Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse (Book 2): Conflict (26 page)

“Unless
they join up,” added Lizzy. “Might be nice to get some locals, if they’re the
right sort.”

“Have to
be the right sort,” I agreed.

All of
our current problems were the result of having too many of the wrong sort
around.

*
* *

Using
Crazy Horse as our base of operations, we drove to the actual monument and
climbed to the top using roadways the construction crews had created. The view
was excellent, and Mary gave the statue a big kiss. For those of you who
haven’t seen it, the face had been completed prior to the world’s collapse. We
stayed up there for a long time, but other than zombies, almost all of which
were in Custer, we saw no trace of people.

One
evening was spent going through the visitor center and its displays. The twins
showed absolutely no interest in the exhibits, aside from briefly glancing at a
few old spears and bows. Lizzy didn’t care much either. Mary, however, has a
fondness for history and spent quite a bit of time reading everything. I joined
her in this, and it’s a good bet that we will eventually recover the entirety
and set up our own museum. It’ll be important down the road for Asher and the
others growing up to have something to show what life was once like, both immediately
prior to the apocalypse and during the centuries preceding it.

We also
hit the gift shop and acquired several decks of playing cards. Since we were
unwilling to travel after the sun went down, if it could be avoided, such
things were a wonderful way to pass time. I did have my laptop, which was full
of movies – Briana has a second one, currently loaded with children’s cartoons
that Asher, being a newborn, wasn’t ready to watch – but seeing the same things
over and over was getting dull.

Originally,
the actual search was to be a scan of all the roads followed by a survey of the
countryside. That proved impractical, so we instead drove down each road,
including any dirt tracks we found, checking out buildings and anything else of
interest. Anytime we saw an easy way to ascend a nearby hill, two of us would
scamper up. This was generally me and Mary. Lizzy, despite her protests to the
contrary, was not in good enough condition. The twins undoubtedly were, but
they had difficulty expressing and describing what they saw, nor did the pair
fully understand what I was looking for. Most of the time, one would take my
sniper rifle and track our movements. It was more than a little creepy, knowing
they had us in their sights, but if anything attacked, Tara and Dale would
hopefully be in a position to help.

We took
photos as well, lots of them, with a digital camera. These were then uploaded
to the laptop and labeled as to the location they were taken from and the area
they were of, all cross referenced on the map. While tedious, this made it easy
to go back and reconsider the places we had previously seen.

As to
the trails, anytime we reached one we would park, hiding the Jeeps as best we
could, and go tromping. Again, we took to the high ground whenever possible for
a more detailed look. These were surprisingly clear as well. We never
encountered a zombie and almost no trace of human life. There was a single, collapsed
tent, but it had been empty.

Eventually,
we finished exploring the easy to reach places, which left several large tracts
of land on the map, areas we had not been able to examine from any of our
vantage points. That was the key factor. Think about it. If we couldn’t see
these spots from the roads or by climbing the nearby hills, then no one else
could either. They were not far away as the crow flies, but very, very isolated
as a practical matter.

*
* *

“I don’t
know if this is a good spot or not,” grumbled Lizzy.

“It’s
perfect. More perfect than anything, except me.” Mary wiped the sweat from her
forehead and took a seat on a boulder. We’d kept to long sleeves, jackets, and
jeans, even with the warm temperatures and strenuous hiking. It might provide
more protection in case of an unexpected zombie encounter, but the practice
also made for an uncomfortable march. “Cause I am perfect. Perfect hair,
perfect eyes, perfect skin, perfect toes, perfect personality…”

Mary
lost her balance when Lizzy shoved her, ending up in the grass.

“One way
in,” said Tara. “Easy to guard.”

“Hard to
run,” added Dale. “Have to find escape paths, or make them.”

“Exactly!”
exclaimed Lizzy.

Here’s a
brief, or possibly not so brief since I tend to be wordy, breakdown of what
we’d found. Deep within the Black Hills, far from the roads and marked hiking
trails, was a valley running north to south. It was a little less than a half
mile wide in most places, sparsely covered with trees, and almost three miles
in length. The long sides were protected by two large, rocky, and steep hills.
They were almost ridges.

The
entrance – this was to the south – was very rough and narrow. It would be
possible to get four wheel drive vehicles in, but no trailers or normal cars.
They could be brought close though, which would make moving large amounts of
supplies doable, albeit slow and difficult. Once out of the valley, you had to
descend through another, along a relatively steep track before you gained ready
access to the Black Hills as a whole. If not for the topographical map and our
intention of specifically checking these places, we might have missed it
entirely.

The
backside, to the north, had a large hill with even more hard to reach
wilderness behind it. It wasn’t as steep as the others, but it was lower, low
enough that it was hard to see from a distance. That was nice. It wasn’t as
obscured as the valley itself, but it was as close as one could hope for. This
hill also held the entrances to several caves. We didn’t explore them in
detail, just a cursory check to ensure there were no bears or anything else we
might have to worry about.

“I think
it’s perfect.” Mary was beaming from where she rested, sprawled on the ground,
both hands beneath her head. “Jacob agrees. See Lizzy, you need to listen to me
more often. I’m way smarter than everyone else.”

“Shut up
brat.” She turned to me. “What sort of layout do you think?”

“The
only way you can get here driving, even if you were to use a dirt bike, is through
the narrow entrance area. We move some boulders around down below, keeping it
natural looking, to restrict it to only a single route up. We burn some trees
too, after taking the wood we want, so that it looks like a normal fire did it.
We’ll have a clearer view, making it hard for anyone to come up without us
seeing them.”

“We’ll
need a permanent watch,” pointed out Lizzy.

“We have
the people for it. What we do is build a watch post, something hidden, like a
deer hunting blind. We have the entrance in the back so people can go in and
out without anybody in the lower valley able to see them.”

Dale
nodded slowly. “Two spots you can do that.”

“One is
not as good,” corrected Tara.

“Where
at?” I asked. “The best one.”

She
pointed, referencing nearby landmarks for our benefit. It was a cleft in the
rock, wide in the rear but narrow with several openings on the front side.
There were trees around it as well. Between the angle and the foliage, it
should hide anyone within while still allowing them to keep a steady watch. It
would take some additional work, but that was something we could manage with
ease.

“Three
miles,” said Lizzy. “That’s a long way to run with a message. You could radio
it, but what if someone is listening?”

“We use
a land line. Harlan can set that up. We run a cable from the watch station to
the main settlement. Just keep it to the side and bury it. A long way, yeah,
but it only needs to be a few inches down to keep it out of sight and away from
easy harm.”

“Telephone
service!” shrieked Mary. “I’m sensing paradise.”

Lizzy
threw some leaves at her.

“We’ll
want people up on the two side ridges too,” I continued. “That’ll be more to
see if any cars are going down the roads in the distance.”

“That
one will be hard,” commented Lizzy.

“I don’t
think so. Tara, Dale, could either of you climb up there?”

Both
nodded.

“I could
too Lizzy. Most anyone, if we pick a good spot. What we do is find the easiest,
safest way up that is on the inside of both hills and away from the entrance.
We can chip out steps in places if we need to. The watches go up, sit down, and
keep an eye out.”

“That’s
a lot of manpower Jacob, for the actual duty.”

“At
least two at the entrance watch station at all times. Have to have two there,
even at night. The hills could just be one person on each, during the day. We
can even give them telescopes. But, those ridges are high, and you can see
their tops from far off. We have to make sure that anyone up there is hidden.”

“We
should have nighttime people there,” added Lizzy, “even if that would suck in
the winter, if we can get people up in the winter. These hills will ice over.
It might not be possible.”

“That’s
a good point,” said Mary. “Falling to their death tends to make people cranky.”

They
were messing up my well thought out system, but it was a reasonable concern.

“If
we’re running cables, let’s use cameras,” suggested Mary. “We can stick the
cables in cracks to hide them – lots of them on the cliffs – and put the
monitors in a room down in the new castle. You could have them by the watch
place up front too, to help in case the people there miss something or have to
stop watching to use the toilet.”

Eureka!
Problem solved. The machinery would break down after a few years, even if we stored
extras, but by then we would have found alternatives.

“Genius
Mary.”

“I know
this.”

“Obnoxious…”
Lizzy turned her gaze to the valley itself. “Place isn’t as flat as the meadow
back in the forest, but the ground seems moist. Should be enough to grow
things.”

“We have
some farmer types with us now, from Wyoming. We can set up a number of
farmsteads on the best locations, fence off the fields with either chain link
or a split rail so they don’t get trampled on accident and to keep animals out.
We can let the cows and goats and horses graze freely everywhere else. We’ll
wall up the entrance too, out of sight from below, so they can’t run off. On
some of the worse spots, we can put barns. We’ll have to get feed, but that can
come from what we grow, or we can cut grass on the plains and just haul it up
in the fall to make haystacks.”

“I claim
first jumping rights,” said Mary.

“No
playing in the animal food,” snapped Lizzy. “From what all the farmers who came
in from Wyoming said, this should be more than enough land to keep us fed. It
looks to be close to a square mile that we can grow on.” She hesitated. “I’ll
have to talk to them again. I might be remembering things wrong.”

Personally,
I had no clue.

“We can
always plant crops elsewhere,” I added, “far off if we have to, and bring the
stuff back here. I rather not, but it’s better than starving.”

“And
huge root cellars,” said Mary. “So we can keep lots of stuff. We should bottle
more food too, like the preserves. We have plenty of jars. You find those
everywhere.”

“Where
would we live?” asked Lizzy. “I mean aside from the actual farmers who I
suppose would be by the farms.”

“That
low hill would be a good spot. Parts are steep, especially the backside, but
see the flat area facing us? We build a fortress there.”

The spot
in question was a hundred feet above the valley floor with the hill rising at
least again that before it peaked. This rise was irregular and gentle enough
that no one up above could roll boulders down on us. They could shoot at us, but,
as I said, the opposite side was very steep. It would be hard to come that way,
and with cameras set up we would see them first. The only way this structure
was going to get hit, excluding by aircraft, would be from the valley itself.
Well, people taking the ridges to either side would be able to shoot down at us
as well, but the range would be long and with paths leading up that only we
were familiar with, we would ideally get our men into place at the first sign
of a threat so they could both provide covering fire and ensure no enemy took
the high ground.

“Back to
the issue of an escape route,” said Lizzy. “It’s like the twins said. There’s
only the one way in and out, easy way at least. If we get swarmed by a horde of
shamblers or the raiders or anyone else and have to run, we’re screwed.”

“True,
but if they have the numbers to get up that rock face to the fort we’re going
to build, then we’re probably going to be surrounded to start with.”

“Most
people could get down the opposite side of the hill,” said Mary. “It would be
hard, but you could do it with ropes. And we could fight off a lot from here.
If we’d been here the first time the raiders attacked, we would have won, even
with the zombies showing up.”