I was glad we were not going to visit. To the west, near a town called Candor, a county water tower in the middle of nowhere had been converted by a bunch of women, and they only accepted women. You can only guess what they called themselves. South of us, between that tower and a town called Laurinburg, a group had taken residence, and they were all nudists. When I laughed at the incredulity of it all, they made it a clear point that they were not joking at all. It was as if the zombie apocalypse had allowed all these fringe minority groups to exist, without interference from the main population.

  Day two had us headed east, towards Fayetteville. On information that Pittsboro had received from the Sanford and Pinehurst towers, we had not taken the direct route into the former military town. According to them, the whole northern side of the town and military base had an excessively large zombie population that had not moved much. Even with vehicles, they warned, we would be walking into a death trap. It was far better to go all the way around the base, and come up from the south, which is the direction we were headed that day.

  Two notable things occurred that day, both easily filling our daily recommended percentage of zombie encounters. First of all, after we had rounded the southern tip of the military base, Fort Bragg, and were headed northeast up into Fayetteville, we came across a large number of military type vehicles along the side of the row, all lined up nicely. There were Humvees and larger trucks, as well. I had wanted to just go past them, but Evan insisted we stop and have a look. He just wanted to see if he could find any new toys.

  We didn’t find anything useful, probably having been picked clean quite some time ago. We did manage to siphon out the remaining fuel in the vehicles, a lucky combination of gas in the smaller trucks, and diesel in the larger ones. What did catch us completely by surprise was one of the last Humvees that we inspected. Inside of the trucks were two dead soldiers, doing what dead people do these days, trying to get at your flesh. They were still strapped in, and could only thrash at us as we walked by, quite easily spooking us at first. We stood there, just watching for a moment. Evan, Aaron and I talked for a moment, lamenting the poor existence of those men, who must have died somehow, still stuck in their trucks. We weren’t about to check how they had died, though.

  What I hadn’t noticed was Heather coming up behind us, and completely scaring us, as she screamed and speared the zombie in the driver’s seat cleanly through the head, splitting the poor creatures head like it was a jar of jelly. We then stood there, and watched in slight shock, as she proceeded to attempt to do the same to the other zombie, missing him repeatedly. She was still going through the driver’s side window, and the other zombie just kept thrashing about. She kept screaming at it, and I even noticed Aaron and Evan looking around, thinking what I was, as well.

  I hope this didn’t draw out more of them.

  Heather did finally manage to stab the last one, and when she turned around to face us, she had grabbed a torn piece of one of their uniforms, and was wiping the guts and grime off the spear, when she looked me straight in the eyes and just smiled. She sighed heavily and said,

  “That felt good.”

  Then she walked off, leaving the three of us looking at each other, before rushing off after her to leave that place behind. She told me that night, when I asked her about it, that it had been her dream to find some soldier zombies that she would not feel guilty in killing. Some people take out their anger on punching bags. She took hers out on uniformed zombies. She really did feel relieved. It showed later that day, too.

  We were only about twenty miles from that location, coming up into the southern end of the city, when the van blew a tire. Thankfully, Aaron and Evan had picked up some spare tires on the trip that had gotten them the van. As we got out, and Tague and Aaron got to the task of changing the tire, we began to notice a few walkers heading towards us from across a parking lot.

  “How long is it going to be guys?” I remember Evan asking.

  “At least five minutes, but probably more,” one of them replied.

  Evan was jumping into the back of the truck, ready to prime his new toy, when Heather popped out of the back of the truck with a bunch of the spears.

  “If he fires that thing, we’re going to call every single one around who hasn’t seen us yet.”

  She had a point. Even gun toting Evan had to agree with that logic. So, we all grabbed a spear, and by my quick thinking (I’d like to think it was, but I’d been thinking about this scenario for a very long time), we formed into nice, tight ranks. I tried to go into a whole historical spiel about the phalanx formation and its functions, but Heather just said “We got it.”

  The point was to stay tight and keep the spears in front of us, to not allow the zombies to get at us. We formed a semi circle, around the half of the van where the guys were working on the tire, while Lucy kept an eye out on the other side of the van. As they shambled slowly towards us, my heart felt like it was about to bu
rst out through my throat. Evan said something, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was, couldn’t hear it over the throb of my heart pumping in my ears. He doesn’t remember what he said, either. Aaron shouted something about making sure we didn’t stab them in the body, and get them stuck on us.

  The first one walked right up to us, and Heather, as cool as could be, and I must say, much cooler than the rest of us, took a small step forward, and plunged the spear right through its head so hard that the spear split the head, and came out the top. The creature crumpled up, and fell into the small ditch we were next to. That was our slight advantage. The zombies had to come up the small ditch from the parking lot to where we were. As they came up, we somehow managed to keep our cool, and we cleanly took each one out. Lucy would call them out, and she even picked one that had come up behind us, to the left of the van. She then switched with Aaron, and she helped Tague finish off the tire swap.

  We held our own, not easily, but without any fear. We were only beset by more than one at a time twice. Other than that, it was generally only one at a time, so we kept our calm. Often, two of us would stab at the same zombie. We had killed about thirty of them, when Tague yelled out that he was done, and ready to go. As we threw the spears into the back of the van, we noticed that we had killed all the zombies in the parking lot in front of us, and although we saw some coming around the corner of the grocery store in front of us, it would take them a good five minutes to walk over here.

  There was one zombie struggling to crawl up over his fallen dead comrade, up the ditch and to us, but it kept stumbling and falling back. If it wasn’t for the fact that this was once a living human being, and that we were living in what was essentially a dead world for humans, this would have been a comical scene. A “youtube” moment, as Chris pointed out. Of course, that didn’t stop Evan from laughing.

  Heather though, stepped out a bit, and speared the zombie through the top of the skull, putting an end to that moment.

  We had all climbed back in to our respective vehicles, when ahead of us, we saw a guy on a motorcycle come peeling out from around a corner, and come driving straight towards us. We didn’t have time to think, before he pulled up right alongside us and motioned us to roll down the windows.

  He took off his helmet and smiled.

  “That was quite the show. We weren’t quite sure what to make of you guys.”

  We didn’t have anything to say to him. He took the silence as his cue to continue talking.

  “We got a radio message that you all might be coming through. Sorry I didn’t come out sooner, but I would’ve just attracted more shamblers. Looks like you all took care of yourselves, anyways.”

  “Where’s your tower at?” asked Tague.

  He mentioned that it was about two miles south of our present location, clearly not the tower we were headed to.

  “Do you know about the tower on Cliffdale road?” Tague asked.

  “Yeah, that’s who we got the message from. They told us to get to you first, before heading into town. They’ve spotted a huge horde moving around the southern part of Fayetteville, and wanted you guys to stay out of the mess.”

  We looked at each other, wondering whether to believe this guy or not. Then, he cleared up our doubts.

  “You are Richard’s son, right?”

  We followed him back to their tower. It was smaller than the one in Pinehurst, but of the same smooth curved style. It wasn’t, as they explained it, fully up and running yet. They hadn’t rebuilt the inside properly yet, but were working on it. Instead, it worked as an extension of the main tower in Fayetteville. The tower on Cliffdale, was a very large tower, that held many people, but had a very limited open space below it. That, and the fact that it was well within the city, meant that the original residents had opted to try to expand their range. Along with this tower, they had another tower outside of the city, on the eastern side. That one, they explained, was also large, but had a very large fenced in area they were converting to growing food. It was also on the other side of the Cape Fear River, and because of that, they were able to control their zombie population with more ease.

  We’ve been waiting here for two days now, but have just received a message tonight that the horde seems to have moved back north, and we’ve been given the green light to proceed into town to get to the tower. We are to meet someone before the towers, who will help guide us into the area. Apparently, the residents of the tower have set up all sorts of barricades, to help them stem the flow of zombies up to the tower.

  Tomorrow, we head off into another city. Not feeling great about it. Then again, I’ve never liked city traffic.

  Entry 46 – Maxie[43]

  We’re spending the night at the water tower inside of Fayetteville. They’re in the process of relocating nearly all of their families from this tower, to the one east of Fayetteville. According to them, this tower has become too much of a risk, especially for as many people as they have living here.

  Our trip in was relatively easy. We met our contact a few miles south of the tower, and he rode in with us. They had been watching a large horde of zombies, and it was now about ten miles north of the tower, so they had clear sailing. They had estimated the horde to number around twenty thousand, and that number staggered us. They had been extremely safe within their tower, which, as we saw, was indeed a very large one. They had about a hundred and fifty people living within it, but the risk of being stuck in there with that many people, and the amount of food required, was just too much. Scavenging around the city was becoming too risky, and they were losing too many people.

  They were, therefore, moving out, and were only going to make this an outpost. They would keep a few men here to keep track of the large horde. The vast majority would move out to the eastern tower, and be a little more comfortable. There were even plans on fencing in some of the large farming areas around there, to provide food for the ever growing number of people. That water tower out east was also right next to a rail line, and some of the men here had a grand idea about establishing a working rail system, and using that area to provide food for more towers.

  We’re only spending one night here, in order to not risk being caught up in here if the horde moves south again, which they say it does every couple of days.

  The tower here had been set up by my father and three other men, two of which had long gone to set up more towers in other locations. The lone, remaining founder was a man everyone called Maxie, and this turned out to be just the man we were looking for.

  Max had been a long time friend of my father. The two had collaborated on many movies, and according to him, they enjoyed sailing. He had been living in Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina, and had been in Fayetteville visiting his daughter, who was married to a soldier stationed here, when the zombies had risen. Apparently, he had been able to get a message off to my dad, before all the cell towers went dead.

  I don’t remember ever having met him, but I do somewhat remember my father talking about him. It was always business talk, so I kind of ignored it, and didn’t come to realize that this guy had been one of my dad’s legitimate friends. So, it was then, when I asked him about where my father was, that I could instantly tell by his hesitation that I was about to get bad news.

  “Brian, I'm sorry. Your father died, about two months ago.”

  So there it was, the end of our little mission. I asked how.

  According to Max, my father had left here, and gone on to help setting up a few more towers in the southeastern regions of the state. They had scouted out several potential good towers, and had taken some of the people from here to go set them up. There had been an accident, and someone had gotten some kind of metal poison in his system, and died in the middle of the night, and we all know what happens. The poor sap had not chained himself in that night, and had killed two people, before my dad had intervened, and gotten himself injured badly. In the chaos of the night, he appeared to have wandered off into the night, where he
was found the next morning.

  I asked Max if he knew anything else. I was trying to coax out any information we needed, without giving anything away. He talked about how my father just wanted to give people a safe place to live, and how he had dedicated himself to that for many months, but otherwise he knew nothing. He did mention that all of my father’s gear and belongings were still at that tower, which was now fully up and running. He showed us on a map exactly where the tower was.

  We would head out there tomorrow, after stopping by the eastern tower.

  Entry 47 – A Grave[44]

  It’s been a solemn and quiet day. I told everyone this morning the news about my father. We were in silence, as we drove out of the tower and headed east.

  Before bidding us good bye, Maxie did say that if there was anything we needed, he always made sure someone was on the radio, and that messages traveled fast enough on their little radio network, and that he would receive it quickly.

  We had a guide that helped us out of the maze of wrecked cars and overturned semis, out into the city again. They had heavily barricaded all but one of the bridges across the Cape Fear River. Whenever they needed to cross, they would just move the two small vehicles blocking the bridge, and block it up again after they passed.

  The eastern tower turned out to be nearly as large as the one in Cliffdale. It also had a completely covered in tower staircase, which they used as storage for all of their farming equipment. We followed a caravan of two vans. With our van, we transported about forty more people out of their tower. The other vans would return later that day to get a few more people out.

  We didn’t remain there for too long, as we wanted to get on the road, and make it to that tower before night. It was easily within a few hours’ drive, and since it would go through the countryside, odds of running into wandering hordes that would require detours were slim. We traded a bit more bread for some vegetables. They were happy to have fresh (days old by now, but still fresh by their standards) bread, and we were happy to have fresh vegetables. They were all looking forward to having cornbread in the fall, after they harvested their corn. They had already begun the process of building a man pulled mill within their fenced in area. They were clearly on the lookout for good farm animals to use instead.