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Chapter 5

Thursday, May 1

For now...Opportunity lost.

We are being deluged by rain that has everybody staying inside. On the positive side...Meredith was still here this morning. I can hear the rain pounding the roof, and the sound of thunder rolls into our little valley, sometimes causing the windows to vibrate.

It is odd, walking around this house...my house...wearing a pair of clean black jeans and a baseball jersey from some city league sponsored by “Hank’s Transmission”, listening to The Planets suite by Holst on a boombox CD player, sipping a cup of hot tea with a dash of honey. Stranger still is seeing this little redhead reclining on the couch reading
The Time Traveler’s Wife
by Niffenegger, wearing Capri pants and one of my flannel shirts.

It’s almost like the past four months never happened. I know I must enjoy it while I can, things change fast...and usually for the worst.

Friday, May 2

Day two of the torrential rain, thunder, and lightning. Less than half of Irony came to dinner last night. Grace and her son, Derrick, went door-to-door today requesting everybody be at dinner tonight. She feels that isolation might be too much “alone time” for some folks. It seems an elderly man named Boyd Garrett hung himself sometime yesterday.

I thought back to my time alone in Hangman Creek Tavern. How close had I come to giving up? I guess there is a lot of healing to be done. But the question is…when will there be time? Will these things eventually fall down and stay dead when they run out of food? And can we outlast them here in our little bastion of humanity? Will they rot to the point of no longer being mobile? Some of them have lost much of their clothing, while others haven’t. But truthfully, I’ve seen no sign of the bodies wearing down in similar fashion. These things might never go away.

Damn.

Saturday, May 3

Today, a group of us decided that, weather-be-damned, we had to at least try for those folks at that Wal-Mart. If nothing else, we could see if they left any indication that they even wanted our help.

Snoe, Meredith, Larry Bonn, Derrick Arndt, and I climbed into an RV and headed out early this morning. We came in from the south as dawn cut through the dismal gray enough for us to actually see past twenty yards. What we saw…well…none of us would have ever thought mankind could continue to find new ways to degrade itself.

Thousands of zombies have flooded into the area…lured by living humans dangled from five helicopters. I have no idea who could think of such a thing, but having seen what was happening in Spokane, I have no doubt that if Captain Dahl is still in command at the Air Force base, this is his handiwork.

Using the natural topography of the Spokane Valley, he is herding the zombies using the carrot-on-a-stick approach. While this has likely cut back on the dangers in Spokane, every other small outpost is now under siege.

We can see the folks we came to rescue. They do in fact have a huge S.O.S. banner hanging, along with what looks to be a huge canopy set up with “Save us!” painted on it. There are, from our best count, seventeen people, all on the roof. It is obvious that the zombies have gained entrance and chased them from the inside to where they now wait. Unfortunately, the crowd outside is at least twenty deep at the thinnest point.

This undead exodus brings a new concern; if our sanctuary is discovered by the Spokane powers-that-be that are seemingly bent on control for whatever the reason, would they seek to have us overrun? Or, are they simply attempting to clear their territory, the City of Spokane, albeit with no concern for the few survivors who may be clinging to a dwindling strand of hope.

We returned to Irony with the news. Grace has called for a meeting tomorrow of all residents over age fifteen. This should be interesting

Sunday, May 4

I have to hand it to Grace. She does not miss a thing. After hearing our report, it is obvious that she is seeing the possibility of the undead swarming down into our valley. She asked for volunteers to try and scout out two possible locations for us to fall back to. The first is near a town called Thompson Falls, Montana off of Prospect Creek. Supposedly there is a militia survivalist outpost nearby. North of that, some off-shoot religious sect reportedly set up in a very rugged area near the Noxon Reservoir off of a tributary that feeds into Trout Creek.

I have volunteered for the latter location along with Meredith, Trent Blake, Scott Paulson—a twenty-two-year-old kid who obviously spent a lot of hours pumping iron, Steve Morgan, and Sasha Ivanoff—the nineteen-year-old blond-haired, blue-eyed counterpart to Scott. We’ve been told only to scout and report. If it is occupied, we are not to make contact, but simply return. Both teams were given similar edicts.

Everybody staying behind will be involved in an extended boundary patrol. Lady B is in charge of setting up a defensive perimeter which includes some sheer sided pits about ten feet long, four feet wide, and six feet deep. Also, razor and barbed-wire barricades will be put up. Since it is strictly for zombie control, they will use trees and not bother with fence posts. Also, another set of two teams will work in shifts, keeping a lookout on the Spokane Valley. Their job is to stay alert for the mass movement heading our way, as well as watching to see if the Air Force folks are probing with any personnel in our direction.

There was a lot of discussion and debate, but to me...it seems like we are at war. I wonder if we’ll ever find peace...not just from the walking dead, but from humanity as well. Due to all the logistics...we will be leaving in three days.

I am going to spend these few days with Meredith. We have no idea when the luxury of just enjoying one another will come. I spoke to Tim before he left for the first cycle of standing watch over the valley. We wished each other good luck. Funny, I think on all the times I bid farewell to friends and acquaintances. I never realized or even considered it could be our last moments together. It has come to such a dire and extreme situation for me to realize that it is important to treat every relationship as something special to cherish and not take for granted.

I will be sure to say something to all those who I spent all those days, nights...life and death situations with. Meredith also mentioned that if we get back, perhaps we could consider having Joey live with us. That was a surprise on two levels; one, the idea of basically adopting Joey (he lives in a barracks with six other orphaned children), two, Meredith wants to live with me!

Wow!

Thursday, May 8

I almost forgot how horrible it is out here. Oddly enough, I’m not speaking of the undead. We have to cut through the Panhandle National Forest on service roads that saw a wet, cold, nasty winter. No crews have come through to tidy up after Mother Nature. The Hummers are struggling. Also, we are actually at elevations where snow is not only still present, but deep enough to force us to back track and change course a few times. We barely made fifty miles today as we sit camped next to the Coeur d’Alene River just north and east of someplace called Cougar Peak. What should’ve taken a few hours took all day.
Tomorrow, Steve and I will go on foot north. Scott and Sasha will go south. We will look for a good crossing spot. Best case, of course, is to find an intact bridge.

The best thing I can say is that, at least on our first day, we were fortunate enough not to encounter a single zombie. Although, about an hour ago we did hear the distinct, yet distant, sound of a gunfire burst. Direction is very tough to determine from our location which is basically a trough carved out of these mountains.

Friday, May 9

It is a good thing we made sure everybody was clear that this would likely be a slow process. Fortunately, having two-way radios, we managed to keep communication most of today. When the signal began cutting in and out, we marked the location by tying a white tee-shirt to an overhanging branch of one of the many trees along the river’s edge.

It wasn’t more than an hour after losing contact that we encountered a roamer. It looked like a hardcore biker, still suited up in its leathers and, unfortunately for us, wearing its helmet. It was making a lot of noise as it charged through the brush like an angry bear. The now blood-caked remnants of a forked goatee stuck out stiffly like a divining rod from its gore smeared chin. I could tell instantly that this thing had been feasting recently.

Steve and I flared out, forcing it to choose a target. I won. I adjusted my backpedaling to allow Steve to move in from behind. It was a simple maneuver, one we often used on single targets. Neither of us even considered that bikers often travel in gangs...until twelve more of the damn things burst from the woods. I know this was not an intentional ambush (at least I’m pretty sure). Keeping our location a secret quickly lost its priority status. We both drew our handguns aiming for the couple without helmets first.

I dropped two before I had to return my attention to the first one I had been luring. At least I could see its face. I brought my arm up as it closed to just a few feet away and fired. I think I heard the sound of my bullet ricochet inside the helmet a couple times.

By the time it was over, two of my four magazines were spent. We hadn’t expected much activity.

A few minutes later, the victims of the zombie biker gang came stumbling and crawling out of the trees. It was a group of kids! The oldest could not be older than sixteen, the youngest, about nine. They had been torn up pretty bad. Some were missing limbs that had been ripped off in the vile feeding frenzy. Most had gaping holes in their chests and stomachs. The youngest, had to be a girl, was missing both legs, dragging itself through the tall grass by one arm. The other arm was gone from the elbow. A long gray coil dragged behind like a serpent’s tail.

I could not think about what they might have done to survive this long, or what had caused their demise. Steve and I simply switched to our blades and put the five young bodies to rest. At some point, I had started crying without realizing it. My eyes blurred, and I missed the creeper twice before finally driving the point of my blade through the back of its skull.

We are up in some trees now. Steve is asleep. I am listening to the gurgle of the water, staring up at the moon. It looks like the face of a little girl.

Saturday, May 10

We are camped beside a bridge. Honestly, Steve and I are too damned tired to start back. Plus, we’ve got company. We found the camp that was the home for those kids that the gang of biker-zombies attacked.

It seems some of those kids were on a foraging mission. They were part of a group of twenty-three kids from Thompson Falls, Montana. When the plague hit, these kids were part of the population that ran for it. They left by bus. There was an accident when the lead bus swerved to avoid a bunch of zombies. The three bus caravan was totaled. One went down a steep embankment on its side. They were the lucky ones. I guess they could hear the screams begin above almost as soon as they came to a jarring stop against a huge boulder.

Initially there had been about a dozen adults. Two were already infected. It was one of the older girls, Brittany Maldanado, who figured out how the disease spread. However, adults being adults, nobody would listen. Since the kids were kept away from the sick, the adults were all gone in the first week. They had managed to make it to a campground. It was deserted…either abandoned or the keeper had turned and then wandered off.

There were plenty of supplies at first. But when they had practically stripped the storeroom bare, it had become necessary to forage. Using a map that had all the Ranger Stations marked, they systematically went on raids. A few times there had been a zombie. But they had heard reports on how to dispatch them and everybody carried a weapon of some sort. Against one or two, it seems they have been able to take care of themselves.

Anyways, those kids actually spotted Steve and I before we saw them. Once they made contact and all the sharing of information was finished (the ten-year-old little girl named September Marie Bluthe and her older brother Rusty were in that group we had just put down) the kids were able to show us the bridge. They will come with us back to the others, showing us a series of logging roads we can drive the Hummers on to the bridge. Then, they will come back to Irony.

Sunday, May 11

Making our way back is easier, but slower. Brittany Maldanado is obviously these kids’ leader. Even when Steve and I say something, they look to her for a nod of approval. About half of them won’t talk to us at all. I don’t blame them. I mean really...this world is ugly and messy.

There are a lot of things I don’t miss...Amber Alerts, the most recent teacher-student sex scandal, another dead priest being accused of fondling his altar boy, and which idiotic Hollywood bimbo lacking any talent or actual contributing skill was seen getting out of her car in a mini-skirt and “accidentally” forgetting her panties. I truly believe that, in some ways, these children are living in a better world.

What does that say about the world that used to be?

Monday, May 12

Made contact with Meredith and the others. It was great to hear her voice. Scott and Sasha have not called in yet. That is only a minor concern since both of those kids are little wannabe-action-figures. The downside is that it looks like we’ll have to hike the whole way back. We can’t have them returning to find everybody gone. I just hope they’ve reported in by the time Steve and I make it back. I wouldn’t want to sit too long.

Tuesday, May 13

Tucked all the kids in. They are in huddled little puppy piles in each of the Hummers. Nothing at all has come over the radio. Meredith and I are under one of the vehicles. It’s not quite camping, but the clean air is refreshing and very conducive to nestling in nice and close.