The King of Clayfield - 01

by Shane Gregory

  Sara opened the garage door to my house, and I backed the truck in. We'd be able to load it without being bothered.

  It felt like I hadn't been there in years; it was like I was in a stranger's home. I went to the sink and turned on the faucet. There was still water.

  "We can fill the jugs here," I said. "There's a bottle of bourbon in the pantry, too. Don't let me forget that."

  "I see you got that new game system," she said, standing in front of my entertainment center.

  "Yeah," I said. "I guess I should have spent that money on canned goods and a Swiss Army Knife."

  "It doesn't look like a woman has lived here in a while," Sara said.

  "A woman has never lived here," I said. "At least, not with me. Hence the game system. I could never have had one before; my wife would have nagged the hell out of me."

  "I would have never done that to you."

  "Yeah, well...."

  "So you've been living alone. Were you taking advantage of being divorced and playing the field?"

  I laughed, "If I were a player, you....well, never mind."

  She smiled and started filling water jugs.

  I went into my bedroom. There were still clothes in my closet, I grabbed a few more things from there and put them on the bed. I heard a low noise from outside.

  "Look out the window!" Sara said from the kitchen.

  I peeked through the curtains. A UPS truck drove by very slowly. The back door was open, and there were at least two armed men standing in the opening, but I thought I could make out more inside.

  I turned and Sara was standing in the doorway.

  "No," she said. "Please let them go."

  "What?"

  "I know you want to talk to them about the Somervilles, but let them go. They don't know we're here. Let's just go back to the stables. I'll stay with you and Jen. I won't be any trouble."

  "You're not any trouble, Sara."

  "Those people out there could be like those men at Lowes. They could be bad people, and I don't want them to know we're here."

  "Okay," I said. "It's okay. But what about the Somervilles?"

  "Maybe they got away and went to Blaine's house."

  "Alright," I said. "We'll sneak away."

  She came into the room and hugged me.

  "Thank you," she said. "They scare me more than the sick people."

  "Sure," I said.

  She looked up at me. I thought she was going to kiss me again.

  "I'll finish the water," she said. "See if you can find more containers."

  She left me and went back into the kitchen. She'd never been any trouble, yet she was a world of trouble.

  When we were sure the men were gone, we left and headed south to Broadway. We'd already accomplished two things on the list--water and alcohol--and it was only 8 a.m.

  "I want to drive out toward Belfast," I said. "Jen's friend, Brian--the one with the Porsche--lives out there."

  We could see Brian's wind turbine from a few miles away. It was turning slowly. When we got close enough to see the house, I stopped the truck. The house had been burned. It wasn't smoking, so it must have burned days before--probably before or during all the rain. There were three trucks, a four-wheeler, and a motorcycle parked out front. A van was parked crosswise in the entrance to the driveway to block it.

  I put the truck in reverse and got away from there.

  If the house was burned, and the men at Lowes had Brian's Porsche, there would be no good up there. They were probably still going to try to use the wind turbine somehow. I know I would, if I could.

  "Are we going back to the stables now?" Sara asked.

  "No," I said. "We'll go ahead and collect the food and other supplies we didn't get the other day. We'll just do our shopping out away from town so we won't run into these people."

  "So we're going to go looting, too?"

  "You have a lot to learn, my dear," I said. "When we do it, it's called scavenging."

  CHAPTER 41

  So long as we needed our water jugs filled every few days, we would need to leave the house, and if we left the house, we increased our chances of getting into some sort of trouble. I think we were coming around to Jen's line of thinking; we needed to hunker down for a while. I was going to have to find us another source of water. The cistern at the yellow brick house wouldn't last forever. We needed a water source of our own out at the stables.

  Before heading completely away from town, I decided to go to Founder's Farm and Hardware. They were another farm supply store, and they would have chicken feed and tools just like Tractor Supply. I knew they catered to the local Amish community, too, so they might have a wood cook stove. Then it hit me—

  "Why didn't we think of that before?" I said aloud.

  "What?" Sara asked.

  "We should relocate to one of the Amish farms. They're already set up for no electricity. They'll have wood cook stoves and heaters. They'll have hand-pumped wells. It would be perfect."

  "But they're out past Belfast," she said. "And I would think that other people would have the same idea."

  "We didn't," I said.

  "You just did," she replied. "If they haven't thought of it yet, they will as soon as their generators and windmills quit working."

  "You're probably right," I said. "But if we can't find a wood cook stove at Founder's then we should drive out there and take a stove from the Amish."

  "We should take an Amish," Sara said.

  I laughed, but it wasn't a bad idea. If we found an Amish survivor, they would be helpful by teaching us what they knew about living without modern conveniences.

  "Yes," I said. "Let's put an Amish on that supply list."

  Founder's Farm and Hardware had been in Clayfield for decades. It was tucked away on a side road away from the big chains. It didn't get as much traffic as the other stores, and it had been overlooked by looters. We were able to get the same stuff we'd gotten at Tractor Supply, just more of it. They also had three 40-pound bags of oats. It was for horses, but I figured that like the corn, we could eat it if we had to.

  We were going to need a truck to haul it all in. We got everything we wanted near the door, and then we went out to the pickup so we could drive around and find a bigger truck.

  To the side of the building, where they kept fence posts, landscaping timbers, concrete blocks, and other things that didn't need to be indoors, were several large plastic tanks. I didn't know what their purpose was--maybe to hold large quantities of herbicides or pesticides for farmers to spray on their fields. Regardless of their intended purpose, they would make great cisterns. They were new, so it wasn't like they'd had poisons inside them yet. They even had attachment at the bottom for a hose or spigot.

  I was never good at those math problems where we had to find volume, but these tanks were a little over four feet tall and their diameter was around ten feet. They would probably hold several hundred gallons.

  "We're getting one of those, too," I said. "We'll need a flatbed truck or a trailer."

  "How are we going to lift it?" Sara said.

  "We'll worry about that after we find the truck."

  I'd seen a flatbed delivery truck parked behind Lowes, but I didn't want to go back over there if I didn't have to. It would probably have a little forklift with it so the delivery driver could unload building materials. That would be helpful, too. It would have really been helpful if I'd followed the masked woman's advice and read up on how to drive a forklift.

  Instead, I drove out away from town on Havana Road. We traveled five or six miles before we found what we were looking for. It was an old hay truck parked between a barn and a silo. It was painted powder blue, and it was eaten up with rust.

  "It probably won't even run," I said. "It must be fifty years old."

  "It'll run," Sara said. "They knew how to make them fifty years ago."

  There was a ranch-style house on the same property.

  "While we're here, let's see what they have insid
e," I said.

  The doors were locked on the house. We searched for a spare key, but never found one. We wound up breaking a dining room window. I lifted Sara in, and then she opened the door for me.

  It was a good score. The family must have just gone to the grocery, because they had enough food to last us for at least two weeks. There was a gun case, too. We found two .22 rifles, a 12 gauge shotgun, a .30-30, and my favorite--an AR-15.

  "Cool," I said taking it out of the gun cabinet.

  "Bad ass," Sara said. "Let me hold it."

  I handed it to her.

  "How do I look?" she said, posing with the weapon.

  "Like you're holding my gun," I said.

  "I don't know," she said, "I seem to remember something about possession being nine-tenths of the law."

  "What law?" I said.

  "Well," she said, "I guess as long as I hold this, I am the law."

  I grinned, "Yes, ma'am."

  I knelt in front of the cabinet and opened the drawer at the bottom. Half of it was full of ammunition, and the other half had two handguns--a Glock 9mm and a .45 revolver, both with holsters.

  "Thank God for gun owners," I said, strapping the .45 to my hip.

  There were two gun-cleaning kits and a very large, very sharp fixed-blade knife in the cabinet, too. We took it all.

  I still hadn't had a real lesson in the use of semi-automatic weapons, but I'd done some reading during our down time when it was raining. I knew how to do it, but I'd never actually done it. Jen would be able to show me how to use the Glock and the AR-15.

  "Let's check the garage for gas and kerosene, and then let’s go get the stuff at Founder's."

  We loaded everything in the pickup truck. I had to drive it and Sara had to drive the hay truck. The hay truck had a manual transmission. That was another thing I needed to learn how to do. Sara kept telling me how easy it was, so I hopped in. I drove for about a quarter of a mile, grinding the gears. Then the engine stalled. Red-faced, I got out and told Sara to take over.

  She didn't say anything right then, but I could tell she was getting a big kick out of it. I led the way to Founder's then got out so I could direct her as she backed in. She brought the truck up close to a tank and got out.

  "How do we get it in the truck?" she said.

  "We can lift up one side, then back the truck under it, and then slide it the rest of the way."

  "How do we lift the side?"

  "We'll use those fence posts as levers."

  "Okay," she said, but she didn't sound convinced.

  "Archimedes said he could move the whole world with a lever," I said.

  "Awesome. You should go on Jeopardy."

  "Just get a damn post."

  We wedged some of the smaller metal posts under the tank. We each lifted on one and put a block under them so the tank was angled up off the ground. Then we got some of the longer, thicker posts and put them under the tank and lifted them up high enough to prop them on the back of the truck, forming a ramp.

  Next I went back in the store and got a big spool of rope. I tied the end of the rope to the tank, and then I ran the rope over the truck, around a light pole, then back to the truck. I tied it to the front bumper.

  "Okay," I said. "Now all you've got to do is back up. The truck should pull it up."

  "You're way smarter than Archimedes," she said. "And he probably couldn't drive a stick either."

  I grinned, "Shut up."

  She backed the truck slowly, and the big tank slid right up onto the bed. We used the rope to secure it. Then we got the rest of the stuff loaded onto both trucks, including some attachments for the tank, some hose, and a couple of plastic barrels to use as rain barrels.

  It was around 1 p.m. by this time.

  "I think we can head back to the stables now," I said. "We're going to have a lot of work to do over the next few days getting set up, but it'll be worth it."

  "How will we fill the tank?" she said.

  "We have access to a generator," I said. "It should still be over by the museum. I have instructions on how to hardwire it into a well. We can pump out enough water to fill it, and then shut it down."

  "We'll have to come back for the generator then."

  "Yeah," I said. "One more trip, but we can wait a few days. We should stop by Charlie's on the way back and get his kerosene. We also need to get the chickens from Blaine's house. You go ahead and go out to the stables, and I'll go to Charlie's and Blaine's."

  "You sure? I don't like the idea of being alone."

  "You'll be okay. Just don't stop for anybody and don't lead anybody back to us."

  CHAPTER 42

  I followed Sara as far as Charlie's house, and then she proceeded to the stables. Charlie had not returned, and I suspected that he never would. I took the fuel, food, and toilet paper he'd left behind, then headed over to Blaine's place.

  I noticed the smoke before I got there, but it didn't sink in right away what I was seeing. There was smoke coming out of the chimney of the workshop behind the house. There was a beat-up little hatchback parked in the driveway. I would have rather seen ten infected people standing in the yard than to see what I saw. At least with them, I'd know what I was up against.

  I parked the pickup and got out, my hand on the butt of the .45. I expected someone to come out to greet me...or shoot at me...but no one did. I knocked, but no one answered, so I went in.

  Brian Davies was lying on one of the mattresses in the floor. When I opened the door he lifted the shotgun Jen and I had left with him. He looked like hell--a far cry from the well-groomed, nicely dressed man I'd seen several days before.

  Next to the wood stove was a pile of sticks and broken pieces of Blaine's dining room furniture.

  "Brian?" I said.

  "Thank God it's you."

  "Are you okay? We saw your car and--"

  "No, I'm not okay," he said. "Where the hell have you been? I've been here since yesterday. I thought you two were dead. Where's Jen?"

  "Jen is....Jen is fine. She's at the other place."

  "You didn't tell me there was another place."

  "Jen said she left you a note," I said.

  "I didn't see a note," he said.

  "What happened?"

  "I never did hear from Henry," he said.

  "I'm sorry," I said, "but what happened to you?"

  "A couple of days after you left these two men came to my house. They seemed friendly at first and asked if I could spare some drinking water. I gave them some. They asked me about the turbine, and we talked about that for a while.

  "The next day, they came back. They brought others. There were nine of them in all. There were six men, two women, and a little boy. They said they were moving in since I had electricity. They said they were doing it whether I liked it or not. I didn't like how they were acting about it, but like I told you and Jen, I was glad to see others, and I welcomed them.

  "They weren't too happy about the basement, and they started talking about what they were going to do about it and the changes they were going to make. I didn't like that either. It was my house, after all, and I should be the king of that castle. We were butting heads by the end of the day."

  "We went to check on you this morning," I said, "but we could see there were a lot of vehicles there."

  "Really? How did it look?"

  "The house had been burned," I said.

  He shook his head.

  "I knew they would do that. They kept saying they needed to do that. God....my library, my bonsai trees, the paintings....I hope they at least saved some things. Some of those trees were several decades old. It would be a shame for them to have been destroyed like that."

  "Where did they plan to live?"

  "They were talking about building a tall fence and building several new houses--like a compound. Sounded like a lot of trouble to me just to have electricity. But they were morons, so whatcha gonna do?

  "One of the women had a big problem with me persona
lly. She told me the whole reason the plague came was to purge away people like me.

  "They put me out of my own house. They gave me a plastic Wal-Mart sack. It had a bottle of water, a peanut butter sandwich, a few matches, and a single shotgun shell. They let me take my shotgun, but wouldn't let me load it until I was away from the house. They gave me a piece-of-shit car to drive. I couldn't keep it running; it kept sputtering.

  "I wound up spending the night in the car and using my only shotgun shell to keep from being zombie food. Anyway, I'm here now."

  "I'm sorry," I said.

  "I'm hungry. All I've had to eat since I got here were two eggs I found in the chicken coop. I didn't have anything to cook them in so I just cooked them directly on the stove, and then scraped them off. It smelled really bad in here for a while. I would have had a chicken, but I couldn't bring myself to kill one."

  "I have food in the truck. Do you want to eat now or go over to the other place?"

  "Eat."

  I went out to look for some things that didn't require cooking. I brought him back some Vienna Sausages, a sleeve of saltines, and a juice box. He didn't complain.

  While he was eating, I took the large plastic dog carrier Sara and I had gotten from Founder's Farm and Hardware and went out to catch the chickens. It wasn't that easy. I finally got them herded into the coop. Then I got in with them and shut the door. It was easier to corner them that way but also more difficult to dodge them when they decided to try to escape by "flying." They made a big fuss over it, but I finally got all of them in the carrier.

  When I came back in the shop, Brian was finished with his meal.

  "Did you kill a chicken or something?"

  "No," I said. "I'm moving them to the other place."

  "I take it the other place is better than this?"

  "Much better," I said. "It's not as nice as your place."

  "Does the offer still stand for me to live with you and Jen?"

  "Yeah," I said. "Jen will be thrilled. We have a young woman named Sara living with us, too. She was supposed to move out today, but that didn't work out."