by Crane, J. J.
Emma also stayed in the house, as it was already her primary residence. She assisted Pam, and they rotated tending to Bo’s needs at night. As Bo improved, the two of them helped him rehab so he could walk again. More troubling was his slow recovery in making simple decisions. He had a hard time choosing food to eat or which utensil to use. He also struggled with getting dressed as they worked with his cognitive and motor skills. Doc suspected Bo suffered brain damage from a loss of oxygen, leading him to speculate Bo may have even died briefly at one point before coming back to life.
It didn’t take long, a few days actually, for the community to accept and feel comfortable with the thought that the virus ended. Discussions ensued about sending out scout teams to canvas for survivors. We wondered if there were friendly groups who wanted to join us in reorganizing the region, maybe even work to get electricity and water back up and running. People wanted to rebuild, but we needed numbers and skill sets to do that. Most of us had white-collar desk jobs before the virus. Aside from Ted and Pops, construction and repair skills weren't something many of us had any acumen with.
We had no idea who survived the virus. The radio did not provide us with any answers either. I even plugged in the TV and cable box into the generator to see if we could find out anything. It turned out the cable was down, and no one had an old television or over-the-air antenna we could strap to a roof to see if that would work.
Our own crude analysis, based on local observations and nothing more than guesses, is that up to eighty or ninety percent of the country had succumbed to some kind of tragic end. We figured between violence, starvation, neglect, other diseases, and ailments as well as the elements and outright abandoning the area; it was as good a guess as any.
After two days of scanning our town more thoroughly and two neighboring towns, we came across zero people. There were indeed signs that someone survived because we came across homes and stores that were clearly breached.
While cruising through a neighboring town, Max, Bruce, and Linda counted twenty successive homes where windows and doors were open, smashed or kicked in. If people were alive, they were keeping a low profile.
With our search for survivors coming up empty and the results beginning to depress people, I suggested we refocus our efforts on investigating homes for canned and boxed produce, weapons, medicine, tools, communication devices, gas, batteries, and any other miscellaneous supplies we thought beneficial to the community.
More people wanted to get involved in these activities. Betty and Katie went out on their first mission. Both wanted to see the outside world despite its eerie emptiness. They joined me, Bruce, Pops, and Bobby K on a sweep. We immediately began to make exploratory ventures through River Run. As always, everyone carried a weapon. Each car had a CB radio or walkie-talkies, and everyone had to wear rubber gloves and masks while entering homes as a precautionary measure.
The first two houses we entered, we found cans of beets, cans of mushrooms, tins of sardines and five boxes of macaroni and cheese. It was an odd find, and we wondered if someone had already taken the other foods. Moving on to a third house, we found empty cabinets. Betty did a sweep in the basement and came to a locked door. Using the butt of the shotgun, she smashed open the door handle. In it, she came across weapons, five semi-automatic AR-15 rifles and twenty boxes of ammo and extra magazines for them. It was a surprise find. We also noticed two weapons missing from the rack and an empty case that held a handgun. We figured the owner took them to wherever they headed.
As we moved from house to house, we had to smash in doors. It made a tremendous amount of noise, always echoing out into the empty world. No matter how loud the sound, we cringed, looking around with uneasiness as if we had to worry about cops catching us.
The next several homes we entered had dead people in them. The lingering smell gave it away. However, the aroma acted as a prelude compared to the sight of late-stage decomposition we discovered. What flesh did remain had turned brown or black, and some of the bodies had maggots and other bugs feasting on the remnants. It was awful. Betty threw up all over the floor when she discovered two children lying in a bed next to each other, cartoon character pajamas draping over their skeletal remains. Having seen a couple of dead bodies prior, it still twisted my stomach to see these once thriving beings, now, nothing more than decaying skin and bones. One in particular, nearly made me wretch. It took a moment for me to decipher what was wrong. Sitting in a chair, a woman’s skull had fallen off the neck and lay deep in the lap of her dress, weighing it down between her decaying
legs as if it were a rock.
In all, we searched over two dozen homes before calling it quits for the day. It was a small dent in an otherwise large neighborhood.
Upon our return from the sweep, a sea of ear-to-ear smiles greeted us. It was suspicious looking to see so many grins as if body snatchers came and replaced the community with Stepford robots. I looked for June. When I spotted her, she gave me a big thumb’s up.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“News,” June said as she came closer to the truck. “Steve and Curtis said they heard over the radio that the President is going to address the nation in ten days.”
“Ten days?” It was the first gleam of hope I had heard in quite a while. “Where did they hear it?”
“The shortwave,” Ted said.
“There was confirmation by some guys on the Ham as well,” June said.
I hadn’t seen her smile such an engaging grin since Christmas when she opened a present I gave her, a charm necklace that belonged to her great-grandmother.
“Did the report say what he’ll talk about or anything?” I asked.
“No,” Ted said. “Ten days was all it said. The announcer said to stay tuned for further updates.”
“Still, this is good news,” I said, overcome with emotion. As soon as I stepped out of the truck, June came up and gave me a big hug, “it is good news, finally.”
Then we heard a shout. It was Jenny. “Hey, the president’s talk is going to happen on Patriot’s Day,” she said waving her hands from her front porch while holding up a calendar.
Chapter 22
The news of the president’s address set for Patriot’s Day reinvigorated people. The mild weather also helped, allowing people to spend much more time outdoors. Jenny and Jason expanded their garden across their backyard and into both Pam’s and the Kenderdine’s. Pops, Casey, Peter, Katie and others set about fine tuning the defensive barrier – continually placing more branches, tree parts, and dead scrub into every pocket of weakness they could find. Bruce, Ted, Max, Beth, and Linda set out for hunting expeditions in the woods that encircled River Run and Circle Estates, bagging several does. It felt like a high moment in the neighborhood.
It was never far from the back of my mind that off in the distance lay another threat. Another group that might want to seek vengeance for what we did to Lasker and his gang. The mandate that everyone always have a weapon on hand stood. It became a natural part of our ritual that you carried a handgun at all times.
As an extra precaution, we set up two more car barriers we dubbed house wedges. One was about a hundred yards further down the road from the barricade that faced the direction of downtown. The other, just beyond the entrance to Circle Estates.
Each wedge consisted of five cars: two cars angled like the roof of a house, another two took up the lanes out to the shoulder, and the fifth acted as a rear cap of sorts in the middle of the road. If anyone wanted to ram these fortifications, they were going to need a big truck to blast through them.
After finishing the setup of the house wedges, I walked back to my house to find, Curtis, and Maya, digging a small trench in the backyard bordering the Kenderdine’s yard.
“What’s going on?” I asked, seeing Maya and Curtis with shovels in their hand chopping away at the moist ground.
“It’s a surprise,” Curtis said pushing the shovel into the ground, so it could stand on its own.
Curtis rolled his eyes at my attitude.
“It’s not a bad thing, dad,” Maya said, working opposite of him. “This is a good thing.”
I motioned my hand that I needed more.
“It’s all good brother,” I heard Ted say from behind me.
I turned and saw him carrying a two-foot long concrete pipe. “Is that a section of culvert?”
“Is that what they call this?” he asked grunting a little as he carried the pipe. “It’s heavy.”
“Where did you get that?”
“Pops. He has three of them in fact. From his shed.”
“Nice to know… are we redoing plumbing for a new outhouse?”
“No,” Ted said. Surprise washed over his face. “But don’t say that too loud, someone may want to use them for that.”
“Can the mystery finally stop please,” I pleaded.
“You really are no fun,” Maya said as she continued to shovel.
Betty, June, and Samantha then appeared with a variety of wood boards in their arms.
“Max had some 4X6’s and the Burrell’s, a couple 2x4’s,” Betty said.
“Doc had a sheet of plywood in his basement,” June said.
“And the Peterson’s had some spare pieces of wood in their shed,” Samantha added.
“I’m out of guesses,” I said to Ted who was placing the concrete pipe in the trench that Curtis and Maya dug.
“I’ll get the other two pieces, and we’ll angle them upwards
on a slight slope,” Ted said.
“Any day someone wants to tell me what’s going on, I’d appreciate it,” I said, my tone steady but not pleased.
Ted shook his head, took a deep breath and placed his hands on his hips. “It’s a good thing, Rob. Your son thought of it.”
“And Maya found the plans,” Curtis said.
“We talked about it with Uncle Ted about two days ago and thought it would be a good thing for the community,” Maya said with pride.
I gritted my teeth while trying to crack out a grin.
“Baby, you need to relax,” June said, rubbing my back after placing her wood with the other pieces. “How about trusting us.”
“Trusting you guys I can do,” I said. “But not knowing what’s going on… that I’m having a tougher time with.”
“It’s a good project,” Betty chimed in.
“I’m getting that message,” I said, my patience running thin.
“I’ll give you a hint,” Ted said. “It involves fire.”
Maybe it was my angst. Maybe it was because I hadn’t had a relaxing moment in nearly three months, but my brain could not put the pieces together.
“Look at your father kids,” Ted said then pointed at me. “If you look really hard you can see the smoke come out of his ears.”
“Get some meat, quick,” June said.
“What the hell are you guys going on about,” I burst.
“You still don’t get it?” Betty asked.
“No,”
“A smokehouse, dad,” Curtis said, half laughing. “What did you think we were going to do?”
I started to laugh. I also kind of started to cry. I wasn’t sure what I was doing, but I did sit down on the ground to catch my breath.
June rubbed my back some more while laughing a little.
“Baby, it’s okay.”
I put my hands on my face. “I know it is.”
“You okay, dad?” Maya said, also coming over.
“I am,” I said with a smile, flushed with embarrassment. “I don’t know why I reacted like that. My whole body feels numb.”
“It’s okay,” Ted said. “You are carrying a lot of stress.”
“I guess,” I mumbled, feeling perspiration soak into my shirt.
“Hey, you should be proud of your kids,” Ted said. “We were discussing food preservation when Curtis said he remembered printing plans for smoking meat as a way to preserve it. I said it was a great idea. Betty and I did that when we first moved up to the woods. It’s another way to keep the meat we’ve hunted. It’ll help with putting less stress on the generators always running to keep things frozen. It will also add some variety to taste, and we can smoke fish that we catch. It’s win, win.”
I looked at Curtis and smiled.
“Maya found the plans,” Curtis said. “I couldn’t remember if I had actually printed them or not.”
I glanced at Maya. “Thank you, baby.”
“We just thought this would be a great surprise,” Maya said.
“And it is,” I said. I stood up. “I think I’m just tired.”
“Then go in and rest,” June said. “We’ll take care of this.”
“Okay,” I said. “I think I will do that.”
Within a day of construction, Ted, Curtis, Maya, Betty, and Samantha had meat hanging in the small smoker house they constructed. It was quite the contraption. They had a small furnace like setup where they made a fire and the smoke funneled up the concrete pipe into a 4X4 box where they hung meat in thin strips. A small exhaust pipe popped out the side to help with the flow of air.
I remember having a piece of the first batch. The salted flavoring stood out, but it also had a sweet, smoky taste to it
as well. Ted was right, it was good to have some variety, and it
would help with preserving meat differently.
The day before the president was to address whatever nation still existed, everyone in the neighborhood exhibited high spirits. It was a beautiful day. The sun shone brightly in a mostly blue sky. Someone even said it hit sixty-eight degrees. By late afternoon an impromptu celebration found itself coming alive. The Kenderdines broke out guitars, saxophones, and trumpets. They organized and performed all sorts of songs, spiritual, contemporary, and classic rock. Recent deer and turkey meat seared away on grills, and we broke with our normal calorie rationing of food and splurged with pasta, and canned vegetables. Some even did their best to cook makeshift cakes and brownies with oven pits a few of us built.
The festivities became intoxicating. Alcohol, which had become people's little secret indiscretion, flowed more freely and openly. As the day wore on, people literally danced in the streets. There was lots of laughter and joke telling. Tensions melted away, if for only a little while. The kids chased each other around playing tag or hide and seek. It seemed they ran around the neighborhood for hours on end.
Ted managed to find a Hawaiian t-shirt from deep inside a black garbage bag of laundry he’d packed but rarely went into.
He also put on some baggy shorts, flip-flops, and kept trying to do a Jamaican accent thing about having a gloriously good time. It was amusing. We all needed to blow off some steam.
Much of the talk throughout the day speculated about what the President would say. Would he talk about the government? Would he talk about fatalities? Would he tell us about the state of the world? What were the plans to rebuild? What, what, what, what? There were so many what if’s, that we made our heads spin. It didn’t matter; we finally were going to hear something.
The party went into the night. The laughter never stopped nor did the music. It was so refreshing to sing, dance, and laugh. I laughed so hard throughout the day that by ten o’clock, I was exhausted, and my voice was hoarse. Many others felt the same and began to drift or stumble home, looking forward to Patriot’s Day.
The Watch Patrol adjusted itself to accommodate the revelers. Peter and Bobby Kenderdine, Katie, Doc’s son John, and Doc offered to take the first late shift. For the second late shift, Emma, Curtis, Samantha, Casey, and Jenny decided they could still hold their obligations. Those not on Watch hoped to shake off any hangover they might incur and were grateful the president’s address wasn’t until noon eastern standard time.
Chapter 23
The beau
tiful day turned cloudy and chilly overnight; typical Connecticut weather for April. A cold raw wind swirled up and bit into the bones of those who were on Watch duty. The patrols now included walks up to the furthest car fortification dubbed ‘house wedges.’
On this night, the walks turned into light sprints from one car barricade to the next in order to stay warm. Curtis and Jenny took the northern fortification (toward Circle Estates), and halfway on their return, radioed Emma, and Casey to start their check of the southern fortification. Samantha walked the cul-de-sac and backyards. This rotation happened every hour, always in pairs.
It was just before six when Curtis and Jenny decided to make their rounds before the shift change at seven. They walked quickly in the brisk morning air. The darkness of night began to give way to pre-dawn light. They chatted lightly about the president’s address and how they hoped to get at least four hours sleep before the broadcast.
Coming to the first car fortification, they stopped briefly to look around. Everything appeared fine, standing trees, dark woods, empty road. They continued, not looking at anything in particular. The setup of the outer house wedge was at a slight bend in the road, just beyond the entrance of Circle Estates. If you stayed to the far left on your walk, you could see the cars, but from the middle of the road to the right shoulder, you had a partially blocked view until you went around the bend. The two of them walked the center line, as did most people.
About thirty yards from the fortification Curtis heard a loud, piercing sound. It caught him so off guard he didn’t know where to look. Another blast blistered through the air. The sound immediately registered as gunfire. Looking up, two beams of light broke through the early morning darkness, filtering through the trees of the woods from his angle. He shouted for Jenny to follow him as he ran for the side of the road to take cover. He knew he couldn’t make a run for the house wedge because it was too far away. Another shot rang out. He looked for Jenny and spotted her face down on the pavement. She wasn’t moving. He looked back towards the lights. It was a truck, a large rental moving truck. He spotted figures scrambling. He wanted to help Jenny but knew if he went out to check on her, he’d come under fire. He grabbed his radio and quickly called that he was under attack and Jenny was down. Another shot sounded. Curtis heard it whistle through the air over his head. He swung his pump-action shotgun around, took a deep breath, fired four rounds, and began running back to the neighborhood. More shots sounded as he ran in a makeshift serpentine motion.
