The Complex: (The Reanimates) (26 page)

             
“As I’m sure you all figured out, this is a map of the complex and where the resources are. I like the idea of a safe zone for the kids, Cali, and agree that it would go best next to the school.” He wrote SZ in the space next to the school. “The idea of keeping the safe zone away from the food and water unit is a good one. Having it on the ground floor might be good as well in case we have to get them out of there. Mercedes? Jody? Do you guys object to having kid duty during this if it comes to a fight?” They both murmured their consent. “Good. It definitely puts my heart at ease knowing there are people to take care of the young ones.”

             
He drew a perimeter around the boxes and drew on a thick spot that was where the gate was. “This here bridge is the strongest point in the wall and that’s great, because we have one spot that they are not going to be coming through. All around the complex the trench comes right up to the wall except in the case of the back wall. We couldn't build it that way back there because of the wash, right?” Trent nodded his head. “That is a major weak zone, as evidenced by that being the camp out area for them. We will have to have eyes on this this wall. I want to reinforce the gap that they have been using. I had thought about putting the spike strips that we used on the front of the complex on the back but I think that since they have their capacities, unlike the zombies, that it would just serve as a ladder for them to climb up. I would give up my left arm for razor wire here but, well, that’s not going to happen.”

             
He put down the marker and sighed. “We need to have people on watch on both the exterior and interior of the complex. If we have one person on each side on a patio or window to keep an eye out then we should be covered. We need to assign people to be on watch.”

             
Martha volunteered to take the watch on the exterior of her building. Tyreese said that he would assign DaWayne to the exterior of my building while he took the exterior of food. Daniel, while he wasn't a council member, was still present since he had played a role in excommunicating (for lack of a better word) Alexus, was there to volunteer to take the back of the school. Trisha and I would be in medical. Something in all of our guts said that there were going to be injuries. Trent said that he would take our patio as a watch point, Joey would take his, Tanya would take hers. Tyreese decided to take Mercedes' patio.

             
Anna and Erin were the only remaining apprentices to not be assigned, though at 14 it was decided that Erin was too young to take part in everything, leaving just Anna to assign. She was a hard one to place so we decided that we would ask her if she wanted to hide out with the kids or if she had an idea of a task that she wanted to take on. When we came to her after the meeting she brought up the very good point. Someone would need to run the bridge. We decided together that at the first sign of trouble she would come down from her apartment or from the safe zone and get to the car. The keys to the car lived under the drivers seat anyway so getting it started would be easy enough.

             
I used to be someone who took great comfort in having a plan. I just wasn't feeling it today. There could be no comfort in knowing you had to take on real people.

             
With tear filled eyes I asked an impossible question. “Guys? What if this all fails and we can't fight them off? What's our contingency plan?”

             
Joey looked me dead in the eye and said, “Our plan for if this fails is evacuation.”

             
Tyreese spouted, “How on earth do we evacuate right at 20 people?”

             
“The water truck.” Trent said simply.

             
Joey nodded his head. “I'll show a few people how to drive it. It isn't easy to learn but it's not impossible to either. This particular truck is an automatic so that will help. Turning it though will be a challenge for those who have never driven something so big before. The absolute beauty of this is, and I know Trent has a working idea on how to make this work as well, is that if push comes to shove and fuel becomes a problem we can make that thing be a bio-diesel truck.”

             
“I'm going to start setting up the trailer for people transport. We can put in a row of bench seats and some beds. We could use the bench seats as storage for food, water, and medical supplies. We can cut out some nice ventilation holes up top and in the middle that could be used as gun port holes as well. I know no one wants to leave really, we have a nice thing going on here but if we have to go we will be ready.”

             
“I think we should also have bug out bags on our backs if the fight happens. That way we all know the things that we wanted to evacuate with are right there.” Jody suggested.

             
“I think it would serve us well to get started on the projects. I think we have enough ideas going on right now to get us started up.” Tyreese said. We all agreed. Trent set Daniel on the job of the safe zone reinforcements and started figuring out the best layout on the trailer. Joey and Tyreese went off to investigate the security holes. I went off to the medical unit preparing for a potential mass casualty issue.

             
We took a break from setting things up to go ahead and arrange the backpack of things we had to take with us. Each one of us filled our bags with special little things. Mine had the box Drew made, to his great delight. Inside the box I put the turtle that Trent made me, all the wallet photos I had, a few marbles that I had for years. I slid my Kindle alongside the box, the hand crank charger that Trent made me, and a few clean pairs of underwear and socks. A friend had sent me several moleskine journals years ago that I had meant to fill with a story. I had started it so many times and had managed to fill a couple of the books, but then I stopped writing it. I would finish the story, I decided. If we made it out of all this craziness alive I would finish the story. I grabbed several pens and pencils to go in the bag. There were still so many more things I wanted to take. How would I fit all my scrapbooks that I had filled with baby pictures? Fitting my life into a backpack and knowing I needed to keep the pack light was so hard. My heart ached. I didn't want to accept the possibility that this was all over, living at home. Drew was sitting in his room having put several things into his bag, stalled out as well. His eyes looked over his room over and over. I sat down on his bed next to him. We didn't need to say a word, so we didn’t. We just sat there for a bit before I finally said that I had to get back down to medical. I asked him to come with me to help set things up.

             
We worked well into the night preparing for the attacks before we were all getting too tired to think. When we went to bed that night I was reminded of that first night waiting for the zombies to come. Just like before, every little creak reverberated through the darkness. We waited for them to come in the night. The only thing that came though was the morning.

             
People were on edge. Decreased sleep played on all of our nerves. Little arguments broke out over setting up the trailer when ways of doing things clashed, like where priorities were. Things like building gun port holes that were an important thing to Joey weren't as high on the list for Trent, who was trying to put together seats and the work area wasn't big enough for both of them to occupy. I argued with Jody about things that were important to fill up the bench seats with. Every argument ended in someone stomping off, cooling down, then making up. All those extra linens we collected when the zombies started were put in the trailer, making padded floor seating areas. We ran drills on getting the kids into the safe zone. We took our backpacks every time we walked out the door. For the week after we exiled Alexus we all waited for the shoe to drop and the fighting to begin. We worked like mad to get that trailer set up. The bench seats were a great idea. One segment was devoted to the cans of food, another for some water, and my favorite was the med cupboard. I had rummaged through medical and had gotten out just about one of every med we had. If we needed to run we were going to be well stocked, almost a rolling hospital. The lower bunk of one of the bunk beds opened up to store tools, the other more water. Things remained oddly peaceful. New Years came and went with unremarkable ceremony. Ryan Seacrest wasn't on the television pretending to be Dick Clark, no one lit off fireworks nor did any random firing of guns into the air sound like in the previous years. It was just another night in the post zombie world.

             
We worked into the second week, though with much less urgency. We stopped having the guys post guard in the outside units, downgrading it to two guys on watch at night on top of the roof. We all had gotten into the habit of the backpack thing, becoming as second nature as putting on our shoes. We were confident in the process of getting everyone into the safe zone. Still nothing happened.

             
On the third week we went back down to a single night guy. For a couple nights the guys slept uneasy knowing there was now only one visible person on watch but after a few nights of this it became just like before. We had come to the conclusion that the marauders were just displaying a false bravado. Bullies always talked big, after all. It was the middle of January, it was cold outside, nothing was going to happen. Even the zombies had gotten much slower when frost blanketed the ground.

             
We got comfortable. We were a slow bunch of learners.

The Night It Changed

             
Our family was sleeping soundlessly when the sound of a gunshot rang through the night, interrupting the first real sleep I had in a long time. Trent and I sat upright in the bed quickly, jolted awake. Pained cries came shortly after. My very first thought was that we had stopped using guns on the zombies a long time ago, preferring arrows made from sticks. Sticks were free. Sticks were everywhere. Sticks were silent. It was quickly followed by the thought of zombies don’t cry out. What on earth could possibly be making that sound? My stomach turned, my heart pounded, and I felt frozen for a moment. People, I answered myself, people make that sound. It took me a moment for my brain to get into gear. Who was crying like that? Did someone shoot their foot off in their sleep? I was reaching for any reason that didn't include an all out war had just started. The marauders were supposed to be all bark, no bite. I had kept rejecting the thought that it could be them. Denial was a sweet friend. It could make me move, I decided. As long as this was some stupid accident I could move. Trent was already zipping up his jeans on his way out the bedroom door when it finally occurred to me that I should be doing the same. I trotted down the hall where I passed Drew's room. Drew was sitting on his bed, eyes wide. “Mom what happened?” He was bathed in the light of the lantern that we left in his room, the florescent glow bathed his skin leaving a sickly pale glow, though with the degree of fear in his eyes, I wasn't convinced it was entirely lighting.

             
I took a deep breath and responded, “Baby I don’t know. Stay here for now, we'll let you know. We'll be back, OK?” He nodded his head, scared to the bone. I knew how he felt. I continued on to the living room, tied up my sneakers and put on my pull over Disney sweat shirt. My last move as I walked out the door was to grab that silly backpack that I had been carrying for three weeks. It certainly didn't take long for that to become a habit.

             
I ran down the stairs to find out why someone was now screaming in pain. I saw Tyreese coming down the ladder with DaWayne, one arm wrapped around his son and the other on the ladder. DaWayne was bleeding heavily from a wound to his shoulder. I realized in that moment that the gunshot noise was someone shooting at DaWayne. The only reason for that was the marauder hit was finally here. DaWayne was struggling to come down the ladder using one hand even with his dad's help. Tyreese struggled to keep his balance against the weight of his football player sized kid. He kept encouraging him with each step.

             
“C'mon DaWayne. Play through the pain. Almost touchdown time.” Tyreese repeated this over and over, like a mantra that he himself was using to get the kid down the rungs. DaWayne had his teeth gritted together.

             
“We need to get him into medical NOW!” I yelled. Trent ran to them as I opened the door of the medical unit. Trent helped Tyreese get DaWayne in the door that was now unlocked. It had taken a little bit to figure out how to run that lock since my hands were shaking heavily by then. There was a crash against the cinder block wall coming from somewhere in the complex. The sound of cement shards rained on the parking lot asphalt. “Trent, the kids. We need to get them into the safe zone.” He ran out the door, took the butt of his gun and banged it on the metal railing against the stairs.

             
“Time to move it everyone. Kids to the room! Assigned places now!” He sprinted over to the safe zone room and opened the door. Through the sliding glass door to medical, I saw Daniel run down the path first with his daughters, one under each arm. I heard Drew run down the stairs, the sound of kid feet rocked the metal platform. When he came into view I saw he had his backpack on, and under his arm was one of those folding stuffed animals that doubled as a pillow. He ran to the safe zone room. Joey covered Drew's passage with his gun drawn ensuring that he would get there safely. A sob tore out from me. That was my baby running over there to get safe and I couldn't be there in that room with him then. I couldn't comfort him. He was going to be terrified and his dad and I had a job to do.