Authors: J.A. Crowley
They discussed which equipment they wanted, then selected the largest equipment that could fit on a single trailer. They selected a huge dump truck, which Darnell would drive home since it could not fit onto a trailer. Cleve, Stan, and I would drive the trailers, Mike would drive the box truck, and Jake would drive a trailer truck full of fuel.
The dealer had a huge on-site tank and a fuel tanker must have been making a delivery just before the Incident. Cleve checked it out and it was empty, so he set up a pump and pumped the diesel back out of the underground tank into the tanker. He also topped off all of the truck and equipment tanks.
Stan gave Mike a quick lesson in driving the box truck. It was an automatic shift, so it wasn’t too bad. Mike was a pretty good driver for a 15 year old and picked it up really quickly. The kid could already swear like a sailor, too.
The convoy out was massive. The dump truck, followed by Mike in the box truck, the fuel trailer, and then the three tractors with the equipment. Stan took the rear. We carefully secured the building and fence before leaving, since we intended to return for more equipment and supplies. We locked the pickup in the garage. It was fitted up pretty well and we decided to come back and get it when we had a chance.
We decided to roll home as fast as we could. No stops, no delays. The return trip went quickly and we travelled back over the south bridge. Darnell and Cleve had designated a huge barn about a half mile from the hills as their headquarters and immediately started to review their plans. They ignored the rest of us completely.
Kate had been in charge while we were gone and gave me an update that night. She was clearly delighted with her news.
“We heard from some survivors on the shortwave today!”
“Awesome. Where are they?”
“Four Canadian coastguardsmen, in a Canadian Coast Guard ship.”
“Wow. Where are they?”
“On the lake.”
Finally, I got the whole story out of her. Sean had picked up a radio call from these guys a day or so ago and had, per our instructions, listened carefully. They were not careful, and he figured out who they were, as well as their approximate location. They were the only survivors from their station and had gotten out on the water just in time.
Kate had contacted them and asked what their plans were. “They are desperate to see other people. It sounds like they’re just kids. But they have a sixty foot boat and they’re out there driving around. They don’t know what to do.”
I called them on the radio and they agreed to come in. They were two women, Sharon and Jackie, and two guys, Cam and Mickey. They were all nineteen years old. We decided to send them up to reinforce Dave and Danny, who gratefully took them. Sharon and Cam went with the Lynches and Mickey and Jackie went to the Spillers. We provided them with 9mm carbines, pistols, and ammos and drove them up.
Dave had found another three survivors, two older guys and a young woman. They had swum across from North Hero. They had all stayed with the Spillers. Danny had found a few survivors as well, hiding under a burned out barn. They were a family of four, the Fischers, and they stayed with the Lynches. We agreed to send up more weapons for them, and in turn we’d get two dairy cows and some instruction in how to use them.
We did that the next day. Julie agreed to become our milkmaid and she was good at it. We had plenty of fresh milk and cream and she started working on yogurt and cheese as well.
While Darnell and Cleve worked on the fort, we detailed George and Sumner to clear and fence a huge perimeter it. The goal was to create both a huge paddock for our animals and an initial line of defense completely encircling the fort and between 200 and 400 yards out depending on the terrain. This was a huge task but they jumped right on it.
They worked from the inside out. They cleared every tree and structure within a hundred yards of the fort and marked the line with wooden stakes painted bright orange. Everyone could use the stakes to judge distance and zero in on enemies.
There were three buildings inside the line, including two houses and a barn. The houses had good strong stone foundations, which we left in place for future use as bunkers and for animal shelters.
We decided that we’d let our goats roam inside the inside perimeter. They’d keep the undergrowth down. To confine them, we built a low fieldstone wall, topped by three strands of barbed wire, around the entire area. A human could get over it easily but it would delay regular Zs and give us a bit more time to shoot.
The stream ran generally from east, where it began in a swampy area, to west, where it emptied into the lake. It ran pretty much through the middle of everything, including the fort. The streambed was naturally lower than the surrounding area and we realized that it could be a weak point in our defenses. George and Sumner cleared the banks to improve visibility and dug a narrow channel in the bottom of the stream to concentrate the flow and create more of a barrier. We left some pools for the animals and built metal gates in the streambed at the 100 yard line as part of the wall. The gates would prevent the goats from escaping and would delay anyone trying to sneak in through the stream.
The first area took about two weeks. During that time, Darnell and Cleve had dug about half of the trench. Some of it was slow going and it was an incredible amount of dirt to move and stabilize. They’d dig a trench, drive logs into the ground on either side to stabilize it, and keep going. Fortunately, we’d located some big tree cutting equipment and they had a pile driver so they had no problem getting or placing logs. There were plenty of trees.
They needed explosives to get through some areas of solid rock. Jake and Stan scrounged some dynamite from the farm supply store and that helped speed things up a bit. Cleve had done a bit of blasting in his time and became the blasting supervisor.
When they’d completed about half of the trench, we decided to route the stream through it as a true moat. It filled up to about five feet deep and had sheer sides of vertical logs. The stream entered the moat on the east side, wrapped around half of the fort in the moat, and exited on the west. Anything trapped in the moat would have a tough time getting out, so we built another goat fence on the outside to protect our livestock.
Meanwhile, George and Sumner had completed clearing out to the 200 yard mark. They were all exhausted, and winter was coming, so we decided to resume fence and fort building in the spring. We finished up a temporary fence, again stone and wire, around the second circle and called it quits for the year.
Chapter Twenty Seven: Winter Preparations
While those four had been working on the fort, the rest of us had been preparing for winter. We decided to stay together for the first winter in the main house, which had enough room for all of us. Stan hooked up two generators to power the furnace, lights, well and refrigerator so we were pretty comfortable. The toilets flushed and we even had hot water. The house had three woodstoves and plenty of wood so we could stay warm even if the generators shut down. We had a manual pump for the well, too.
Mike, Kate and I had cleared everything out for about seventy five yards around the house. It was sad to cut the beautiful, mature trees and shrubs but we had to have a good kill zone all the way around the house. Darnell dug a deep trench around the property and we built sturdy barbed wire fences around both side of the trench. We kept two driveways clear; one in the front and one in the back. Each had a heavy gate and was also blocked with one of our Hummers.
Stan and I built heavy shutters that covered the windows on the first floor. They could still be opened from the inside to let in light and air but could be shut and barred if we were under attack. We built a crow’s nest on top of the roof, which could be accessed from the attic by a ladder. It gave a great view of the surrounding area and we stored the Barrett .50 and the M24 with ammunition in the attic. Mike and Christina were our designated snipers and were assigned to the crow’s nest in the event of attack.
Marj and Christina had carefully calculated how much food and water we’d need and had packed the basement with MREs, water, and canned goods. We all looked forward to having fresh food the next year, but we had plenty for the winter, not to mention fresh beef, pork, and goat.
Sean and Bobbie had become quite the fishermen, as well, so we often had fresh fish to supplement our diet. Bobbie and Tyler had started to breed and raise rabbits, and Sean and Cody were working on chickens. Sumner volunteered to act as our butcher.
The winters up here are cold, to say the least. It gets really cold by Christmas and stays cold until at least mid-April. Lots of snow, lots of wind. It’s a very good time to stay indoors.
We wondered what would happen to the Zs in the cold weather. Li and Nancy thought that they would freeze solid and be unable to move but that they’d thaw in the spring. Stan and Marj thought they’d be active all winter and that they wouldn’t freeze. I personally hoped that the winter would “kill” them outright.
We pretty much took late December off and spent the time relaxing, eating, hanging out and staying warm. There was a lot of mourning and sadness, but for the most part we were glad to be alive. We did keep active sentries out at all times, though. We had a nice Christmas, with Christmas carols and great meals. People exchanged little joke gifts, mostly stuff they had found or made. It was fun but also sad as we remembered past Christmases.
Chapter Twenty Eight: Winter Patrols
In January, I decided that we should send out patrols to see what was going on. We wanted to find more survivors, if we could, before they froze. I also hoped that we could knock off a bunch of zombies if they were slow or dormant. We could always use more guns, ammo, and food as well.
We started down in South Hero and quickly cleared a bunch of houses and businesses down there. We scored a bunch of canning equipment and supplies and also some high quality wood stoves. To our surprise, we found a few survivors down there, including an eight year old kid who had hidden in his grandmothers’ basement and survived the whole time on preserves and vegetables that she stored down there, and his best friend from next door who had somehow survived on water and junk food from his parents’ pantry. We sent them up to the Lynches and Spillers.
On New Year’s Day, George, Tom, Mike and I set out in a Hummer to make a run out to a Vermont National Guard armory in St. Alban’s, a bit to the north and east of South Hero. We hoped to find survivors and weapons. We brought an empty trailer to store our finds. It was well below freezing but we all had excellent cold weather gear including shooting gloves.
We traveled down Route 2 and over to Route 7 then north for a bit. We weren’t in a great hurry, since we’d been cooped up in the house for weeks. Spirits were high. We had placed some pretty heavy wagers on the “Frozen Zombie” issue and we knew that we’d probably settle those bets today.
There wasn’t much happening out on the roads. We saw several deer right in the road and a family of moose in a low lying swampy area that had not quite frozen over. It was good to see that the virus had not wiped everything out. There were lots of abandoned cars partially blocking the road, and we checked each one. The first dozen were empty of people but full of junk. We pushed them a bit to clear the road. There was more traffic in the southbound lane since people must have been trying to get to Burlington or out of the state. North was fairly clear.
We didn’t see any zombies until about 10:00 a.m. A tractor-trailer had overturned by the side of the road down in a ditch. The back of the truck was full of big-screen televisions. What a waste! The door was open and the driver was trapped in his seat by his seatbelt.
George approached, calling out “I think he’s dead. He must be frozen solid.”
He prodded the driver with the barrel of his M4. Nothing. No movement and no signs of life. He yelled out again: “This one’s a zombie; his right arm is all chewed up but his head is okay. He’s a popsicle.”
I decided that it was important enough to test the situation. Tom got a small Nissan Sentra running and we moved the driver into the Sentra with the heat on high. The Sentra had plenty of gas in it and we figured we’d check on our Popsicle on the way back. We strapped him in with the seat belt and headed north.
As always, we stopped and checked each car. You would think that a frozen zombie would be easier to kill, wouldn’t you? But not if you don’t want to shoot and don’t want to start a fire. You can’t get a knife through a frozen skull and it takes a long time to bash one in. We decided that if we needed to kill Popsicles quietly we should do it with a battery operated drill or saw. For today, we opted to leave them be and see what happened with Popsicle One.
We took great care as we approached St. Albans. I figured that the armory would be a gathering point for survivors. It was an emergency shelter for the town and lots of folks would have realized that weapons were stored there.
The town was silent. We parked a half mile from the armory and moved in slowly on foot. The Hummer was too noisy.
The area was fairly built up with houses. Mike noticed a big yellow colonial with smoke coming from the chimney. We had a brief meeting to discuss what to do and we finally decided that we had to deal with the house before approaching the armory. Whether they were good guys who could help us or bad guys who would interfere with our escape, we had to know.