Aliens Versus Zombies (23 page)

By this time the rest of the group had followed them outside.

“Sorry, everyone,” Daniels replied. “We found another farmhouse. This one was untouched. We had to clean out a couple of bodies of the previous owners, but it’s livable and ready for us to move in. We found Mabel there.
Didn’t
we, girl?” He stroked her flank.

He went on to describe their day. “So, we didn’t come back with a rabbit, but I think we did okay, overall.”

Geoff stepped forward to shake Daniels’ hand. “Son, you done great. A couple of us here grew up on farms and around horses, so we know how to care for them.”

“Glad to hear it. I suggest we pack up our stuff and put everything in the SUVs. It’s not safe to go far in them, but if we travel in the heat of the day, and go slowly enough, I don’t think we’ll attract attention. The other barn is even bigger than this one, so there’s plenty of room to stash the vehicles inside. And let’s not forget to bring the rest of the food from the root cellar here.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Geoff turned to the others and raised his voice. “You heard the man. Pack up. We’re movin’ to our new home!”

The others cheered and then turned back to the barn to get their meager belongings.

A week after recovering from the hyperallergy virus, The Pack sat in a circle singing.

“Ol’ Mack Donald had a farm, E, I, E, I, O. An on dat farm he had some pigs, E, I, E, I, O.”

Jay, smiled at the ecstatic impression on Amanda’s face.

“I do good?”

“Wow, Uncle Jay, that was amazing! You’re so smart! You, too, Aunt Suzi, and Uncle Mike, and Aunt Joanie. You’re all doing so well! Uncle Bobo, you’ll have to practice some more, but you’ll get it, too.”

Poor Uncle Bobo, the only member of The Pack to be immune to the new virus, was the only one not to benefit from the side effect of brain cell growth. He would never learn the song.

The rest had a lot of learning to do.

* * * *

The other recovering Zoms now had a modicum of intelligence to go along with their animal cunning. Although having no formal education, they learned fast, just as children do. Those who had never used weapons before—not even sticks and stones—learned by observing others do so. This made them even more formidable than before.

These smarter Zoms were better able to defeat the original Zoms they faced, and the golden people.

* * * *

FronCar smiled at Dr. ZemBleth. The two sat in the latter’s office. “I have to hand it to you, doctor. Your virus is doing its job. There are hundreds of indie corpses littering the streets of this city, and I’m sure there are untold numbers where we can’t see them. Overflights of the surrounding countryside show thousands more outside the city. I’ve increased the number of sorties to other parts of the continent and the other continents as well. Within a few months the indie population of this planet should be down to the nuisance level. You’re to be congratulated, Doctor on some fine work. You’ve been a great asset to our mission.”

ZemBleth basked in the praise. “Thank you, Commander. As always, I’m at the service of the empire.” A gleam came into his eyes. “I, er, trust you will mention my humble service to the viceroy?”

“Certainly. I was just on my way to discuss the progress of our colonization efforts with him. I’ll be sure to express my pleasure at the fine work you and your people have done. “

“Thank you. That would be most appreciated.”

“It’ll be my pleasure, Doctor.”

* * * *

Viceroy CresNal seemed pleased with the status report.

“That’s excellent news, Commander. I knew you could find a way to secure the area without leveling the city. It just took the right motivation.”

FronCar successfully hid his grimace at the reminder. The fool looked for every opportunity to rub it in. Sure, FronCar had managed to subdue the indies in the city, but it had cost nearly a thousand of his men’s lives, and had taken at least two months longer than that it would have doing it FronCar’s way.

“Yes, sir.”

Still, he had to admit that doing it this way had probably accelerated the colonization effort. The new built-from-scratch Drahtch city was still months away from being ready to move the first settlers in, while over a thousand were already residing in the indie city. The living conditions weren’t ideal, yet the colonists had been cooped up on a ship for the last eighteen years. For them, the ability to live on the surface of a planet again and walk under the open sky, even an alien one, was a pleasure.

“Sir, given the progress we’ve made I feel confident we can safely extend the outer perimeter to encapsulate most of the city. Then we can accelerate our timetable for offloading people and materials from the ships. I expect that we could secure the new perimeter within several weeks and have as many as five thousand colonists settled in within a month after that.”

CresNal beamed. “Excellent! Now
that’s
the news I’ve been waiting to hear. I know it will be quite the undertaking to ready housing for so many people that quickly. You have my authorization to requisition whatever manpower and resources you need to accomplish your goal.”

FronCar executed the sharp nod that passed as a salute among the Drahtch. “Thank you, sir! Oh, and I have a question. Given that we’ve made so much progress in this city, perhaps it’s time to begin settling other cities across the planet. That would allow more colonists to live on the surface, rather than being stuck up here for another few years.”

“I understand your concern, Commander, but this is the way we’ve always done it, going back millennia. Why change things midcourse?”

“For one thing, normally we have to conquer a planet by force. It takes time to clear an entire area, so it makes sense to colonize slowly as well. But here, the entire planet is open at once. We could settle in a dozen cities right now, if we wanted to.”

“I’m sure we could, but that’s not how we do things. We have an established tried-and-true procedure, and I intend to stick to it. Any other questions Commander?”

From the tone of viceroy’s voice, it was clear he didn’t want to hear any.

“No, Your Excellency. Thank you for your time.”

“Always a pleasure, Commander.”

FronCar left feeling frustrated, as so often happened after speaking with the viceroy.

Sticking to “established tried-and-true procedure” are we? Didn’t established procedure call for orbital bombardment from space? You didn’t have any trouble breaking that protocol, did you?

* * * *

Although the house was terribly crowded for thirty, they managed to find room for everyone. There were four bedrooms upstairs, plus the living room and dining room. As long as most of them spent the day out and about, the house didn’t feel
too
crowded. At mealtimes, some sat at the dining table, some at the kitchen table, some on the sofa and guest chairs in the living room, and the rest on the front or back porch. They made do.

Each day, several of the better shots went hunting, a few people worked in the garden out back, and others stood guard at the perimeters of the yard, to provide advance warning should Zoms wander in from the woods or up the road. The rest either worked on preparing meals and doing dishes—thirty people ate a lot and dirtied plenty of dishes—or they worked on making beds.

Not ‘making the beds’ but making beds. Sleeping on the floor was exceedingly uncomfortable and there were only three beds with mattresses left in the house after Daniels and Jesse tossed out the disgusting one. So, several people with carpentry skills gathered tools and lumber from the workshop behind the house and built thirty bunk beds over the next couple of weeks. Two others sewed together sheets obtained from both farmhouses and stuffed them with hay from the barn. They weren’t the most comfortable beds ever, but they were a damn sight better than the floor.

The bedrooms turned into barracks, with four bunk beds in three of the rooms, sleeping eight people each. The fourth room held three bunk beds, along with a crib they made for the baby, Abby. Having only one bathroom was a problem. That necessitated building several outhouses behind the barn. And because there was only one bathtub, they also built a couple of rainwater-fed outdoor showers. That meant cold-water showers, only after a heavy rain and only for a few people.

With so many people in one house there was next-to-zero privacy, but they were dry and warm, and had enough food for now.

More importantly, for the first time in months they felt reasonably safe.

Still, it was midsummer and Fall was fast approaching. There was only so much food stored there, and the small garden and three apple trees would feed thirty people for only so long; certainly not enough to last all winter. Unfortunately, the cornfield out back had reverted to the wild in the absence of weeding and planting. The occasional rabbit, squirrel, or bird the hunters managed to bag added some variety and protein to their diets, but there wasn’t a lot of that either. They’d have to find a more permanent solution before winter fell.

Daniels and two others with horse-riding skills took turns scouting the surrounding area.

* * * *

Chrissy sounded the alarm, hollering back toward the house.

“Everyone inside the house. Hurry! There’s something coming down the road. Move it!”

Those working in the garden and the tool shed dropped everything and hurried back to the house. Those inside quickly closed the interior window shutters they had built recently. They were made of solid lumber with slots cut into them as firing ports, if needed.

Chrissy squinted at the distant image. Without high-powered binoculars, it was hard to make out what it was, but it was large, moving slowly and seemed to be weaving from side to side, almost like a snake, but less regularly. And it was definitely coming her way. Her rifle had an old 2X scope on it, which helped, but not a lot.

She kept watching from behind the big oak tree and hoped it wasn’t a small pack of Zoms, or worse: aliens.

The faint image got closer and larger. She began to sweat, and not just from the afternoon heat. What if…?

After a few minutes the image grew clear enough that she could identify it. She cried out again.

“False alarm! It’s just Geoff.”

Geoff Meisner was riding Mabel—she could just make out his broad-brim hat at this distance—but he wasn’t alone. There was something else behind him.

Make that,
two
something elses.

A grin spread across her face at what she saw.

“Everyone, he’s got another horse! And something else… Hot damn. It’s a cow!”

Tied behind the pony was a much larger stallion, and trailing behind was a Holstein.

Chrissy could hardly restrain her excitement for the twenty minutes it took for Geoff to get within hailing distance.

“Where the hell did you find those?”

Geoff grinned. “Hold on there, missy. Give me a few minutes to get them into the barn and I’ll tell everyone at once.”

The rest of the group now waited outside the house to see what was going on. As promised, Geoff was done quickly and strode back toward the others.

“It was the damnedest thing. Mabel and I found this farm on the far side of the woods. It’d been ransacked. Nothin’, really, of value left. I walked around to the back of the barn to see if there might be some tools or somethin’ we could use. And there were these two, just happily munchin’ away at some grass, side by side. When Buck—that’s what I’m callin’ the stallion—saw me, he just moseyed on over, pretty as you please, and Elsie followed. Wherever he went, she went, too. It was like they was the best o’ friends. I didn’t even have to tie her. She just followed us back the whole way. I checked in the barn for a saddle, but I didn’t see any horse tack there. They musta wandered there from somewhere else.” He beamed at the end of his story.

“A cow,” someone in the crowd said. “Steaks!”

“No! Milk!” someone else cried out. “I haven’t had fresh milk in forever.”

An argument ensued over which was the best use of the cow: milk long-term or meat short-term.

Geoff whistled to stop the chatter. “Y’all city folk should know that a cow that ain’t milked daily quickly stops producing milk. Until she calves again there ain’t gonna be no milk. And she ain’t gonna calve unless we find a bull somewhere.”

That settled the argument. They would have one hell of a barbecue.

“But we can’t possibly eat hundreds of pounds of meat all at once,” someone called out. “Then what? We don’t have any refrigeration.”

“Yet another inconvenience of post-apocalyptic life.” That drew a chuckle.

Someone else replied, “We can cure the beef, make jerky out of it. It’ll keep indefinitely that way.”

“That’s great. Does anyone here know how to cure meat?”

A couple of people volunteered to do it, having experience curing venison and rabbit. They were going to need copious amounts of sugar or salt. That meant finding a store somewhere that had some. And it meant putting off the barbecue until they had the means to cure all that meat.

Daniels volunteered to go in the morning.

“Cool,” said Chrissy. “While you’re out, see if you can find some binoculars, too.”

“And maybe somewhere that sells saddles,” Geoff chimed in. “Buck needs one—and a pad and bridle. A halter, too, if you can find one.”

“And some shotgun shells, too,” Jesse added.

“And more diapers. Lots of them,” from Abby’s mom, Andi.

Daniels sighed. “Somebody make a shopping list.”

* * * *

The colonization efforts had expanded considerably over the past few weeks. More than two thousand Drahtch colonists had settled in, along with several hundred soldiers. Two-thirds of the city was secure behind the protective perimeter field. There were still daily sightings of indies within the barrier, but only a few here and there. Most were quickly eliminated, but somehow a few always managed to elude the soldiers.

* * * *