There was a basic toolkit on a shelf above the generator, along with an operating manual and a couple of cans of oil, so she assumed all she would need to work on it would be right there. However, working with the night vision goggles at close distances was very difficult as they were super bright, so before she began her generator reclamation project, she went upstairs to get some flashlights.
When she got upstairs, she found that the sun had finally broken through the clouds and light was streaming into the lobby through the tall windows. Grabbing a blanket, she settled down in a warm patch of sunlight and soaked up every blessed photon. Following the patch of warmth for the next two hours—getting up only once to slide the dead postal worker’s body out of sight behind some trash cans—she actually felt better than she had in a long time. However, a bank of dark clouds and some scattered flurries broke the mood, and she decided to get to work.
On her way through the storeroom behind the counter, a box caught her eye with “Yankee Candle” printed along the sides. Realizing a few scented candles could work wonders in the musty fallout shelter, she took the box, hopped on top of the counter, crossed her legs and imagined it was Christmas. And it smelled like Christmas as her hunting knife sliced through the tape and the wonderful scents of bayberry and cinnamon wafted out. There were four large pillar candles, and a plastic tray of twenty-four votive candles of various aromas.
“Thank you, Mrs. Margaret Fleming of 130 Church Street,” Becks said, reading the invoice in the box.
After taking a deep breath of bayberry and thinking how fortunate she was to have found the candles, she had an “Aha!” moment. Or perhaps, a “Duh!” moment was more like it. Rather than cursing her luck at getting stuck inside of a post office, she should have thanked her lucky stars that she was now in the midst of packages from every major online retailer who had been in existence BZA. Even eliminating the countless boxes of tanzanite rings and designer handbags from QVC, that still left hundreds, if not thousands, of items that could make her life more comfortable and help her survive.
Running back into the storeroom like a kid on Christmas morning, Becks searched for packages from L.L. Bean, Eddie Bauer, Eastern Mountain Sports, REI, and anything that sounded like a food company. An hour later, she was clad in various sizes and colors of silk long johns, premium cotton turtlenecks, down vests and jackets, and Gore-Tex pants. Not to mention the three cashmere caps that were now caressing her head in soft, cozy warmth, as she feasted on cashews, jams and jellies, flavored pretzels, gourmet popcorn, jerky, and yes, the Holy Grail of mail order foods—assorted dark chocolates from some of the finest chocolatiers. Stale, hard, chocolate was still better than nothing.
Even after tearing into dozens and dozens of packages, Becks had barely scratched the surface of this massive cardboard monument to consumer gluttony. But she had spent enough time sunning herself and pretending it was Christmas. It was time to roll up those silk and cotton sleeves and tackle the generator—after one more stick of Cajun jerky.
Constantly referring to the manual, hour-by-hour and piece-by-piece, Becks began disassembling the generator and soaking the gummed up parts in coffee mugs filled with gasoline, as she was fresh out of carburetor cleaner. She didn’t have a syphon, so she slipped and fell her way to the closest mail truck, and used a screwdriver and hammer to put a hole in the gas tank and drain the contents into two buckets from the maintenance closet.
Once everything she could remove was soaking in gas, she decided to leave them overnight. However, before she went upstairs, she took a look at the odd pump toilet. As long as she had buckets and access to the outside it wasn’t really an issue, but still, it would be nice to have a little creature comfort.
Pumping the handle slowly up and down a few times, nothing happened. Then she saw a sign on the wall behind the toilet that read, “Pump Vigorously Until Desired Result is Achieved,” which elicited an uncharacteristic giggle. Nonetheless, she followed the instructions and pumped away as if she was on a sinking ship. As she was about to give up, she heard a strange sound from deep within the bowels of the earth, as it were. Something was stirring in the pipes below the fallout shelter.
Continuing her rapid pumping, there was a sudden spurt of brown, smelly water into the bowl, but several pumps later, the water began to clear and flow evenly. She had a working toilet!
Could this day get any better? she thought, as she clutched the handle for the pump on the sink.
On the third pump, the handle snapped off at the base. It would have been nice to have running water, too, but with an endless supply of frozen water just outside the door, she wasn’t too upset. Of course, the water being pumped into the toilet must be coming from the same well, but she just couldn’t bring herself to drink out of a toilet. Even in an apocalypse a lady had her limits.
The next day was spent carefully cleaning and reassembling all the parts of the generator. It was slow and time consuming, but she wanted to get it all right the first time. She needed heat, and light would be an added bonus. Finally, she was ready and confident the generator would start, and if it didn’t, it wouldn’t be because of a lack of effort or attention to detail.
“Lights, heater, action!” she shouted, as she ceremoniously gave the pull cord a mighty tug.
The dry-rotted cord snapped in half and the generator remained silent. However, Becks did not, as she ranted, raved, swore, and kicked things. But not for long, as she immediately had to switch gears to find a Plan B to generate heat, as the plastic hummingbird thermometer outside the break room window was currently reading eight degrees. Granted, the basement was probably a relatively toasty 45 degrees, but her increasingly scrawny skin and bones body needed real warmth.
As her big toe throbbed from kicking one of the metal barrels, an idea started to form. She could just empty a barrel, take it outside, and make a classic redneck fireplace, but she didn’t relish the idea of having to stand outside next to a barrel in windy, eight-degree weather, no matter how big of a fire she made. Examining the exhaust pipes attached to the generator, she realized she might be able to cut a hole in the lid of the barrel and insert the pipes. Then she would cut a hole in the front to stoke the fire and let the glorious heat spill out.
However, before she wasted any more time on hopeless projects, she would test it to see if heated smoke would travel up the pipe. For all she knew, it had been sealed off 30 years ago, or 50 years-worth of birds and squirrels had fallen down the pipe and clogged it. Detaching the metal pipe was a simple task, and on an overturned barrel she made a small pile of crumpled up Change of Address cards. Angling the large diameter pipe directly over the pile, she lit it.
At first, the smoke went everywhere, but as the heat intensified, the smoke was clearly drafting upward through the pipe. Becks kept the fire going for about 15 minutes just to be sure it wasn’t going to back up into the room, and just because it felt so good.
Once her experiment was successfully concluded, she rummaged around the maintenance closet and found a small hacksaw and a pair of tin snips. The metal of the barrel was tougher than it looked, but by bedtime her custom redneck fireplace was cranking out heat, thanks to all the boxes, papers, and the wood from the banks of post office boxes. In fact, it got so hot, she had to take off several layers of clothes before bedding down on the middle bunk of the closest set of beds.
The following day, she shoveled snow into buckets and heated them on her barrel to wash her grimy hair and offensively filthy body. Becks put together a nice set of clean clothes—thanks to several ladies in town who most likely died or turned zombie right after placing their orders—which completed her “makeover” from scummy survivor to civilized human being again. She also couldn’t resist opening some of those QVC boxes and soon had a tanzanite ring on every finger, as well as earrings, several necklaces, and bunches of bracelets. She couldn’t remember the last time she actually wore jewelry, and it was a fun and frivolous diversion to play “dress up.”
As
it was another relentlessly cold morning with dangerous wind chills, she opted to spend the rest of the day in her bunk with a stack of mail to read for entertainment, by the light of honeysuckle-scented candles. She was surprised at how many people had written letters in the final days before the complete collapse of society’s infrastructure. Granted, cell phones and Internet service had become increasingly unreliable over the course of several months, but Becks felt it was something more than that. In times of crisis, people like the comfort and security of something they can hold in their hands, something that will last without electricity and will travel anywhere they went.
Her theory seemed to be supported by the nature of the letters, as well. Estranged family members reached out to either beg or grant forgiveness for past transgressions that now seemed so petty in the face of the looming crisis. Dog-eared photos of children, honeymoons, and grandma’s house crisscrossed the country, accompanied by heartfelt messages of love and remembrance. Some letters made Becks laugh, but most made her cry, as the themes of “Everyone I love is dying” and “I’m afraid I’ll never see you again,” played out on page after page.
“This probably wasn’t the best idea,” she said, wiping her eyes as she approached her barrel fireplace and was about to chuck a fistful of letters and photos into the flames.
But she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t obliterate the last traces of these people whose lives had been reduced to the contents of a business envelope bearing a first class stamp. The dreamer in Becks imagined groups of historians years from now, in a zombie-free world, collecting letters such as these to document the darkest age of human history. And what right did she have to destroy these letters and prevent the future publication of the best-selling series of books, Letters from the Apocalypse.
Which reminded her, she hadn’t kept up her own diary—for obvious reasons—that she began in Dylan’s notebook soon after the accident. How long ago was that? What day was it? Hell, what month was it? She didn’t know. All that mattered was how long this winter weather would last, and when she could start the final push home.
After writing in her diary for about an hour, she found that it was even more depressing than reading other people’s letters. Instead, she opened some more packages, looking for something to keep her occupied. There were a lot of boxes from Amazon, but few that actually contained books, and fewer still that had any appeal to Becks.
There were loads of eBay collectible flotsam and jetsam, 99% of which she categorized as complete crap—until she tore open a small box and came face to face with the cutest vintage sock monkey. Naming her Ginger, and giving her a tanzanite bracelet for a collar, Becks at least had someone to talk to now. Sure, it was crazy, but even pretending to talk to a stuffed toy lowered her anxiety level—which became even more necessary as the days stretched to weeks of bitter cold, snow, and even more snow.
Needing to conserve some MREs for when she hit the road again, she sustained herself only on what she could find in the packages, and a couple of the old Civil Defense survival crackers and biscuits every day. The Cold War-era food didn’t taste good, but it didn’t taste moldy or compromised in any way, either, so she wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. And when she found a package of Aunt Edna’s homemade, Maine blueberry jam—which never made it to her nephew, Randolph Hastings, of 225 Second Avenue—the crackers took on a whole new life.
By the end of the third week, cabin fever threatened to make her go postal. She had tried to remain in some shape by jogging around the sorting room and up and down the cellar stairs, but she wanted to get outside. She needed to get outside. She had found plenty of clothes and jackets to keep her warm, but her combat boots were no match for deep snow. There was a pair of well-worn rubber snow boots in the basement, from some long-gone mail carrier, but they were a men’s size twelve. However, by stuffing a couple of children’s Scottish cashmere sweater vests—meant for the young MacTavish residents of 16 Parkside Circle—down into the toes of the boots, she not only made them fit better, but added some much-needed insulation.
If she thought the 17-degree temperature was a shock to her exposed skin—which after rewrapping two scarves consisted only of her nose and a small patch of each cheek—then the 20-30 mile-per-hour gusts made it downright painful, and dangerous. A few flirtations with above-freezing temperatures, followed by long periods of single-digit deep freezes, over the past few weeks had left a dense, hard snowpack that held her weight, but made every step a challenge on the slick surface.
Balancing herself using a pair of makeshift walking sticks, crafted from broom handles to which she had duct taped some tacky commemorative Native American knives from the Home Shopping Network—ordered by Stan Wysneski, Terrace Gardens, Apt 2B—she made her way into the street and was able to see the neighborhood for the first time. A block to the south was a strip of small businesses, although she couldn’t see what they were. Further down looked to be more open space like a park, or maybe a school.
More importantly was what lay to the north, which led to the road she hoped to take westward to Interstate 287. She had asked Eddie to draw a map of the best way back, but as he knew “the way like the back of my hand,” and he was supposed to go with her, he never bothered to make that map. There were some maps in the post office, but they only covered the local mail routes. The road that had been choked with a zombie herd did seem to run due west, and if that was impassable she would have to travel through side streets and yards until she found a clear section.
Today would be a preliminary reconnaissance mission to determine the size of the herd, and how many might still be alive. Any living or undead creature out in this extreme cold for this long should have frozen solid and be permanently dead by now, which could create its own problems. A few hundred, or god forbid, thousands of corpses frozen together in the road would be as impenetrable as a castle wall.
She may not be able to make a definitive assessment with all this snow, but at least she was outside, the sun was shining, and there didn’t appear to be any imminent danger.
Until the earth began to move.
Chapter 13
Becks could have made her way back through the woods she had crossed on the ATV, but she didn’t want to tangle with all the branches and thorns again, not to mention the steep embankments where she would be unable to get any kind of decent footing. The road was clear and straight, although the snow drifts had formed a strange sort of rolling contour—something like a mild version of the moguls skiing course she had seen on the Winter Olympics.
Very cautiously approaching the intersection, she was quite surprised that there wasn’t a huge herd, frozen where they had stood that almost fateful night. Carefully maneuvering the slick, bumpy terrain, she made it to the center of the intersection and looked to her right where she had encountered the blind curve, although she had approached it coming from the other direction. This side of the blind curve appeared clear, so perhaps it hadn’t been such a large herd after all, and it had moved to the east, and away from the direction she wanted to go. Looking to her left, the strange bumpy terrain continued down the road as far as she could see, but no herds were in sight.
“Well, I sure lucked out!” she declared, feeling very good about her situation, until she felt something odd.
It was like the planet suddenly shuddered—an unnerving tremor that almost made her lose her balance.
“What the hell? Is it an earthquake?” she asked, looking down at her feet, and then turning 360 degrees to view the entire landscape for some clue as to what might be happening. And that’s when a sick feeling hit the pit of her stomach.
The road sign poles were much too short. Even accounting for the couple of feet of snow, they were still a few feet too short, as if there was something big under the snow…
“Fuck…me…”
The ground shook again, this time more violently. The sound of cracking ice echoed around her, and all of the bumps and moguls seemed to come alive and star
t writhing, like frosty cocoons ready to burst open. But these weren’t butterflies under her feet—this was the massive herd of zombies!
When Becks had spent the previous winter at Cam’s compound in Saugerties, New York, she had seen small numbers of zombies caught out in the cold. They froze to death like grisly popsicles, often standing up together in clumps. However, she had never witnessed the winter behavior of the huge packs that existed in New Jersey.
She had no idea that when it snowed heavily, zombies lie down on top of one another in mounds and let the snow act as a blanket, while they “slept” in deep twilight states. Between the insulating layer of snow and their combined body heat, at least half their number could survive even for weeks with these brutally frigid temperatures. It would be a lesson that would be burned into her memory—if she managed to get out alive.
Just twenty feet in front of her, a mound broke open, and several sluggish zombies started clawing their way out. A few seconds later, two mounds to her right split apart as hands and heads pushed to the surface. As far as the eye could see to the east and west, the bumps in the road erupted like swarms of maggots bursting out of a corpse.
Moving was almost impossible as the sheets of snow and ice beneath her feet heaved upward and grasping hands thrust out. If the pack below her had enough layers of zombies, she could be swallowed up in the middle of the ravenous horde! One chubby hand got a hold of her ankle, and using her walking stick as a spear, she repeatedly stabbed at the hand, cutting off three fingers before she could break free. But more hands quickly appeared around her, like a macabre garden of limbs. Heads with snapping teeth were emerging, as well.
Several zombies right under her were trying to stand up, and she actually went a couple of feet in the air on the back of one of them, before she fell and slid into another mound about to erupt. The mounds were smaller and more scattered on the sides of the road, so Becks stumbled and crawled her way between the thrashing arms and gnashing teeth to a relatively safe spot. From there, she hoped to make a mad dash the half block back to the post office, until a large crack appeared ahead in the snow, like a fissure opening up in the earth—only instead of lava, rows of starving zombies flowed out and began to spread in all directions.
HVZA (Book 2): Hudson Valley Zombie Apocalypse 2 Page 19
