Stronghold

by Ron Tufo

  Wink and Steve came trudging up the road, satisfied that there were no trespassers of the almost dead again kind on the property. They headed over to Wink’s house to spark up his old one-ton stake truck and take a ride over to Doc’s. Gary was checking out a new beaver dam with Gabby, who had tagged along for the morning patrol. Boo had joined them too, but there was no way an Old English Bullie was going to keep up with a hound dog for long. She just kind of gave up the chase and sat on the road, waiting for them to get back to her.

  Wink pulled his old Ford out of the garage. You could hear that Detroit engine coming from a couple of days away. He was either going to attract all kinds of zombies or scare them away. Steve jumped in and they rambled on down the road. We were well into late autumn mud season, and the old truck was only a one-wheel rear drive. Wink didn’t dare stop in front of the house to say goodbye. He had to keep his inertia up or we would have been digging him out next summer. A wave and a beep was all he could manage. In typical Talbot fashion, everyone was on the front porch cheering him on and taking bets as to whether or not he would make it up the rise.

  Doc’s place was first on the list, but Wink also wanted to see if the tankers were still safe and sound at the National Guard Armory. Steve remembered what the watch system at Doc’s home was like almost too late to warn Wink. Sure enough Shoot First Talk Later David was on duty.

  Wink couldn’t understand why Steve was screaming and ducking under the dash as the same time but being a combat seasoned vet he had the right reaction anyway. The brakes grumbled to a mudslide stop. His quick reaction time saved them from David’s warning shot that holed the front bumper and ricocheted off the frame. Wink is not a small man. At 6’5” he still managed to scooch under the dashboard with Steve!

  “Doc! Doc! Call off the guards man! It’s Steve from the Talbot place!

  The answer came from David. “Steve, yeah, I remember you. Come on in.”

  “Dude! Why do you always shoot first?”

  “My granddad says it’s safer these days to shoot first. Who knows whether it’s bad guys or not?”

  Hearing David’s shot, the Doc came up behind the boy with his own rifle at the ready.

  “I know that old stake truck. Used to be owned by my friend, Jay Curtis. Although there weren’t any holes in it back then. Nice shot, David. Wink Curtis? Is that you hiding in that truck? Get out here young man and let me see you!” Wink unfolded himself and came out to say hello to his dad’s old friend. Doc looked him over and what he saw through time was his old buddy standing there, smiling at him. Wink caught up the feeling and stuck out his hand for a shake. Doc ignored the hand and grabbed the big ranger in an even bigger hug than he had bestowed on me the other day. Steve thought for sure he heard bones snapping. Even Wink grimaced at the strength of the old man.

  When he could breathe normally again, Wink asked how the kids were doing. A frown came over Doc’s face.

  “Don’t worry, the kids are all fine, but we do need to talk. We had a bit of a scare the other night. Come on in. I got coffee on and you need to hear what happened.

  Budgets must be tight here, I thought. The old Schlage locks were still in place and true to my word, it only took a moment to open the door. That old “like riding a bicycle” saying came to mind. Seemed like my hands knew which way to move without my mind consciously telling them what to do. Nice to know I still had that skillset. You have to wonder though, in what part of your brain do all the little evil skills reside? Do they sit around in the darkest corner playing poker until you need them again? (Picture it. Wise cracking Lock Picking guy hears the call and turns to the other criminal skills, shoplifting guy, mother-wallet raider, gas siphoning dumbass…sitting at the card table: “Damn. I had a full house and after all these years that old fool calls me now. Whatever. I fold. Gotta answer the bell, boys. It’s a break-in! Save my seat; don’t you fuckin’ touch my chips.”)

  Mark and Mer were posted at the front door while Squeak and I went in to clear the floor. First room on the right was Sister Incanata’s 1st grade classroom. The room was clear and securable. Seems that the Boston suburb of West Roxbury had been going through the same crime wave the rest of our no-gun cities had been enduring. There were bars on all the windows and locks on both the front and rear doors of the classroom. We looked at a few others and they were all the same. Empty and secure. Squeak and I had a quick peek down the hall and decided to bring our gear into that first room. A rooftop escape was no longer feasible and at least this one would be the closest to the wagons if we needed to make a quick exit.

  The kids locked up the vehicles. Why not? We really didn’t know who was around here or who had seen us pull up to the school, rock throwers, perhaps. We brought our stuff inside. It was already dark by the time they were finished and Squeak and I were satisfied that we could close up and get some rest. We posted the usual watch and everyone took a corner to lie in.

  I didn’t even realize I had fallen asleep when Mark shook me for my turn six hours later. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and sat in a spot where I could see all around the room. It was quiet but for some mouselike scrabbling of feet. It was really a welcome sound. If you have lived in Maine for any length of time you will have gotten used to small animals looking for a warm place to hunker down for the winter. Field mice are no exception. Except then the scrabbling was coming from a considerably bigger rodent. I mean, way over rat sized, too. It was a scene straight out of No Country for Old Men when Chigurh slowly steps up to the motel room door of Llewelyn and you can see the shadow of his feet under the door. Scared the crap out of me then and scared the crap out of me now as the tightly laced, black hightop shoes of a nun stood outside the classroom door and I heard something repeatedly dragging across the wood frame. Fucking beyond spine-chilling!

  My knees were none too stable. Against the profound wishes of my limbic brain, I brought myself to stand just on the other side of Hell, separated only by a piece of wood.

  I snapped on the flashlight and aimed it through the glass. Holy Mother of God. It was Sister Elizabeth Clair. I would know that wrinkled old bat anywhere, anytime. She was fucking ancient back when I was a pre-teen. She had to be a hundred fifty by now. How is it that she lived long enough to become the Mother Superior of all zombie nuns? In truth, she was less nasty looking as a zombie than when she was completely alive. Dappled grey with wisps of sickly yellowed white hair sneaking out of her veil were very much her colors.

  Unfuckingreal. She was still holding a yardstick! I wondered if it was the same one she used to hit me with during recess in the schoolyard when I was punching it out with Charlie Bishop? That happened everyday. We really didn’t like each other. He was the class bully, I was his prime target. She wielded that thing with uncanny accuracy. Could hit a kid off the head at twenty paces and have it boomerang back into her hands before he started bleeding.

  Right now, Sister Éclair, which is what we called her–first and only time she ever heard me I got whacked on the back of the head with the dreaded three foot attitude adjuster; I swear that thing had a titanium core–was sandpapering her wooden measuring stick back and forth across the door. I vowed I saw a glint of recognition in her rheumy eyes and a gotcha now sneer on her peeling lips. I stumbled back a few steps. As shaken as I was, I didn’t want to wake everybody up from their much-needed rest. What the hell, as long as the old bat couldn’t get in, anyway, I’d just let her saw away.

  Doc poured coffee as everyone got comfortable around the old, farm-style, wide pine kitchen table. He looked tired. “The kids are upstairs. In a minute I’ll have David go get them so you can say hello. They were all having a great time until a couple nights ago.”

  Wink and Steve eyeballed each other. Neither wanted to interrupt the older man as it looked like he was already having enough trouble trying to relate his story. He picked up his thoughts again and continued. “Two afternoons ago, they were all playing a game in the living room. I was reading on the couch, having my own
fun watching them enjoy themselves. They were full of energy, and I was ready for a nap. Well, I must have dozed off because the next thing I saw and heard was little Iza rocking back and forth on her knees and crying.

  “The other kids were all looking at her. They had no idea what had started her tears, then she said, ‘Make her stop. Make the bad lady stop! She is coming here to hurt everyone.’ I asked, Who, Iza? who is coming here? And she looked at me point blank, like I should have known. ‘The lady with all the bad zombies. She wants to hurt us all.’”

  They looked at Doc; of course, the first question that popped into Wink’s head was: “There are good zombies?” but he knew enough to keep quiet and let the man continue.

  “No sooner had those words left the child’s mouth then the bars on the front windows started to shake. I had told my grandchildren why I left rifles and ammunition at every window and door–I never wanted to be fumbling or searching for a gun when I needed one. I know how sick that sounds, but it had to be done. I grabbed and loaded the closest one to me and pulled back the curtain to get a look outside. What I saw did not give me much confidence we would make it through the rest of the fading day.

  I couldn’t see the driveway for all the zombies that were outside the house. I was mentally estimating how many when a cackle come over the whole group. There in the center of her insentient army was Ida Maeve Littlehill. She still almost looked human, but as I got a more focused eyeball on her, I could see that she was more cold-blooded looking than she ever was when alive. And I’ll be damned, she was in charge of them all, and instructing them to break down the windows and doors. That short round little ball of rolling shit was trying to get in my home and do harm to me and these children.”

  Everyone hung on Doc’s speech, and more than one head swiveled to check that the guns were still at the windows.

  “I had never asked Ron if it was okay to train the boys and Iza in the use of guns, and I didn’t want to do it without his permission. I told Rebecca and David to get their rifles, they’ve each got a Remington 870 Express Compact Jr. I told them to take everybody to the safe room in the basement. We were secure enough for the moment, and I started to pick off zombies. I hated breaking so much glass, but shooting through it was a way better decision than asking the zombies to hang on a moment while I unlatched and opened the windowpanes.”

  That brought a nervous chuckle from Mark, picturing, no doubt, having to roll down the windows in the truck for on the fly target practice.

  “Seems like I went through hundreds of rounds; didn’t even make a dent in their ranks. I was getting tired of shooting, if you can believe it. The bars were holding up okay, so it really was more of a one-sided shooting gallery. David came up to see if he could help his grandpa, and I was grateful for it. I gave him a window to defend and told him if this started to go south, he best get himself back downstairs. Made him promise me.”

  “Then I heard a sound I never wanted to hear. A squealing ripping of metal as it started to pull away from the wooden frame of the house. David looked like he wanted to run right then and there. Could you blame him? I told him to get! Now! I could see he was torn between helping me and being too scared to stay. I yelled that he needed to protect all the children; that gave him the break he needed to release and go. Good. At least they would make it until someone alive came to their rescue.”

  Doc took a big swig of his coffee, which Steve hoped, for his sake, had been laced with whiskey. Sounded like they’d really been through hell, and at that point in the story, the guys were surprised anyone had made it through.

  “I really wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to keep them out of the house. My chance to turn the tide came when I again heard Ida Maeve trying to inspire her troops to keep storming the place. I could tell she was off to my right. I left the window where the bars were coming loose and moved over to where I had heard her screeches. Sure enough, I could get her in my sights. Kill the general if you can; that was all I remember from my basic training days. My stint in the army was spent wielding a scalpel, not a rifle. I’m a doctor, not an infantryman.”

  Damn, Steve thought. I’d been waiting for years to use that one iconic Star Trek line; guess he beat me to it!

  “I was shaking as I took the shot and it looked like I had waited just a breath too long. She had gotten partially blocked by a zombie, and I couldn’t be sure if my shot was true or not.

  “I wiped my eyes and got ready to go back to the damaged window when the tremors of the attack stopped. They ended just so quickly; it took me a few seconds to process what was no longer happening. I really felt bad for the poor creature that was half in and half out of the window. If a zombie ever had a quizzical look on his face, this guy qualified. He had ripped strips of his face away on broken glass as he tried to get a purchase on the windowsill and he was methodically losing his intestines as they got caught on more glass when he started backing out. I didn’t have the heart to shoot him as he was just trying to get back outside. Then the callous part of me got happy about it because it would be one less body I would have to clean up. All of the zombies started to back away from the house. The only sound I heard over the scuffling was Ida swearing:

  ‘It hurts so much. I will personally kill you, you old fool, Jefferson! Just as I will kill Talbot to avenge my husband. Protect me, my friends. Carry me to safety.’

  “They disappeared into the dusk as quietly as they had come out of it. It was over and we were alive. I fell to my knees from the shuddering. I had never been as petrified as I was at that moment. It was over, and yet I knew it wasn’t over for long.”

  We stared at Doc, wondering how he was able to tell this tale so calmly; We thought maybe he was still waiting for it all to sink in before he had his breakdown; once the children were safe.

  “The control that woman had over the zombies was all encompassing. To a one, they all followed her commands. She seemed to be walking a fine line between the worlds of humans and undead. My overriding fear is that since she can control them, how far does that power extend? What, if any, are distance limitations? Her ability to organize them? Her range of commands? Jesus, this just keeps getting better and better.”

  Wink interrupted Doc’s rabid questions with a memory of his own. “Doc, that old biddy was a mean one ever since we were little kids. She used to keep our baseballs if they went into her yard, sometimes even just close to it. She would sit by her window waiting for a foul ball to come her way and then be out the door like a shot to get the ball before we could. My dad went up to her one time and asked her to return the baseballs to the kids and she cackled at him to ‘tell those brats to go play somewhere else.’ Like Brussels sprouts with mustard, she was nasty even then.“

  Doc continued his story as Steve got up to warm the coffee. “It has taken me all of two days to clean the area of guts and glory, even with my tractor. That’s one ordeal I refuse to let any of the children help me complete. If we should survive, they are going to be scarred beyond hope of a normal life as it is. I refuse to make it any worse. I am repairing what damage was done and reinforcing every possible entrance beyond what has been accomplished already. Some of the windows will have to be replaced with whatever I can figure out. Who knows, someday I may get Ron to raid a Home Depot store for me. I’ll bet he would enjoy that!

  “In the meantime, I don’t think we will be hearing from our friend Ida Maeve for a little while. My shot was better than I had hoped for. Looks like I got her in the fleshy part of the hip. Lord knows that is a big enough target.” He laughed at his own joke.

  Wink and Steve finished their coffees and said their goodbyes. They could only think that Ida was one to make good on her threats. Another zombie confrontation at the Talbot compound was a given.

  Rather than head right back home, Wink had a wondrous suggestion. He said to Steve, “While we are down here, why don’t we swing past the National Guard Armory and see if those tankers you guys saw earlier are still there. Wouldn’t Ron c
onsider that the finest kind of surprise ever if he pulled into the yard and saw a tanker of diesel fuel?” Steve did break out in laughter at that joke. He knew my birthday was coming up–maybe they could paint a big Happy Birthday sign on the side of it.

  They got to the Armory and both the diesel tanker and the propane truck were still there. Wink was pleased, but a bit surprised. “You know, Steve,” he said, “the fact that both of those tankers are still there and full, too, worries me a bit. Everyone left in the county needs fuel of some kind, especially during the Maine winter. The fact that both those trucks are still full means there can’t be all that many survivors who would need heating fuel. The human race may have been thrown a bigger curve ball than we thought."

  “Let’s go back to the house and get another driver so we can take both of those trucks back with us at once. That way when we break in and steal–I mean emancipate–those poor lonely tankers for Ron, we only have to do it one time. I’m also thinking that we want to leave a notice telling people where we are and what we have in case some other folks need some fuel too.”

  “Won’t that draw raiders? We’re already attracting zombies to the homestead,” Steve said.

  “I’m not too worried about the zombies rediscovering the ability to read as a skill set and if there are any bad guys, we will just have to deal with it. Just not too keen on leaving other Mainers near here with no fuel.”