Deadfall: Survivors (5 page)

Entry 9 – Winging It
[9]

Did I mention I very rarely know what I'm doing? That I mostly just have to wing it? I was a high school teacher, and not a post apocalyptic type useful teacher. I didn’t teach Home Ec, or Workshop or even Science. I taught History. Therefore, putting a bomb together of any kind is one of those things I have no idea if it’s going to work.

But, I have something ready to go. At least I think I have something that may work. Or
it’ll blow a huge crater into the Hendersonville Ingles parking lot.

Ok,
here’s  what I did. I tried to keep it as simple as possible. I am, by no means, a bomb builder, so I had to go with common knowledge. I know for sure that gasoline will explode, and even if it doesn’t give me the crater creation I am looking for, at least it would burn hot and fast, and that for sure would create a hole large enough to get those people out of there.

So I started with barrels and garbage cans of gasoline. The barrels and cans were the easiest part. A local hardware store not two miles away
, had a whole load in their aisles. Apparently, there was no large demand for large plastic barrels or garbage cans when zombies were trying to rip your arms and legs off for snacks. Luckily for me, the means to move my bomb were here as well. The hardware store had two of those large hauling trucks they would usually rent. It took me a while to find the keys, but I got them. Once the barrels and cans were loaded on to the truck, I took the risk of driving this noisy beast. I really hoped that all the zombies were truly concentrated on that unfortunate group.

In either case, just to be sure, I drove in the opposite direction. I hit up several gas stations to get as much gasoline as I needed to fill up the barrels. It involved using a little hand cranked pump I used for such occasions. I drop tubing connected to this pump of mine into the gas reservoirs at gas stations
, and crank the thing until gas starts pouring out. I know most of the gas had been siphoned out of the stations, but there was still plenty in the large tanks that were below ground. They were accessible through small fittings on the ground. My father had taught me how to get them open.

With a truck load full of gas, I needed something to set it off. I
, of course, have no way of making a cool timed detonator or anything of the like, so I had to stick with something completely crude. A pile of fireworks on top of the middle barrel that was partially open would have been ideal, but fireworks are technically illegal in North Carolina, and the Fourth of July was long gone. I did manage to find a whole bunch of road signal flares. These would certainly do the trick. I did manage to find a long fuse, although I had absolutely no experience in knowing just how long I had till the fuse found its way to the flares. I did test out a few, just to make sure the flares would take. They did, but the timing was off every time. I figured I had about a minute.

I had a really bad feeling about this, but at the same time, I felt exhilarated at the thought of creating something like this. In my mind, I saw
something straight out of a Hollywood movie trailer.

I drove the truck back down
to the hardware store. I then took the other truck out to make sure it had a full tank of gas. Once I had the two trucks ready, I headed back to my appliance shop to rest, and try to let the others know about my plan.

The idea is to set a brick on the gas pedal of the first truck, light the fuse, and put it into the direction of the grocery store parking lot. The ensuing explosion, if in the right place, would hopefully blow out a whole section of zombies. This would allow me to drive the other truck right up to the side of the grocery store. I had a ladder on the back
, and I would set that up against the roof so that they could climb down into the back of truck, which I would then put in reverse and we would get out of there.

I let them know to pack up as much food as they could carry easily in bags
, plus whatever belongings they felt they needed to take with them. I did let them know we would be walking a lot, so whatever they had, they would have to carry.

When they asked
where to be when the truck bomb blew up, I had to think that one through. I told them, finally, on the roof towards the far back. I had no idea what this bomb would do to the grocery store, but I hoped it wasn’t more than just blown out windows.

We would try this tomorrow in the later part of the morning
, since I still had to go back to the hardware store and bring the trucks back down here.

I'm eating some canned something I found at the gas station. Beans and something, I think.
Doesn’t taste bad, but I really am not sure what it is.

Let’s see what tomorrow brings.

Evan’s Notes: Brian had never really told us how he had set up his little diversion. I thought it had worked exactly how he had wanted it to. Typical Brian though. He plans something, it goes completely awry, and ends up working out better than planned.

Entry 10 – Morning
[10]

Ok, I'm writing this here now, at the hardware store, before I head off. I have no idea if this will succeed today, and if it doesn’t, then I hope someone finds this someday and has an idea of at least these last few days in my life. There was plenty more that I want to put in here, and should I live out this day, then I really need to make it my priority to get this information down.

The trucks are ready.
I’m  going to drive the empty truck down there first, then huff it back here and drive the mobile bomb down there. I will then get everything set up on the bomb, head on up to the roof, make sure they’re  ready, then start the show.

If I don’t live, and you have found this
; I have a house, a veritable fortress in this end of the world. It has enough food to keep one man alive for over thirty years. It also has enough information on computers to allow you to survive and start anew if needed. It is up along the Blue Ridge Parkway, just past Mount Pisgah, opposite to an entrance to Black Balsam Knob. It’s  really hard to find, there’s  no road into it, but just wander around there and you will eventually find it.

Evan’s Notes: Good thing he didn’t die. We sure didn’t need anyone else finding out about the vault.

Entry 11 – Evening
[11]

We are alive. I got them out. This is just a quick note, to myself, or anyone else who is reading this. Things worked, just not as I planned them to. No one died, although people are hurt. We are out of Hendersonville and we have already ditched the truck and hauled ourselves out a few more miles, and holed up in a house next to Mills River.

I
’m  going to make sure they all have food, I'm going to eat, and then I'm going to attempt to sleep. I hope it happens sometime after my heart finally slows down.

Unless
we’re  in a hurry tomorrow, I’ll  take the time in the morning to put down into writing the events of this day.

Entry 12 – Morning and a Bomb
[12]

Quiet night, I think everyone slept as if they hadn’t slept in weeks, which, they might not have. They didn’t talk much last night. They ate a lot more than they talked, which is fine by me since I have essentially been alone for many months now, and now have been forced into an awkward social situation. Most social situations are awkward though. It’s  currently a little past nine AM, and everyone is still sleeping. I’ve  just taken a slight walk around this house we have taken temporary residence in; just to make sure we have no stragglers that somehow may have followed us, or any local dead residents that might have taken notice of us.

Nothing but a few dogs, two
of which had collars. I wonder how they have adapted to an owner less life.

I
’m  now glad that I decided to wait till this morning to actually write about all that happened yesterday. If I had attempted to write about it last night, it would have sounded chaotic, just like the day ended up being. I think now I can look back and see the events with a calmer eye.

I woke up yesterday morning and quickly set out from my rooftop observatory to get the trucks ready. The large crowd of zombies was still as equally focused on the grocery store as they were unfocused on nearly anything else. I hope
d that it would stay that way. The trucks were just that; trucks, and therefore, were as noisy as any truck you could imagine. I would need to park them over a mile away in order  to draw off as little as possible, if any, of the zombies.

I double checked my unprofessional truck bomb
, and prayed silently to the “Not the Zombie God” that this would work. I double checked the keys, and marked them truck one, and then truck two. Things would royally suck if I had to double back, or if I lost track of any of the keys. I tucked them into the one pocket on my pants that had a zipper. I then jumped into truck one, the bomb, and started that loud machine. At this point, my heart was already beating like crazy.

I drove it back to that point about a mile away from the grocery store and parked it. I then huffed back to the other truck. I was extremely grateful that it hadn’t decided to be one of those notorious
ly extra warm North Carolina spring days. The cool weather was allowing me not to completely collapse. I was many things, but a marathon runner was not one of them. Having driven the other truck back to the truck number one, I made my way back to my rooftop to see if the crowd I was going to try to rescue was ready.

Back on the roof, I used my refrigerator door to communicate to them that I was ready. They messaged back saying that they themselves were ready. They moved towards the back of the building, away from the potential explosion. Seeing them as far away from the front of the building as possible, I got back down myself and headed back towards the truck. I
walked this time, knowing that after I set this mobile bomb down its path, that I would be sprinting a mile back to truck number two in order to get the rescue under way.

I must say that was a long walk back. In all of these months, I had only been responsible for my own life, and to be honest, it had been very easy staying alive where I was. Even on my few trips to the “outside”, I knew that being alone, I was quite safe. But now I was putting my own life at risk for people that I didn’t know. Deep down
, I knew this was the right thing to do, but a small part of me, the greediest or most selfish part, kept asking me why I was doing this when there was so much potential for a disaster. But it really boiled down to one thing for me...

I was bored.

Well two. I knew that I would never be able to sleep at night if I had never tried to rescue those people.

I had gauged about where I would be able to drive up the truck. I wouldn’t have much time to get out of the truck, set the fuse, get the truck going and run off before the first wave of zombies was onto me. Driving down, I got to within one block and through the foggy windshield
, I could already see a portion of that writhing mass of dead bodies start to move in my direction. I quickly got out, scrambled to the back of the truck and lit the fuse, sprinted back to the driver’s side, set the brick on the gas, slipped it into drive, and jumped out before it could get going. I then sprinted back as quickly as I could, to a store around the corner to hide out and get the first glimpse of my master plan.

Generally speaking, when I plan things,
the overwhelming Being that people believe looks down on us usually breaks out laughing. When I reached the corner of that store and looked back, I could already see things going wrong. The truck wasn’t going nearly as fast as I had hoped. Maybe the brick had slipped off, or I just hadn’t jammed it in far enough. Needless to say, it hit the curb of the parking lot far slower than expected, and immediately began to veer off to the left of the grocery store.

My dismay continued as the truck
slid and scraped off one parked car, and then into another, slowly going way off course, almost back out onto the street. The mass of zombies was moving in its direction though, and if I managed to pull enough off, maybe I’d be able to get in there quick enough to get them off the roof.

A
trio of bad things then happened. The truck slammed head first into a pickup truck, large enough to stop it. A few of the barrels spilled over, gas gushing out along the parking lot pavement. At this point, I was very doubtful of this explosion I had visualized in my head. In my movie trailer version, the explosion had knocked all zombies on their asses for a square mile, enabling me to simply drive in and rescue the forlorn living humans. Instead, my truck had stalled, spilled gas, and the zombies were moving towards it, oblivious to anything but the sound of the truck.

Then, my notorious good luck kicked in. The other part of my plans that never work is that somehow, the ends get taken care of. In my case, the ends ignore the means.

The lit fuse reached the gas tank and it was over. There was no explosion per se, but within a few seconds, Hendersonville’s largest bonfire sprang to life in the parking lot of the Ingles grocery store. The heat wave created by the first fire managed to knock a lot of the other gas barrels off the truck, engulfing a large area in very hot flames. The truck and the cars parked where it was stuck began to burn profusely, stoked by a steady supply of gas. And within this burning hell were a large quantity of zombies, which apparently were not taking to the extreme heat too well. The bodies were collapsing one on top of the other, burning much better than I thought they would. Those behind kept crawling into the fire like moths to a flame, not realizing their impending doom. Within a few minutes after the fire had leapt into life, a small clearing had began to appear on the side of the store. I saw one head peek above the rooftop and I knew this was my chance.

I sprinted back as quickly as I could to the other truck
, and had it rumbling down the road towards the grocery store. I pulled around the corner to see that my small opening had gotten larger; while the fire still burned hot, a pile of what I assumed to be more and more zombie bodies within the flames. I nearly lost control as I sped over the curb and into the parking lot, headed towards the side of the grocery store. As I leapt into the parking lot, I could see the figures of the people I was to save stand up on the roof. For a split second, I wondered if I had strapped the ladder down. If I hadn’t, it surely was back there lost somewhere. Or maybe I had strapped it on too tightly, and would be a pain to get off in time. These are the dumb things one thinks of in these split seconds of insanity.

I noticed that there was another group of zombies coming around from the back of the store
, and I thought we would only have a few minutes, if that, to get them off the roof and to get myself out of here. I ran the truck up to the side of the store and quickly got out and into the back of the truck. As I was getting the ladder (yes, it was there, and yes, I got it up easily) the other group was throwing down their packs. As soon as I got the ladder up, they began coming down in a hurry. I looked beyond them to see the zombies getting even closer. I can’t quite remember what I said, but I'm sure it was to the nature of:

“HURRY!”

Seeing the last of the group, the smaller woman, who from this distance was an older woman, getting on the ladder from the roof, I jumped back down and into the truck. I could see ahead of me that a good portion of the zombies that had not been barbecued in the bonfire were now headed towards the new source of sound and food. I heard a loud thud and crash and one of the guys behind me in the truck yelling at me to go, so I stepped on it, hoping no one was thrown off. I ran over two or three zombies in front of me, hoping only that they didn’t damage the engine or stall me enough. One managed to hold on to the side of truck on the driver’s side, but one of my new passengers was smashing at him with a baseball bat.

For a split second I wondered if my truck was going to have any dents in it.
Insurance might deny my claim.

The zombie rolled off right as I hit the curb
, and I might have seen one glimpse of my new passengers bouncing around behind me, as I looked back through the rear view mirror. I then sped down the road towards the location where I had planned to ditch the truck. I have never known just how fast zombies can really walk, but I wanted to get there in plenty of time to get a good distance between myself and the mass that I'm sure was already rambling on down towards that end of town.

I got to the park opposite the motel
that I had stayed in the first night, and turned off the truck. I got out and got a good look at the first living human beings I had seen in over five months. I grabbed my pack out of the back of the truck, and motioned for them to follow me. Before I could get very far, the older woman gave me a hug.

She was in tears.

I was in awkward.

Unfortunately, the going was slower than I had expected. The other woman, Lucy was her name, had gotten some burns from a
different fire (when they said burns, I thought somehow my fire had burned her) and was still rather tender, and therefore slow. And the older woman, Dawn, had been that sound I had heard crashing down from the ladder. She had twisted her ankle, and needed to be helped along. We hobbled along quite slowly and in a few hours, I made the decision to simply find a house and bunk down for the night.

But my hiking plans were still working. Following along the river back up to Mills River seemed to have thrown off our tracks, or scent, or sound. That or we simply were far enough away. Just to be safe, we crossed the Mills River
; an event all unto its own with two hobbled people. The first house we found at the edge there along the Mills and French Broad is where I’m  at now, and is certainly fitting our needs.

No one said much last night. I got out that large bag of rice I had scavenged just a few days earlier
, and cooked it up with a large pot I found here at the house. None of them were in any way starving or famished, but they did eat the food eagerly. Maybe it was the safe setting, or just a pot of hot food, but it went down pretty fast.  Evan, the guy I had seen that first day on the roof, told me a little bit about how they had been stuck in that grocery store for three weeks, and that they had scavenged all the food that had remained in the grocery store.

I didn’t really bother them that much last night. They seemed exhausted, and so I let them all drag mattresses down and we all bunked down for the night.

I got out my iPod last night and listened to two songs. It still had plenty of charge.

Evan’s Notes: If Brian is ever one thing, he is emotionally honest. The guy has the knack of telling us exactly how he feels about something, even if it pins him as an awful person. The truth is though, that he talks honestly about what
he’s  thinking while the rest of us would never voice such thoughts. It was clear that he could have left us all behind, and it shows his nature that he wrote down that even thought about it.

He also doesn’t mention that he let me listen to his iPod as well
, and hearing music for the first time in so many months was at the same time bizarre, and also wonderful. I can’t say that I agree with his taste in music. It was something electronic, or musical instrumental, I don’t really know. It was still wonderful.