"You read that somewhere, didn't you?" Lisa said.
"No. I got it from a movie, actually."
"Which one?"
"Don't remember. But I liked it a great deal."
Beth smiled. She leaned over and kissed her husband. "We made some super kids," she said. "We did something right with them."
"That's for sure. We are proud of you kids," he said.
"Look on the bright side," Aiden said.
"The bright side?" his father asked.
"Now you don't have to put us through Penn State at $50,000 a year."
They were silenced by that. Penn State was an icon that had disappeared overnight. Its staff and student body had been dismissed as the emergency approached its sacred home city of State College, Pennsylvania. The unthinkable had occurred. It was like the feeling that God himself had died and been buried and that his previous creation disappeared. In fact, the entire world as everyone had known it had been summarily canceled.
#
John Wilson came to the front door to greet his brother's family. "I'm glad to have you here. How many did you salvage?"
"Beth, Aiden, and Lisa. Plus, I have eighteen others. They have nowhere else to go."
"They are welcome here. But we'll have to work hard here to keep them fed. It'll mean a lot of farming, hunting, and fishing."
"We can handle that, I'm sure. And they have agreed to pay their way and to fight off any droolers who show up at your door. Two of them are well-trained strays from the national guard. They are young. Green peas. But they have proven themselves as brave in fire fights with us and able to follow orders in our battle with the hordes of vicious zombies in Lancaster."
"We haven't seen stumblers here," John said. "Are you sure none of these are infected?"
"I'm sure. I've checked them for bites. They are as pristine as it gets. They are good."
"Great. Come on in. Have them bring their things inside. It's going to be crowded. I'll share whatever I have but this one chair and the master bedroom are mine."
"It's a deal. I'll make sure they know the terms."
"You got to do what you got to do," John said. "If I was running for my life like them, I'd want someone to welcome me in."
"What goes around, comes around, John," Beth Wilson said. "How's it going for you, my favorite little brother by marriage."
"Your only brother by marriage, you mean, Beth." John Wilson hugged her and gave her a little nip on her cheek.
"Oops. I bit you. Now, we'll have to mash your head in, I suppose."
"Very funny. Too much of that stuff is going around, you know."
"You guys can teach me how to defend against them," John Wilson said. "I want to survive this, and I want to be a tactical genius like you."
"Twenty people," the sheriff said. "That's the optimum number for a good defense. It's sustainable up to a point, plus its an already trained battle group that can exert a good defense and can move rapidly in a retreat. In addition, they can squeeze into a house like yours and hunker down. It may be a squeeze, but its a better fit than fifty of them."
"You are right there, brother. What's mine is theirs except for..."
"The master bedroom and the special general's chair?" Aiden said.
"He's learning, Robert! I like him already."
#
Their first day as refugees came early. John Wilson rang the bottom of the pan with a big metal spoon, yelling, "Time to get up! Get up! Get up! As long as you are alive, you got to work to earn your keep! Get up! Get up!"
The guests got up slowly. They were towns people. They had never gotten up before the sunlight. This was going to take a lot of learning. John Wilson knew he was pushing them hard, but he also knew that he'd have to keep them working or they'd become slackers. He knew from his time in the army that slackers were the ruination of soldiering. John was not going to have any of that.
He assembled them outside and ordered them to follow him in calisthenics.
"If you don't follow me, you don't eat breakfast. If you keep that up, you leave." John Wilson pointed to the road. "That road is empty now, but soon enough, the droolers who want you in their fangs will be coming down that road, and, if you aren't ready for them, they will kill you.” He put the emphasis on the last two words. "It is my job to protect you. I protect you by making you strong. In the end, you may hate me for getting you ready to fight whomever you have to fight. I am an ex-army puke, and I will live off of your hate. You will also learn to live off of your hate for me. If you survive the next ten skirmishes, it will only be because of me. It will be from the muscle and grit I shall place inside you. I will build you up, so when the zombies come to eat you, they will find that they cannot have you! You are mine! Not theirs! I will eat you every day for them and to see that they don't get a chance to bite you and turn you into the devils they have become, devils only interested in eating your heart and ripping out your souls. I am old school, but this new world you are stuck in requires old school. You will worship the day you met me. You will worship everything I did for you. When you respect me, your hate for what I did to train you will remain. I will see to it that it will keep you warm and alive, that you will fight for yourselves and for this unit of men and women you came here with. Now, if you don't agree with me on this, that's tough." He pointed at the street. "There's the road. It's your choice. If you live in my house, you are mine, and I shall train you to survive. So, here's the choice. This is your way out. Stay here and be trained and face the hard times I give you. This is the chance to live, to survive, to remain a warm, loving human being. That road is the chance to loaf, to do whatever you want in the life you have left. It is also the chance to die. Because that road leads straight to death for you. So, if you want out, go now. Take the road to death. I'm going away for five minutes. Leave if you want. Those who stay will do exactly what I say."
John Wilson turned and went into the house. The door slammed shut on its own. Bewildered and disgusted, several of the people complained.
"We don't need this shit. Let's leave. We'll find somewhere else."
"I'm not going out there," another one said. "I'm staying right here and do what he tells me."
Sheriff Wilson stood up. "You heard him. He's my brother. He's tough. He's hard on you. However, he can lead you and train you. He's also a good man. He has experienced battles overseas. A lot of them. He knows desperate times. He knows strategy. He knows military ways. You don't. But you need to, because that's all that can save you. As for me, I'm going to do whatever he tells me to, because I want to live. I want you to live as well. It's going to be tough no matter what we choose. But I am going to choose hard times and life. I know already, from what we just got away from out of sheer luck, that we need a man like him if we are to survive this. Half of my friends and yours are already dead. John is telling us the truth. Out there is death. If John can give me life, that's what I want. Because no matter if I stay here or go out there, it's going to be just as hard. There is no free ride in this new world. We are all fucked, and I say it's time to just suck it up and get on with finding out how to survive."
Five minutes later a few had left, but before they were out of sight several droolers came over the hill. That ended the cake walk. They returned to John's house, resigned to do whatever was necessary to survive.
John came out. He counted heads. All of them were still there. He saw the droolers approaching. "sheriff," he ordered, "take several of your best fighters and destroy those biters out there so we can get started."
Orren, Eliott, Aiden, and Sheriff Wilson started down the road with baseball bats and rifles. There were nine zombies coming. In three minutes, they were dead. Their skulls were smashed, and they were dragged around the corner where their bodies were disposed of. The four of them returned to the house.
"Ready!" John said. "Follow what I do. He dropped to the ground and completed twenty push ups. "One! Two! Three!" He counted out each and every push up. Everyone of the twenty ne
w recruits completed them.
"Good start!"
They completed squats, jumps, kicks, and other calisthenics.
"Get ready to follow me," he yelled, "and see that you stay with me."
John lead them on a three mile run. When they were finished, he said, "At ease. Rest time."
He led them behind the house where there was a shower made from a hose. They were told to wash up and get ready for breakfast.
They had pancakes, eggs, and a piece of ham.
Then, he addressed them. "Now, I know this is going to be tough, but it is not nearly as tough as dying out there somewhere for no reason at all when you could have lived. I am going make you into cohesive and strong fighting units. Each unit will be interchangeable. Each will be capable of fighting for extended engagements. This is what will protect you. It is not an easy road, but the lazy road is far more difficult, because when the bite hits your neck and your guts are pulled out while you are screaming your asses off and crying for your mommas you will know the truly more difficult journey is not the one which I offer you. It's the journey where you left this safe house and died out there all alone. I'm talking about the journey when you left and were killed and were resurrected as the dead and came back right here as one of them and tried to kill us all, only we were so well trained, that we killed you."
#
The displaced people of Lancaster spent the rest of the day in the garden. John Wilson was a survivalist. He had gotten into it as a hobby. His brother, Robert, as sheriff, thought that John was a bit strange for delving into various end of the age scenarios including governmental collapse, asteroid hits, economic dislocations, dead seeds, worldwide starvation, and a thousand other wing nut options. They were all related to John's paranoia which Robert figured was due to his war time assignments overseas where God only knew what had happened to John Wilson and the men he was responsible for. Had they all died? Or mostly died? Had he been a hero to them? The sheriff never knew for sure but he was determined never to ask, figuring that his brother deserved privacy. As a County sheriff, Robert understood that the best thing a law officer could do to keep the peace was to keep his nose out of the hidden side of every person's blue jeans. Not knowing what was inside of them seemed to almost always be the best way to go.
The citizens were given a debriefing for the third time in the same day.
"I know you are sick of listening to me, but I'm going to have to give you some more training. We are out here alone, so we have to raise our food ourselves. No one who is a zombie is trainable to do this, and you can bet your skinny ass that the stores are already denuded of their vegetables, meats, and canned goods. I have stock of these things, but even better, I have heritage seeds that have been used by farmers in Pennsylvania for several hundred years to produce hundreds of vegetable crops. These are not only proven seeds, but their produce is visually interesting and very tasteful. In addition, they produce the nutrients all of us are going to need in the years ahead. So, we are going to start right now to plant our garden and to protect it from animals, robbers, zombies, and drought. In this way we will insure that we will be able to survive. We will not go the way of the pilgrims starving at Plymouth, Massachusetts."
John Wilson gave them a hands on demonstration of each thing he expected them to do. He demonstrated until they all had gotten the idea, then gave them the shovels and hoes to continue each step of the process. He already told them that they would be spending three hours a day on the garden, devoting themselves to planting, aerating, weeding, and fencing the produce off from deer, rabbits, squirrels, and other predators. "This is difficult," he told them, "but starvation is one hell of a lot more difficult, and I don't intend for my troop of soldiers to ever endure that hardship. The main thing that defeats an army is lack of food, and there's no way around it, either we eat well or we will be defeated by our inability to feed ourselves and stay healthy. We are on our own out here. We have to farm successfully or we will indeed starve. It's a tough new world we live in, and the Sarah Lee dessert sections of the local supermarket is a thing of the past. Even by gardening, hunting, caring for chickens and cattle, we are going to be very lean by comparison to where we started, because the right food produces the right bodies. We have all been eating the wrong foods and have become somewhat fat and decadent. That will never again happen. Within a year we will all be very lean and spry, because of our new ways of eating, training, and exercising which are a part of the new way we have to live in order to survive. Our first exercise daily will be gardening."
Aiden and his girlfriend, Marlaina Kreuz, worked together in the rows of dirt. His sister's boy friend Brayton Bormann worked right along with them.
"You know, this might help impress my dad, Brayton," Aiden said. "Your status before now never set very well with him."
"Your dad is a typical fascist prude," Brayton Bormann told him. "I don't do dope any more than you. I shouldn't be judged by what my brothers did, because I personally don't do it. Besides, all they did was sell a little pot. It's not like they were Mexican mafia."
"Are you telling me to not smoke pot?"
"No, I don't smoke pot, but I admit my brothers smoked it. You know, I bet most of the men in this brigade have smoked the stuff. Your dad's reign of pot terror for whatever reason has ended. There's no government left now. We are on our own, so he really has nothing to enforce."
"He's still the sheriff," Aiden said.
"No, he's not. There's no Lancaster County. Besides this place isn't even in Lancaster County, so to be honest, your dad's jurisdiction does not cover this place."
"I never thought of that."
"Check it out," Brayton laughed. "I should have been a frigging lawyer. You know that?"
"You speak enough bullshit to test out. That's for sure," Aiden quipped.
All three of them laughed on that one.
"Did you ever smoke any marijuana?" Brayton asked Aiden.
"Do you want a lie or the truth?"
"Truth, of course."
"Yes."
"Did you like it?"
"It was okay. It made my toenails more interesting, you might say."
"My brothers would say that it makes everything more interesting. That's why its recreational. But I'm being honest. I never smoked pot in my life. In all of Lancaster, I'm probably the odd man out as far as that goes."
"By the way, tell my dad that I confessed to smoking pot, Brayton, and I'd have to deny it. I'd break his heart if he ever found out I did."
"I know. You know what else?"
"What?"
"Your dad's not stupid. He already knows you've smoked it."
"How would he know, smart ass?"
"He was the sheriff. They have ways of getting information about kids that you are I aren't even privy to. So, he knows. But neither I nor Marlaina nor you will ever tell him. And do you know what else?"
"What is that?" Aiden said, as he dug another foot of top soil and turned it just the way his uncle instructed them to do.
"He doesn't want you to admit it, either."
"Why not?"
"That's easy. He wants to deny it," Brayton Bormann told him. "You dad wants to deny it. To himself. To your mom. To everyone. It puts him in a good place."
Bormann was right. Ways in small towns are almost never private. Everyone's nose is sniffing inquisitively inside everyone else's bunched panties. You couldn't fart in a high school, church, or restaurant without the entire town knowing it by morning.
Halfway through the first lesson on planting, nine droolers came out of the woods and began threatening the entire Wilson crew.
"Shamblers!" the sheriff yelled. "Don't get bit!"
Brayton grabbed the shovel from Aiden and ran toward the one that seemed to be approaching his sister, Marlaina. He raised the blade in the air and cut a neat slice through the zombie's head, from side to side. Blood gushed in an arc from his broken skull, and he fell to the ground. Brayton went for another close zombie, rip
ping up his head from the top down. Then he handed the shovel back.
"How did I do?" Brayton asked.
"Very well. My dad is already reconsidering your social worth to all of us."
"Just call me the killer," he laughed.
"Are you feeling all right?"
"I'm okay. I'm okay. Yea."
"Did it upset you?"
"Yes and No. I've had to kill tons of them, Aiden. I've been watching everyone's back since this started, but I still find it upsetting."
Several other walkers staggered onto the scene.
"They seem to trail each other, moving like cattle," someone observed. "Poor brainless bastards that they are."
The sheriff killed two of them as they staggered toward the group of newbie gardeners. As he struck each one of them dead, he shouted out, "Clear!"
"Clear, huh?"
"Yea," Aiden said. "It lets everyone know the job's been done right. No mop up required. Otherwise, we'd have to go back and check. Actually, we'd check anyway, because we just can't let them resurrect. Then, they could bite us and someone would have to kill us."
"It's grisly business," Brayton Bormann said.
"Indeed. This is just the beginning of it. Half of America is infected or will be in a month. There's three hundred and twenty million Americans. Half of them either are or soon will become the walking dead."
"Zombie America," Marlaina said.
"It has a ring to it," Aiden said.
They laughed and continued preparing the garden for a crop of fresh beans. There was a lot of work to do and a lot of zombie killing. It would not be boring, and all of them would be athletes before the first year passed.
"I'm hot now," Aiden thought. "But by this time next year I'll be even hotter. The chicks will certainly want me." He smiled. Small favors often begin with hard work and the persistence to prevail. Aiden had always done both. He would measure up to the task. All of them would. If they didn't, most of them would die soon. It was time to root hog or die in the ancient Pennsylvania hillsides.
#
John Wilson and his brother worked with a crew to build a large bonfire. After eating dinner outside, a ceremony began in which they were serenaded by two performers who sang blue grass music. The fire was lit and the flames soon engulfed the stack of kindling. As it reached a huge high point, John and his brother, Robert, carried the zombies and tossed them on. They were dry and kindled far brighter than the wood had. The audience was amazed. The bodies sparkled in a lively manner, almost like fireworks. They were extremely combustible, having dried out rapidly in the hot Pennsylvania air.
The Zombies of Lancaster Page 11
