by Rachel Aukes
I stared at the letters for a couple minutes. With no law enforcement, it seemed fitting to somehow note these men’s crimes. When I tossed the can on the ground, Clutch gave me a nod and headed back to the truck.
We drove around for an hour, scanning for the minivan, and only saw a zed here and there. The bastard was either long gone or had gone to ground, and neither option did us any good. I felt like our duty wouldn’t be done be until we could find the fourth rapist. Only then would the poor girl finally be avenged.
All in all, taking care of corpses took us five hours. We sat in the truck and ate the sandwiches I’d made this morning.
“Check out the warehouse next?” I asked between bites. I had the bolt cutters along, and Clutch had been hankering to get his hands onto all the surplus gear.
He nodded while he chewed.
Not even a minute later, thunder rolled, and the damn rain picked up again. I watched heavy drops pelt the windshield. “It’ll be tough watching for zeds in this.”
“Agreed. We’ll try again tomorrow,” he grumbled as he wiped his hands on his pants.
“At least the storms should keep other looters away, too,” I offered.
He grunted. “We can only hope.” And he started the truck.
By the time we’d returned to the farm, the rain had become relentless. Jase stepped out from his cover under a nearby shrub. With the rain parka, he blended seamlessly into the foliage around him. He unlocked the heavy chain and pushed at the gate. Metal screeched as he shoved it open. Something clanged, and the gate broke free from its rollers and swung out at an odd angle.
“Damn it. I knew we were going to have problems with that piece of shit gate,” Clutch muttered before gunning the engine through the open space. Once through, he jumped out of the truck and I followed.
It took all our strength to right the gate. The wind pushed against us and the hail pelted our heads. Once the gate was back in place, we tied it to the barbed wire fence we’d reinforced with chain link on each side. It wasn’t pretty but it would at least hold the gate and slow down anyone—alive or otherwise—trying to get onto the farm.
A thunderous boom shook the ground. A crack echoed through the air, followed by a large branch off an old maple tree slamming into the ditch behind us.
“C’mon!” Clutch yelled out, his voice a whisper over the wind. “We need to get inside. Now!”
We ran to the truck. Even though there was a backseat, Jase and I both tumbled onto the front bucket seat.
The truck lurched forward, buffeted by the wind that seemed to come at us from every direction. “This one’s going to be bad,” Clutch muttered.
Going to be? Spring storms in the Midwest were known to get nasty. But, maybe because I’d lived in a city where buildings tempered the winds, I didn’t remember a storm this bad in a long time.
Hail bombarded the truck, the noise deafening. When we reached the shed, both Jase and I tumbled out to slide open the large door. The hail hurt, and the wind had become vicious. The sky had turned an ominous green. We started pulling the door shut while Clutch drove the truck into the shed. Once in, he jumped out and helped slide the large door closed.
Hail sounded like an atrocious muddle of drums on the shed’s metal roof.
Then the screaming winds mysteriously stilled and the hail stopped.
We all stood and looked up as if we could see through a metal roof. Chills crawled over my skin.
“This can’t be good,” Jase said.
“We should get to the cellar,” I said. I headed to the side door to make a break for the house, but Clutch stopped me.
“No time. This way.”
Jase and I hustled behind Clutch through the winding stacks of seed corn waiting to be planted and to the far corner of the shed. He moved aside a couple empty pallets to reveal an earthen-colored tarp. He lifted the tarp and opened a round steel hatch.
“Cool! A bomb shelter,” Jase said from behind me.
“I wouldn’t call it that,” Clutch said, getting down on his hands and knees and pulling out a lantern. He pressed a button, the light clicked on, and he handed it to me.
The winds picked up again, howling like banshees, touting impending doom.
Holding the lantern in one hand, I gingerly climbed down the ladder into the dark hole. The small light lit up the dismally small space below. It couldn’t have been more than a five-by-five-foot hole, with the walls taken up by shelves of food, water, and a shotgun vacuum-sealed in plastic. A small square fan covered what I assumed to be the only air vent in the bunker.
Jase landed right behind me. “Cozy.”
The walls were rough concrete, but it still smelled of dank earth. “What is this place, Clutch?” I asked.
“My TEOTWAWKI hole,” he replied after locking the door above us. “Made it myself.”
Sudden silence boomed in the small space.
“The End Of The World As We Know It,” I clarified to Jase when he shot me a confused glance. Clutch had used the acronym the day I met him, back when I could still rely on the Internet to get my answers.
“I built it to support one person for fourteen days. But it’s tornado-proof, so we’ll be safe for tonight. There’s no way anyone or anything is going to get in here without a blow torch and several hours of extra time.” He tore open a plastic bag and pulled out a metallic sheet. “I have only one blanket, so we’ll have to share.”
As I sat next to Jase and dried my pistol, I wondered what would await us in the shed when we went to open the hatch in the morning.
****
“We could set up a fenced-in pasture out back,” I offered while we sat around a huge breakfast feast, cleaning out the last of the food from the freezer and refrigerator. Since the storm had blown the power out, the mood was somber. My final bite of steak marked the beginning of rationing. Clutch said we’d get used to being hungry. I wasn’t so sure.
More so, it was an eerie feeling to know that there was no one left to bring the power grid back up. Even though Clutch had a generator, he’d made it clear that it was for winter use only. It was old and loud and would only attract attention. It also used diesel fuel, and he had only a couple hundred gallons left in the diesel tank out back that had been used for his farm equipment before the outbreak.
No more TV, radio, or ice. No more Internet. No more email to my parents.
“Livestock will attract zeds,” Clutch countered, bringing my attention back. “Besides, that’s too much meat for the three of us. It’ll go bad too quick.”
“Not if we find goats,” I said.
“Have you seen any goats around?” Clutch said.
“What if we smoked the meat?” I asked.
“Mm, I love jerky,” Jase added. “Can we try it, Clutch?”
He scowled. “That means we’d have to keep a watch on the fire. If it puts out smoke that can be seen over the trees, then we can’t use it. The smell of smoked meat may also pose a risk. It could attract attention.”
“We’ll make sure it’s good and sealed,” I said. “Any risk whatsoever and we won’t use it.”
He watched me for a moment. “And you know how to make a smokehouse?”
I shrugged, and then smirked. “No, but I bet you have something in your library.”
He sighed. “See what you can find. But I check over anything you build before you start a fire in it.”
“Deal,” I said, and Jase gave me a high-five.
“Don’t you first need to build that chicken coop you’ve been talking about?” Clutch added.
I’d planned a pen out of chicken wire and two-by-fours to be connected to the smaller shed so that zeds, wildlife, and raiders couldn’t easily get to the chickens. It wouldn’t be pretty, but it would do the job. “I saw chickens at a farm a couple miles that way.” I pointed. “I’ll pick them up today and put them in the shed until I’m done with the coop. They won’t last long on their own.”
“That’s the Pierson’s,” Jase added. �
��They’re nice. Moved in just a couple years ago.”
“We’ll stop on our way back from Home Depot if there’s time,” Clutch replied. “If we don’t get that roof patched, we’re going to have serious problems, no thanks to all these rains.”
While we’d huddled together in our underground tomb, a twister had blown through. We’d been fortunate. The machine shed and two smaller surrounding sheds were left untouched except for some dents and bent corners courtesy of wind damage. The storm had uprooted one tree and split another in the backyard, but we decided to leave them where they fell since they provided decent obstacles for zeds.
One of the wood covers had snapped off a ground-floor window—a quick repair. The only real damage was to the roof of the house. When we checked out the roof the next morning, all Clutch said was, “I’ve been meaning to get that roof redone one of these years.”
“And the surplus,” I added. If Clutch thought there was some badass stuff tucked away in the warehouse, it was going to be Christmas for us. I was keeping my fingers crossed for a Jeep.
“It’s going to be a busy day,” Clutch said.
“I’ll stay back and guard the house,” Jase offered.
“Negative. You’re both coming. Home Depot is big. If I knew where I could get shingles anywhere else, I would, believe me. I need extra eyes and ears there.”
“But who’s going to protect the farm when we’re gone?” he asked.
“We’ll lock the gate up good and tight before we go. That should cover us for a few hours,” Clutch replied. “And you can carry in today’s water before you gear up.”
Jase slumped.
I gave him a reassuring pat. With the power out, we had to get our water from the manual pump outside.
A thump against the outside wall sent us all to our feet. “I’ll check it out from the living room,” I whispered, pulling out my pistol. Clutch had upgraded my .22 to a Glock 9mm after the run-in with the rapists, and the weight felt good in my grip.
“I’ll take upstairs,” Jase whispered before taking the stairs three steps at a time.
Clutch nodded and reached for his rifle.
I headed toward the source of the sound and paused, waiting for the next thump. When it came, I took the window on my left and slid open the peephole. The yard looked clear under the overcast sky, though with the peephole, I couldn’t see anything against the walls.
I turned to Clutch who was now behind me and shrugged. When I turned around to look outside again, I found a jaundiced face staring back at me. I jumped. “Shit!”
“Ahhnn.” The zed pounded on the wood and began to chant the meaningless sound over and over as though it was saying, “Let me in.” The window frame vibrated under the pressure.
“Cash?” Clutch asked.
I lifted my pistol, held it just inside the sniper hole, and fired. The pounding stopped and daylight shone through the hole once again.
Jase came running down the stairs a moment later. “The yard’s clear. That was the only one I could see.”
“It never should’ve gotten this close to the house. We need to take shorter breaks with the three of us together,” Clutch said. “No more than fifteen minutes without anyone on guard every three hours.”
“That gives us less time to plan and report status,” I said.
“We should use treadmills,” Jase said.
“What?” Clutch and I asked at the same time.
Jase gave us a wide grin. “Treadmills. We should surround the house with them. Any zed who comes up to the house will step onto a treadmill and will just keep walking and walking. Then we don’t have to stand guard at all.”
“Exactly how are you going to power a hundred treadmills?” Clutch asked.
Jase shrugged. “Solar power, maybe.”
“Oh, solar power. Of course. I’ll pick some up on my next grocery trip,” I said drily.
Jase flipped me the bird. “Jeez, can’t you guys take a joke?”
I smiled, though Jase had a point. It was too hard to find humor in a world that had given up.
Clutch sighed. “C’mon. Let’s hit the road.”
Jase’s smile dropped. “I’ll grab my stuff.”
As we headed out to repair the gate, the weather reflected Jase’s mood. The sun refused to shine, giving reign to a gray mist instead. I felt sorry for the kid. Going into Fox Hills would bring back a lifetime of memories for him. Where he went to school, where his mom picked up groceries—everything we’d drive by would be a stark reminder of what he’d lost.
With the gate back in place and operational, Jase sulked in the backseat while Clutch drove down the gravel road. Jase feigned nonchalance, but in the side mirror I noticed that he stiffened as we drove by the empty ranch house he grew up in. It looked deceptively welcoming, the scene of death hidden within its red brick walls. My overactive imagination feared that Jase’s parents somehow had come back again and dug out of their graves. Fortunately, the house disappeared behind us with no sign of zeds, those related to Jase or otherwise.
Another mile down the road, Jase and I got out to move a small tree that had fallen across the gravel. Broken branches littered the gravel, and one low part over a culvert showed signs that the road had been underwater a few hours earlier.
A bloated zed lay floundering under the shallow rapids of a rushing creek beyond the culvert. Trapped under a log, its arms flapped clumsily at the water.
“I don’t get it,” Jase said from the backseat. “That thing’s probably been underwater all night. How can it still be alive?”
“They’re not alive, they’re just…echoes of life,” I answered honestly. It’s what I told myself every day so that I no longer thought of them as people. When the time came to kill—not in self-defense like when Melanie had attacked me—if I believed that they still felt or thought, I wasn’t quite sure I could go through with it.
When we reached Fox Hills, we had to lay down plywood in the muddy ditch to get around the roadblock. From there, Clutch drove down Main Street, straight through the center of town. The store we needed was on the opposite side of town, and rather than burn precious gas, he’d made the call to risk driving through the more populated areas of town. It also gave us a chance to see how many zeds we’d have to deal with if we were to start looting houses.
Last night’s storm had wreaked havoc on Fox Hills. Plastic trash bins that had lined driveways the day of the outbreak were now strewn about. Garbage was scattered everywhere. Diapers, magazines, and milk cartons littered every open space, looking like the aftermath of a wild party. Every now and then we saw a zed with its head shoved in a garbage bag, going after an easy meal.
“They’ll eat anything,” Jase said.
“Yeah,” I replied, though we all already knew their favorite meal.
Clutch drove around trees that had been ripped from the ground, and their branches crunched under the truck’s tires along with garbage. A tree had smashed a convertible. A Honda and a Chevy were slammed together like bumper cars. Every now and then, we saw a zed lying motionless on the ground, which meant they must’ve taken serious blows to the head during the storm. But the storm hadn’t taken out nearly enough. More zeds than I’d seen last time wandered aimlessly outside, open doors and broken windows the only hints as to where they’d come from, though I suspected most of the zeds still lumbered around inside their homes.
I held the pistol on my lap. I had the tanto, but it was still in its sheath. My real confidence builder was the crowbar I’d found in one of Clutch’s sheds. Whenever we left the farm, I carried the crowbar since the knife was short and required me to get awfully close and personal to do any damage. The crowbar, on the other hand, was a power driver of cold iron.
At the sound of the truck’s engine, zeds turned and lumbered in our direction, sniffing at the air, but as we put distance between us and them, they soon lost focus and returned back to their eerie shuffling.
“Hey, you!” Jase yelled, opening his window. “Ov
er here!”
Several zeds emerged from the shadows, coming at us. At the way their expressions changed when they homed in on us, I could imagine their mouths watering at the sight of three healthy people.
“Hell, kid. Are you calling every zed to us?” Clutch spat out, stepping on the gas.
“What are you doing, Jase?” I asked.
He kept waving, not answering our questions, but after a moment, he slumped back in his seat. “I saw someone. A lady. But she darted around the corner of that house over there.”
“We ain’t a search-and-rescue, kid,” Clutch said, then added more softly, “Roll up the window.”
“But we have to help others if we can,” Jase countered.
“She didn’t want our help,” I said. I’d seen her, too. She looked in her late fifties or early sixties, and she’d been carrying a baseball bat. We’d made eye contact just before she ran. Was it bad that I was glad that she’d run away rather than toward us? Any orphan we took in was another mouth to feed.
I was pretty sure I saw another couple—a man and a woman—watching us through shuttered windows from a small starter home. I didn’t mention them to Jase. I figured if they needed help bad enough, they’d run to us.
It wasn’t our job to play hero.
Selfish? Hell, yeah.
But honest. And necessary to survive. After all, I was only human.
Besides, after seeing what had happened to the girl at the corn bin, I realized that laws and scruples were no longer viable in this new world. Now, people scared me as badly as zeds.
What I saw next made me burst out laughing.
The guys turned to me, and I pointed. “Look. A zed kabob.” Off to my right, a zed had somehow gotten itself skewered onto a still-upright parking meter, with the thick round top of the meter embedded in its ribcage. Its arms and legs flailed uselessly like it was trying to air-swim. The guys didn’t find it funny, and we continued on.
A stoplight was down in one intersection, and we had to turn around and find a detour. Two more detours past smashed cars and fallen power lines, and we were back on Main Street. I carefully noted every obstruction on a small notepad.
