Zombie Dawn (18 page)

We decided to do the same thing the next day.  We’d discovered a small armory in the station with a dozen 9 mm pistols, Glocks, and six 9 mm Ruger rifles and three cases, 3,000 rounds, of 9 mm ammo.  There was a bunch of 12 gauge ammo, too, but the shotguns must have been out in the cars.  They also had two pairs of night vision goggles. 

This time, Jake and Christina would take the traffic tower and Stan and Mike would support them from the telephone poles.  I drove the truck and Kate drove with me.  Jake, Christina, Stan and Mike carried the Glocks and the 9 mm rifles.  They had all of the ammo with them.  We figured we’d use that up and save ours.  Darnell and Mike stayed back to guard the police station.  Jake and Christina also each carried a .22 with 1,000 rounds.  Kate and I had the Mini and 500 rounds plus a 12 gauge and 500 rounds plus two .45s.  We were loaded for bear.

Jake set off the air horn and we started up again.  The zombies started pouring in on the four open streets, since Stan had blocked two with bodies the night before.  I decided to block off one on the east and one on the west with today’s bodies.  That would give us an even better kill zone for the next day’s activities.

Once again, the plan worked perfectly.  Jake was at about 90 percent with the .22s and Christina was even better.  Stan and Mike each used up 400 of their 500 rounds, leaving 100 in reserve.  Kate used up all of her 500 rounds and 400 of the 12 gauge rounds.  Luckily, we had brought hearing protection.  I dropped about 100 with my .45 and easily another 500 with the plow.  We figured that we had done at least five or six thousand that day.  I had been able to completely block off three of the remaining four roadways in, leaving only one road from the north in.

We had somehow accumulated two more survivors at the station. One was young homeless man, apparently called “Scooter.”  We had a Skeeter, now a Scooter. Where did these guys get these names?  I didn’t need homeless winos; I needed a welder or a mechanic.  Clearly, there was no love lost between the two and they squabbled constantly.  I told them to shut it up or they’d be back outside.

The other was a nineteen year old woman named Susan.  She’d been hiding out in a warehouse a mile away and monitoring the police frequency on a security guard’s radio.  She’d actually picked up some chatter from Sean, who’d been trying to figure out the police radio system.  She told us that it looked like some type of military warehouse.  She’d snuck in on the first night after her boyfriend had been dragged from the car and torn apart.  They’d been making out.

Susan had been there ever since, surviving on MRE’s and water that she’d found in some crates.  The security guard had turned and chased her around for two days, until she’d finally dropped a fire extinguisher on his head from the top of a stack of crates.  That’s how she’d gotten the radio.

The next day’s plan was Sean’s.  “They come when they hear noise, right?  We’ll take a bunch of these police radios and leave them on high all night and all day tomorrow.  We’ll get a few trucks full of oil and gas and park them in the ring.  Stan can rig them with grenades or something to blow them up.  We can close up the ring and set it off. It will probably be a lot easier than shooting each one.”

Stan jumped right on it.  “Great idea, Sean.  I saw a gas tanker over by that Irving station and two fuel oil trucks a couple of blocks from here.   There was another gas tanker parked at the Mobil station.  We’ll bring the oil tanks over and open them up and drain them in the circle.  Then, Jack and I can use those trucks to plug up the circle.  We’ll stick the tankers right in the middle.  I’ll open up their valves just a little bit so they leak out and we’ll wire some grenades to each truck plus a Claymore.  We’ll run a wire to the Claymores, and we can set it off since it was your idea.”

“No way is my eleven year old going to kill 5,000 zombies, Stan,” laughed Kate. “He’s not even going to see it.”

Marj just rolled her eyes. “What the hell are you thinking, Stanley?”

It took the whole next day to work the plan.  First, we had to get the oil trucks started; their batteries were dead.  Each time we had to dispatch a dozen or so zombies attracted by the sound.  We got the tankers into the “Coliseum,” as we’d started to call it, and then opened the valves.  We had to drag zombies over to cover a few catch basins and drains so the oil would accumulate. We sort of squashed them into a paste to plug the grates up.

That took awhile, and we needed to handle another dozen zombies while we waited.  The trucks were noisy as hell and drew zombies every time.  Next, we got the first tanker started, luckily it started right up, and into the Coliseum.  Stan wired the grenades and Claymore to that one, and ran a long wire from the Claymore over one of the high stacks of zombies to the south.  Jake unrolled 300 yards of wire and tied the wire off to a telephone pole.

Next, we set up a bunch of radios in the Coliseum.  It was hard to get the radios loud enough so we had to break into a Radio Shack and take some boom boxes, load them up with D batteries, and fire them up.  We decided to leave them going while we got the next truck.

We jumped that truck and Stan wired it with the grenades and Claymores before we entered the Coliseum.  We drove it into the Coliseum and circled around squashing all of the zombies in there while more kept streaming in.  We threw the wire over the wall, and then used a ladder to climb the wall ourselves.  Jake wired it up, and then we waited to see how many we’d draw.

Once again, they streamed in steadily from the north.  In order to keep them coming, I set up a ladder and climbed up the south wall and fired 100 or so shotgun rounds into the crowd.  That really got them fired up and they packed into the south side.  I was afraid that barricade would come down, so I circled over to the east and did the same, this time from an office window.  Stan saw what I was doing and did the same over on the west side. 

I noticed that there were definitely some Brains in the crowd.  They were seeking a way to attack us or to escape.  Under their influence, Speeders and Zs rushed the ladders that we’d left in.  One of the Speeders made it up a ladder and I dropped him with an improbable shot from seventy five yards away with a shotgun.  Right through the temple.  One shot.  Nice.  Mike was impressed, which was saying something about the shot.

We saw that the trap was almost full and started to circle back to the north to drive the oil trucks in.

Meanwhile, Jake and Mike had climbed into the telephone pole and were prepared to blow the Claymores.  Each had one detonator and a radio.  Christina and Kate were covering them from an office roof about fifty yards away.

Stan and I each got a truck going but we couldn’t even get near the north entrance.  The roadway was too clogged with zombies.  We decided after a brief consult to see if I could get my truck rolling towards the entrance then jump out and get into Stan’s truck.  We figured we could crush a bunch, maybe plug the gap, and also that we’d need a truck to get out of the crowd of zombies.

That’s how it worked.  I got the truck going in low gear and held the gas down with a bag full of junk.  I aimed it toward the gap and wired the steering wheel to the driver’s side window.  When I thought it was set, I radioed Stan to roll up next to me then stepped off of my running board right onto his.  I quickly jumped into the seat and closed the door because we were surrounded.

We got the truck turned around, crushing a bunch of zombies and sliding around a bit then, when we got a hundred yards away we radioed to Jake and Mike to blow it.

They did, and the explosion was tremendous, throwing a huge fireball into the sky and rocking our truck to the point that we thought it was going to roll.  One of the mirrors shattered when something from the explosion hit it.  I think it was a kneecap, but Stan claims it was a jawbone.  A wave of energy and heat rolled over us, doubling our speed.  Stan almost lost control.

“Holy shit,” he yelled.  “That was almost too much.”

“Yeah,” I replied.  “I think we may have just burned down the entire city.”

I radioed everyone, telling them to return to base and get ready for a quick exit.  We’d have to leave Scooter in the trailer and Susan in the back of the pickup because they had not been quarantined yet.  The rest would need to load into the vehicles and get ready for us.  They were all gassed up and loaded, so it would take only moments to get ready.

I later learned that Scooter had initially refused to get into the trailer.  Marj pistol whipped him, knocked him out, and threw him in there-while Tyler and Cody watched with their eyes wide open.  They had adopted Marj as their new grandma and looked at her with new respect-and some fear.

Chapter Twenty:  The Islands

I decided to have a long talk with Scooter very soon.  But for now, we needed to get out of Dodge, so we did.

About ten miles north, we stopped in a big barn for the night.  Along the way, Kate was laughing hysterically, saying we were going up there to be farmers and we didn’t even know if any animals had survived!  What if we had to crawl back to Jim?  She thought it was funny but she was also worried.

We started to see a few cows out in the fields.  Lots of dead bodies where they couldn’t get to water but the ones with farm ponds seemed to be okay.  We decided to watch them closely for a day or so and hung out in the barn.  Stan and Cleve started working on an old tractor trailer with a cattle car to see if they could get it up and running.  I knew they could.

We never even approached the farm house since it was clearly full of zombies.  They moved around but couldn’t get out.  We’d burn it before we went.

Bobbie saw a paddock with two beautiful—and very much alive—horses in it and decided that she had to have them.  She had Jake and Darnell twisted around her finger and began her campaign to bring those nags with us.  She told them that she’d teach them about horses and how to ride if they helped her.  Kate overheard this, and privately reminded Bobbie that she’d only had four horseback lessons.

“I guess that makes me the national expert, then, huh?” Bobbie smirked.

“Good point,” chuckled Kate.  “Carry on.”

There was an old pickup truck and a dilapidated horse trailer at the farm.  Bobbie worked Jake and Darnell unmercifully, making them fix up the truck and load up the back with horse stuff, hay, food, saddles, and on and on.  After a bit, she had them unload most of the saddles and repack the food; she’d decided to ride bareback to keep it simple.

The trailer was big enough for four horses and Bobbie was determined to fill it up.  She made us mount up a small expedition to find more and we located them less than a mile away at huge farm.  It took her hours to figure out which ones she wanted.  She’d decided to bring one stallion, one mare, and two fillies so that she could become a breeder.  I don’t know anything about horses, but I totally agreed with Bobbie’s choices.  They were beautiful.

Bobbie also insisted that we start letting livestock that we could not take out of their pens, saying that they’d at least have a chance of surviving.  We opened the pens and barns but the horses and cows just stood there.   We gave them a few cowboy yells to get them moving and they ignored us.

 The pigs and goats knew what was going on and scattered.  I grabbed a few piglets and some little goats and threw them in the trailer.  I assumed that the free pigs would probably thrive in the wild and go feral.  I wasn’t sure about the goats but since they eat anything I thought they’d be okay. 

We were becoming quite a convoy at this point, adding two more trucks with trailers.  We decided that Darnell would drive the horses, with Bobbie riding shotgun.  She refused to drive anywhere but with the horses.   Stan was our best truck driver and he’d drive the cattle truck with Julie riding shotgun.  We’d put the trucks right in the middle of the convoy for a bit of extra protection.  I instructed everyone in the trucks to abandon them and jump in a protected vehicle if attacked.  I assigned one Expedition, driven by Bill, to protect the horse truck and a second, driven by George, to protect the cattle truck.

We knew that zombies would be attracted to the sounds and smells but, on balance, decided it was worth the risk.  We hadn’t been seeing many Zs up there and figured we could handle any who showed up.  It was more important that we had a food source.

The next morning we shoved off early.  Bobbie, Darnell, and Jake had gotten up at 4 to load the horses and Stan and I had agreed to load the cattle.  We realized that we didn’t know anything about cattle, at all, so we decided to grab a few of the black and white ones and a few of the big shaggy ones and figure it out later.  We ended up with fourteen mixed beasts, six piglets, six goats, and two crates of chickens. 

Kate came with me in the truck.  We took stock of where we were, Kate in her wifely way.  “Jack, do you realize that we have no need for lawyers anymore?”  I had frequently thought about that.  We had way too many lawyers in the world before the “Event,” and a reduction in our numbers wasn’t entirely a bad thing.  But I knew that we’d ultimately need rules, and dispute resolution, and many of the other things that lawyers did. 

“Babe, I’m not a lawyer anymore.  But if we make it, we’ll definitely need lawyers and it won’t be long before we need accountants, too.  Right now, that stuff doesn’t matter.”

Chapter Twenty One:  South Hero

We were ready to roll by 5:30 and set off.  To get up to Grand Isle, we took Route 2, the Roosevelt Highway, north from Burlington.  It turned west through a national park, then we came out onto a causeway and crossed onto South Hero island.  This area had never been densely populated and was clearly even less so now.