Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse (Book 2): Conflict (2 page)

We
returned the following morning, after the dead finally shambled off.
Miraculously, there were two survivors. Steph and a four year old boy, Johnny,
had managed to climb atop the rafters of our common room, taking shelter in a
shadowy alcove. No one else made it. We immediately began discussing our
future. There were plenty of reasons to leave, not the least of which were the
bad memories, but winter was just beginning and we didn’t know where else to
go.

In the
end, it was decided to remain at the castle. Most of the livestock we’d
gathered from neighboring farms was still alive – zombies ignore animals, and
the raiders hadn’t targeted them directly – so there was no shortage of ready
beef, eggs, etc. The generator was still working, and we had plenty of
supplies, including what the gang members had been carrying. Most surprising, Briana
informed me she was pregnant. I was going to be a father.

I’ll go
ahead and provide a list of the survivors for your easy reference.

      Jacob
Thornton

      Briana
Mills

      Lizzy

      Mary

      Steph

      Johnny

As to
our settlement, it is placed on a slight rise at the far end of a long, curved
meadow in one of the deepest portions of the Nebraska National Forest. Behind
the castle, near the tree line, is a creek which provides most of our fresh
water. We also have a large parking area enclosed by a standard six foot wood
fence, intended to keep zombies and wildlife out. Finally, there are some
corrals for the livestock and a scattering of benches and picnic tables.

The
castle itself consists of a twelve foot high, five foot thick curtain wall.
This is composed of two layers of reinforced cinderblock. The area in between
has been filled with gravel and cement. Up top, we installed battlements. While
not originally intended as a defensive measure, being there to prevent anyone
from falling, they did prove beneficial when the raiders attacked. Along one
side wall are our townhouses, two story structures with a sitting room and
washroom on the bottom and a pair of tiny bedrooms above. Opposite these is a
large storehouse that doubles as the armory. In the rear, across from the gate,
rests the common hall and a small bathhouse. There are two latrines as well,
one near the entrance and another by the kitchen.

Shortly
after the attack, Lizzy and I established a series of caches in and around the
forest, their purpose to guarantee a ready source of emergency supplies in case
we couldn’t make it back to the castle for any reason or if we were forced to
flee our home a second time. This system was greatly expanded in the months
following, so I’ll leave detailed descriptions for later.

That
about covers the key events described in my first record, along with a simplified
explanation of where we stood following the battle. From here on I’ll be relating
all new material, some of it good, some bad, a few items dreadful in the
extreme. No way around that. Face it, our world sucks. We try to live as best
we can, staying safe, taking care of those we love, but the zombies are an
omnipresent danger. Add in the breathers who have used the situation as an
excuse to exercise their baser tendencies and heartbreak is always right around
the corner.

Chapter I

Thanksgiving
was pretty damn miserable. Most of our friends were dead, along with a large
number of assholes who more than deserved their fate. I’m not going to pretend
to give a whit about this latter group’s violent demise. However, I will say,
as I’ve informed Briana and the others repeatedly, that it’s a crying shame
they didn’t have the courtesy to fall in a nice, convenient pile. But no, we
had hundreds of bodies spread all over the meadow and nearby woods. It was a
mess, and only Lizzy and I were available to deal with it.

Steph
and Briana were taking turns babysitting Johnny and working on the castle proper,
and Mary was acting as our lookout, leaving just the two of us. So, we hitched
a flatbed trailer to one of the pickups and carted the corpses several miles to
an isolated, rocky area. There, we dumped them. We briefly considered torching
the things but decided not to. There’d been enough disasters already. Adding a
forest fire to the mix was out of the question.

The
temperature hovered around the freezing mark most of the time, which kept the
stiffs both stiff – hee hee – and somewhat fresh. The stink was at a minimum,
and with the normal decomposition that begins following true death hindered by
the weather, things were less disgusting than they might have been. Granted,
many of the bodies had been mauled by zombies or blasted apart by gunfire, and
there was plenty of nastiness leaking out of orifices and gaping wounds, but it
was bearable.

Christmas
was looking to be much better. We didn’t have a lot of time to prepare – the
repairs and cleanup had to be completed first – but our small band was
determined to make it as jolly as possible. Johnny in particular needed something
cheerful in his life. His parents were dead, and he couldn’t begin to
understand why. The poor thing had haunted eyes and a streak of paranoia that
no four year old should have to suffer through.

*
* *

“Lizzy,
are you sure the tree isn’t going to fall over?”

The
stout woman glared at Mary. “It won’t. I have it good and secure.”

“Didn’t
stay up the first time.”

Briana
began to laugh.

“It’s
fixed!”

Lizzy
had insisted on a large Christmas tree. I’ll start by saying a freshly cut,
fifteen foot pine is exceedingly heavy. Still, we managed to get it inside and
upright, securing it by tying the top to the rafters. The damn thing slipped
almost immediately, nearly taking Steph out. She was not pleased.

Following
that epic failure, we sawed off the bottom six feet, leaving us with a more
manageable nine footer. We set the base in a large bucket, filling the extra
space inside with rocks and water to make it as heavy as possible, and strung
additional wires from the upper portion of the trunk to the beam directly
above. That seemed to work. At the very least, it didn’t wobble too much when
Steph gave the tree a good shake to be certain.

“See, I
told you it would stay up.”

“It
better,” remarked Steph, as she headed for the kitchen. The redhead had a large
pot of stew simmering.

“I said
I was sorry! Stop being so fucking pissy.”

“She did
apologize,” I added, “twice, which is pretty remarkable considering the
source.”

Mary
began to giggle, alongside Briana, and Lizzy swung her eyes between them and
me, apparently trying to decide who merited her abuse more.

“Let’s
start decorating, and why don’t we have Johnny put the star on.”

Briana
beckoned for the boy to join us – he’d been sitting in a rocking chair near the
fireplace, out of danger in case the tree toppled a second time. “Jacob’s
right. It’s your job to put the star on.”

He
looked around. “Where is it?”

“Right
here,” replied Mary. “We made it earlier, just for you.”

The
petite teenager retrieved the decoration from its resting place atop one of the
bookcases that lined the walls. Lizzy had cut it from a piece of sheet metal
the night before with Mary filing down the sharp edges before covering it with
about a dozen layers of aluminum foil. A ribbon passed through a pair of holes
in the center allowing it to be secured to the tree. It was a sweet thing to
do, and Johnny’s eyes lit up when she gave it to him.

“Okay
now,” continued Briana, “Jacob’s going to put you on his shoulders so you can
stick it where it goes. Mary will help tie it because we don’t want it to fall
off, do we now?”

“Nope.”

“No
squishing me,” I cautioned. “You’re very heavy, you know.”

“Am
not.”

The
slightest of smiles formed.

“Are
too. You’re super heavy.” I lifted him onto my shoulders and made a great show
of teetering to the side and nearly collapsing. “Oh! So heavy.”

“Make
sure it’s straight,” said Mary, her laughter mixing with Johnny’s. She was
perched atop a stool.

“It’s
straight.”

“Are you
sure?” asked Briana. “If it isn’t, Jacob will have to pick you up again, and he
might break.”

“It’s
straight,” confirmed the boy, holding the star in place while Mary wrapped the
ribbon around the trunk before tying it off.

“Close
enough,” commented Lizzy. “All right, get on down before Jacob really does fall
over. You have to start putting up the rest of the decorations anyway. Here you
go.”

“Ooh,”
purred Briana, “a Rolex.”

“Is it?”

She
rolled her eyes. “Let’s see, bright gold with a huge logo right there on the
face. You should be able to recognize the things by now.”

“I prefer
Omegas. You know that.”

Johnny,
who clearly couldn’t care less one way or the other, was quick to loop it over
a branch. He then took another from Lizzy. You see, we didn’t have much in the
way of traditional ornaments. There were plenty in the nearby towns, both in
private homes and at a handful of small Christmas shops we’d come across.
However, our early looting priorities had been weapons, food, clothing, and the
like. Add in the chaos of the attack and the onslaught of winter and we’d been
unable to retrieve any proper decorations. Therefore, we were using jewelry,
most of which was found among the raiders’ belongings. I’m not really certain
why they were hording such things, but it meant we now had a wood chest full of
gold and platinum rings, bracelets, and necklaces, along with coins and bullion.
Mary had been telling Johnny it was pirate treasure and we’d have to bury it
sometime soon, after we made a map so we could find it again.

“Dinner
will be ready in about an hour,” called Steph. “I think we should do turkey for
Christmas.”

“We
don’t have any turkeys,” I pointed out, “just chickens.”

“That
reminds me.” She was standing in the doorway. “We need to move the coops inside
the castle. It was okay before, when we had so many people around, but if we
leave them by the corrals a wolverine or weasel or something is bound to get in.”

“We
could put one against the wall next to the storehouse,” suggested Mary. “Plenty
of space there, and it’ll be out of the way. Plus, we won’t have to worry about
zombies showing up every time someone wants scrambled eggs.”

“Jacob
and Lizzy will start tomorrow,” decided Briana. “I don’t see it taking more
than a day or two.”

Steph
nodded and returned to her cooking.

“And…”
She stepped close, running a long finger down my chest. “…you can hunt for a
wild turkey later, or maybe a goose. We had that once when I was little. It was
pretty good.”

“Or a
deer,” countered Mary. “Those taste better. Oh, I know. We can just chop off a
chicken’s head and pretend it’s a turkey. That would be way easier.”

Johnny
winced slightly but didn’t stop his decorating. Like most children, he was fond
of animals and saw nearly each and every one as a potential pet, but there was
no getting around the fact that we kept livestock specifically so the animals
could be slaughtered and eaten. He was prohibited from playing with or, God
forbid, naming the things. That privilege was reserved for non-edible animals,
like horses. All right, so horses are considered food in some parts of the
world, but hopefully those nations had all been destroyed. Damn culinary
barbarians.

“Speaking
of chickens,” I said, “the animals need to be seen to. Your turn to help Mary.”

The
teenager grabbed her coat and checked her gun. Like everyone else, save Johnny
of course, she was armed at all times, generally with a 9mm semi-automatic. I
favored a .40 caliber myself. The holes it made were larger, but it was every
bit as easy to manage.

“Take
the hatchet,” ordered Lizzy.

“Ah,
come on. We have plenty of ice.”

“We need
more water too.”

Ignoring
Mary’s look of consternation, I collected a pair of buckets.

“Can’t
this wait?” she complained.

“What we
have will be melted by morning,” said Briana. She followed us outside and
closed the gate after we passed through. “It’s best to grab some now. Want me
to keep a look out?”

I shook
my head. “No. We have a clear view. Nothing’s going to sneak up.”

“Yeah,
you can see everywhere except where the trucks and cars get in the way, the
corrals, the fences, the little barn stall thingees we built to protect the
animals from the wind, the castle itself, the trees, the occasional bird…”

“It’s
fine Briana. We’ll be back in a little bit.”

“We’re
good,” confirmed Mary, “so get inside before your belly freezes and Jacob
starts crying.”

One hand
on her stomach, Briana threw us a smile and turned to go. “Give me a shout when
you’re ready.”

The
gate, as always, was barred.

*
* *

“I’ll
feed the horses.” Mary ran her gloved hand across a gelding’s muscular neck.
“You can do the goats.”

I glanced
over at the adjacent pen. Several of the animals had developed a habit of ramming
anyone who entered their enclosure. Maybe it was time they made their way into
the kitchen.

“Know
what would be nice right now?”

I began
filling the trough with hay and oats. “What’s that?”

“Orange
juice, freshly squeezed.”

“Would
be nice, not that it’s going to happen anytime soon.”

“I can
hope, can’t I?”

“As much
as you want. Just about done over there?”

Mary
double checked the latch on the gate. “Yeah. They didn’t eat much today. Think
any are sick?”

“The
horses look fine to me, but we’ll have Steph check them in the morning.”

“So,
back inside?”

“We
still need to get the ice,” I reminded her.

“Do we
really have to?”

“Worried
about falling in?”

“Yes!”

Such an
accident had already occurred, and it had been a miserable experience, both Mary’s
immersion in the freezing water and my having to pull her out. I’d also carried
her back to the castle where she spent a good four hours sitting directly in
front of a roaring fire. Being somewhat less drenched, it only took three
before I felt normal again.

“You’ll
do it this time?”

“Sure
thing Mary, I’ll do the chopping. Don’t worry.”

“Wonderful.
I just… Wait.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Something is moving over
there.”

Drawing
my pistol, I stepped away from the corral and took a few steps forward. The sun
was down at this point. Did I want to go tromping about in the dark? We had
flashlights for emergencies, but those tended to attract zombies so we rarely
used them.

“To the
left.”

I saw it
then, a figure slowly advancing, unsteadily forcing its way through the foot
deep snow. The gait was one we’d come to recognize.

“Creepy,
the way the stars are shining behind it. It’s like a black blob.”

“That’ll
end as soon as I bash it with the hatchet.” I holstered my gun.

“I want
to do it. It’s my turn.”

Reaching
over, I gave her arm a squeeze. “Think you can crush the skull? It takes a
good, solid strike.”

“I’m
strong enough.”

“Maybe…
No, go ahead and shoot it instead. No reason to take the chance, and I don’t
want you to miss or slip.”

“The
noise could bring others,” she warned.

“Doubt
if there are any. They tend to stay out of the forest, but I’ll keep watch for
the first part of the night to be sure. Lizzy can take over after midnight.”

“Oh,
she’ll love that, standing outside in the cold, all alone.”

Mary’s
laugh caught the zombie’s attention, and it shifted direction ever so slightly.