Dead: Siege & Survival (3 page)

“I don’t think that is a good idea.”

“It’s not like we both haven’t been fighting and surviving since day one. I realize the advantage of sticking together, but we aren’t going to be so far apart that we couldn’t rush to the other’s aid. Plus, I think you should leave your bag of meds in the street or something…just in case.”

Kevin had to admit that she made excellent points. Still, years of horror movies screamed in his brain that this was a terrible idea and it never ended well when people split up. However…

“This ain’t the movies,” Kevin grunted as he unslung his pack and set it up beside the nearby bank of mailboxes.

“Huh?”

“Nothing.” Kevin selected his trusty machete and his Ka-Bar from his weapons. He wanted to be as light and mobile as possible.

“So how do you want to do this?” Willa set her gear beside Kevin’s. She seemed to fidget over her weapon choice for a few seconds before settling on a garden variety machete and her crossbow.

“I say we leapfrog down one side of the street until we reach the end and then return. Don’t enter your next house until I’ve come out of mine.”

“Sounds good.”

They walked up almost three blocks to clear the heavily burned section. Along the way, a few zombies crawled out from the charred ruins, but were easily dispatched. Finally, they reached the first houses that looked safe enough to enter. The first one only had minimal fire damage on one side of the structure. The pair patted each other on the shoulder and Kevin headed for the second house.

He tried the door and was happy to discover it unlocked. Entering the small foyer, he was greeted by a grand staircase on either side that allowed access to the second floor. He really didn’t think the upstairs bedrooms would hold what he sought.

The house didn’t smell, and other than a layer of dust, seemed in excellent condition. He was mildly surprised that looters hadn’t sacked it, but he imagined that, like any other resource in the post-apocalyptic world, even looters had to be in short supply. With so few people living, they couldn’t hit everything.

This actually gave him some hope. There were still places where they could seek supplies once he returned to the others. He knew from the exterior of the house that the garage would be to his right, and so he moved cautiously down the hall and turned right into a kitchen that was almost the size of his apartment. An oak door was on the other side of the enormous refrigerator.

He opened the door to a pitch black three car garage. The slight illumination came from the open doorway he now stood in. A quick sniff didn’t raise any alarms, but he would not drop his guard.

For some reason, he really struggled with taking that first step into the darkness. Hugging one wall, he inched his way in and eventually reached the sturdy roll-up door. It took a considerable amount of fumbling around before he was able to find the mechanism and then figure it out enough so that he could manually open the garage.

The door inched upwards on squeaky rails and Kevin winced as he realized that any zombie for blocks…maybe even miles…had probably just heard his actions. Realizing he had nothing to gain in opening the door slowly, he heaved it up.

Sure enough, coming up the driveway were several undead. Quickly surveying the situation, he decided that his best move was to step in between the fancy sports car and the never-been-in-the-mud four-wheel-drive truck that would require a step stool to climb inside. This offered him a perfect view of the approaching threats as well as funneling the zombies to him in a very defendable space. It worked even better than expected. In a matter of a few moments, the snowy driveway was strewn with bodies, and as an added bonus, he had multiple pathways to walk in. He could trace each zombie back to its point of origin if he so desired.

A look around the garage proved to be a disappointment as far as transportation was concerned. He had returned back inside and been tickled to discover a set of hooks with key rings dangling from them, However, none of the cars rewarded him by turning over when he tried the ignition.

He went out to the sidewalk and waited for Willa. She’d had no better luck than he, so they moved on. House by house they searched. They encountered every possibility inside from mass suicide to an undead family waiting on them like they would a pizza delivery. Many of the homes were looted, some showed signs of having hosted squatters who eventually figured out the obvious—a residential neighborhood was no place to ride out the zombie uprising. The only real benefit thus far proved to be an occasional pantry with canned food on the shelves.

As the shadows grew long and the pair grew weary, Kevin began searching for a spot to stay the night. He found it in the back yard of one of the houses that had yielded nothing beyond a zombified family that consisted of father, mother, teenaged son, pre-teen daughter and a Golden Retriever. The irony came when he searched the garage. He hadn’t really expected to find anything outdoorsy considering the obesity level of the entire family—dog included. Still, he couldn’t stifle his chuckle after he opened the main garage door to shed some light. On the back window of a huge blue Suburban was a variation of the stick figure window decals. A zombie family paraded across the tinted glass under the words: “My zombie family ate your stick figure family!” In that family’s above average-sized back yard was a large oak tree with a deluxe tree house.

He signaled Willa to join him in the garage when she exited the house she’d just finished searching. She was not nearly as amused by the window decal, but she was more than happy to climb up into the tree house for the night after they retrieved their packs,

Kevin tried to hide his excitement behind the discovery of a bookshelf in the tree house that would make any zombie nut jealous. There were several titles he was familiar with:
World War Z
,
Monster Island
, and every single
Walking Dead
comic book and compendium. However, there was also a plethora of titles he had never heard of by names he was unfamiliar with like Mark Tufo, Armand Rosamilia and John O’Brien.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Willa sighed as she flopped down on the cot shoved against one wall.

“Hey…it was a lot more popular than most folks realize,” Kevin replied, warring against his inner desire to grab a book from the shelf.

“Yeah…well no need to read that crap anymore. Just go outside.”

Kevin considered a few of the titles, but decided that Willa was right. He realized that he no more wanted to read any of those books any more than one of those soccer players in that plane crash probably wanted to read about the Donner Party.

They settled in and began opening up an assortment of cans. Despite being cold, his body was starved and the food sent tingles of contentment through him. Once they were both full, they opened up their sleeping bags, crawled inside, and drifted off to sleep.

***

Kevin woke first to the hair-raising sound of a baby cry. He rolled over to shake Willa and discovered that she was gone; her sleeping bag nothing more than an empty shell. Sitting bolt upright, he almost broke his legs trying to get out of his sleeping bag. The room was still dark—the inky blackness of a dead world combined with a thick cloud cover—making it impossible for him to even see his own hand in front of his face.

Feeling around, he tried to recall the layout of the small cubicle. The back of his hand struck the bookcase and he was unable to stifle a yelp of pain. That only encouraged the crying zombie somewhere down below.

A thought entered Kevin’s mind, and he quickly forced it back into a dark corner. By the time he managed to discover the floor hatch that they had climbed through the night before, Kevin could not stop his hands from shaking. He tried to convince himself that it was the cold, but he knew better. He tugged the hatch up and actually managed to make out a handful of shadows moving around at the base of the tree.

“Willa?” he hissed in futility. He knew damn well that no answer would be forthcoming. Still, until the dawn broke and he could see for himself, he was not prepared to accept the reality of the woman’s fate.

Over the next two hours, he had plenty of time to consider just what in the hell had happened. He could not ferret out any situation where she would simply leave in the middle of the night. The only fly in the ointment of his defense that there had to be a reasonable and rational explanation for her absence continued to be blown up by the growls and cries coming from the base of the tree.

Finally, a dull glow shown from the open square in the floor and the curtained windows, signaling that morning had indeed broken. Steeling himself for the sight he was certain waited for him down below, Kevin crawled to the square and peered down.

It was still too dark to make out anything beyond individual shapes. He flopped back and looked around the tree house. He had hoped that perhaps she might’ve left him a note…anything. He didn’t like the idea of staying up in this place any longer and wanted to get moving. He turned his head and considered his former companion’s pack. If nothing else, he would take the crossbow. Rummaging through, he was disappointed to discover that it was not there amongst the scant few belongings left behind.

A peculiar thump sounded down below. Followed by another…and then another. Kevin drew his Ka-Bar and moved to the hatch. He was unprepared for what greeted him. Three of the zombies—dawn had given way enough for him to actually begin to make out details—were pinned to the trunk of the huge oak. A hiss and a thump were accompanied by a dark flash as another of the zombies took a bolt to the head.

Kevin leaned down farther and looked in the direction of the house. Standing in the yard on a pair of long, slender skis, Willa was bringing her crossbow back up to her shoulder. A second later, the noises repeated and another zombie was finished. This one had the bolt pass all the way through its head, and it fell to the snow.

“What in blazes!” Kevin hissed. “You scared me to death. I thought…well…never mind what I thought, but what could you have possibly been thinking?”

“I had to use the bathroom,” Willa talk-whispered back.

“But you could have told me.”

“I did,” Willa replied as she slung the crossbow over her shoulder and picked up a pair of ski poles that were lying at her feet.

“Huh?”

“I shook you and told you I needed to use the ladies’ room.” Willa came to a stop directly under the hatch. “You said, and I quote, ‘Don’t fall in!’ end quote.”

Kevin searched his memory and came up blank. He plastered his best scowl of disapproval back on his face and scolded, “You should know that there is no way I would have let you go out there in the dark all alone like that.”

“I’m a big girl,” Willa retorted.

“Not the point—”

“You’re right,” she snapped, cutting him off. “The point is that we are wasting time while you sit up there bitching. We need to get moving. I found these cross-country skis in the house I picked to use the ladies room, along with a set for you. I will warn you that yours are not going to fit well…they will be a bit small, but I think you can force your feet inside the ski boots. Beggars can’t be choosers and all.”

Kevin opened his mouth and then shut it with an audible click. With one final glare, he tossed down their gear and then climbed through the hatch.

As he shouldered his stuff, Willa placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry.” Kevin shot a glare in response. “I honestly did not think that I would have to worry about any more zombies. I thought we had put most of the ones in the area down during the course of the day.”

“But you went to a house that we hadn’t cleared.”

“Actually…” Willa paused.

“How did we miss something like this?”

“You missed it,” Willa said cautiously.

“How did I miss it?”

“By not paying attention.”

“I don’t get it…what do you mean?”

“I went to the house to use the bathroom. The thing is, you can’t see worth a damn. I stumbled around until I found the kitchen. I just went through every drawer. Rich or not…everybody has a junk drawer. That’s where all those single batteries, loose nuts and bolts…and candles are usually found.”

“Okay, but that doesn’t explain the skis.”

“I lit my candle with the nifty lighter I found in that same drawer and headed up the stairs figuring it would be the safest choice for a bathroom break. On the way up, I was just looking at some of the pictures hanging on the wall. Most of them showed the family up in the mountains someplace. They were skiing.”

Kevin had moved into the open garage so he could sit down someplace dry to put on the boots that would fasten to the skis. They were tight, but not so bad that he couldn’t manage. The big thing was that he could at least get his feet into them…mostly. His toes were going to look like he’d been practicing the old Asian tradition of foot binding when it was over, but he would make it home today.

“So where were they?”

“In the attic.”

Kevin scowled, but said nothing.

“Hey,” Willa adjusted her own pack just a bit, “you can’t have
all
the answers or pull
every
rabbit out of your hat.”

“Something that obvious could have cost us,” Kevin finally mumbled.

“I’ll settle for a ‘Good job, Willa’ and call us even.”

“I’m sorry,” Kevin let out the breath he’d been holding as if that would make his foot slide into the boot easier, “you did great. You made up for my carelessness.”

“A bit of a backhanded thanks, but I guess it will have to do.”

Five minutes later, the pair was gliding across the snow. Their progress was by no means smooth, but it was marginally better than just walking. As the sun broke through the gray canopy, the landscape became more familiar…with one exception…there were signs of a considerable amount of foot traffic, and it was all headed for the golf course.

2

Vignettes XXV

“Send the first vehicles,” Aaheru called down from the balcony. “Ensure that the women have a truck in front and behind the bus.”