Authors: J.A. Crowley
The goal was to funnel the zombie hordes away from the Farm and to prevent them from “recruiting” on the way. We didn’t want to block Route 89, for the most part; we wanted to block them from getting off of it, especially near the Farm.
The northernmost exit was pretty easy. There were four ramps. For some reason, the ramps ran though a swampy, wooded area and had to rise up quite a bit to meet the highway. We built walls at the base of each ramp, then lit them up and moved to the top of the ramp, where we built another one. Eight walls and eight fires. The fires were easy to light, since Darnell made sure to puncture a few gas tanks as he worked. Apparently, the zombies did not “awaken” before they burned since they were frozen solid. Even though they were dead, we were glad we weren’t causing them any unnecessary suffering.
Mike and Ben were trying to top each other with their finds. Mike found a truck full of Twinkies, and they stuffed themselves silly while they took turns imitating Woody Harrelson in “Zombieland.” Jake covered them carefully, and they moved slowly, because we didn’t know yet if the Brains and Wolves could freeze. Ben found a huge bag of cash in a Lexus limo. It took them a minute to think it through, and then they threw it back. It was worthless. Ben claimed victory when he broke into a Target truck and found thousands of videos, cds, and video games. We limited the guys to one big box each and told them to choose stuff that everyone would enjoy.
We kept one big-screen TV and one video game setup back at the Farm and everyone took turns, although sometimes all of us would watch a movie on the weekends. The younger kids didn’t use the video stuff as much, nor did the older kids. Who wanted to play video games when you could ride horses, learn to drive, practice martial arts, hunt, fish, explore and do all kinds of great stuff? The answer—nine to twelve year olds. We had to force them outside. I knew they’d outgrow it.
George and I covered Darnell as he drove the forklift. There was room inside to ride shotgun and one of us would do that while the other would man the .30 on the Hummer. At all times, all six of us stayed within 50 yards or so of the others to be able to help if anything happened.
I had decided to go “retro” with my finds, if I made any. I realized that the world would never get back to the way it was before. I started to wonder how long gasoline and diesel would work. How about bullets, canned goods, etc? I knew we had a good long time before most stuff would go “bad”, but I also knew that we should learn not to rely on items that would not be available in the long term. Just a thought, because I wasn’t really expecting to be around for the “long term.”
After we blocked those ramps, we moved further south a bit in Swanton. Here, there were several bridges over the Missisquoi River. We blew several of them. This would make it difficult for any horde to attack from the north, since any real zombie population would have to come over one of those bridges, which they couldn’t. If a horde came down from Montreal, they’d hopefully fall off the bridge into the river.
There was a great sporting goods store in Swanton and we spent some time there. Most of the guns were gone, but there were several hunting bows, a good selection of arrows, and a few .50 caliber black powder rifles left. Also, some molds, powder, bullets and stuff. I figured Tom would have a good time with that stuff so we packed it. In the back room, which had not been raided, there was a case of Buck knives, all different types, and sheaths. That was a great find. We all chose a new one.
As we continued south, we blocked off any easy exits from the highway with lines of cars. Any hordes that somehow reached this area would be basically stuck on Route 89. We lost count of the cars and trucks that we torched, but there were hundreds, maybe thousands. I’d say there was an average of one zombie per car, so it was worth it.
The most zombies we saw were in one of those vans that delivers workers to Chinese restaurants. There were nineteen in there. Amazing. We saw a Rolls Royce, empty, and a Bentley containing three frozen and very well dressed Zs. The Rolls had a very nice matched set of 12 gauge shotguns in the trunk and the driver, apparently the butler, carried a .50 cal Desert Eagle, although he only had 50 rounds for it. We took it for novelty sake. That thing had one hell of a kick.
We decided to divert all of the traffic into the north bound lane. The southbound side was pretty jammed anyway. Each few miles, we’d simply line up cars in a line that funneled traffic across the median and into the north bound lane. We figured the hordes would be forced to follow the lines and go the way we wanted. There were simply too many cars to stack carefully. Many times, we’d just push a bunch of cars together and light them up.
As we rolled south, we decided to choose an “official vehicle” of the Farm and not destroy all of them. Mike and Ben wanted the Hummers but they were rare and likely hard to find parts for. We ultimately decided on F-150 pickups, especially the four door versions. There were a ton of them, mostly four wheel drives, and plenty of Ford dealerships around. We left the empty ones in good condition in place and destroyed the rest.
We covered a lot of ground but the process was very time consuming. We realized that we’d have to do it in pieces. We’d started the north, but we needed to handle St. Albans and then, most importantly, address Burlington to the south. We’d been on the road for a week and needed some rest, so we headed to the house in St. Albans. Mike and Ben insisted on keeping one of the F150s with four doors and double tires in the back and I decided to let them, if George agreed to ride with them. He was a good guy and said he would but only if Mike drove slow. The grin on Mike’s face was a mile wide.
The house was in good condition so we set up a watch rotation and got some rest for a couple of days. We had pretty much used up our rations so we restocked the two vehicles from the stores at the house. On the third day we started clearing St. Albans. As usual, our goals were to locate survivors, eradicate zombies, and find supplies, pretty much in that order.
Chapter Twenty Nine: The Bat Cave
We decided to work in two teams of three and that we’d start by working in a circle around our base, which Ben for some reason called the “Bat Cave” and we sort of started using it. The teams were Mike, Ben and me and Jake, George, and Darnell. We’d stay in radio contact and fire our weapons only if we had to.
Each team carried a 20 pound sledgehammer to break doors down and fluorescent pink spray paint to mark houses that we’d cleared. We’d use fluorescent yellow paint to mark houses that had stuff we wanted to come back to. Each team had a notebook to write down any really good finds and a hammer and nails to re-seal each house.
We got it down to where we could do a house in about ten minutes. We’d check for chimney smoke. If none, we’d break in the back and storm through the main floors, then the basement, then the attic. We’d throw any zombies out into the back yard and find something in the house to burn them with. Every house had flammable stuff in it. They burned pretty well for frozen meat; something about the virus must have made them more flammable.
The scenes in the homes were horrific. Lots of people had clearly murdered their families then killed themselves. Others had turned, then torn each other apart, then frozen. A smaller number had barricaded themselves in then survived for awhile, then either gone murder/suicide or zombie. There were lots of kids and lots of babies. We were getting used to tragedy, kind of numb to it. We burned every house that had dead bodies or blood in it.
We got used to checking for houses with lots of bodies in front. Those at least had weapons. We had plenty of guns but we wanted more ammo and guns in our main calibers—.22, .45, and .223—as well as explosives, mines, and bigger stuff.
We didn’t find any survivors on the first day. We worked for about six hours and cleared over fifty houses. The take was a couple hundred dead zombies and a decent cache of .22 rounds from a house that had thousands of shells but no weapons. Go figure.
The next morning we got up early and started where we left off. We found survivors in the first house that morning. A big white house with black shutters was carefully barricaded and kept neat as a pin. At least three chimneys were going. The house just felt right so I walked onto the driveway, stopped about 50 feet from the house, put my M4 on the ground, and called out.
Someone from the house quickly yelled “Turn around, mister.” I don’t really know why, but I did.
“Are you alone?”
“No, but I’m friendly. We’re looking for survivors and supplies. And we’re killing zombies.”
“Sounds good. If I were younger, I’d come with you. Come on in.”
I radioed it in to Mike and went into the house. The man I had been talking to was old. We introduced ourselves, then his wife came down. She was even older. Their names were Brick and Edith. We talked for awhile and I asked if they’d like to come with us. I told them a bit about the Farm, but not where it was. Trust was no longer in my vocabulary when it came to strangers. They asked about all of the people at the Farm and what they did and how we had gotten together. It was a delightful meeting, so nice to sit and talk like the old days.
Finally, Brick and Edith exchanged a glance. “We want to stay here,” said Brick, “but we’d like you to take the kids.”
“Okay,” I said. “We have a bunch of kids. I’m sure they’ll like it at the Farm.
Edith called them up from the basement. “Boys, come on up. We’ve got company.”
To my great surprise, the “kids” were at least sixty years old. Two huge, fat, bearded idiots wearing matching overalls. Not idiots in the classic sense, since these guys would probably have been ranked as morons under the old scale, which moved up from idiot, to imbecile, to moron. (Now they use the same term for all three classes—congressmen.) These guys looked like Bluto in the old Popeye cartoons. Their names were Elliot and Barry, like those furniture guys.
We spoke briefly. Elliot and Barry seemed nice enough but they wanted to stay with their folks. They had simply never grown up. Apparently, they did all of the work around the house and took care of the old folks. I thought they needed to stay together more than anything, so I proposed that they all come to the Farm. They refused. I proposed that they all come to the Bat Cave. Barry and Elliott beamed, jumped up and down, clapped their hands, and yelled “yes!” Even after I told them it was not the real Bat Cave, they were still excited. I called everyone in and we packed up their stuff and brought them over there.
Amazingly, they had no weapons except for a couple of long-handled shovels. Apparently, Barry and Elliott were some serious bad asses, so we figured they’d do a good job of watching the Bat Cave when we were gone. It was no use teaching them how to use firearms; it was simply beyond them. Brick was okay with a .45, though, and Edith could handle a 12 gauge if she had to, so I figured they’d be okay. Barry and Elliott insisted on fixing up a room in the basement and Brick and Edith chose a room on the first floor.
That killed that entire day. That night, Brick told us about their experience. Barry and Elliott were huge zombie fans. They had somehow immediately known what was happening and attacked anyone who came onto the property with their shovels. They mostly decapitated them with strikes to the throat. Edith was pretty sure that they’d ended a few people who hadn’t turned yet, so I made her feel better by telling her that many people had died after they let infecteds into their house. I told her that Barry and Elliott had done the right thing and that we were glad to have them.
Apparently, other than their miraculous and immediate interdiction with the zombies, neither Barry nor Elliott had ever committed a violent act in their lives. They spent their time eating, watching TV, and leafing through comic books. Elliott could read a bit and he’d sound them out to Barry. Barry could understand a bit, so he’d try to explain them to Elliott. The best way to describe them would be that they were the world’s only idiot savants of zombie lore and prevention. They were also up on vampires, all of Spiderman’s enemies, and certain types of ghosts, but zombies were their “thing.”
The next morning, Edith fixed us the best breakfast that we’d had since the Incident. Ham, eggs, hash browns and toast. No wonder those guys were so big. She also made really good coffee. We rolled out and started again in the house next to Brick’s.
We got through about 80 houses that day. No other survivors, but I made a great find. One of the houses was owned by a guy who owned a construction company. In his basement, he had a bunch of those fancy shovels that you use for ground breaking ceremonies. I found a pair of beauties, ash handled with solid silver blades. He also had a beautiful pair of 1911 .45s, a gorgeous old Boss 12 gauge over under, and about a thousand rounds of ammo for each. That was a good stop.
That night, Barry and Elliott were beside themselves when I presented them with the shovels. Brick and Edith were gracious when I gave them their weapons but I think they felt so safe with Barry and Elliott around that they literally didn’t worry about weapons. I don’t think Edith ever knew she had a $50,000 gun under her bed. Brick kept one of the .45s around with him but I never saw him fire it.
The next day was to be our last before we checked back in at the Farm. We had been gone for thirteen days and had agreed to return before fifteen days had passed. After seventeen days, they’d send out a rescue team. I realized that we really needed a good shortwave setup at the Bat Cave, especially with our new permanent occupants. That meant we’d need a generator and a fuel supply as well.