Stage 6 (3 page)

I then looked over to see the chimney clear, and slowly lowered myself in using my legs held firmly against the sides to slow me down (thankfully I had jeans on.) I hit the bottom and awkwardly scooted out. Lucy just looked at me while my mom ran forward and hugged me. I could tell she wanted to reprimand me for taking too much of a chance running outside, but I broke free of the hug after a second, and told Lucy to grab the supplies she had gathered and try and board up the chimney as best as she could. I then quickly told them what was going on, and ran out to the garage with my shotgun.

Knowing that time was extremely important here, I yelled into the phone “GO!” and shoved it in my pocket.

I watched as gunshots rang out and there were flashes from across the street as Ian’s dad shot all the zombies in front of the garage. I started opening my garage, and blasted three zombies in the heads. Ian was half way there when a zombie jumped on the side of the truck and somehow managed to hold on. They roared across and entered the garage as I backed up to try and hit the automatic garage door closer. I tripped over Hunter, who was barking maniacally right behind me. I fell to the ground as Ian stopped the car and the Infected was thrown off into the wall, while meanwhile more started running towards the open garage door. I looked at the oncoming crowd in terror.

Ian jumped out of the driver’s seat and yelled, “Shoot the line!”

I immediately understood and pointed the shot gun up at the cable line running across the ceiling holding up the garage door. One shot, and the door collapsed as Infected slammed into it and fell stumbling to the ground. They had seen the door open however, and were attacking it with frenzy. The glass windows were broken suddenly, and cracks and splinters began forming the weak wooden doors. I jumped up and quickly ushered Ian’s sister Karen inside. Hunter sniffed her menacingly but let her pass. I yelled for my mom and Lucy to help unload the truck. Ian grabbed a bunch of weapons in the back and hurried inside, and we grabbed the meager supply of food they had brought with them. More thuds, and the garage door was on the verge of collapsing. I ran inside and slammed the door behind me, dead bolting it into place. I heard the creaking sound of the garage door falling in, and suddenly Infected were pounding up against the door. It was a pretty strong door, but it wouldn’t last forever. I yelled at Lucy to find some furniture to block the door with, but she couldn’t find any. Ian seized a small shelf from in front of a relatively obscure window in the corner and dragged it across the room. Lucy looked embarrassed that she hadn’t thought of that as Ian and I shoved it into place blocking both the front door and the garage door at the same time.

After a few minutes of rest, the panic over, we then adjourned to the family room and sat in a circle to talk. We recounted the past day’s events to Ian and his sister, and then they did the same to us.

Ian started off, “Well yesterday my mom had just left to go shop when we heard the same noises you did. I looked outside just in time to see Devin and Lucy run into your house, and Devin’s dad run after them. Shocked, I tried to call nine-one-one, but I couldn’t get through. I told my dad and he wanted to go over with a gun and hold him down, but before he could do that we were interrupted by breaking glass in Karen’s bedroom and screaming. My dad rushed in with his revolver and shot the Infected as it moved towards Karen. It fell to the ground but continued to go towards her so he shot it another few times for good measure, once in the head. We saw a few more outside the window, and heard more screams from around the neighborhood. My dad grabbed Karen and backed out from the room, locking the door behind him. He then grabbed our kitchen table and stuffed it against the door. Knowing that nine-one-one was down, we turned on the T.V. while warily looking around us. We heard about the riots, and similarly to you guys began barricading. We locked all the doors around the family room because we didn’t have much spare stuff to barricade with, but luckily our house doesn’t have many windows in the first place. We watched T.V. for a while, and saw the same message you did last night. At that point we were pretty terrified. We gathered all our food and weapons, each of us aiming at a separate entrance and tried to stay awake during the night. We could hear them breaking in, but failing to get past the barricaded doors. They couldn’t even figure out how to unlock or turn the door knobs. Then we waited like that until morning, until you called us, and you know what’s happened after that.”

We asked a few questions but I was satisfied for the most part. They knew of no other survivors, and the streets were empty, but I felt sure the newly placed banner would draw some attention.

Ian then remarked, “Of course, we are going to have to retrieve my dad somehow. We felt reasonably sure he could be safe there for a while, but I don’t think he will survive the night in that house.”

I agreed, and we began plans to evacuate Mark, his father. Ian had brought over little food, but a fantastic array of weapons. He had brought two standard hunting rifles, a revolver, and a semi-automatic pistol. The semi-auto pistol belonged to Ian, and I already had a shot gun. My mom and Ian’s sister Karen each took a hunting rifle, and Lucy took the revolver. We discussed several different scenarios while Ian called his dad to get him in on the conversation.

I ventured, “We need some sort of distraction. The Infected are attracted to loud noises and movement, right? What if we taped my megaphone playing a song onto that old remote control car I have, and drove it around towards the end of the street? If I could keep it away from Infected for a while, it would attract all of them to it and lead them away from the house. Then your dad could simply run across the street?”

Everybody thought it was a good idea, and Ian relayed the plan to his dad. He thought it was as good a plan as any, and as soon as he heard the megaphone playing he would get ready to go. To see where it was going though, I had to find a view point. We took down the barricades in front of the front room’s middle window so I could see, and then opened the window, threw the car out, and turned on the mega phone. It began to play some sort of victory song, and I shut the window and drove the car outside. Immediately the Infected nearby began chasing it, and I drove it in a neat loop several hundred feet away from the house. The Infected apparently were not smart enough to figure out the pattern, and soon I had a quite sizeable horde of them following the car around in neat circles. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mark open his front door and start to run across the street, as Ian opened our front door to go meet him. Then everything went wrong. Distracted by the movement, I let the car slam into a curb and it was quickly destroyed by the confused Infected. As Ian’s dad ran across the street, another Infected that had been coming from around the house ran towards him. Ian shot him in the chest a few times, and then once in the head and the Infected laid still. They both ran towards the house and as I moved to board the window back up I heard screams and gunshots. I bolted towards the family room and stopped as I saw the cause. There was an Infected that had chased them and managed to get in before they had closed the front door.

He was on top of Mark, while Ian was yelling, “Don’t let him bite you dad!” and trying to get a clear shot. I ran up without thinking and grabbed the Infected around the throat so he couldn’t bite my hand, and then slammed him into the wall.

I shouted “Shoot!” and Ian shot the remaining rounds of his pistol into the Infected. It slumped to the floor and I quickly dragged him to the window I had just opened previously. I shoved him outside, and then boarded up the window again. I walked back in to find the rest of them aiming guns at each other.

I yelled, “What the hell!?”

My mom said slowly, “We don’t know if he’s bitten or not.”

Mark calmly replied, “Search me then. And search Jack too, because as much gratitude as I feel towards him we don’t know for sure.”

As an added measure we all pretty much stripped down and inspected each other. It felt a little awkward, but this was a life or death situation. No time for modesty. Satisfied none of us were bitten, Mark, Ian, and Karen huddled into a group and announced that they were going to sleep, because they were exhausted having none for the past few days. I was a little annoyed that Mark would just announce this to us as if we had no say in the matter, but I agreed and told them we’d work on a plan while they took a nap.

“From now on, I think it would be best to take turns staying awake so that one of us is awake at all times. And we all sleep in the family room, the middle of the house,” I said to consenting nods from Lucy and my mom.

I asked my mom, “Assuming the bare minimum needed to keep us alive, how much longer can we stay here based on our food supply?”

The tentative answer came, “With the six of us? I’d say maybe another two weeks at the most, and that’s with barely anything to eat during the day. We would be weak and starving when we finally ran out of food.”

We sat there in silence for a bit while I thought. I knew we would have to leave, but my mom didn’t seem to keen on thinking about this possibility.

Lucy spoke up, “Well. We are going to have to leave sooner or later. We will run out of food eventually, and I for one would rather die with a full stomach than miserable and hungry.”

I agreed, “Yes she’s right. I say that we ration the food for another week, so that we can all have double rations. During that time, we are going to have to figure out a way to get out of here and down to those forts. I would say we could use the truck that Ian drove over here, but the Infected are swarming our garage.”

Even now, we could hear them shambling around and knocking things over in the garage.

After several minutes of just sitting there, I got up and said, “Well I don’t know what to do but I’m sure we’ll think of something. In the mean time there is always something to do. I’ll go organize supply bags for us to carry our ammunition and food in assuming we leave here somehow.”

Lucy got up as well, “I will get all the blankets and sheets and pillows we have and bring them into the family room. We might as well sleep comfortably.”

My mom sat still. Lucy and I looked at each other, and then grimly walked off to do our jobs. By the time we had all finished doing our jobs, and everything else we could think of it was night and Ian and his family were still sleeping. I had managed to find the six most practical supply bags in the house, consisting of three camping back backs, two school bags, and a purse. I had already outfitted my camping backpack with a golf club in either side, a baseball bat sticking out the back, the shotgun ammunition box and the cleaning tools associated with the shotgun inside, and a first aid kit. I also had added a few thick jeans and jackets as protection against bites.

Reasonably proud of myself, I volunteered to take first watch. The others fell asleep, and I patrolled the house with my Mossberg, often feeling reassured by its now-familiar weight. The next few hours passed uneventful, and I woke Lucy to take the next shift. She took her hunting rifle and propped herself up against a wall to survey the windows. I could only hope she wouldn’t fall asleep on us. As I began to fall asleep, I found myself wondering just what the rest of the world looked like right now.

Crash! I was awoken by the sound of shattering glass, and leapt to my feet clutching my Mossberg tight. My mom was sitting in the corner on her guard duty, and looked at me bewildered. Ian and Lucy awoke too, but didn’t get up as fast. My mom explained what we had heard to them, while amazingly Ian’s sister and dad hadn’t even woken up yet. We silently spread out around the house, searching for where the breakage had occurred.

It wasn’t long before Ian yelled, “Over here!”

I rushed to him, in the master bed room where the biggest window was shattered and several Infected were pushing their hands through trying to grab on to something. They hadn’t gotten past the wood boards nailed into the wall yet, but it was only a matter of time before their combined weight and frenzied antics broke through. We all looked at each other, thinking about where else in the house this could happen, and next time would they go through the boards as well? We went into the family room, the situation under control for now. I explained how we have nothing more to barricade that window off with, as we’ve used all of our scrap wood and furniture.

“What about that giant shelf you guys have in there? Isn’t that furniture or did you just skip that?” Ian asked me.

“Well it was our dad’s personal shelf before he died, so we were hoping not to mess with it...” I looked at my mom as I said those words.

Ian replied, “Well how much greater use could he get out of that shelf than saving your lives? We can drag it to just outside the bedroom and put it in front of the door. Like we did at my house, it takes them a while to figure out how to unlock or turn the knob, and then after that the door will still have a hundred pounds of shelf backing it up.”

I couldn’t argue with the logic, and moved to help Ian prop it up against the door. When we were done Ian traded his shift with my mom, and we went back to sleep. I awoke peacefully in the morning to the smell of pancakes. Startled I went to the kitchen to find my mom attempting to prepare all our boxes of pancake mix.

She looked at me and shrugged, “I figured since this takes a while to prepare, we might as well eat it now instead of on the road when we won’t have a chance too.”

I smiled at her, glad that she was officially on board with the plan now. After a quick inspection of the house, I learned that we were now entirely surrounded by the Infected, but no other windows had been broken.

Just then Lucy screamed, and it echoed through the house. I was already near the living room, so I simply turned around. I didn’t see anything. Lucy was standing up with a horrified looking expression on her face.

I cautiously asked, “Uhh Lucy, what’s wrong?”

She pointed at the chimney and now I could hear it too. Something was moving around in the chimney. I approached the bottom, which we had used the last of our supplies to board up pretty securely. There was a faint moan.