“Shit, that’s the first I’ve heard anything like that, do you think it could be true? You know how people spread rumors,” Grizzly over.
“I believe him, it sounds like something the government would do and the United Nations has been trying to create some kind of ‘New World Order’ ever since the Clinton administration. Besides, if you look at all the facts, it fits everything I’ve been seeing the last two days,” Squirrel over.
There was silence for a few minutes.
“Grizzly, have you figured out anyway to fight the damn walking dead yet?” I’ve tried shooting them, dumping gas out the window on top of them and setting them on fire, but they just keep coming,” Squirrel over.
“Have you tried shooting them in the head?” Grizzly over.
“No, I didn’t think it would do any good. Does it work?” Squirrel over.
“I’m not sure, I shot at one this morning and he dropped on the spot. I’m not sure but I think I hit him in the head.” Grizzly over.
“Interesting, I’ll have to try that,” Squirrel over.
“Oh shit, I have to go, there’s a big mob heading straight for my trailer,” Grizzly over and out.
“Let me know if shooting them in the head works,” Squirrel over.
“I can’t, I ran out of ammunition this morning,” Grizz………
“Come in Grizzly,” Squirrel over.
I picked up the mic and pressed the button.
I had some questions I wanted to ask before they both signed off.
“Squirrel, come in please,” Badger over.
“Squirrel, come in please,” Badger over.
“Why isn’t he answering me?” I asked. “Did they both sign off already?”
Logan walked over to the workbench and began to look over the base of the CB.
“I think I found the problem,” Logan said. “Look at this, I think a hungry mouse was eating the CB.”
I got up and walked over to the radio and looked where Logan was pointing, something had chewed through one of the wires that led from the mic to the base.
I turned around and looked at Emma.
“Well, what do you think Badger?” Emma smiled.
“It was my dad’s handle, it was the first thing that came to mind,” I replied. “But to your other question, I’ll have to see if I can splice the wires back together, hopefully I can get it to work again.”
“Dad, do you think what the squirrely guy said was true?” Katie asked.
“Who knows, with the government involved anything could be possible. But one thing you have to remember about people that you hear on the CB,” I grinned. “They are like some people on those blogs or chat rooms, they make up things, exaggerate and blow all sort of things way out of proportion.”
“That’s disappointing,” Katie said. “I was getting really impressed.”
“Watch it smarty pants,” I said.
Before anyone could say anything further, we all stopped talking and listened.
“The noise is getting louder,” Emma said as we all listened as the sound of pounding against the doors and windows suddenly increased.
“OK, everyone, go take a look and see how our barricades are holding up, then we need to go up in the attic and see what has those people riled up all of a sudden.
We ran into the house, closing the garage door behind us as we went.
“Check your rooms, I’ll check the other rooms,” I instructed. “Yell if you see any problems.”
A few seconds later, Logan, Katie and Emma all came running back into the living room.
“Dad, there is blood running in to my room between the boards on the barricade over my window,” Logan said.
“Mine too,” Katie and Emma chimed in together.
“Does it look like this,” I said and walked over to the large living room window and pointed to the blood seeping in through the cracks of the boards. Just as I pointed at the barricade, a drop of blood ran down the board and splashed on the floor.
They all nodded.
“It seems that they have smashed out all the windows and they’re banging their heads directly against wooden boards of the barricades now,” I said.
When I saw Emma staring at the boards vibrating on the barricade, I suggested that we all go upstairs and look outside to see what was going on.
Each of us took one of the lanterns that we had set around the living room to give us enough light to see by.
When we were in the attic, everyone gathered around the vent facing the front of the house and waited while I turned the latches to open the small door.
“Oh Shit!” Emma said when the door swung open and she saw what was out in front of our house.
When I looked out, I couldn’t see the concrete on the streets or the grass in the yards.
There were too many staggering bodies surrounding our house to see anything else but bodies.
Chapter 14
“Where did they all come from?” Emma asked. “I didn’t think that this many people lived in our neighborhood.”
“And why are they all so suddenly interested in our house?” Katie added.
“Dad?” Logan said. “Do you think that Squirrel guy could be right?”
I looked over at Logan and asked, “Right about what?”
“Could all these people really be dead?” Logan asked. “I stopped counting at twenty-five the number of people that had at least one arm missing. Wouldn’t they have bled to death in a few minutes after losing an arm? Most of them have lost a lot more than just an arm.”
“I feel certain that something like having an arm torn off would kill a person if they didn’t receive immediate medical attention,” I replied as I looked at the mob of mangled bodies below. What I also noticed, besides the massive wounds that covered the bodies, was the skin color.
Two days ago, the skin color on the people outside was close to normal, a little pale, but fairly normal.
Yesterday I briefly noticed the skin was a little darker.
Today, the skin color was becoming a dark shade of gray.
The last time I had seen that color is still fresh in my mind because the situation where I saw that color was so shocking.
I was at the funeral home after my father had died. The funeral home held the body for a few extra days to give Emma and I time to fly to Montana to attend the services.
I was kneeling in front of my dad’s coffin, saying my final goodbye. I reached into the coffin to touch my dad’s arm.
When I touched his arm, the pressure of my hand on his arm caused his sleeve to slide up a bit and I saw his arm.
The undertaker had put makeup on his face and hands to make the skin color appear normal, but the color of his arms was a dark gray leathery color.
When you are at a funeral, you look at the body and try to remember the deceased as he was, but when I saw my dad’s arm, it shocked to me realize what his face and hands really looked like under the makeup.
Like most people, I was going through the funeral process in a fog, not wanting to believe that my dad was actually dead. When I saw what his skin really looked like, it shattered the veil of illusion I was hiding behind, and it hit me like a ton of bricks.
Without the makeup my dad would look like some gruesome monster from a horror movie. I was kneeling in front of a dead body that would scare the hell out of me if he wasn’t made up.
I remember the tears that began to run down my face as I forced myself to stand and walk outside the funeral home.
“Dad, are you crying?” Katie asked, interrupting the nightmare I was reliving in my mind.
I turned my head and wiped my eyes as I saw my family staring at me.
“Sorry, I just saw something that reminded me of a very sad time in my life,” I replied. “I’m fine.”
“So what do you think?” Logan asked, seeming not to have heard what Katie had said.”
“I would have to say to think that those people are still alive,” I paused and took a deep b
reath, “would be to deny the reality we are seeing in front of us. I don’t know how or why, but those people are dead, and they are still trying to kill us. If we are going to live through this, I think we have to face the fact of what we are dealing with.”
“I thought so,” Katie replied as if casually making an observation to one of her friends.
“Are you serious?” Emma asked. “Wouldn’t that be impossible?”
“I can’t explain it, but obviously not,” I replied. “If we keep thinking they are some poor person that has been injured or something, we are going to start feeling sorry for them. If we feel sorry for them, we aren’t going to do what we need to do and we will end up letting our guard down and getting ourselves killed.”
“This can’t be happening,” Emma said.
“It is happening,” I replied. “We’ve been denying it ever since we saw the red dots killing and eating those people out there. We have to stop fooling ourselves, this damn nightmare is really happening.”
“Does that mean the rest of Squirrel’s story was true too?” Emma asked.
“Does it matter?” I asked.
“I guess not,” Emma said.
“I know how we can find out?” Logan said. “You can shoot one of them and see if it dies.”
“Shoot one of those people?” Emma asked looking horrified.
“Yeah, Dad,” Katie added excitedly. “Shoot one of them and see what happens.”
“Emma, they’re not people anymore,” I said. “They were at one time, but look at them, they are walking cadavers.”
Emma thought for a second, “Logan’s right, shoot one. We need to remove all doubt from our minds if we are going to see this for what it is. But what if he dies?”
“Just don’t shoot it in the head,” Logan added. “Remember Squirrel and Grizzly said they shot the dead but they didn’t even seem to notice until Grizzly shot one in the head.”
“If you shoot one in the heart and it doesn’t die, then we’ll know for sure,” Katie added. “Remember, Big Richard shot one four times and he said it didn’t stop it until he shot its leg off.”
“Big Richard shot the leg off of one of them?” Logan asked looking surprised. “How do you know that?”
“I saw it on his chat room post,” Katie replied.
“Who is Big Richard?” Emma asked.
“I’m glad I’m not the only one that doesn’t know about Big Richard,” I said. “Maybe Katie can tell you about Big Richard later.”
“I really don’t know much about Big Richard,” Katie said looking embarrassed.
I grabbed a box of ammo, took out a shell and shoved it into the Winchester.
“Let’s do this before I change my mind,” I said, then I moved over to the open vent and rested the barrel of the rifle on the bottom of the opening.
I could feel Emma, Logan and Katie press up against my back so they could see.
I looked for an easily identifiable target.
“See the tall guy with only one arm and without a shirt on right below the window?” I asked.
“I see him,” Katie and Logan replied in unison.
Emma remained silent.
I took careful aim, it had been a while since I had fired the Winchester, but at this range no matter how rusty I was, I knew I wouldn’t miss.
“I’m aiming for his heart,” I said. “If nothing else, I’ll be putting the poor bastard out of his misery.”
I took a deep breath and as I slowly let the air out, like my dad had taught me, I pulled the trigger.
The sound of the shot echoed loudly through the attic making my ears ring.
I saw my shot hit the guy squarely in the middle of the chest, blood and shattered bone splattered across the body behind him as he fell over.
“He went down,” Emma said sounding shocked.
“But he is still moving,” Logan said.
“Look, he’s getting back up,” Katie added.
We watched as the guy struggled to his feet again.
“Gross,” Katie said. “You can see right through his chest, there is a big hole that goes right through him.”
The man stood and slowly raised his head and looked right at us, then he opened his mouth and raised his hands.
I couldn’t tell if he was growling or not, the volume of moans outside had risen to a deafening level.
It was then we noticed that all of the bodies outside were staring up at us too.
Then they all began to push and shove each other as they made a frantic rush towards our house.
“I think we just woke the dead,” Emma said.
“Either that or we really pissed them off,” I added. “I don’t think we should use the gun again unless we have to. They seem to react violently to the noise.”
I closed the vent door and turned to my family.
“I think it’s going to be a long night,” I said as I listened to the vicious pounding against the barricades over our windows.
“What are we going to do now?” Logan asked.
“Sit tight, talk softly and hope they get tired and go away,” I replied. “There isn’t much else we can do for now.”
“What if they get into the house?” Emma asked.
“We just better hope that one of them doesn’t have a ladder,” Katie added.
Chapter 15
It had been a long, long, noisy night.
I don’t think any of us got any sleep or even much rest.
Every time I felt myself drifting off, the loud sound of a wooden barricade breaking shocked me fully awake again. I assumed it was just my imagination playing tricks on me, or my subconscious mind relaying what it was worried about the most, because whenever I looked around I saw that my family was still trying to get some rest and they didn’t appear to have heard anything.
I would then start to worry, feeling that maybe I was the only one to have heard the sound because I knew what to listen for.
Was I going crazy?
If I was, I had plenty of good reasons I could point to as the source.
We had just come to terms with the fact that we were being stalked by the dead.
Just admitting that was enough reason to certify us all as totally insane, because that was impossible.
At least it used to be.
If we were all just having a nightmare, I felt certain that this nightmare would soon drive us all crazy.
No matter how crazy everything felt, we needed to try and keep a grip on our sanity to get through this or at least until morning would come.
All my life, from the time I was in elementary school up until the time I had worked for Citi Bank, my problems always seemed at their worst during the night and gave me nightmares when I was trying to sleep. But when morning came giving me a fresh start where I could see my problems with a clear mind, I would always find that they really weren’t so bad after all.
I could only hope that would be the case here, because the way I felt now, I couldn’t see any way out.
It all felt surrealistic, and even though we hadn’t left the house in a few days, everything felt like it was moving so fast that I just couldn’t keep up.
It was all I could do to keep from panicking. Every time I would think about what waited for us outside, or what could happen, I could feel my heart racing out of control.
The only thing that helped me to stay calm was that my family needed me, and I wasn’t going to let them down.
I tried to think of something else to help me calm down.
I tried to think of something less terrifying, then I thought about our night in the attic. Sleeping in the attic had felt worse than sleeping on top of that ant hill we accidentally put our tent over during our last camping trip.
Last night we had turned off all the lanterns except for one and that one we turned it down until it was only giving off a soft glow, enough light to find our way to the improvised bathroom.
We all made at least one trip to the bathroom.
The spon
ge did its job and the only noise we heard from the bathroom was when Katie had to use it, the sound we all heard was, “Oh Gross!”
Knowing Katie, I of course had expected that, but I still found it amusing.
I sat up trying to clear my mind, feeling relieved that some things were still what I expected.
I looked at the vent on the wall of the attic to my right.
I felt a cold chill run through my body as I thought about looking outside and what was out there.
I pulled myself together, telling myself that we couldn’t hide in here forever and that knowing what we were facing was better than not knowing.
Just Trying To Stay Alive: A Prepper's Tale Page 13
