Dead Calm (23 page)

Brain recovered enough to finally sputter out, “Fuck
me running.”

Tick-Tock snorted and replied, “Fuck me running
doesn't even begin to cover that.”

Chapter Twelve

Woman's Lake Minnesota:

The bonfire in front of the lodge melted the snow
around it in a wide circle. Clustered on the half frozen ground was
an assorted collection of slat, camp and folding lawn chairs that
were as varied as the people occupying them. Some were refugees who
fled from the HWNW virus when it swept through the big cities but
most were residents of the nearby small town of Woman's Lake. Even
before the call for tonight's emergency meeting, they came out most
evenings to enjoy the company of Carl Hibbing, owner of the lodge
and the cabins that surrounded it. Having lived his entire life in
the small town, Carl was well known to its inhabitants, as was his
father and grandfather. For three generations, one Hibbing or
another had served as mayor to Woman's Lake, which, after the last
census, could brag a full-time population of six hundred
seventy-nine.

Scattered among the townies around the fire were a
dozen summer residents who owned cabins near the lodge. Among them
were also a few refugees who had moved into some of the unused
fishing camps scattered around the lake. They had shown up in
October and November, after being forced from their homes in the
cities and before the town quarantined itself to outsiders.

These refugees were at first met with the inherent
friendliness the people of northern Minnesota were known for, but
soon distrust built up in the locals, and they kept their distance.
The suspicions and exclusion came about as the newcomers told
horrendous stories about bodies said to be infected with the HWNW
virus being burned by the thousands in the streets of Minneapolis,
Fargo and Duluth and of armed National Guardsmen shooting down
anyone acting strange or aggressive.

The most horrendous story they told though, was that
people were dying and coming back to life to feed on the
living.

The citizens of Woman's Lake watched the news and
where it was reported that, while some isolated incidents of death
had occurred as a result of the spreading virus, the government had
the situation under control. Since this didn't jibe with what was
being related to them by the refugees, there was just no way that
their story could be true. Thus, the people of Woman's Lake
discarded what they considered tall tales, and a schism was created
between the townies and the refugees.

This changed however, when the first case of HWNW
cropped up in a local man named Otis Trevor. He had recently
returned from a trip to the State Capitol where he had been bitten
and infected after propositioning the wrong prostitute. The people
of Woman's Lake quickly became believers after Otis had to be
beaten down and killed by a frying pan wielding cook at Gram's
Diner. This was after he entered and attacked a waitress and one of
the patrons during the lunchtime rush, tearing bloody chucks of
skin and muscle off and swallowing them. The incident was witnessed
by thirty of the townsfolk, so there could no longer be any denying
the disease was just as the refugees claimed.

Further proof came about when the Constable tried to
contact Otis' wife to tell her about the unfortunate incident.
Failing to reach Linda on the phone, Constable Nielsen went out to
the Trevor residence on the edge of town. Here he found the entire
family butchered and torn apart as if by a pack of wolves. The
Constable also found Sally Trevor, the youngest in the family,
feeding on her mother's dead body.

That evening, the town council convened the first of
many emergency meetings. With hat in hand, they asked some of the
refugees to come and relate what they had witnessed before they
fled the cities.

Word about the attack and the meeting spread quickly,
and the number of people showing up at the town hall got to be so
great that it had to be moved to the High School gym. Despite this,
an hour before the meeting was to begin it was standing room
only.

By the time the first three people were finished
telling their tale of people killing and eating each other in
Minneapolis, you could have heard the proverbial pin drop in the
gymnasium. There were still a few doubters in the crowd, but a
majority believed the city folks. Carl Hibbing took the microphone
and asked that no decisions be made on how to proceed with the
defense of the town against the HWNW virus. He called for the
council to table any motions they were considering until they had a
chance to look into the crisis. As a situation like this was beyond
the scope or imagination of any of the board members, this was
seconded and approved to give everyone time to grasp the reality of
the dead coming back to life.

The meeting was then adjourned.

As people filtered out of the gym into the parking
lot, a few naysayers who had kept silent during the meeting decided
to voice their point of view that civilization couldn't be breaking
down because everything was still working. One man orated for a
full ten minutes on how America was too strong to be pulled down.
At the end of his speech, as if in a dissention to his view, the
power went out all through town.

A second emergency meeting was immediately called for
right there in the parking lot. There would be no waiting and no
tabling of motions. Something needed to be done tonight. Cars were
pulled into a circle facing inward and headlights were turned on so
the council could immediately reconvene. Emergency measures such as
rationing the available supplies in town were passed, and an
immediate quarantine was voted on and unanimously approved.
Twenty-six new officers were deputized to support the village
constable in enforcing the quarantine.

The following morning, after guards were posted at
the grocery store, the quarantine was implemented. Two groups of
the newly sworn-in deputies went three miles past the outskirts of
Woman's Lake in opposite directions along the only road through
town. Here they found the biggest trees they could and dropped them
across the roadway, effectively isolating the town. Hiking trails
were also similarly blocked, and armed men in boats patrolled the
lakeshore to make sure no one tried to get into what was now a Dead
Free Zone. Two person teams were assigned to each of the roadblocks
created by the fallen trees, and anyone driving or walking up to
the blockades was approached by one of the men on guard duty.
Unless you were from town or could prove you owned one of the
cabins that dotted the area, you were asked politely to turn around
and go back the way you had come. Most did, but a few of the more
hard headed cases tried to bull their way past the sentries.

These gate crashers never knew what hit them when the
second guard shot them with a scope equipped deer rifle from a
concealed position. Most of the citizens of Woman's Lake had grown
up hunting deer, bear and moose in order to eat, so a one hundred
foot shot into the center of the chest of someone trying to run
their blockade was nothing compared to some of the shots they had
made to put meat on the table. Either way, it came down to the same
thing. Survival.

Although the traffic at the roadblocks was sparse, at
least once a day someone approached and was either allowed to pass
if they belonged, turned around if they didn't or shot if they
tried to break through. This continued until the first heavy snow
fall. With the throughways soon blocked by twelve inches of
unplowed powder, no one tried to brave the road or trails that led
to Woman's Lake.

Once further isolated from the rest of the world, and
already a close-knit community, the citizens and refugees turned to
their fellow man. Going out of their way to help each other
survive, food was shared with the needy. Those with the know-how
taught others who didn't know how to hunt and fish. Luckily, with
the outbreak of HWNW coming in the fall, the residents of Woman's
Lake had already filled their heating oil tanks so freezing to
death wasn't an immediate threat. Most houses had a fireplace, and
for those that didn't they were put up at the High School until the
weather warmed and an alternate heating source could be built for
their home. A feeling of self-sufficiency prevailed and already
spring gardens were planned. The citizens of Woman's Lake were
survivors.

At the bonfire this night though, the good vibrations
were missing.

Earlier that day, a man by the name of Derrick Olsen
whose ex-wife lived across the lake in a neighboring town had gone
to visit her and drop off some venison. As Derrick approached the
town of Hanson, after driving his snowmobile eleven miles across
the frozen lake, he noticed what seemed to be all the citizens of
this small village roaming around on the streets. At first, he
wondered if they were having some type of winter carnival, on
closer inspection he saw large mobs circled around some of the
houses and shops that lined Main Street. Feeling that something
wasn't quite right, he stopped a quarter mile from shore and pulled
out his rifle. Using its scope, it took him only seconds to confirm
his sense of dread.

The HWNW virus had arrived at Woman’s Lake.

Oblivious to the cold, the dead staggered through the
thoroughfares of Hanson in a variety of dress and undress. Derrick
was amazed to see one man, naked except for a pair of brown socks
on which the feet had worn away to leave nothing but the tops
wrapped around his ankles, wade unflinchingly through a waist high
snow drift before finding a section of walkway someone had
shoveled. Continuing on in the ten degree below temperature as if
taking a slightly unsteady stroll across a nude beach on a
Caribbean Island, the zombie joined a group of the dead banging on
the doors and windows of a small house.

Switching his view, Derrick saw there was a large
crowd of the dead clustered around the brick building that served
as the town's City Hall. He started searching their faces, or what
was left of their faces, for anyone he knew. In reality, he was
hoping desperately he wouldn't see one face in particular, that of
his is ex-wife.

Relieved when he didn't find her in the grotesque
group, Derrick suddenly realized as he scanned the faces that he
could only recognize one in twenty of the nightmares lurching
through town. Looking closer at the clothing of the zombies, he saw
that some were wearing ragged suits and ties, while others wore
light casual dress that you'd be more likely to wear if you worked
in an office. This was when he noticed something else. It was the
number of people on the streets of Hanson. Although the population
of the tiny berg was just over three hundred, there appeared to be
twice that many figures wandering around the main drag, with more
showing up from side streets every minute. Quickly, he came to the
conclusion that these weren't the citizens of Hanson.

Although Derrick did spot a few distorted faces he
recognized, these were few and far between. It seemed like the dead
had come from somewhere else. How they ended up out here in what
was almost the middle of nowhere, he couldn’t even begin to
fathom.

Slightly elated that he hadn't seen his former wife
among the dead besieging the town, he turned to look further down
the shore where she had her trailer at the end of Main Street.
Zooming in with the scope, his elation turned to dismay when he saw
that the front door of her doublewide had been torn free and hung
crookedly by a single hinge.

Although they had parted on bad terms, in the four
years since the divorce he and Mary had actually grown closer than
they ever had been as husband and wife. Almost certain that his
former spouse was dead due to the trashed door, a flicker of hope
sparked the idea that maybe she had seen the zombies coming and had
taken shelter in one of the sturdier buildings in town. If that
were the case, he would do whatever was in his power to save
her.

Realizing that he couldn't do anything on his own, he
pushed aside his emotions and prepared to focus on another section
of town so he could describe everything he saw to the Constable and
his men. He knew that once he reported the sacking of Hanson, the
people of Woman's lake would band together to help their neighbors.
Within hours they would put together a team to try and rescue
anyone holed up in any of the buildings. Derrick knew he would have
to lead the group back here in order to find Mary, but to do this
he needed to gather all the information he could so they weren't
going in blind.

Giving one last, longing look at his ex-wife's
trailer before focusing elsewhere, Derrick's heart suddenly leapt
with joy when he saw a figure wearing a yellow dress enter the
doorway. Remembering with rising excitement that Mary loved this
color, he zoomed in on the familiar shape as it exited the trailer
and moved into the light.

She’s alive, he thought gleefully.

Looking intently as he adjusted the focus on his
scope, Derrick's hopes were shattered when he saw that, while he
was correct in that it was Mary, she wasn't alive.

With fluttering hands, the thing that Derrick had
once shared a bed with felt its way to the rail next to the stairs
and descended to the walkway. He noticed with sadness that it was
the walkway he had cleared of snow on his last visit. Blind, fish
white eyes set in a shattered half eaten face stared blindly out at
the world as the thing turned its head back and forth as if looking
for something it would never see. Dried blood spotted the yellow of
the dress and disheveled blonde hair that he instantly recognized
as Mary's.

Lowering the rifle, Derrick wept openly at his loss.
In his grief, his mind alternately raced with thoughts and then
stopped dead and went blank. After fifteen minutes of this, his
sorrow lessened enough that he could think clearly again.