The Event Series (Book 1): Life After the Meteor

by Thomas Larson

  June 16th

  The boys lifted off this morning at about 9am. The weather was good and by our best guess was going to stay that way. But with the weather and the lack of forecasting equipment it was hard to tell. We do have the basics, a barometer, and wind speed things but there is no longer any Doppler radar or the Internet that we had all become used to. It makes one think about things like red sky at night sailor’s delight, wooly bear brown to black ratios and other weather related sayings and myths.

  We maintained radio contact with the planes for most of their trip. They would check in every 15 minutes to let us know all was well and where they were. Ron seemed to get a little weak in his transmissions as he was closer to Albany but overall the flights were uneventful. It might have been considered a milk run to use an old WWII bomber term.

  They were back to base by 11am and had each found a viable option. Ron discovered that there was a bridge in the area of Schuylerville which was about 45 minutes north of us. It did have a small town attached on the west side of the river but it was not as big as Hinsdale.

  Armand found a bridge about the same distance to the south in the area of Rhinecliff and Kingston. It actually sounded a little better because it did not have a town on either bank of the river so we would be able to cross without the need to drive through any urban or semi-urban area. Neither bridge was blocked with abandoned cars or trucks.

  “I think we should make a trip down toward the south,” I suggested. “We would make the run to Rhinecliff in the morning to figure out if the bridge is really passable.”

  “We could also make a swing to the Rhinebeck Aerodrome to see what they had for planes and equipment laying around,” added Armand. “I have done a fly over and saw a few old fighters and a couple of helicopters.

  Much to my, and everyone’s surprise Steven, the stoner, piped in, “I think I would like to tag along on that trip”. It was the first time I had ever seen him take any interest in much of anything.

  “I will pass on the trip, there shouldn’t be any blast damage like what might have occurred at the I-90 bridges so he can have my spot,” offered Jan.

  June 17th

  We picked up Steven early in the morning. He is one of the members of the Hinsdale Survivors’ that we usually do not get much interaction with. In part because he was generally off on his own, almost hiding but also because of what we felt was his drug activities. We had been of the opinion that he had a stash and spent much of the time stoned on weed. Yet when he got into the HumVee he did not smell of weed, in fact except for the hair (Rasta Do) he was quite clean and well groomed. There was an air of enigma about him.

  We headed on back roads west on the trip down to the bridge staying on Route 7 and then cut over on Route 44 to Route 199 which would bring us by Rhinebeck Field and on to the Rhinecliff side of the bridge. We also figured that we would take Route 9 back home giving us the chance to cover as much area as we could for intelligences and potential scavenging targets. We lost radio contact with Peru and Hinsdale about 20 miles south of Pittsfield so we were pretty much on our own.

  The trip to Rhinebeck was pretty uneventful. We found a couple of spots where we had to negotiate fallen trees. It was evident that some of those trees had been taken down by a storm. We were good with that but one of them appeared to have been intentionally cut.

  That was a little troubling so we had Matt in the turret as we crossed that roadblock but met no issues with getting around the fallen tree. It did open the question as to who cut it, why and was ‘whoever’ still around.

  When we arrived at Rhinebeck Field, there was not a lot to look at, it had been sacked. One of the things that our group has done in its scavenging is that we take what we needed but we did not destroy what we couldn’t use or did not want. Whoever had hit this place had vandalized the planes and the buildings. Items were strewn all over the ground.

  “That is just stupid”, I thought, “What if there had been someone who had been able to use this place or the equipment for survival. Resources are so limited and in many cases irreplaceable. What a waste.”

  Steven was standing by an old Dessert Storm vintage Huey Helicopter. It had the windows smashed out and was pretty much wrecked on the inside. As I walked up, he started to tell me all about it.

  “The Bell UH-1 Iroquois, aka Huey, is powered by a single, turbo shaft engine, with a two-bladed main rotor and tail rotor. The helicopter was developed by Bell Helicopters to meet the Army’s requirement for medical and utility purposes, it was the first turbine-powered helicopter to enter production for military, and more than 16,000 have been produced worldwide.”

  “How do you know so much about them?” I asked”.

  He stared blankly off into space, “It was in another life time.”

  As I looked at him, I could sense an emotional storm in him that was of hurricane force he was not going to go into it right now, this was not the time or place for me to push it.

  After a quick sweep of the grounds we determined there was little for us to forage. So we continued on our way. We found that Rhinecliff was abandoned, and much of it was burned out. We had to cover about a mile to get to the bridge.

  The bridge was in once piece and it appeared to be usable. There were a few vehicles that were abandoned on it but they did not block the road completely. We went ahead and cleared them out of the major travel portion so that we did not have to zigzag to make it across.

  While we were clearing the road Matt was vigilant in the turret. He did not see anyone but there is creepiness about this place and I felt that perhaps we were being watched.

  We finally finished and made it across to stand on the west side of the Hudson River for the first time and were within sight of Kingston.

  “What do you think, should we scout the city?” Matt asked.

  “No, let’s get close enough so we can make some visual assessment, but it is getting late and we really need to be careful. We came down to see if we could get across the river and we can so it was time to go home.” I answered.

  Before starting back north we brought out the map and reset the GPS for the trip. The satellites are still up there and the information is in the little devices themselves so they still work. I noticed that Woodstock, the famous Woodstock was not that far way. It made me think of Max Yazgur’s Farm in the summer of 1969, three days of peace and music. Look at us now.

  We set course to take Route 9 all the way up passing through a number of small towns along the way. We would see an occasional Zom but did not have any contact with living humans. About half way up we found a second way across the river. It was the Rip Van Winkle Bridge and it led into the Catskills.

  “Hey, let’s hit the resorts of the Borsch Belt for vacation, the time of our life, what do you think?” I suggested.

  But that idea was met with silence or groans, too soon? Or maybe they just didn’t know of the place.

  We check the bridge out and it was open and usable but this one led directly into town which could mean the prospect of populations, living or dead. For now we would just make a note and we may revisit it later.

  We finally reached Hudson and it is a fair sized city probably akin to a 40 or 50 thousand population. It had not been razed and it looked like there was a lot of movement. It wasn’t that important to determine if they were alive or undead so we worked our way around from south to east and finally back onto Route 44. From there it was back to Route 7 and finally we made Hinsdale where we dropped Steven off.

  As we drove from Hinsdale to Peru I asked, “What do you think of Steven?”

  Matt and Anne looked at each other, and then at me. They were puzzled by my question

  Anne offered, “Well, he seems ok, not as weird as I first though he was, does that help?”

  Matt was quiet for a couple of minutes and finally said, “Well, you think there is something odd, want to share?”

  I filled them in on what had happened with the Huey at Rhinebeck. They both thought it w
as interesting, but had no further comment to add.

  We were back to Peru just before it was time for dinner. While we were getting ready to sit down I was summoned into the Office of The Three. Henry informed me that the plane that had made the run up north, Ron’s Plane, had been hit by a couple of rounds of small arms fire. They were not sure where it had taken place but that before we made a run to the north we would have to talk some about the safety factors of doing so.

  Over dinner we talked about what we had found and thought about the bridges. We spoke about the airfield and how it was vandalized. I tossed out the Catskill thing again to pretty much the same response as earlier. But I think that everyone was pleased that we had a couple of options available if we decided to move to the other side of the river.

  June 18th

  Anne surprised me this morning when she announced, “I want to see how the zombies up at the camp are doing.” It sounded kind of weird but when she explained, “I need to check the rate of decay and what impact that might have on their movement and initiative.”

  I guess the idea of initiative is not exactly correct because that would imply that they are willfully and consciously attempting to consume a specific target. In the case of our Zoms it seems more a case of latching onto random targets and then just relentlessly moving toward it until they take it down or the target can break the tracking lock.

  One of the things that we brought with us this time was a remote controlled toy, the kind that at about a foot long and looks like a mini truck. The idea is that we could us it to stimulate the Zoms without putting ourselves at risk. Lance suggested that we attach one of the little spare walkie talkies to the truck so that if necessary we would be able to add additional sounds to our decoy in case the whir of the electric motor was not enough to attract attention.

  We drove to the same parking spot that we had used the last time and walked the quarter mile or so to the little rise that gave us cover. With the foliage in place it was a much more secure observation post but it also required that we be very aware of our surroundings to not walk into the tracking zone of a Zom.

  Once we were in place we first watched to see if we could identify our previous test subjects. We have been careful to not place any specific tags on our subjects. I was not so worried about it for me but I did not want us to “name” them. That could create a bond to the test subject and that bond could lead to a host of issues down the road. It is difficult enough for both of us to deal with the idea that two of our subjects are children. I have never been an official “parent” but over the last 14 years I have been a dad by proxy to Margo and that has changed my sensitivity toward children greatly.

  Five of the six original subjects were still in the yard area. Sadly, one of the females appears to have fallen and has been under attack by rodents. Much of her face and the flesh on her appendages was ripped off. There was one dead squirrel still in her hand so it looks like she did not go without a fight. The missing Zom was one of the males. The remaining two active adults had thinned and were looking pretty much the worse for wear. But the two kids seemed to be holding up much better. Their rate of decay seemed to be less than the adults. This was a surprise to both of us because we figured that the kids being smaller would waste away more quickly. They had lost mass, but not to the seeming same pace as the active adults.

  We introduced the R/C truck into the equation and almost immediately upon doing so the test subjects began to track it. First with their heads and then they began to chase it. Well, chase is not exactly right, more they moved toward the target. It was a slow steady chase that would not result in a capture.

  Interestingly when the R/C Truck stopped moving and there was not sound the Zoms also stopped tracking, or moving toward the target. It raised the question of whether the tracking was being done by sound or by movement detection. It appeared that if the target was not moving then the Zoms lost interest. A potential last ditch idea if you were overrun, ‘play dead’, but I am not thinking that anyone would like to test that theory.

  To explore this a little more what we did was to start clicking the walkie talkie and making some noise. This seemed to attract the attention of the undead and they began to shuffle toward the little truck again. We stopped the noise and they continued to move, but walked right by the target.

  Unfortunately we were doing this research in the day time because I was wondering what the result of a laser dot might be. Would they track it like a cat or dog? That was information that would be very big in further determination of whether they track by audio, vision or both.

  We recalled the R/C Truck and beat feet back to the Coyote. As we were leaving the little parking spot, we found our sixth subject. He had wandered away from the camp and had started down the road. He was actually heading toward Peru, although I was not sure he would stumble upon or into it. We decided that it was time for this one to go home and we ran him down. While he was pinned under the wheel we did some initial study of his actions and reactions to visual stimulus. We were also able to look closely at his flesh and decay, the smell was horrible, and it made Anne sick. I had been to enough dead body calls in my career to be able to withstand the stench.

  One of the things that I found odd was that there were no flies. I recalled working on a case in which we excavated a body from underground and within thirty seconds of it’s being out in the air the flies were there. Why was this not the case, the smell was certainly there. The season was right. This did not add up. In the past where we came upon fresh bodies the flies were present. What made this different? How did the reanimated not have the same attraction of insects?

  In the end we freed the subject from whatever Hell he was in using one of the impact tools that Nick had created.

  We had a lot to consider and discuss on the short ride back to Peru. We did mess up on one aspect of this trip; we did not consider the idea of tracking by smell although I am not sure how we could have gone about it. As we talked about this on the way back to Peru, we decided that it the human smells would linger in the clothing of the undead and yet they were not attacking or tracking each other. So it seemed unlikely that smell was a means of tracking. We had also seen no behavior that seemed to indicate sniffing the air.

  Anne spent the afternoon writing up the observations of what she had seen so that she could share them with Major Barkley out in Hinsdale. I took a nap, but the mind was working on some of the strange and illogical results we had discovered.

  June 19th

  It was a quiet day. Much of it was rainy, but it was very hot and unpleasant. One of the things that we had decided not to use very often was the air conditioner. It was only a small unit and could not keep up with the large room anyway. We had a couple of good sized fans that did a good job keeping the air moving but that did not help that much with the humidity.

  June 20th

  Today is Henry’s Birthday. He has reached the ripe old age of 67. We had a small treat for him at the evening meal. Teckla put together some cupcakes and was able to do a fancy frosting job on them.

  This morning Anne finished up her report on our test subjects. We made the run up to Hinsdale for the Major to look at. It was also an excuse to get into the air conditioned truck for a while. The Major seemed a little disappointed that only the two of us showed up for the meeting. I sat in on the meeting between the two of them and just listened.

  “Based upon our observations the feeling is that the average adult would remain active and moving for about six months until the decay rendered them pretty much inert. But that is based upon a temperature range above 60 degrees,” explained Anne.

  “As it cooled, that time frame could be extended. So what that meant for us was that as we move into autumn there should be less and less active Zoms.”

  The Major thought for a minute, then said, “But that still only reduces the numbers. Part of the undead population has been generated after the initial out break and even now there are still some that have been recently
infected.”

  “True, and the other aspect of this is the children, we had no idea why they seem to deteriorate at a slower pace than the adults. That does not seem to make any sense, it would seem logical that because they are smaller than they would have a quicker rate of decay. “

  Now when we talk about inactive Zoms what that means is that they are no longer fully mobile. The legs and arms have reached a point where they are no longer capable of supporting or providing movement for the head and body so the undead just hit the ground and become non-movers. But that does not necessarily mean that they are not still capable of biting or gnawing if a target of opportunity presents itself.

  June 21st

  I think it is the longest day, the solstice; but I rather doubt that we would or will be dancing naked around a bonfire and chanting in ancient Druid. It does not seem to hold any significance for us other than it means the days will start getting shorter again and winter will be coming.