Get Off My L@wn - A Zombie Novel (7 page)

W
e sat in stunned silence. We had driven through
a mass of undead just the other day but this was different even if much less
dangerous. While the corpses we passed in the car and even bumped into were
horrible, we were focused purely on escape. Now, watching the undead pass
slowly in black and white silence one by one we were focused exclusively on
them.

I felt Ruth Ann’s hand take hold of mine. I
could feel her pulse, maybe it was mine I don’t know. We just sat there
watching as it passed under the view of camera six. With a click of the down
arrow, camera five looking northwest showed the man disappearing into the night
followed by the woman, its head almost looking back at us.

The cameras had audio too but we could listen to
just one at a time. Full screen on camera five we heard just light wind noise.
Suddenly there was a low thud, but no source in view. I selected the all-camera
view again and saw a big shape getting unsteadily up from the ground on camera
six. It had hit the low enclosure that protected the top of our water well.
There was movement on all four cameras with easterly views now.

The creatures were heading in the same
prevailing direction, trailing the turkeys. I said quietly to Ruth Ann that
they looked like they were exhibiting a flocking behavior. I remembered a
graphics paper from the late 1980’s describing self-organizing groups of
individuals. A demo of the algorithm in the paper was called “Boids.”
Individuals in a flock exhibit both attraction to and avoidance of the other
individuals.

We actually saw it happen when a child with one
arm missing at the shoulder passed in front a man with a gaping hole where his
guts should have been. The man slowed slightly. His head tracked the motion of
the girl as he plodded in his original direction. As the dead child passed, he
picked up his jerky pace again veering to the girl’s direction.

In the infrared light more and more creatures
filtered into view. Like coming through fog, at first they were indistinct.
Their image grew clearer as they staggered closer. One face was familiar.

The creature was in a ripped nightgown with its
mutilated hips and midriff showing. The tears extended upwards showing its rib
cage where its right breast had been.

“Doug, is that Charlotte Krause?”

“Who is Charlotte Krause?”

“Babe. Babe Krause. She owns the yarn store.
That’s her. I know her.”

Ruth Ann’s eyes narrowed. I could see anger on
her face. These fucking things were here at
our
house. People we
know
.
My eyes were also fixed upon the screen. I didn’t know Babe Krause personally.
Never the less, the corpse walking before us was part of our world.

Can I say the dire peril in which the human kind
found itself just “became personal?” It is a cliché, but, yes. I can. Piece by
piece the man whose world view was “People suck,” was disappearing. The
detached technologist who processed nameless and faceless people as so many ID
numbers, who helped create massive systems to buy and sell them down the river without
them knowing was suddenly becoming aware of the value of just one soul.

Ruth Ann was always my connection to the human
race. She cared. She nurtured. Good thing she shot stuff too or we’d have been
screwed from the start.

The point is I assumed she would be
more
troubled being so much more in tune with human connection. It turns out my
wife’s reaction headed in the other direction. As she watched her former friend
head hungrily, vacuously and soullessly into the night, she became hardened.

As she grew more determined that we survive, I
grew more accepting of the idea of helping others do the same. In a way, as in
so many ways, we both grew on this awful night.

Mixed in with the wind noise we could hear many
different unintelligible sounds emanating from the creatures. Some were
monotonic. Some rose and fell in pitch. Some sounded wet while others rasped
dry. There were long gutturals and short chuffs. There was no uniformity except
in that none sounded entirely human.

After a while, Ruth Ann turned off the audio.
Thankfully we could not hear so few of them through our walls and windows. We
watched until we were stiff and our eyes burned. None of the creatures seemed
to know we were here.

Our tea had long gone cold and went unfinished.
We slept uneasily on our comfortable couches under piles of blankets in our
well-appointed living room with a large flock of undead flowing slowly past us.
The contrast was uncomfortable.

W
hen I woke up on Friday (Day 30), Ruth Ann was studying
the laptop screen.

“There’s still one outside. He’s just standing
in one spot like the first ones we saw in town.”

In daytime, the cameras showed a color picture
as opposed to night’s black and white. The creature stood motionless to the
northwest near the Boetche’s house.

“How long has he been like that?”

“It. It’s been like that for twenty minutes.
There’s coffee for you.”

I like my coffee cold. The Keurig machine we
have consumes all the watts generated by our rooftop panels when it brews so we
used it carefully. The power consumption of the machine wasn’t going to be a
concern much longer though. We’d be out of coffee tomorrow. Then it would be
only tea. We had a lot of bulk tea.

The dead guy was stock still as I continued to
watch. Our view was mostly of his back. He stood in a droopy way. His head was
down. From this distance he could have been a stoner listening to the national
anthem at a baseball game. He had on a light jacket, an arm in one sleeve over one
shoulder. The other end lay limply down his back. Still consistent with the
stoner image I thought dryly. His pants legs were bloody though.

We put the security DVR into playback mode. I
stopped first on last night’s second creature, the woman that looked right up
into the camera lens. “It’s looking right at the IR LEDs and paid no attention
to them. She kept on walking,” I said.

“Does that really tell us much?”

“Maybe they can’t see infrared or maybe they
weren’t cued into the illuminators because they were stationary.”

“Don’t all the zombie books say they see heat?”

“Pretty much.”

“Doesn’t infrared look warm?”

“Yeah.”

“So maybe they don’t see heat, or they do see
heat but are triggered more by motion.”

“Or maybe the zombie books are full of shit. How
can a virus instantly give dead people super hearing and vision?”

“How can a virus make dead people rise?”

“Good point.”

Debugging computer programs actually isn’t that
hard though most programmers suck at it. The key is careful observation, formulating
a testable hypothesis, performing tests and observing the results.

If we were going to live though this it would be
because we thought things through, I believed. I can laugh at this remarkably
naïve view now but I was sure of myself then.

“We can test their night vision,” I pronounced.
“I have spare IR emitters that could easily run all night on some AA
rechargeables. We can Velcro the setup to a tree branch so it sways in the wind
like we did with the fake laser scopes. If more creatures walk by tonight and
get excited then we know they can see IR.”

“How fast are they? To tell you the truth I
wasn’t all that cued in on details when we were in the car.” Ruth Ann said.

“Me neither. We can measure them just from the
video time codes we already have. Take some screenshots of them walking. We’ll
go outside and stand where they were and measure. It won’t be super accurate
but we can average a few measures together.”

“By “we” you mean me, right?”

“We both better go to cover each other. I’ll
bring a tablet to view you through the cameras and do the timing.”

“OK”

“What about him?” I said pointing at the laptop.

“Shoot him first; answer questions later.” Ruth
Ann said.

“Can we avoid guns? Every zombie book says they’re
attracted to noise.” This was true, every fictional and nonfictional account
said gunshots were like dinner bells.

“By “we” you mean me again?” she ribbed. “I’ll
try the bow but we’re both bringing firearms.”

W
hen it was time to take care of business we
watched the all-camera view for about ten minutes. We flipped through the audio
channels and heard nothing but wind noise. The stoner was unchanged. Ruth Ann
attached her recurve hunting bow to its sling. Four razor tipped broad head arrows
hung at her hip. We agreed that if she didn’t drop the stoner in two arrows we’d
risk a gunshot. Slung on her back was our carbine. She held a spare clip in her
coat pocket.

I had asked her if I shouldn’t go outside with
the long rifle since I’d be further away. She looked at me, picked up the snub
nosed revolver intended for in-home defense, checked its load and handed it to
me. “Okaaaaay, there’s a vote of confidence,” I thought to myself.

I was also armed with a ten-inch Android tablet
tuned into the house security DVR. I wasn’t sure how far WIFI would reach
outside so I wouldn’t be venturing too far away. I did not want to give up the
security of the all-camera view.

I made for the heavy sliding glass door at the
back deck. Ruth Ann stopped me by saying, “We can’t lock that from the outside.
Let’s use the front door.”

“What if we get locked out?”

“Don’t” she said. “Bring your keys. The chances
of being locked out are small compared to the risk of one of those things
getting inside the house through an open door.”

She was right. We both took our keys and went to
the front door. Looking at the tablet’s screen, all cameras showed clear except
for the stoner. Ruth Ann silently undid the lock and hasps. With a nod from me
she quietly opened the door. “He’s still there,” she whispered, but I could see
that on the tablet.

I nodded and made a “let’s go” gesture. She
opened the door wider. I checked the knob to make sure the door would lock
behind us. We both were outside. I stood behind Ruth Ann and, realizing she was
crouched low I quickly did the same. It occurred to me that I’m more Dumbo to
her Rambo.

She motioned for the evergreen bush, a young
tree actually, ahead and to the left of our driveway. We could see through the
tree and knew it wasn’t hiding anything. Almost winter, the grass was still
short in our yard. Beyond the road separating us from the Boetche’s backyard
were wild grasses tall enough to conceal a body. All the trampled tall grass
trails passed completely through. I was confident there were no threats there.

We crept low over to the evergreen. Ruth Ann
pointed at me and pointed to the ground. This was to be my spot. My feed from
the DVR was fine. I nodded to signal my understanding.

Ruth Ann continued crouched low. She crossed the
road and reached the edge of the tall grass. She gave me a backwards glance. No
threats on camera, I signaled thumbs up.

She crept into the tall grass, taking one of the
trails made by the dead the night before. Crouched down, just her shoulders and
head were visible. The stoner stood still, looking away from us.

Ruth Ann was about two thirds of the way through
the tall grass making steady progress. She stopped. I heard a loud sustained
moan like only the start of a pirate’s “Arg!” Ruth Ann bolted upright and
grabbed for something at her waist. I saw her hatchet rise up; I didn’t even
know she had it. She swung it down viciously. The pirate went silent.

The stoner snapped his head around, much faster
than I anticipated. Turning, his whole front was covered in dried blood and he
was missing all the skin on his face. Nose, cheeks, lips everything was gone.
Just its teeth and eyes remained. Eyes fixed on Ruth Ann. I yelled. Ruth Ann
dropped her hatchet.

The stoner was about 40 yards from Ruth Ann when
it snapped out of its stupor. This was the far end of the range Ruth Ann said
she was comfortable taking the shot with her bow. The stoner was on the move
now. On the bright side, Ruth Ann would have the benefit of a shorter shot
whether she used her bow or carbine.

I could see her left elbow move back to grab the
grip of her bow. Then her right arm disappeared in front of her. I knew she was
unclipping the bow from its sling. Her right hand shot down to her waist to her
quiver. Up went an arrow then up went the bow bending as it rose. The creature
had staggered more than five yards in the short time that had elapsed. This was
faster than I expected, yet again.

It was leaning into its path, left arm out
reaching for Ruth Ann. She took aim for what seemed like hours. At thirty yards
she loosed. It was fucking gorgeous.

From where I was I couldn’t tell if there was an
arc to the arrow’s flight but where it terminated its travel was certain. It
passed into the creature’s right cheek bone near its eye and nasal cavity. I
saw the arrowhead glint in the sun poking out the base of the creature’s skull
as it twisted on its way down.

We both stood there. Presently Ruth Ann turned
and walked upright back to the house. I intersected her path but before I could
speak she said, “Don’t say anything. Spray me with bleach water and let’s get
the fuck inside.”

We didn’t set up our experiments that day. Not
testing vision or speed. It was enough to know the creatures could move much
more quickly than we saw the night before. Indeed, we were pretty much cured of
the desire to experiment at all.

We did not venture outside again that day. Instead,
Ruth Ann sat quietly in the kitchen and slowly nursed some tea. We didn’t talk
till it was dark.

Finally she said, “I left my hatchet outside.
And I want that arrow back. We don’t have that many.”

Before I could say anything she turned to me.

“There wasn’t supposed to be anything in the
grass, Doug. You said the trails went all the way through.” Ruth Ann drilled
her eyes into mine, they were puffy but I hadn’t seen her cry.

“I know. I’m sorry. I played back all of last
night. After we fell asleep one went in right behind another. The second one
tripped on something, I saw it go down. The one in front continued on out of
the grass making the trail look all the way through.”

“When we were in the car I didn’t look at them,
I concentrated on staying moving and staying on the road. Today, today was
different. There was no color in its skin. Their eyes are filmy like they had
cataracts. There’s no soul inside Doug. There’s no person in there. They… They’re
monsters. They really are… monsters.”

“It’s OK honey. We’ll be OK.”

“Doug?”

Our faces were inches from each other’s, I
nodded.

“You have to learn to shoot better. You have to
be able to cover me with more than a tablet.”

“Yes dear.”