by Rich Baker
They zip across the green space, the hill that the massive electric pole sits on shields them from the big open field, which is full of zombies.
Once they cross the open space and get some concealment in the narrow bike path that connects it to Starlight Drive, Andy recons the areas behind them with the Parrot. He takes a minute, looking for any zombies that may have caught their scent or saw their crossing, but there are none, just the dead ones they left in their wake.
“Listen,” Robert says. “That alarm is fading. It must have been on a battery backup.”
Kyle listens to it for a second. Though they’re closer to the area where the alarm was blaring, it sounds more plaintive now, like it’s dying at the hands of zombies the same as it’s owners probably have – for surely if they were still alive, they would have turned it off, wouldn’t they?
“Alright gang,” he says, “if that alarm is going to fade out as its battery dies, the zeds won’t be drawn by the noise any longer, and they’re going to start chasing things by sight again. We need to hurry and get this done.”
Kyle and Annie creep forward to the edge of the bike path, crouching as they move. He signals that she should check the street to their right and he’ll take the left side. The rest wait twenty feet back in the carts.
Bushes are growing along the split-rail fence that lines both sides of the path, and they offer good concealment from the sides. To the right, toward the alarm, there are only a couple of shambling zombies, the rest likely lured away by the noise from the alarm. On the left side, where the Starlight Drive curves away from them and veers west, there’s more than a dozen of the creatures milling around in the street and yards.
Kyle presses the push-to-talk button on the headset’s cable.
“I have at least a dozen of them here on the left side. I say you guys should hop the fence here and hit the houses on either side of us to start. Annie and I will start clearing these things, and hopefully, nothing brings the horde that was chasing the alarm back our way.”
Robert climbs the fence, with Ben and Andy in tow. He drops into the window well and uses the glass cutter and suction cup to cut through the two panes of glass, then reaches in and unlocks the window. Holding his breath, lest they trigger an alarm that brings all the undead for miles around down on them, he opens the window. There’s no noise.
Ben and Andy glance around, nervous about being out in the open for so long. They can hear the slides racking on the .22 rifles as Kyle and Annie take out the zombies on the street, so they feel a little better, but they won’t feel safe until they’re in the house.
“C’mon!” Robert calls out in a loud hiss from the basement.
Ben drops in, leaving Andy to watch the rear approach for zombies and ferry food to the carts.
“Okay, first we sweep the house for threats, and then we scavenge,” Robert says. “We’re looking for canned food, vitamins, and any other useful non-food items. Toothbrushes, painkillers, antibiotics, and any guns or ammo we can find. Got it?”
“Yeah, got it,” Ben says. “But I was just thinking…how do we know these people aren’t home? I mean, what if they’re here and they shoot us for looting?”
“That’s why we sweep the house first. But I admit, I was thinking that we’re checking for zeds and not people. That’s a good point. We’ll have to be extra careful.”
“We can call out, announce that we’re here and we don’t want to hurt anyone. If they’re home, we can tell them we’ll leave the way we came,” Ben says. “If there are zeds in the house, it will bring them out, and we won’t have to go looking for them.”
“Good idea, Ben,” Robert says.
They use their lights to check around the basement, and they find a flat of bottled water. Ben hustles it to the window well and sets it on the ground in the opening, and then hurries back inside. Andy drops into the window well, grabs the water, and heaves it over the edge of the steel rim onto the ground above. He climbs out and runs the water over the cart, dropping it into the first trash can.
“Hello?” Robert calls out when reaches the bottom of the stairs. “Is anyone home?”
He waits a few seconds, hears nothing, and calls out again.
“We don’t want any problems! We came in through a basement window. If anyone is home, just call out, and we’ll leave the same way!”
Another few seconds pass, and there’s no response, no noise of any kind, human or otherwise. Robert looks at Ben.
“Let’s rock and roll,” he says.
Kyle changes magazines, releasing the slide, loading the rifle. He sticks the empty magazine in the pouch on the rear of his vest.
“That’s my third mag,” he says, his voice just above a whisper. So far they’ve managed to avoid being spotted by any of the undead, and he wants to keep it that way.
“We have plenty. Just don’t spray your shots. Remember, relax, breathe, and squeeze. Just repeat that to yourself until you get it,” Annie replies.
“How are you all so good with guns?” he asks. “It’s like you guys had been planning for this kind of thing.”
“My uncle took us shooting every weekend starting when we were little. Steph was shooting a .22 almost like these before she could read. He had a range on his land, cut into one of the hills. He built a big overhang and covered it with railroad ties and dirt to catch any ricochets. He made a backstop from railroad ties, too – he got like a thousand of them from the railroad when they re-did the tracks east of us. He told them where to dump them, and they were grateful not to have to haul them very far. Anyway, we painted them white so you could see the targets better. We shot so much that we had to re-paint them a couple of times a year.”
She pauses, looking around to make sure there are no zombies getting too close, then continues.
“Uncle Henry grew up in Idaho, and his family was all in some militia up there. He said growing up in that family was like growing up in the military. I have my doubts that the level of discipline is the same, knowing a few of those yahoos, but he brought some of that regimented attitude to raising us. If we got in trouble at school or disobeyed him or Aunt Lynn, we were on physical work detail, and there was always a lot of it on the ranch. The reward for being good was going shooting. He had all kinds of fun targets set up, but the metal ones that would spin on a pole, flipping from one side to the other when you shot them were the best. You’d play against each other, one magazine each, and whoever flipped more targets to the other side won. That was Steph’s favorite game. She’s the only one to beat Robert at it. Heads up!”
She puts the rifle scope on a zombie that has wandered close to the driveway of the house to their left, where the guys are scavenging. She shoots, hitting it in the head. It collapses into a neat pile of loose joints and damaged flesh.
They both look around for others, but the nearest ones are three hundred feet away, so they duck back down.
“Steph used to go out with Uncle Henry and shoot coyotes that came after his livestock. Robert would too, sometimes. I didn’t. I never liked the idea of killing an animal that was just trying to live, you know? We put a buffet out for them, and then get mad when they eat?”
“I’m glad you don’t feel that way about zeds.”
She laughs, and says “Well, I guess it’s different when I’m on the menu.”
Their headsets crackle and they hear Ben’s voice.
“We’re coming out. Don’t shoot us!”
“Gotcha,” Kyle says into his mic.
Behind them, the two men come out and set duffel bags bulging with supplies in the trash cans, and Andy grabs the first one and carries it to the cart, empties it into the trash can, and swaps it for the other one when Robert brings it to him. He dumps the contents into the can, making more noise than he’d like. Robert clicks the button on the headset.
“We’re going to the house on the left now. How are things out here?”
“We’re good,” Annie says. But it sounds like that alarm has died, so
you guys had better make this one quick. The zeds could be on their way back anytime.”
“Copy that,” Robert says. He and the other two men hop the fence, where Robert drops into the window well. In a couple of moments, Ben follows.
“Copy that?” Kyle says, chuckling. “Are we going to start saying ‘over’ when we finish a sentence too?”
“Yeah, he’s funny like that,” Annie says. “He wanted nothing more than to go into the Marines, and ever since I can remember he’s always emulated any lingo from movies, as long as it sounds legit. He’s never quite gotten over the fact that he didn’t make the cut. He’s still trying to figure out what to do with his life.”
“Why didn’t he make it? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“Oh, not at all. He has a bad heart valve. They caught it when he went for his physical before induction. He’s going to have to get it replaced at some point, er, well, I guess, not so much now. It’ll be kind of hard to find a heart surgeon now, won’t it?” Annie’s voice breaks a little as she says this.
“I’m sorry,” Ben says. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“No, it’s fine. Just takes some getting used to, you know? Like, no more gyno exams, no more teeth cleanings, no more of so many things that were normal, you know? Just normal life. That’s all gone now, and Robert’s life will be cut short because of that bad valve.”
“What did the doctors say about it? How long did they give him?”
“They didn’t have an answer. The doctors said most people with that same problem live fine into their forties with them before needing to be replaced, but for some people it’s much sooner. You know how they are; they can never be too specific.”
“How old is he now?”
“He’s 24.”
“Well if it’s any consolation, zeds or something else will probably kill him before that valve does.”
Annie studies Kyle for a minute. She knows he’s trying to make light of the situation, but she can’t bring herself to laugh. Instead, she just says “Doesn’t that apply to all of us now? No one’s going to grow old anymore.”
“No, I suppose we’re not. It’s a Darwinist’s dream now. The smart, the fast, the strong – they’ll be the ones to carry humanity forward.”
“Or the lucky. We’ve had a lot of that since this started. Your kid coming through our land, your neighbor having a fortified bunker under his house with an arsenal at the ready. My brother and sister and I just lucked into all that. We’d be shamblers stumbling away from Fort Collins by now if it weren't for your kid and his friends.”
Before Kyle can reply, something flashes past them in his peripheral vision to the left of them, on Deer Trail Drive.
“Did you see that?” he asks.
“See what? I was watching our friends over there,” she replies, nodding to the pair of undead shuffling their direction, but still half a football field away. “What did you see?”
“Not sure. It looked like a small white car, but it was just in my periphery. I only caught a glimpse of something.”
Annie talks into her mic. “Heads up guys, we may have had a car or something go by on the main road. Be ready to go.”
A few seconds pass and Robert comes on. “Andy, get the Parrot up. This place has a LOT of stuff in it, so Ben and I are still loading up.”
“I’m on it,” Andy says. He runs to the cart and starts messing with the Parrot, swapping out the battery for a fresh one. A minute later he has it airborne, rising to one hundred feet in height.
“We need to move,” Kyle says, pointing to the main road. A few fast-moving zombies run past Starlight Drive, with some speed-walkers hot on their trail.
“Andy, what do you see from the Parrot?” Annie asks over the walkie-talkie.
“Only a few hundred zeds heading this direction,” he says back. “Guys, we need to go, or we’re going to get cut off.”
“Copy,” Robert says. Annie and Kyle trade smirks over his use of the lingo.
“Let me know when you guys get into our alley,” Marc cuts in on the walkie. “I’ll be ready to get the door open for you.”
“You got it, Marc,” Kyle says as Ben climbs out from the window well, hops the fence and hefts a bulging duffel into one of the trashcans. A can falls out of the bag with a loud clonk as hits the sidewalk.
Kyle and Annie turn, and sure enough, the two closest zombies heard the noise and speed up their approach. They both start firing at them as Robert exits the house and stashes his bag in a trash can. Andy recalls the Parrot and puts in the basket behind the seats.
“Let’s go,” Robert says over the walkie-talkie.
One of the zombies is down, for good, but the other one is still coming.
“Go!” Kyle says, pulling on Annie’s sleeve. “Get to the cart, and I’ll cover you. Once you’re there, I’ll come back, and you can cover me.”
She stands only as far as a crouch and hustles back to the cart as Kyle keeps shooting at the lurching creature. Its movements are so unsteady Kyle can’t get a clean head shot. The bolt on his rifle locks open, his magazine empty. He stands and runs back to the cart, abandoning the crouch as the zombie is only thirty feet away. Ben and Robert put their carts in reverse. They forgot the tone that sounds off when a golf cart backs up, and zombies along Starlight Drive hear it and start moving their way.
“Dammit,” Ben mutters as he reaches the end of the narrow path and pivots the cart around to the northeast, pointing it back at the alley and in the direction of their house.
“It’s okay, son, just get us going!” Kyle exclaims while he swaps magazines in the rifle. It’s harder to do in a moving golf cart than he expected.
Annie turns and faces backward in the cart, her rifle’s bolt clacking every couple of seconds as she fires at the zombie, which is now only fifteen feet behind them, with more entering the narrow pathway behind it.
As they pass through the green space, they see a few dozen zombies moving along the main road, following the runners which were following whatever Kyle saw. When the undead see them in their carts, they change course and turn into the green space.
They make it to the alley and are grateful to find it still clear of zombies, other than the ones they killed on the way over to Starlight.
Kyle has his rifle loaded again, and turns to help take out the closest ones, but finds them dropping back, unable to keep pace with the carts now that they’re going full speed. The lone exception is the one that has been pursuing them from the narrow path. Kyle has a hard time keeping it in the rifle’s scope with all the bouncing and lurching the cart does as Ben navigates around the bodies in the alley. The zombie finally trips on one of its deceased brethren, falling and hitting its head hard on the asphalt. It has a hard time getting up, and soon the other zombies catch up with, and pass it, in their pursuit of the two carts.
“We’re coming in now, Marc,” Robert says into his mic.
“I see you,” he says back. “Andy, give me the iPad and the Parrot as soon as you get in here.”
As they approach the garage, the door rises. The pull in at full speed, braking hard once inside, sliding on the smooth concrete of the garage floor. Marc pulls the door down, making sure the latch catches and retrieves the drone and the tablet from Andy. He opens the side door and sets the drone on the stoop, and slams the door shut and locks it.
He gets the drone in the air, moving it out into the alley at the height of eight feet – low enough that the zombies can see it, but high enough that they can’t get to it.
“Come on, you smelly fuckers,” he says. “Follow the cheese.”
He flies the drone into the vacant lot, along the side of the house across the alley. Half of the zombies follow it, while half continue their pursuit of the carts. He flies the drone out to the sidewalk, veering left and along the front of the house. Now out of sight of the zombies, he takes it up to fifty feet and brings it back to the rear of the house they’re in now. He spins the drone in a circle, pleased to see
zombies still playing follow-the-leader into the vacant lot, but another group of them reach the garage door and start pounding and clawing at it, trying to get in.
Annie, Ben, and Andy start unloading the carts, shouldering heavy duffel bags and heading into the house and down to the basement. Robert and Kyle stay behind with Marc while he flies the drone.
He brings it right behind the crowd of zombies pounding on the garage door. One by one, they begin turning and looking at it. He moves it a few feet toward the alley, and they match forward after it. The banging on the door stops. He repeats the maneuver he used before, rounding the front of the house across the alley and then flying up and over it and back to their house. He keeps it at fifty feet and surveys the area. Satisfied he’s done all he can do to distract the small horde, he uses the downward facing camera to navigate over to the window well on the southwest side of the house and presses the button to land the drone. It descends into the window well and out of sight of any of the zombies.
“And that is why I love technology,” he says.
“So you can lead a horde of zeds on a wild goose chase?” Robert asks, joking. “I’m sure that’s what they had in mind when they made it.”
“No, smart guy, because you can always find new ways to use it, even ways that the inventors never thought of.”
“Let’s unload the rest of the supplies and get back down below. I’ve had enough excitement for one day,” Kyle says, grabbing a duffel bag. “You can debate the finer points of technology use later.”
Seven
“I can’t tell what make it is, but it’s definitely a white car,” Kyle says.
The image on the screen shows the blurry back end of a small white car just before it disappears behind a house. Robert had to go frame by frame through the camera footage to find this one image.
“So we know someone else was here yesterday, in the neighborhood,” Annie says. “What does that mean for us?”
“It means we need to be careful when we’re out,” Kyle says. “This is the third time we have footage of a white car in the neighborhood, and one of the days it was in front of a house where we later found the owner dead at the bottom of her stairs. Given the circumstances, I find it hard to believe that it’s all coincidental. They’re scavengers for sure because they ransacked the kitchen in the house where that woman was killed. They might be murderers. It’s not like they have to fear the police catching them. So I think it means we need to be very careful and be ready to defend ourselves.”
