"So we're going into houses we know have zombies in them?"
"Yup."
"I want something better than this piece of shit then."
"Then you'd better hope you find a house with something better in it, ‘cause that's what I've got to give you."
James sighed. "Yes sir."
Sgt. Andrews cracked a slight smile. "That rifle was good enough to beat the Nazis. It's good enough for you."
James wanted to mention that the Soviets had suffered millions of casualties because of shoddy leadership and miserable equipment. He decided to salute instead. Mouthing off wasn't going to change her mind.
Later that day they backed the Hummer up to the porch of a boarded-up farm house. Aside from the boards on the windows the place looked immaculate. No corpses on the lawn, no bloody or dirty hand prints on the walls. He pulled the bolt on his rifle back into position. This was a live fire exercise. They leapt out of the Hummer and hit the door with crowbars. The boards were down in a flash, and then the house came alive. It had been silent before, but as soon as the boards hit the porch, a wailing chorus of moans started from inside the house. The sound knocked them back, and they looked at each other hoping the other would be the one to suggest they run away. James watched in horror. They were going to try to bust down the door just to prove to each other they weren't scared.
"Get in the Hummer, drive fifty yards that way. If you leave me behind I will come back from the dead and eat your face," James said.
"We have to clear the house!" One of the radar guys said.
"That's what we're going to do. Just going to do it the smart way," James said. "Get going and I'll open the door."
While James was not supposed to be in charge, rank tended to get disregarded at moments like this. Whether they understood the plan or not, it involved them getting farther away from the zombies. That meant it couldn't be the worst idea ever. They went, and the Hummer pulled out. It went a bit farther than fifty yards. James worried the driver was heading home. James had never been more afraid than in that moment, watching the Hummer drive away. When the brake lights went on he sighed a deep sigh of relief. He grabbed the door handle and turned. Locked. Of course it was. He skittered down the porch and fired his rifle into the bay window next to the door. It shattered, and with shocking speed a zombie started to push his way through the shards of hanging glass. It took a good ten seconds for the zombie to squeeze his way through the window; even better than the door! He dropped to a knee and drew a bead. Boom–and he apologized for all the mean things he'd thought about his rifle. Sure, it was old. It was loud. It hurt his ears to fire, and the recoil made his shoulder sore. But all that was secondary to the fact that the back of that zombie’s head exploded like somebody stuffed an M80 in a calzone. The zombies behind him didn't miss a beat; they just kept pushing through. He retreated a few steps, kneeled, fired. At this distance he couldn't miss. He worked his way back to the Hummer.
"We're going to be out here all goddamn day at this rate," someone said.
"I'd rather have to pop a few random walkers than go into a house that full. Not with bolt action rifles that hold five bullets."
"Good point."
They kept coming, and coming. The whole extended family was in there. Most looked like they had turned from the Airborne–they were intact. But a few had been ravaged–intestines swinging, faces bitten off. They had been the Airborne immune, but they'd stayed in the wrong house. James shivered and remembered his ex-cellmate Dick. He knew what that felt like.
His ears were ringing from the slow but steady fire from his group as the zombies kept pushing their way through the window. They kept firing, and shoving bullets into their hot guns. By the time they had finished a good forty corpses lay strewn in a pile outside the house.
"What a bunch of fools," one of the radar guys said.
"Maybe they didn't realize it was Airborne," James said.
"If they had the time to gather up the whole damn clan and board the house up they should've known. The plague didn't start hitting here bad for a week or two after it got bad out East."
James shrugged. "Guess it doesn't matter now. Move the Hummer back to the house and stay on guard. I have to think there's a few left in there."
"Yessir." And they obeyed.
The house radiated a horrible stench. The dead always smelled like a steak that had been left in the sun for far too long, but this was worse. This was about five tons of steak left in a hot house for months. They had dripped their juices and their feces and then rubbed it into the carpet with their endless shuffling. A skeleton lay next to an overturned recliner, picked clean by the horde inside. They covered their mouths with their hands and listened. No sound. Their eyes watered; it almost seemed like they could see the filth floating in little brown specks around them.
They had become hardened to bad smells over the past few months, so they handled it with only a little retching as they went room to room. They found a few shotguns, a deer rifle, a few empty revolvers, and another skeleton or two.
The first floor at least was a complete bust. The kitchen held a few cans of evaporated milk and a dozen cans of condensed soup.
"What the fuck? No way. No way forty people got together and only brought twelve cans of soup!" a Guardsman said.
"Check the attic. Check for a basement. They had forty people to sleep, they may have stashed the stuff there," James said. He knew a thing or two about where people hid their valuables.
He went to the garage. There were no cars; there was only the motherlode. Boxes and boxes of MREs, canned vegetables. Luxury items like candy bars, potato chips, salad dressing, dried fruits like raisins and dates, cocoa mix. Damn near anything you could get that wouldn't spoil. It was stacked to the roof. Canned chili! James started slipping a bit of everything in his backpack. While not official policy, Sgt. Andrews had made it clear that anyone who helped salvage got to skim a bit for personal use as danger pay. The others took his lead in stuffing the choicest bits in their backpacks and pockets. No one was quite jaded enough to eat in the stench, which was still considerable. The Hummer honked twice, the sign for zombies visible but distant.
"Todd, get on the horn with HQ, let them know we're going to need an extra two ton. Let me know how close the zombies are," James said, "Jesus, pop that door." He gestured at a door that had been left clear of the food. If they'd left a path to it, it must have been important. "Listen for trouble first." Jesus put an ear against the door and frowned. He put a thumb out and made a noncommittal wiggling gesture. They brought their guns up and James nodded to Jesus as he attached his bayonet, a black thing with a tip like a flathead screwdriver. It wasn't designed to slash, just stab. It was perfect for zombies. Jesus opened the door. It was dark down there. James couldn't see a thing. He turned his flashlight on and rolled it down the stairs.
A man, emaciated, grabbed his eyes and screamed as the light hit his eyes. He scrambled away from the light and hid in the corner. James crept down the stairs, wondering. How had this man survived who knows how long down here, when the door up here wasn't even locked? The garage door hadn't been locked either. They should have smelled him after so long, or heard him, or just stumbled into him. It was miraculous. The man was sobbing in the corner as James grabbed his flashlight and scanned the basement. He was naked, except for a pair of nasty tennis shoes. Empty gallon jugs of water, empty food tins, and a whole lot of piss and shit. James gave Jesus the eye, and Jesus went over to try to comfort the guy. James just didn't feel empathetic. He went upstairs and found Todd coming back for him.
"Three zombies, nothing big. HQ is sending another truck," Todd said.
"We found a survivor in the basement," James said.
"You're shitting me!" Todd exclaimed.
"No shit. Help me check the attic. They must have had more weapons than this."
"What's his name?"
"Didn't ask. Put Jesus on baby-sitting."
"Jeez. He ok?"
"He ain't dead. I don't like this," James said.
"What the fuck are you supposed to like?" Todd asked.
"Dunno. This whole thing is weird," James said as he scanned for the attic ladder. It hadn't been in the garage for some reason.
"Stuffing forty unimmune people into a fifteen hundred square foot house is weird. They were weird people," Todd said.
"I don't dispute they were dumbasses, but that guy must be really lucky. I've never heard of anything like it," James said, and found the cord. He yanked down the ladder. He paused to listen; no reaction. He clambered up the steps and swung his flashlight around.
"Sure you have. Sometimes the zombies just ain't that bright, you know? Like that kid who got through hundreds of them by flipping over a box and just crawling real slow. Said he got the idea from some video game. That worked. Other times they know exactly where you are. Andrews thinks they just have different senses than us, and so you can't tell what will trick them and what won't."
"On the other hand they had excellent taste in weapons," James said. Six AR-15 rifles sat on a plastic tarp, a crate of magazines and next to it–hundreds of boxes of 5.53 ammo. He climbed up and handed five of the rifles down. "Give these to the guys. This is our shit now." He started flipping boxes of ammo down. Todd yelped as one hit him on the head. "Fuck the food, this is our first priority. Let the truck worry about the food." He took the remaining AR-15 and checked its magazine. Full. Sorry, bolt action. We were friends, but it's time for you to find a new owner. Daddy found someone a lot sexier. They'd even brought spare magazines.
They loaded up what they could, and drug the survivor out of the basement. He screamed when the sunlight hit his eyes. They ended up putting a trash bag over his head so he'd stop screaming. They drove back, fondling their new weapons and stopping to take pot shots when they saw zombies. The survivor just huddled in the backseat. He mumbled, holding one hand over his eyes while the other held the bag away from his mouth. They passed the two ton that had been sent out to scavenge the food. The soldiers on the back looked at them and patted their stomachs. James wondered how much of the food would make it back in to the Commissary and how much would end up on the black market. He didn't especially care. His crew had a truck full of stuff that was worth twice its weight in gold and he planned on making Sgt. Andrews let them have it. If they wanted to sell the guns and ammo they'd be eating hydroponic veggies and fresh chicken for years. They could maybe even get some real BLTs. The thought made his saliva glands gush.
They dropped the new guy with the quarantine guys, and then hauled their loot back to their barracks. They stacked the ammo up in a cell and put a mattress on top of it. One of them was going to be with it at all times.
That was life. Every day they'd hit a new house. Some had nothing more than some old man zombie with a .38. Some had food and no weapons; some had small arsenals. Some were empty; nothing but furniture with tarps and a can of lima beans. They got pretty good at it, and it became routine.
The first lesson of fighting zombies is that they will never stop coming. Sometimes that was a strength, but it was also their big weakness. Even the most obvious trap worked like a charm every time.
The second lesson of fighting zombies was a maxim that applied to every war. Be on the strategic offensive, and the tactical defensive.
It got to the point where he wasn't that afraid anymore. It had become routine.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I've always been fascinated by how people react to adversity. In my life I've seen people who by any objective standard have terrible lives. Someone in their family seems to get cancer at least twice a year. Their parents were crazy. Their marriage sucks. They have Lou Gehrig disease, and all they have to look forward to
is pain and suffering. If anyone ought to be suicidal, it's them.
But those people never seem to kill themselves. They hang on.
Then you have the people who do kill themselves. Usually it seems like their problems weren't all that bad. Not bad enough to justify ending it all. They are the ones who jump off the Golden Gate Bridge.
I read a survey of people who had survived jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. Every single person said they regretted jumping the instant they fell. Once they were committed and there was no way back, all of their problems seemed minor. Life seemed worth living again. I held that thought with me often during the darker times. I have forever to be dead. No need to rush it. Now I'm not opposed to a quick coup de grace if the situation demands it. No sir. But the fuckers are going to have to work at it to get me. I don't know if it was natural selection weeding out the suicidal. Maybe true adversity somehow breaks people out of the blind tailspin of suicide, but I just never saw much suicide among the people who survived the first three months. Not as much as you would think. Having a clear cut purpose in life–surviving, protecting, hunting and gathering. It seemed on some level to be a sort of secret spring of, if not happiness, strength.
Of course all of us were more or less grief ridden. We'd all seen and done some horrible things. We were afraid. We had more to worry about than anyone else, ever. Maybe I'm just talking about myself here. So let's talk about me.
I was one of those small town gentlemen homosexuals I mentioned earlier. I played a frost mage in World of Warcraft. I hunted deer to fit in, but never enjoyed it. I lived across the street from my mom and I was the assistant manager of the Casey's General Store. I was a good Baptist. I kept in decent shape so that when I went to St. Louis once a month I could get some action. That was my life. I wasn't happy with it, but small towns have a sort of gravity to them. If you don't break orbit when you graduate high school, when your personal obligations will be as low as they ever will be, odds are you're never going to leave. Every year just adds more power to the gravitational pull. Every year you fall farther behind, and making a change just seems more and more impossible.
Looking back my life was pretty wonderful. Maybe not the best, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse. I could have made it better if I had tried, but I was paralyzed. But the flat truth is that I came a lot closer to killing myself then than I ever have since. Even in the darkest days, ending my life never even occurred to me. I came closer to killing myself after a bad Black Wing Lair raid than I ever did when I was fighting real monsters. If I had a time machine I'd go back and tell myself to cancel my Warcraft account, pack up my shit and move to St. Louis, consequences be damned. You'll adjust to the traffic and the people.
But then if I had done that I'd most likely be dead. Each of our survivals was so dependent on sheer luck that any change to the past would most likely end in your death. It's hard to have real regrets when following your dreams ends with you getting your intestines ripped out by a pack of monsters.
If I could go back and stop the zombie plague, I would. Of course I would. But I think a part of me would regret losing the man I became. I would never say this to anyone, but in a lot of ways, this is the best thing that could have ever happened to me. If this hadn't happened I'd have spent the rest of my life a closeted homosexual. Too scared of coming out to have a real boyfriend. Pissing away my years behind a cash register and filling the void with silly little video games. I told myself I would do something when mom died, but it was already too late by the time the plague happened. My life would have been pathetic. I would have been one of those sad, broken little gay men. I would have lived off my tiny social security check, wishing I had dared to eat the peach. Now, even if I die tomorrow, I've done things. I've seen things. I've had adventures and close calls. I know what it's like to be hungry and so I know what it's like to be full. I've thought up ideas and then done them. I've saved lives and ended them. Whatever you might think of this world, it's a world where my life matters. Happiness is not a never ending slow drip of dopamine. Happiness is purpose. And no purpose is more elemental than survival.
Anyways. So I was in the back of this truck on the way to Columbia with Rich and Janet Franke. Rich had been a dentist. Janet was his hygienist. Rick was fifty and had some serious golfers tan. Janet was an attractive older lady. I think in the old days she had been a bit of a label whore. Their truck was the nicest car I'd ever been in. Neither one wanted to talk. Like I said, they had just lost two of their kids and they were worried sick about the third. Making conversation did not even exist in the universe of things they might want to do. It was a quiet trip.
I keep going back to the supernova image, but it resonates with me. The zombies weren't the only ones who did it; we did it too. The debris of bodies and wrecked cars and walkers, it grew and grew. Then it fell off. We even saw a truck driving north at the Fulton exit, but whoever was driving was not interested in talking to us. He looked right at me and kept going. And even God himself would not have been able to talk the Frankes out of their beeline to Columbia. They were going, come hell or high water. Before long we had gone too far for me to turn back. I was picky about the cars we saw; many had been abandoned, which indicated to me that something was wrong. Most had their gas caps pulled by people looking for a quick fill up. I never had the option to leave. Before I knew it, I was reading the Highway Sign: Exit 128, HWY 63 S. The Wal-Mart in question was only a mile or two away. Rich got on his CB radio and started calling.
"This is Rich Franke. We have a party of three. I am talking to the rescue station at the Wal-Mart. Please acknowledge."
Silence.
"Walmart, please come in."
Silence. Rich started switching stations, repeating the call again and again. The look on his face... I doubt I'll ever see that look again. I hope I don't. The longer it went the clearer it was to me that if Rich didn't get a response and soon, he'd be taking the quick way out. I expected Janet would see things the same way.
Rich and the Wal-Mart started talking over each other for a second. Rich and Janet smiled, despair occulted by hope.
"Wal-mart–Wal-mart, please shut the fuck up. You have someone, Michelle Franke. She's supposed to be at the station. Is she alive? Please tell us."
"Travelers, who are you?"
"Rich and Janet Franke. We're her parents."
"We had her. She won the helicopter lottery. She left two weeks ago."
They started crying. A little bit of disappointment, sure. But mostly relief.
"Where is she now?"
"Somewhere safe. I can't say more than that."
"Can we come in?"
"Negative, negative. This is a very, very hot area. You've got about sixty thousand zed between you and this place. Policy is you go find somewhere to hide. We'll let you know when we're done pacifying the area."
"You need to tell us where she is then!"
"Negative. Can't do that. Honestly, I don't even know. And I certainly can't tell you on the air."
"Well, who the fuck do you think is listening? You think the zombies have CB radios?"
"Sir, I understand what you want, but I cannot transmit classified secrets over unsecured radio. I also cannot explain why I cannot transmit classified secrets over the radio. Your daughter is alive. Take that for the gigantic fucking win that it is, and find somewhere safe to sit out the next few months. That's your best bet for seeing her again."
"No! You have to let us in! Send that helicopter!"
"Not possible. The area outside Columbia is somewhat pacified. Go find a farm somewhere and sit tight. That is your best bet."
Rich threw down the mic and snapped the radio off. He looked at Janet. They nodded. They looked back at me.
"We're getting into that Wal-Mart, come hell or high fucking water," Janet said.
"Want to help?" Rich asked.
"Well sure," I said.