Deadfall: Survivors (20 page)

Entry 34 – Uncertainties
[32]

Well, the whole mood of the group in the house is definitely one of confusion. After a night’s sleep, those that were for remaining in the house, seem to have changed their minds, just as those who seemed at first more inclined to go out, patrol and be proactive about our possible opponents, seem to have given up on that option for the safety of the locked up vault that was our home at the moment. Yesterday, I had been for the more cautious remaining here, but overnight, I had woken up to the feeling that it would be better to get out and find these men.

And then there was Dawn. I point out that I read her entry last night in more detail
, and am starting to get a little wary of her rapidly changing mood. She appears to be having a religious challenge to her faith. She seems to be going from calm follower of a local church to having a faith breakdown, borderline psychotic breakdown. I'm probably exaggerating, since I really don’t have any real idea about psychotic breakdowns, but it really feels like a giant reversal from her usual mood.

I
’m  truly beyond my scope here. I was a school teacher, and dealing with hormone filled teenagers, while difficult, was pretty straight forward. I’ve  been really lucky so far that I seem to have found rather mentally healthy individuals who are dealing with the end of the world as best as possible. Even Heather, with the events that took place in her life, has done what she can without any real help on my end, which is probably for the best.

So what am I to do if Dawn does have a complete breakdown? I feel I need to have a talk with someone else here in the group, show them Dawn’s entry
, and get their opinion on the matter. But I’ll  have to think about who to talk to this about. This could be nothing, and I would rather not expose any of Dawn’s current feelings to anyone who might not make the best of the situation.

I'm not a religious person myself. I know my mother had been
very religious, not that her religion had stopped her from cheating and then leaving my father so many years ago. Therefore, I’m  not very qualified to be able to understand just what kind of conflict Dawn might be experiencing. If your whole existence is based on a set of chapters based out of a religious book, and those chapters are complete and absolute truth to you, well, then this new state of the world might be a complete cold shower to you.

I
, on the other hand, lived within the completely fabricated world of my father’s imagination and books. So while I understood reality from fantasy, my father’s ability to make the fantasy borderline reality, may have dulled my senses towards the reality that exists now. His books had such an essence of reality in their fantasy, that all the extraordinary events that occurred, while out of this world, just didn’t seem to out of place in my mind.

Tonight’s conversation at the dinner table was mostly about the choices of whether to lock up or patrol, this time with different arguments given by those who changed their minds overnight. Heather really seems to be the only one who didn’t change her mind, naturally
advocating for remaining in the house as long as possible. There was no consensus of course, and there were no heated discussions. Everyone seemed to agree that either of the choices were prudent, and it was just a matter of deciding which one to go with.

I have a bad feeling
they’re  going to ask or rely on me to make that decision.

Evan’s Notes: I don’t think Brian ever approached anyone about Dawn’s entry. I wonder if that foreknowledge would have helped in any way. We were all quite green back then
, though.

Entry 35 – Cold Mountain
[33]

It’s  been a few days now since my last entry. As I had assumed, nearly every individual, save for Heather who seemed to go with anything, and Dawn, who still seemed to care nothing about what was going on around her, and instead seemed to be getting more and more quiet, could not come to his or her own decision about whether to remain locked up inside the house, or attempt to go out and investigate the people with voices heard on the recordings days ago. Now, they’ve  left the major choice to me, something I was truly not hoping for.

But, here I am.

So, Heather and I took our hike over to Cold Mountain, as we had originally planned.

Cold Mountain, and the hike
there, is one of those relatively simple hikes that bring a lot of satisfaction to the hiker. My father and I used to hike to the peak and camp near the top whenever we wanted to get away from the world. While the hike is moderately popular, very few people actually camp out on the mountain, and therefore, we would regularly have the site all to ourselves. It was a remarkable peak for the east coast of the United States, one of the higher ones around, and, all to itself with the surrounding mountains, standing out quite alone in this little corner of the world. One could easily see well into Asheville and the surrounding countryside. Even the hike there was wonderful. You peak a few balds, peaks of mountains where for whatever reason, trees have not grown or are not growing, a rarity in the Appalachians. It is also a relatively easy hike, so that even newcomers to hiking, with heavy packs, can make the trek without hating life.

So
, Heather and I spent three days out, one day hiking over, one at the campsite, and one hiking back. The weather remained mild, but that’s  usually the case up here in the mountains, even during the summer. Even on the hottest days, there’s  still a breeze up here, making full effective use of your sweat to cool you off. Because of this, that first day hiking up was pleasant, and we were able to keep the topic of conversation off of the doom and gloom subjects that usually followed. Not that this wasn’t to be expected, the end of the world had come and gone, and we were those survivors here. Water cooler talk could hardly find any other kind of topic. But for that day, at least, we deflected all that darkness.

With hiking having been my one and only true passion before the comet, I immediately delved right into it. I must have beamed proudly as I rattled off high peaks and strenuous trails that I had hiked in the past, without realizing that there was probably nothing to impress Heather with since she couldn’t relate. She probably hadn’t even ever heard of the names I was pronouncing. But I think she understood the general feeling behind my accomplishments. She talked about being part of two consecutive state playoff basketball teams her Junior and Senior years in High School, cherished memories she still carried along, and while I had never been any good at sports, at least not good enough to play on teams as she did, I recognized the sense of achievement, the same as my peaks and trails.

At least her accomplishments brought upon recognition by others. Hiking is entirely a non recognition accomplishment. Sure, you can tell others how you hiked to a high peak, or crossed just so many miles, but there is rarely any recognition there. Instead, hiking becomes an internal reward. Only the hiker knows just how hard he or she fought for those miles, just how out of breath those trails straight up the mountains left him, and just how amazing it felt, either at the top of the peak, or at the end of the trail, despite the pain and soreness. And I guess that’s  who I am, and just why this sudden mantle of leadership thrust upon me has become quite difficult.

I must realize now that either by fate or luck, your choice, I did survive the comet and the
undeath that it carried within itself, within a vault that carries the possible future of mankind, or at the very least, the future of those people who I’ve  run across and have “saved”. I certainly don’t feel like a savior, and, as the past has shown, they might come to realize that I'm not that savior either, but for the moment, this group has left it entirely up to me to make these difficult choices for them. It’s a trust I really didn’t want, but appreciate nonetheless.

We spent that first night huddled closely together in the chilled night. Here I was sharing my bed, or ground, with a woman I would have never met without a certain comet making its impact upon the earth, a woman who may have never looked upon me otherwise except as someone who saved her life. I made this possibly foolish remark the next day, as we sat around enjoying the cool peak and its views, and Heather was visibly quiet for a while, before honestly answering with “I'm not sure”. I really didn’t want her to feel that she had to be close to me in order to feel safe, just as
with that first night, she didn’t have to offer herself up for “protection”. In all honesty, I didn’t think I was truly capable of offering any kind of real protection. All the protection we had came from the mind and works of my father.

I talked to Heather about him. She had asked me why I didn’t mention him more often
, and I had no solid answer. Our family, well, my father and I, had a very loose relationship. When he had left, just a month after the dead started walking, I think I had resigned myself to the fact that he probably wasn’t ever coming back. And yet, in those few fleeting moments where I did think about it, it bothered me to think that his body was ambling around somewhere, possibly even being the cause of death to some other survivor.

I had no idea where he had taken off to. He just said that he wanted to get some things done. Always cryptic, just like our house in the mountains. Maybe he h
ad more such locations that needed checking on. But more likely, I think my father was so intrigued by the fact that one of the wildest creations of his mind had been realized. He wanted to go out and see one of his own books come to life, to finally completely immerse himself into the very worlds that he had created in his mind to contend with the failures in his own life. I can almost envision my father being absolutely delighted by being torn apart by zombies, and yelling out, “see, see, I told you so”.

I barely remember my father
, pre books or movies. I have these vague memories of a quiet man, thoughtful even, but always sad, torn. It would be when I was an adult when I found out just how my mother had treated him, and the circumstances under which she left him, but not once in my life with him did I ever hear him utter one bad thing about her. Granted, he didn’t utter much of anything about her, and I can mostly say that it never was about him still loving her, because I'm sure he hated, or still hates, her, but it was simply that he internalized the pain of having been with someone you think is your all, your completion, and having then being suddenly thrust into a gigantic web of lies and deception that so overwhelms you to the point of a mental stun gun.

He transformed that devastation into his apocalyptic books and movies (and into boat loads of cash), but his books, while heavy on the destruction, were always about redemption and surviving the worst. Now with this world around him being destroyed, I think something inside of him wanted to go out and redeem and survive
, instead of being safely stowed away inside a five star apocalypse hotel.

I never partook in his grief. My childhood
, once my mother was gone, was about as great as it could have been. Even finding out later just how horrible and destructive my mother had been to us never really sunk in as it did with him. I had no problem having relationships with women (when I had them), unlike my father, who swore off relationships of any vigor, other than with his son. Maybe, that’s  why he left me behind. I had no problem staying in the house.

This was my conflict then
; do I just stay buckled down, like my true personality would indicate, or venture out to see how the world was surviving, in memory of my father? Maybe, deep down, it was just that I wanted to find my father, one more time. The more I talked with Heather about him, the more she made me realize with her questions about him that I just didn’t know him that well and now I felt a sense of wanting to remedy that.

Last night was a chilly one for a summer night, which can happen on a peak like Cold Mountain. Heather and I had been close all day, sitting together or laying down, talking. It took a lot within me to resist all urges to just give in to her. Her smell, her hair, it’s all a little too much for this forlorn idiot. It’s just that somewhere down in that poorly lit logical part of my brain, something is telling me it just wouldn’t be good for either of us at this point. Few things scream end of the world panic than easy sex. I will admit that I had trouble falling asleep. It also worries me that at times, her conversations tend to lead in the direction of hopelessness for the future. I would much rather not
be her “last day on earth” guy.

I sound like some old guy t
alking about chivalry and honor, you know the kind. He’s handsome, wealthy and married to the gorgeous perfect woman. Not a worry in life. I hope a zombie ate that guy.

Evan’s Notes: Knowing Brian
, who he is now, it’s amazing to see just how much internal conflict he was going through here. He just isn’t the meek quiet guy he thinks he was at this point in his life.

Entry 36 – Close Encounter of the Cult Kind
[34]

It’s  been just over thirteen days since my last entry. Sounds like a bad confession.

In these past
thirteen days, I have, at times, attempted to start a few entries, but the events that have taken place during these days has been rather chaotic, and to be honest, there was actually very little time to write good, thought out entries. Therefore, I’ve  taken them all together, and with the help of the guys, have reconstructed the events of these past thirteen days. It’s been quite wild and revealing.

Here goes.

It’s hard to remember that far back, thirteen days ago, but those couple of days up on Cold Mountain with Heather were sublime, heavenly even. We made our way back in a day, in a goofy honeymoon state, holding hands at every opportune moment, all the way back to the house, using the subdued horniness to forget a lot of the things that had happened recently, and not so recently. Now, I remember this state so well, mostly because of the harsh change of emotions we got when we got back to the house that evening.

When we first walked in, you could tell right away that something was wrong. Tague gathered me up quick
, and took us up to the computer room and clicked away at a file. I listened to the recording, and realized why everyone was on edge. It was a new conversation between our two mysterious gentlemen in Asheville. The first one, the one that had been at the university, had really specific instructions for the second one, instructions that revealed some very clear fears we had about their intentions. They were clearly searching for our house, or as they called it, a Government Ark. They also had another name for it; Datila.

They were desperately seeking our house
, in search of specific data that was supposedly stored there. Tague mentioned that he tried hunting down through the files here, but that without knowing exactly what they were looking for, he had no parameters to search. What he did say was that, as we somewhat already knew, there were  vast amounts of storage in hard drives, not just in the computer room, but in some buried NAS drives somewhere else in the house. Something in there, something my father had allowed someone else to store there, was somehow very valuable to this group.

The discussion that evening quickly turned to what we might have to do. The option of simply sitting and waiting wa
s probably out of the question, despite the fact that we had the advantage of them simply not knowing where it was. And yet, if this group was fully intent on finding us, specifically this house, our sanctuary, it fell within the realm of possibilities that they eventually would. We probably were in no position to oppose any kind of attack on our house, whatever advantages we thought we might have, guns or otherwise. It simply wasn’t who we were.

The biggest problem was that we simply
didn’t  know enough about this group or what they wanted. It felt like a huge military conspiracy deal, and we weren’t  in any kind of movie. We were teachers, lawyers and regular people, still alive after getting our lives ripped apart. We certainly felt out of place, as well as overwhelmed with the uncertainty of it all. So Evan, of course, came up with possibly the best idea, even if it was somewhat insane, and the main reason it took me thirteen days to finally write all of this up.

We had to capture one of these men and interrogate him.

Yes, like I mentioned, insane. First of all, we had no idea where in Asheville they were. It would be like finding a needle in a haystack, except that in our case, the haystack was actually thousands of walking dead. A needle in a zombiestack. So while we were trying to find someone whose location we had no inkling of, we would have to be dodging through what was probably a rather larger ocean of zombies. In my experience, it was one thing to avoid the few random zombies out in the country, it was entirely another to go willingly into a larger city. Charlotte clearly had shown us this.

To add to that
, was the fact that we had clearly observed the stream of zombies slowly flowing north along the interstate. It was, of course, unlikely they were holding Zombie-con in Asheville, but the city was kind of a highway bottleneck, and regardless of their destination (did they even have one?), that traffic was sure to be turned into a jam in Asheville. Not the best combination for living human beings. One does not simply walk into Zombiedor.

Of course, even if we could somehow
find one of these guys, and if there were  really only two, but then we would have to deal with what, to all of us now frightened civilians, sounded like trained professionals. We could, of course, have been completely wrong; they could have been guys like us, former plumbers, cable guys and high school students, but there was something to the way they talked, and for that matter, the sheer audacity of simply searching within a large city itself, that screamed “I'm a Delta Commando.” Even Evan, with his almighty knowledge of guns, really only got that from hunting deer in Harnett and Johnston counties.

Ok, so we find this guy, take him down without killing him, and then what? Is one of us here going to actually torture the guy? It’s possible that we might just find whatever information we need on him, but something told me that was not going to be the case. So
, we subdue the professional soldier type guy, and suddenly he is going to sing?

I mention all of these things because this was the state we were in that night. We knew, 99.99% sure, that we had to do this, but somehow also knew, with almost the same degree of certainty, that it was a horrible idea
, and that this just had “all go wrong” written all over it. We were nervous, afraid, and clueless. We had to go up and over, out of the trench, and across no man’s land, knowing the fate that awaited us, but knowing we simply had to do it.

We spent the entire next day getting our gear ready. Dawn and Chris would stay behind, although my chivalrous
, stupid self wanted Heather to stay behind as well, she wouldn’t hear of it. We packed up as much food as we could, maybe even talked about driving the truck up to the house to stock if full. We had no idea how long we would be out and gone, just what it would take to find this guy. Aaron had suggested to simply make ourselves be found by these guys, without giving who we were away, but while a somewhat good idea, there just was this thought of these guys taking no prisoners creeping up in our minds, that we turned that idea down.

Tague, on the other hand, after spending what seemed like most of that morning
, disappeared downstairs somewhere, emerged with his plan, which would at least solve the first of our problems. He held a couple of what looked like walkie talkies, but with a small screen on each. He mentioned how he had noticed these when looking at a list of items that had been stored here. They were radio locators, and using three or more of these, as long as you knew the single frequency, you could triangulate where the signal came from. The closer we were, the more precise we could make it.

According to Tague, the group had been communicating every other night, on exactly the same frequency. They were due to communicate again on the following evening, at which point we could see if these locators actually did what we hoped they would.

Now things felt better. At that moment, Aaron and I decided to head down the mountain to get the truck and bring it up, not as much for the extra food, but for the flexibility it would lend us. It might make it easier to a) take a subdued human being back or, b) beat a hasty retreat if things got quickly out of hand. So, while the rest of them stayed back and packed up, Aaron and I packed up a quick pack, and took off early that afternoon to head down the mountain to that community center house we had left the truck parked at. Wait, no,  was it a fire station next to it? Well, we were going there.

We made it nearly down the mountain that day, but had to make a camp for the night because we were still a few hours
away, and we simply weren’t comfortable with hiking in the dark, even with flashlights. It left too much to chance. I showed him my technique of tying my hammock high up off the ground between two trees, climbing up and being relatively safe for the evening. He didn’t take to that, instead, sleeping on the ground, but covering himself up with a large amount of brush and cover, effectively hiding himself from plain view. I hadn’t seen any indication that zombies could see in the dark any better, or had any kind of heat vision. As far as I was aware, they were just dead people, with the same abilities as people, just an added appetite for flesh.

The whole hike down was very quiet. We didn’t have much to say to each other, and were just really worried about getting to the truck and getting back. That night was the same.
Quiet night in the woods makes for great sleeping, as long as you're not worried about the undead and impending suicide missions.

He did
, at one point, ask, “Is Heather ok?”

My instant
reply had nearly been “Breast”. Thankfully, I had just said “Yes.”

We had to drive around once we got to the truck, to find a gas station that had diesel in a tank. We eventually settled for siphoning the diesel out of a semi we found parked. It had
more than enough to completely fill up the truck’s tank. On our way back, Aaron nearly ran over a zombie, formerly an elderly woman, it seemed. As much as running one a zombie over would have felt wonderful, hitting a person does about the same to a vehicle as a deer can, that is, completely wreck it. None of us were mechanics, and we needed our vehicle working. It really did scare the shit out of us though. I remember him telling me he was just going to drive slower.

When we got there
, at some point after noon that second day, we found the rest of the group, sans the two that were going to remain behind, ready to go. In fact, they had been ready to go since the previous night, and were now just waiting. We very quickly packed up our gear into the truck, and then began further waiting. We were all anxious and nervous, and at least I was a tad terrified. Once everything was ready, there was nothing else to do, except wait for that evening, and for Tague’s idea to hopefully work.

Well, of course, it did. Once the
radios came to life, and the two men began talking on their radios, we turned on three of the locators, and set them to the exact frequency and channel that the two men were using, and nearly instantly, the three devices lit up and started giving out a reading that, thankfully, Tague was able to interpret. He jotted down whatever numbers were being displayed, and then input them into a program he had up on one of the computers, and two small circles showed up on the map, one in the northern part of Asheville, and one in the further south part of the city. They were wide circles, covering a large area. The plan therefore, was to head to the southern one, who we had deduced was the man that was actively searching for the house. We would study the area a bit and find a good place to hole up and wait for the second night from now, where we would hopefully be able to triangulate the location even closer.

That night,
the dinner was eaten without a word being spoken. That was the tone for the night, too, as even Heather and I barely said anything.

We headed off that third day, down the Blue Ridge Parkway, towards Asheville. For a brief moment there, those first
thirty minutes or so, it was like a good old calm drive through the mountains. There were no zombies up here, and it truly felt like we just weren’t in that horrible world. You could sense everyone relaxing for a moment. That changed quickly when you head around the first corner where you can see down into Asheville. Now, Asheville isn’t your large metropolis, with huge buildings everywhere, but it was clear that this was a city, and even more so because of the enormous plume of smoke, black smoke, that was rising up from somewhere north of us, in the city. My guess was somewhere near I-40. That sight snapped us all back into reality.

The southern search area was centered
on Lake Julian, and the area of Asheville south of where the Blue Ridge Parkway cuts through the city. There were lots of residential houses there, as well as plenty of smaller commercial areas. We could easily find several locations there that we might both hide, granted that the same held true for our target. It could be a place for our target to hide (feel so soldierly by saying target). There was a high and middle school in that area, as well as some hotels along I-26, and some larger commercial buildings, REI, a YMCA and some movie theaters. We parked the truck on the western side of I-26, and moved out to scout out the interstate and see if crossing it with the truck was feasible, or if doing so would bring down the zombiestack on us.

Thankfully, the overpass was clear
, and Evan brought up the truck and we crossed over, not a dead person in sight. We passed over to our left, and parked the truck rather randomly in the parking lot of the YMCA, to hopefully not draw attention to it. Up to this point, we had not run into any zombies, and I was feeling a little too nervous about this. I much preferred seeing some of them walking around; it helped me feel comfortable knowing where they were. Instead, all I could think of was that the inside of that gym, well, that they were all going to be in there.

And yet, it all went smoothly, again. We went inside
, and only had to deal with two of the creatures, which Evan took out rather willingly. And that was it. It was a bit disconcerting that this was going way too easy. I mentioned, laughingly, that maybe we’d just find this guy sleeping in a room in here, sleeping so heavily that we could just take him there.