I took a walk over to the table and rejoined the story telling. I had sat down across from Fred. As others talked, I asked him if we could talk in private, kind of group leader to group leader to just clear some air. He agreed and we went into the office. Once inside I did not waste any time.
“What happened when you firebombed the house?”
He looked at me and then said, “Ron and I put the plan together and they were actually intended to bomb it before we talked to you but the weather had thrown a wrench into their plan. When we came up to rescue them, they saw the opportunity to still do the bombing and opted to do it as they all were leaving.”
“Based on what you told me I would have expected that kind of act from Ron, your involvement kind of surprises me.”
“I have seen what the Zoms had done to people I knew, my uncle, Doc Swensen. I wanted a little pay back.”
I understood.
I asked him “What happened after the last bomb was tossed and about his run back to the truck?”
He seemed straight forward, “I was running back to the truck and my foot got tangled in a branch and I slipped in the snow as I ran back to the truck.” He said, “I fell, then got up after kicking the branch loose and got into the truck.”
I asked him, “Have you looked at the leg that was caught by the branch?”
“No, why?”
I watched as the color left his face when I told him what Matt had seen from the bucket loader.
“Fred, we have to know if you have been bitten.”
He said, “I wasn’t!”
But I think he likely would have said that even if half his leg had been gnawed off.
I explained, “We needed to know and that the only way to be sure was to have Charlene take a look at it.” He reluctantly agreed to the exam.
I called Charlene in to the office and she took over from there. By now the rest of the group had figured out that there was something wrong and had guessed what was happening. They quietly talked among themselves. Ron remained very quiet. He realized that it was his plan that may have been what brought this about.
Charlene had Fred remove his clothing, first his boots and sweater then his shirt. He was fine from the waist up. Then his jeans came off. While she was checking him over I looked at the boots. There was no blood on the inside but there were scrapes and some blood stains and a broken tooth partially embedded between the sole and the upper on the outside.
While Charlene was doing the inspection I thought about the options that might face us. Could any of us take him out and put a bullet in his head for the sake of the group? Or do we lock him up under guard until he turned. This is a kind of ethical dilemma that we were faced with in the new world. It was not a choice I relished.
If it were me, I think that I would want to be taken down before I became very ill thinking of the safety of the group. But at the same time I wondered if it would not be a good idea to be secured and for as long as I was lucid try to relay what I was experiencing, even though it might be very painful.
Charlene also found some blood on the left leg of his long woolen socks. It was not a lot of blood. When the socks came off we looked. There were only the marks that are left from the fabric pattern. There was no broken skin, no bite marks, no bruising on either leg.
When the Zom grabbed him, and chewed on his boot, but that was it. Fred was okay. Fred flushed, more from being naked in front of Charlene than anything else and even made a weak quip about her not even taking him for a drink before she got him out of his clothes.
Charlene laughed and then said, “He is okay, no bites.”
I let out a sigh of relief and left the office.
After he dressed we emerged from the office. Fred was smiling and gave a thumbs up. There was applause and tears. It was one of those surreal moments, so stark and yet so fitting. Ron came over to Fred and hugged him, apologizing for the insane plan. Teckla, Charlene and I stood back. We had dodged a bullet, or should I say Fred had dodged a bullet. But we were all thinking the same thing. We need to get some things laid down to deal with this and other potential situations before they arise.
Anne, Margo and I had staked out a little space in an old supply closet. It gave us enough room to stretch out and gave us a door, privacy was such a premium. I had lived alone over the last twenty five years and found that I liked being with just me. I could get up when I wanted. I could keep things the way I wanted them. There were times of course when I would travel with someone. And for a few days or a week I could tolerate company. I was pretty spoiled and this new world did not allow for much alone time.
The dream was back. This time the figure was closer than ever. I could see the outline, I could see the shadow in its hand, and I could hear the mumbling. At first I thought it was a Zom but it was moving wrong. It was reactive but more rapid moving and the mumbling was not groaning or moaning. It was saying something. I could not tell what it was saying. I did not know if it was a threat, a warning or just gibberish. All I could tell was that the dream had an apocalyptic flavor to it. I often had those types of dreams and even on occasions found that I would get into recurring loops with the same or similar dreams. But this one, it seemed different. There was something haunting about it.
March 6th
Today there was nothing exciting, tragic or very interesting going on. Everyone kept busy doing small tasks. Nick whipped together another series of meals that were made of unusual combinations of items, yet tasty. Mary-Lou had signed on as his assistant. Matt, Mark and Frank worked on vehicle maintenance and adding some defense items like window re-enforcements and running lights. Charlene took a look at our medical supplies and also created a shopping list of items to scavenge. Cody, Ron and Henry took a walk downtown, if you call it that, a drug store, a grocery store and a hardware store is not much of a downtown. They brought back some canned goods, some frozen foods, meats and some pasta. But more importantly they took a kind of inventory of what was available to us in town. They figured that at this point it was not necessary to bring it all back to the garage because the threat of it disappearing was pretty slim. Anne and Margo were working on something but I could not tell what. They seemed to be interviewing everyone.
Jan and Fred took a walk to the east to some unattached buildings. Had I known that was what they were doing I probably would have told them not to. But then I need to get away from being mother hen. Their ventures lead them to some interesting discoveries. They hit the first house they found and broke in. Inside the house, on the first floor they found a few bottles of water, some canned goods and a handgun. On the second floor they found a 9mm handgun that had been used by the family to remove the threat of their changing. It was a couple in their 30s and two small children.
Jan and Fred left the house and had a little better luck in that one. There were no dead bodies, moving or not moving. They also realized that they had only to inventory the contents; it was not going anywhere, although Fred did find a treasure or at least a treasure in my eyes, but hold that thought for a bit.
Burt and Cyril, Anne’s dad sat and talked most of the day. Because of his eyesight Cyril really was not able to do a lot as far as building or guarding and Burt had a heart issue that also prevented him from heavy activities.
Teckla was working on one of our laptop computers in the office, as was Lauren. The efforts that we had made to protect them from the EM burst seem to have worked. Lance was sitting listening to music on his iPod but he had figured out the surveillance cameras that were on the four corners of the maintenance garage as well as those associated with the town hall. He had them up and running and was monitoring the area for activity. He could see some of the things our people were doing and if there were any immediate threats to the area.
I was catching up on this diary but I was also thinking or trying to think ahead. What to do, I considered what would happen if I was suddenly removed from the picture. I have been a sort of war chief since the crisis began, the man with a pl
an. But what if there needed to be someone else in charge.
When Fred came back, he found me and said “I found this, what do you think?”
“Wow” was all I could say. He had a series 6 Boy Scout Manual, the good old fashion one that still had tracking, cooking, first aid and survival information in it. It was back from the days when I was a Boy Scout. That book is a simple resource that had so much good information in it. If it were still alive, we could have used the Internet to get some of the survival information but it isn’t. Granted we had some of those skills in the “data bank” of people like Henry, Burt, Cyril and others but we have forgotten so much. This gives a hard copy for all of us particularly, the youngsters to reference.
The dream was back last night and it all came together. I think that the activity and exhaustion had caused me to block parts of it. It was Brandon. It was reliving the day that he came to get Margo. It was him screaming at me that he had to save her. I awoke with a start, sitting stark upright in bed, sweating. My heart was pounding. My twitching woke Anne.
She asked “Are you okay, you’re soaked.”
I reassured her, “yes, I’m fine, go back to sleep”.
I laid there for a bit and finally fell back to sleep. I did not dream anymore.
March 7th
The sun was up and the weather had cleared. It was another day of standing down and catching up. Some of us went about further exploration of the town, or working on the projects that we had set out for ourselves. I really had nothing pressing going on and thought that it might be a good day to take a ride out toward Camp Danbee to assess the damage that had been done by the firebombs and try to get a feel for the numbers of Zoms that were out there. The weather was warming, it would also give an opportunity to see their reaction to some things like noise, movement and the temperature.
Before The Event I had been a member of the Zombie Study Group (ZSG). There had been a number of articles by fellow members theorizing on how the Zoms would act under various conditions. I am not sure how many members of that group are left but having read theories written by many of them I guess it had fallen on me to do some field study even though that research most likely never become integrated into the ZSG database.
One of the theories that had been put out there was that the Zoms tended to react like cold blooded animals such as snakes and insects. This had seemed to be true based upon the initial observations of Fred’s group. But it seemed a little questionable based upon the part of the rescue where it appeared that one of the Zoms had tripped Fred, and gnawed at his shoe. The information itself could be helpful in determining our plans over the short term as well as the long term. If cold stopped or slowed them down significantly, then it would be wise to head further north. But if it only slowed them a little, then perhaps the direction did not matter.
I was gearing up to go but I needed a wingman. I looked around for who was available. It really boiled down to Burt, Cyril or Lance. I know that Burt and Cyril were not an option so Lance seemed to be the only choice. Then to my surprise Charlene came over and asked what I was planning to do.
“I’m planning to head back up to the camp to do a little looking around.”
“I am done with the medical inventory and gave a shopping list to Fred. I have nothing to do and could use the walk,” She said.
For whatever reason I felt that she could handle herself if the bacon was in the fire so she packed up and joined me. We were not planning any lengthy trip so we didn’t take the big packs with us but each took some water, binoculars, snacks, a handgun and a melee weapon. I figured we would drive part way to the camp then walk in from there.
It was actually a pretty nice day, clear and in the forties. The snow on the road where the plowing had been done was gone. The woods still had snow. We drove to about a half mile from the camp. While driving we looked off road to see if there were tracks in the snow that might show movement by the Zoms. We did not see anything. While we drove we chatted about life before The Event. I discovered that in addition to being a school nurse that Charlene had been an army nurse in Desert Storm.
“I’ve seen some things and had some issues with some of them after the war. Drinking was an issue but I’m not sure if that was because of what I saw or who I married.”
She went on, “Bob, my ex, was my high school sweetheart. He had not been in the war and had attended a college in the Midwest, where we were both from. He had become an insurance adjuster. After the war I came home and married him. I got a job at the Veterans Hospital near home.”
“But between taking the job, the home life and the memories of the guys I had seen come into the MASH unit I served in I started to drink, a lot. Bob became very jealous and we fought, finally we had the big blow-out and it was over. Six months later I’m in rehab and a friend of Bill W ever since.”
She turned to me and asked, “Where did you do your military time?”
I said, “Me? I never served, or at least not in this lifetime.”
This surprised her based on the way she had seen me operating the last few days. She had me pegged as at least a captain.
I explained, “I was not military, although I’m a retired cop, detective, who had worked with the Emergency Services Team and was the commander to the Crisis Negotiation Team. That may have been why you thought I was military.”
I told her about my life in a Reader’s Digest version. I explained my relationship to Anne and Margo as well as the family ties of our group. It almost seemed like it was life in the normal world for a little bit.
About a half mile before the turn in to the camp road we parked and then continued on foot. We kept to the woods. As we neared the camp, you couldn’t help but smell a combination of burned wood, rotting flesh and roast pork. Had it not been for the rotting flesh part of it I could have been hungry.
We came to a little hill at the edge of the camp where we stopped and just watched. The main building was gone. It was just a pile of rubble that was still smoking in places. Due to the heat there was a snow free gap of about 50 to 100 feet and then the snow cover started again. In that gap there were a few burnt bodies but there were no standing Zoms. Where the snow started again there were Zoms standing. They were not moving. They did not show any signs of life, or better yet, let me rephrase that, activity. We watched for about 30 minutes and saw no movement. Point one seems to show that inactivity breeds inactivity in the undead.
I whispered, “Let’s add a little stimulus to the equation.”
We tossed a couple of snowballs at a car abandoned in the area of one of the cottages to see if the noise would attract attention. We were careful to do so from cover to keep us out of the equation. The hits did cause a few heads to perk up, and slowly turn toward the car. But it did not stimulate any other movement on their part.
We quietly talked about what to do next. The danger was that we could find ourselves in a situation in which we were at risk, or worse that we got them to start chasing us and lead them back to our little community.
We caught a break. As we were getting ready to jump around and yell, a dog wandered into the yard. It was more a puppy. It barked and yipped and ran around in circles. It ran up to one of the burnt Zoms in the yard and playfully jumped at it. This sudden flurry of activity, although it seemed innocent enough was potentially deadly to the puppy. At first I was fearful for the pup, we both were. But the little dog seemed to have some idea of what it was doing. It was testing. It was learning and adjusting to the new world order.
The dog soon became bored with the dead Zom and began to run toward one that was standing in the snow. The thing began to track the puppy with its head. Initially we were not sure if it was by sound or by sight. But as the puppy yipped and yapped and ran around the Zom it followed him. The Zom grunted and growled and then started to move trying to follow the puppy as the little dog raced around him. Other Zoms had also noticed the commotion and were starting to move toward activity. I wanted to call to the dog but that was
dangerous. We could make the Zoms aware of our presence making us and not the dog the target.
When the Zoms closed in the dog it seemed that he sensed that he could be trapped, so he surprised us both running full speed toward the Zom he had been taunting, jumped and hit the Zom in the chest with its paws. It pushed the Zom back, and it toppled over. The dog, untouched raced off into the woods. The Zoms started to follow but as they moved into the deeper snow they slowed, and came to a halt but we were not sure if that was due to the temperature or just that they no longer sensed prey.
The show was over and we had been given a lot of information to consider. As we walked back toward the truck, we talked about what we had seen and learned. It did seem that the cold had some impact on the Zoms, and that they were cold blooded but not completely dormant, it was more that their activity area was greatly reduced. It would be like sticking ones hand into a wasp nest in the middle of winter. The wasps would still get you, but only in limited proximity.
The Event Trilogy (Book 1): Life After the Meteor Page 7
