by Kirk Allmond
“I couldn’t believe how quickly you moved. The blade was a blur, I barely noticed you moving,” added John.
“The pack was still pretty far behind, so we all concentrated on the three that were closing in on us,” said Leo. “They moved almost in unison, matching each other step for step. Before I knew it they simultaneously reached in, one for each one of us. A pale woman with black short hair managed to dodge Johns shot and swerved around behind him. She tripped him off his feet, he landed flat on his back. I watched as much as I could, in between dodging the redheaded zombie who was trying to swipe my head off and ducking like a boxing pro out of her arm span. She was faster than the pack, in comparison, normal to a fully functional human being, but everything seemed to be moving slowly, except me. Kyle managed to get a couple of shots off at the big biker zombie that was after him. Four bullets hit that monster in the chest. He shrugged them off like they were nothing, barely even knocked him back a step.”
Leo sighed, finished the water in her cup, and continued, determined to get through the rest of her story. “I heard John yell, almost the same cry I let out when the blonde in the bathroom took a bite out of me. My skin felt tight and prickly. The redheaded attacker had me by the neck, blocking my view with her body. I remember feeling frustrated, and then with one strong thrust I ran the kukri upwards through her jaw and out the back of her head. Her blood splashed onto my face before I dropped her to the ground. John was struggling with the pale woman. She was on top of him, and had him pinned down, her face buried in his shoulder. I couldn’t imagine how a small thing like her could have so much strength.”
“She was incredibly strong, and in my defense, I didn’t know yet that you had to shoot them in the head,” said John defensively.
“Before I could get close to help him, John pressed the gun to her chest and fired twice. It didn’t seem to hurt her, but the impact jarred her loose, allowing him to roll her off backwards. John sat up, switched the gun to his good arm and shot her twice more straight through the head. Her corpse fell over in a heap.” Leo was gaining momentum in the telling now, speaking more quickly. Her accent was getting even thicker. “Kyle had moved on to the big pack now, killing three more. The big lump of flesh that used to be a biker was lying on the sidewalk beside him, his head blown off. The biker’s leather jacket had ten or fifteen bullet holes in it. Kyle finished them all off one by one, before the rest of us could have a go, each one shot to the head, they dropped like flies.”
We were all on the edges of our seats. Despite her accent and sometimes-odd phrasing, this was a riveting story.
“John cussed and yelled at his luck,” she said. “He kicked the corpse in front of him before turning around to face us. I didn’t say anything, I knew how he felt, if the movies or stories or zombie websites had taught us anything, it was that once you are bit, you become one of them. I watched as Kyle started to drag one of the bodies to the front yard of a house, dropping it and picking up another one. I didn’t understand why we were wasting time to pile up bodies on the side of the road, but I didn’t question him either, I decided to help him instead. Kyle was angry. ‘Fourteen of them, a couple of hours ago they used to be human, now they are just rotting flesh,’ his voice heavy with emotion. We’d all talked about zombies before, but no one really believed it could happen. Kyle continued, ‘I think we should clear up a house here, spend the night, reinforce it while there is still daylight, it seems the shit has hit the fan in the speed of light’.”
Several heads nodded their agreement at both the speed with which the outbreak occurred and the need to find a safe place to hold up for the night.
“Two of us were injured and we were running out of ammo, it seemed like a rather valuable idea to me, and John agreed. We walked past a few houses, until we found one with the door standing wide open, a stain of red marked on the white porch. It seemed like a better idea to start by luring the zombies out, if there were any inside it would be best they came to us, rather than trying to fight them in a hallway or a bathroom. We made some noise and waited for a while but nothing came towards us, plan b was to sweep the entire house making sure it was clear of the infected. Coming past the living room, I noticed a pair of legs protruding sideways from behind a couch. I signed to John towards it and aiming his gun at it, he slowly approached it. The deceased’s legs once seemed to belong to a male, but it was hard to tell. There wasn’t much left of the corpse aside from the lower appendages. We cleared out the rooms one by one, locked the front door, dropped the blinds and closed the curtains, Kyle made sure that the back door and the garage door were also secure.”
“That fucking smites more then when I got hit in the gumnuts by a boomerang. I don’t recommend getting bitten by a zombie to anyone,” said John rubbing his shoulder, remembering the pain of the bite.
Leo almost cracked a smile at that, which I would bet was John’s plan. He was a lot like me, we both use humor to diffuse uncomfortable situations.
“I passed the first aid kit I took from the Ute to John to take care of his wound,” Leo said. “He looked at me and curled his lip. He nodded a thank you and sat on the couch. I sat across from him, watching him as he poured antiseptic over the bite, he didn’t bother to bandage it up.”
“Seemed like it needed air,” John mumbled. I grinned to myself. Again, it was exactly something I would say.
“I remember Kyle questioned me about my skill with the kukri. I didn’t really have an answer for him. The truth is - I had probably sliced the air with the damn thing ten times since I got it, but killing those zombies out there came almost naturally to me. I couldn’t explain it. I felt different.” Leo said. “We sat quietly; John flicked the television, each channel showing the same thing, people attacking people, warnings to stay inside. I wondered what he was thinking, he wasn’t really paying attention to the TV, I could tell by his unmoved gaze. Suddenly almost, as if he heard me he turned around to look at me. He told me he was worried about his family back home. We talked about our lives at home for a couple of hours, I learned about his children and his wife, how close he was to his younger brother Sean, who often got mistaken for his twin.”
“By then, it had been a couple of hours, and we didn’t seem to be turning,” interjected John. “My bite healed up really quickly, and Leo’s did too. Within those few hours both of our bites were gone.”
“By then, Kyle had climbed onto a single bed in one of the rooms and was snoring away, I felt tired myself but I was too paranoid to close my eyes. More hours passed, we circled the house numerous times, watching carefully through the blinds on the street outside, a couple of cars went by but other than that not much movement was detected. I kept my backpack on my shoulders, ready to run if I have to. We kept the light turned off, limiting ourselves to the illumination the TV created in the living room. I found a gym bag in the main bedroom and emptied it from the dirty sweaty clothes. Rampaging through the kitchen I filled the bag with whatever non-perishable foods I could find, and filled a couple of empty bottles I found with water.”
John interrupted again, “That’s when it got ugly.”
“This is my story,” said Leo, eyeing John. “I will tell it how I want too. Anyways, I placed the bag on the couch in the living room and turned, aiming to check on Kyle who was still sleeping, when John grabbed me by the wrist, and told me something wasn’t right. It seemed as if we automatically attuned to each other, we moved in unison. John was ahead of me with his gun ready. We moved down the dark hallway towards the bedroom where Kyle was asleep, when we came across an opened cellar door I did not recall seeing earlier. We continued until we found ourselves outside the bedroom, I slowly pushed the door, squeaking as it swerved open. We heard a growl, Kyle was pinned in the bed by a zombie, one of its hands covering Kyle’s mouth, I could see his body pulsating underneath the weight, the zombie had taken a chunk right out of his neck, and the bed was covered with his blood. The zombie pounced towards John; he fired before it could reach him, t
hrowing it backwards behind the bed. I ran over to Kyle and placed a sheet over his neck, desperately trying to stop the bleeding, his body still shaking, unable to speak; he looked at me his eyes wide.”
“Poor Kyle,” said John.
“Kyle grabbed my arm tightly, to the point it felt it was going to break and his expression changed from fear to hatred in seconds. John must have sensed the change and grabbed me by the shoulders. He pulled me backwards, forcing me free from Kyle’s hand. I watched in horror as he pointed the gun at his head, just as the zombie he shot before jumped over from behind the bed throwing him backwards outside the door. I leaped up to my feet and sprinted to the front door, Kyle hot on my tail. I ran onto the road my eyes met with the bright lights of a truck that had stopped in the middle of the street. That’s when you, Victor, yelled ‘Ma’am get down!’ I yelled back that Kyle was my responsibility. I turned around and took the kukri out of its sheath, swinging it downward like an axe, splitting Kyle’s skull in two. His body dropped, I had just killed my friend. I freed my kukri of his skull, wiped it, and then holstered it back to its sheath. That’s when I turned around now to face the mysterious man and the special kid that was looking at me through the back window.
I could hear John coming; I knew he was going to be interested in these two survivors.”
13. The Work Begins
After Leo’s story, we all decided that we’d better get some sleep. By the time we’d finished talking, it was almost three in the morning, and we were exhausted. We said our good nights; Mom took Leo and John to their rooms, right across the hallway from the suite I share with Max. Mom agreed to sleep in my room in case Max woke up and was afraid. I needed some time to think, both to clear my head and to formulate the plan for defending against an attack, so I said I’d take watch for the rest of the night. I walked out to the truck, and opened the back gate. I grabbed my black Maglite, picked up Candi’s body, carried it to one of the storage rooms, and laid her on a wooden table. I pulled back the cover and laid my hand on her cold forehead.
“Candi, I will keep Max safe.” I said. “I will defend him with my life, and I will learn from my mistakes and I will not let any more harm come to him. Watch over us, and help if you can. I love you. Goodbye.” I kissed her forehead, covered her back up and headed out to start the work.
My first stop was to my old bedroom. It was a separate one room building, originally part of a dog kennel complex added to the property in the early 1900's. Cinder block construction with small high windows, it was a good solid building. Inside was my gun safe. I hope Candi wasn’t too angry now that I’d lied to her all those years ago when I told her I got rid of my guns. Inside the safe, wrapped in oil cloth were two pistols, my Sig Saur P226 .40 caliber and my first handgun, a Glock 17 9mm. Each had a spare magazine, and a box of bullets. Beside the pistol shelves, in the taller section was my grandfathers Winchester 12 gauge Sx3. When I inherited it, I’d added the eleven round extension tube. It was a long gun, but I was outside, and I liked the idea of double-aught buck shot.
I had a shoulder holster for the Sig, and an inside the waistband holster for the Glock, so I took the shoulder holster and the shotgun, plus a vest pocket full of shells, and started to walk the perimeter of the property. Out behind my room was a large forty-acre field. I was glad for the full moon behind that was a marshy creek.
One time when I was younger, I was bush hogging that field, and buried my tractor up over the back wheels. Even in the hottest part of the summer, that area stayed wet and mucky. It would be impossible for any normal zombies to walk over; they would sink up to their armpits. That marshy area led to the river that bordered the property on the south-west side. The river went under a bridge on route 15, and turned to parallel the road for about two miles before heading off to empty into the Rapidan. The Robinson River was about thirty feet wide, ranged from mid-thigh to well over my head in depth, and ran fast and cold. For twenty years, the sportsman’s club upstream had been stocking the river with trout, and over that time, it had become one of the best trout fishing rivers on the east coast. It was hard to walk through, if the zombies ever formed up into ‘wandering hordes’ like in those ‘of the dead’ movies, I hoped that the river would be a natural barrier. That was a large part of my defensive plan. I knew that super zombies could get around, over or through it, but it was better than nothing, and would channel the undead down a few specific areas where we could set up lanes of fire.
I turned left and headed south east behind the horse barn, and walked between the barn and the paddock there. The paddock fence was a stout four-board fence, each segment of fence made up of six by six posts and four ten inch sections of 1.5-inch thick lumber. There was just less than four miles of fence on the property.
The barn itself was a cinder block building. There were thirteen exterior facing horse stalls down each side, and a large two-thousand square foot hayloft above. Each end of the hayloft ended with a large door for loading hay. When the barn was built, they’d built a large swinging arm with a pulley on it so a man could pull the bales of hay up to the loft and swing them inside, rather than trying to carry them up a ladder. These days we loaded hay up there with forklifts on a tractor, but our diesel fuel was only going to hold out for so long. At the end of the horse barn was the equipment barn. Inside, there was a large orange Kubota tractor with front bucket. The backhoe attachment was stored in the next bay. The bush hog was currently attached, which would be good for cutting ‘patrol’ paths through the long field grass, if it came to that.
Beside the Kubota was an ancient John Deere 410C backhoe, and a John Deere Combine. The combine was pretty new, purchased for cutting the back corn fields. I enjoyed a minute thinking about driving the combine through a horde of zombies, and the spray of corn kernel sized zombie bits flying out the exit shaft. I turned again behind the equipment field, parallel to Route 15, a little over half a mile east of me, and started walking up the front of the manor house. The lawn in the front of the house was roughly triangle shaped, pointing towards the road. The angled sides were formed by four board fencing, which lead all the way down to the brick entrance gates at the road. The top of the triangle was formed by the house, barns, and outbuildings. The house was completely surrounded by four-board fence; we referred to the thirty acres inside that fence as the ‘lawn’. It was all landscaped, manicured grass and gardens. Outside the fence we had another four hundred acres of mostly horse and cornfields.
The fourth edge of the property was the dirt road we ended up on after we’d crossed the Lawsons’s farm on the dry creek bed. Four board horse fences ran up the entire length of the property on that side. The property was a large square, with a balloon shaped ‘inner’ property where the house was. Horse fencing made up the outline of the balloon. There were only two ways onto the property, one from the dirt road that ran up the side, over a cattle guard, or up the main driveway. The main driveway entered through two eight-foot tall brick gates, and then ran a little under half a mile uphill to the manor house.
The manor was a large brick ‘L’ shaped house, with large porches on the front and back. The sides of the house had high windows, at the lowest point I could just barely reach the sills, at the highest point, the bottom sill was a dozen feet off the ground. The windows and doors on the porches were easily accessible though. In the center of the ‘L’ shaped house, there was a large courtyard with a fountain and herb gardens. The first order of business tomorrow would be to start reclaiming fencing and wall off the open sides of the ‘L’, turning it into an enclosed courtyard in the back. I would like to have made that wall two stories tall, but tomorrow we’re going to shoot for seven feet.
I did some quick math in my head. The fence boards are ten feet long, 1.5 inches thick and twelve inches wide. The ‘L’ is roughly thirty feet by eighty feet. That means to hit seven feet of solid wall; I’m going to need eleven boards long by seven boards high, seventy-seven fence boards. Over one hundred ten feet, my boards are ten fe
et long, eleven posts would do, but I wanted to add strength, and put posts every five feet, so twenty-two posts and seventy-seven boards. At four boards per one post, I’d have to take out twenty-two sections first thing in the morning, which would give me eighty-eight boards, eleven boards to put across the windows in on the front porch.
We’d need at least two hours to pull up the fence posts with the front bucket and chain with the Kubota tractor. At the same time I can dig the footer trench and post holes with the backhoe.
For the job, I’d need to make sure we had nails for the nail gun, screws, ideally some big bolts to put through the posts, if we had any concrete. The posts will have concrete on them already, but I’d like to add some more. I brought all of my tools, and the farm had a pretty well stocked tool room. Those boards won’t stop bullets, and they won’t hold forever, but they will give time to get inside the house, and they’ll make it hard to aim at anything/anyone specific.
About five in the morning, just before sunrise, I saw headlights moving fairly slowly down Route 15. I dove into the boxwood bushes that create the formal gardens, and watched, suddenly wishing I’d brought my 30.06 with the scope. The car turned its blinker on, and turned up the driveway, and I sprinted towards the parking area, and stepped into a shadow. The house lights were off. With the light of the full moon, I could see the windshield was smashed out of the car, explaining the slow speed. If you’ve ever driven anywhere at night on a motorcycle you know the bugs are attracted to your headlights.
The car slowly moved up the driveway, but I couldn’t see the driver. It pulled up beside my truck, the headlights blinked off at the same time as the motor. The white car had streaks of blood dried in sideways lines down the doors. When I heard the car door open, I lowered my voice by an octave and said, “Stop where you are. Identify yourself,” trying to sound as intimidating as possible.
