Zombies in Paradise (Love in the Age of Zombies Book 2) (22 page)

“Excellent!” Kevin said. “What hops did you use?” They talked brewing for a few minutes until two men and a woman walked up and introduced themselves as Stan, Nadine, and Arthur. Nadine was an attractive woman in her fifties, with pure silver hair, while Stan looked to be a bit older and mostly bald. Arthur looked around sixty.

“Why don’t we grab a table,” one of the men suggested. “We’re the unofficial welcoming committee.” The four sat down at an empty table. “So, what brings you to our fair town?” Stan asked. Although he was making an attempt to act relaxed and light-hearted, Kevin picked up on some low-level guardedness.

“I traveled from Ann Arbor to see if there’s a working hospital here,” he said. “My wife’s pregnant and is having some medical issues. We live with a doctor who said she may need medical treatment.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Nadine asked.

“She might have something called preeclampsia. From what I understand, the only cure is delivery. But if that’s what she has, we need to be close to medical facilities. She’s just over four months along and Doc started noticing symptoms a few weeks ago.”

“Preeclampsia is hard to diagnose without lab equipment,” she said, “how do you know there’s anything wrong?”

“We don’t know for sure. But her mother had it, plus her age and some other risk factors. Like I said, we live with a doctor. He said I could lose both her and the baby. I can’t let that happen.” Kevin wondered if Nadine was in the health field.

As if reading his thoughts, Stan said “Nadine’s a veterinarian, and a busy one at that. People still have pets and livestock.

Kevin was about to ask a few questions but before he could, Arthur addressed him. “How did you survive the Collapse?” he asked.

“I got lucky. A couple years ago I retrofitted my basement to act as a survival bunker, complete with solar power, hydroponics, and plenty of food and supplies. Just before the Collapse, a new neighbor moved in. When the bottom dropped out, she had no food, no power, no heat. She moved in with me. And, well, now she’s my wife and she’s pregnant.”

“You said you live with a doctor. How many of you are there?”

The way the questions were being asked, Kevin could tell they were being more than just friendly. He didn’t know their motives, but figured it best to be transparent and friendly.

“It was just me and Michelle—that’s my wife—for the first six months or so. But we talked to Doc on the radio a lot. When he learned Michelle was pregnant, he made his way to our house.”

“Where did he live?” Nadine asked.

“He lived in Atlanta, Michigan, about thirty miles west of Alpena. He was well provisioned with a Jeep and plenty of supplies.”

“How long ago did he join you?”

Now the rapid-fire questions were getting on his nerves and it came through in his voice. “I told you, he moved in after about six months. Is there anything else you want to know?!”

“What was your occupation before the Fall?”

Kevin sighed. “Like I told Brian, I was an IT specialist. Now if you don’t mind, I have a few questions of my own.” The three exchanged glances. Nadine, who had been leaning forward on the table, reclined back in her chair. She waved to Brian to get his attention, then lifted one finger in the air. Brian nodded back.

“We don’t mean to interrogate you. We have to be careful. We’ve had people try to sneak their family in—family members who had turned. We had a sexual predator. For all we know you’re a psycho. You could be an advance scout for an unfriendly paramilitary group. Or an Amway salesman. We have a good thing here, and we need to stay vigilant.”

As she was saying this, Brian brought over a pint and set it in front of her. Hearing her last few comments, he said with a wink, “Vigilant is right! You could be here to steal my hard cider recipe!”

“So what is your setup? Life seems pretty normal here,” Kevin asked, taking another sip of his beer.

“Normal? There is no normal. Normal disappeared last October. Now all we have is a strange life we’ve gotten used to. We used to have nearly twice the population before the grid went down. Some of them took off. Some died. Some chose to end life on their own terms.”

“How are you able to ensure everyone’s safety? How are you surviving?”

“We figured out early on that zombies were unwilling to cross bodies of water: lakes, rivers, even large creeks. We have Lake Michigan to the west, Betsie Bay and Betsie River to the south and east, and Crystal Lake to the north. We ran a fence between Crystal Lake and Lake Michigan, and another fence from the Crystal Lake dam to the Betsie River. Are you familiar with this area?”

“Yes, I vacationed at Lake Menekaunee for years. We used to come into Frankfort all the time, sometimes drove into Beulah or to the Cherry Hut. I liked to visit the J&M Rock Shop.”

“So you know there’s not a lot of distance between the southwest end of Crystal Lake and Lake Michigan. It’s about a half-mile. And It’s just over a half-mile from the other side of Crystal Lake to the Betsie River. We had crews out every day putting up fences and scouting for zombies. Once the fence was up, we were cordoned off and the zombies couldn’t get in.”

“You were able to get rid of them all?”

“Zombie patrols got rid of most of them, but there are still some in the woods. It was a pretty active job for awhile, but we found less and less as the weather got cold, and they were easy to eliminate. Now that the weather is warming up, we’ve started seeing a few. It’s still a dangerous situation.”

“And the hospital is open?”

“Yes, barely,” Nadine responded. “We have a doctor, a pharmacist, and a handful of nurses. A couple across the bay provides the hospital with power from their solar panels.

“You mean Jake and Lee? I met them on my way here.”

“Did she show you her boobs?” Arthur asked with a grin.

Kevin felt himself blush. “Yes, she did.”

Nadine sighed and said, “That woman. What are we going to do about her?”

“We’re not going to do anything. If not for Jake and Lee, we might not be alive,” said Stan. “They’re our benefactors. By choice. And she has gorgeous boobs.” He turned to me. “Jake was able to stockpile quite a few solar panels before the grid went down, and of course there’s his wind turbines. He generates far more power than he needs, and he donates the rest to the county. The hospital gets priority.”

“Who’s the authority here? Who makes the rules and who enforces them?”

“There’s not one person. Right now a group of folks make the decisions and call themselves the city council, but there’s talk about swapping members out this fall. Some people want there to be a lottery so everybody gets a chance to serve. Others want to have an election. Personally, I’d rather it be a lottery. The idea of having people campaign for the job turns my stomach. I think it should be the civic duty of everyone to serve a term, just like jury duty,” finished Nadine with a look of resolve in her eyes.

“And the problem with that,” Stan said, “is that we have a very limited supply of people who know how to efficiently run a municipality like Frankfort. We can’t have council members who don’t know how to get things done or delegate responsibility or make an unpopular decision. We can’t put people in charge of Frankfort who don’t know what the hell they’re doing. That’s asking for disaster.” Kevin got the feeling this was an old, unsettled argument.

“Nadine,” Arthur said, “you’re saying we shouldn’t let the majority decide who to put in charge, but if the majority doesn’t decide, who does? A few people who will run everything? Like a plutocracy? That’s just asking for trouble! Let the people elect who should run Frankfort, not a privileged few!”

“And create in Frankfort a political system filled with, ugh, politicians. No, thanks! There has to be a better way.”

Kevin interrupted the political discussion, feeling the futility of either side to sway the other’s opinion. “But you have some kind of security system in place?”

“We agreed early on that to qualify for certain benefits. Everybody has to spend some time doing community work, whether that means going on security patrol or watching a handful of toddlers. For our community to work, everyone has to pitch in. There’s no other way to make it fair. We’ve had a lot of grumbling about forced labor, but that grumbling usually stops when we have a crisis. If a zombie gets loose and bites people, who turn into zombies and bite others, we could have another scenario as horrible as the pandemic last fall. That’s how we developed the barter system. Nobody gets anything for free except a few terminally ill people and some Alzheimer’s patients. The community voted to support them. Otherwise, you can barter your time or your product or your talent or your services and get credit to purchase something you need. And as certain items get scarce, their value goes up. You wouldn’t believe how long a guy has to work to earn enough credits for a package of toilet paper, for God’s sake,” he said with a sad shake of his head.

“What about the people who have limited education and skills?”

“Everybody can do something. Right now we’re in the process of planting a community farm. Anyone can dig holes or plant seeds or pull up weeds. We have a few mentally challenged citizens who sit with the cancer patients and Alzheimer’s patients. In the old days both groups would have sat around watching TV. Now we have the keepers reading books to the patients, or taking them for walks, or playing games. And we’ve noticed an improvement in the mentally-challenged. They’re not smarter—that will never happen—but they’re more balanced. Helping someone worse off than them has had an impact. They develop empathy and social skills and some enjoy it so much they volunteer to work extra hours.”

“We had a few people who refused to do any civic duty, so they earned no credits for bartering. It didn’t take long for them to run out of food or something else they needed, and their hunger propelled them to get on board and earn credits. On the other hand, if you have someone who puts in twice as many hours, they earn more credits, so they can afford to buy better produce, or pay someone to watch their kids, or try to start their own business.

“How do you have enough to eat?”

“The winter was tough, not being able to grow food. But thankfully we had Jake, who turned out to be quite a guy and pretty smart despite being a stoner. He donates his excess power and turns over all the goods from his greenhouse to the council. Well, except for some of what he grows in his marijuana greenhouse. He keeps some of that for himself. Did you see Lee’s boobs?” Arthur asked again with a bright look in his eyes.

“You already asked him. He said yes. Let it go, Arthur.” Turning back to Kevin, Nadine said “We have Lake Michigan for fishing. We’re expecting a big year for salmon and lake trout. We have the rivers for brown trout and panfish. We have a lot of woods with deer, rabbit, and even bear. We have one small cattle farm, a small alpaca herd, and a couple of chicken houses. We’re going to use the community garden to grow as much food as we can, and we’ll preserve much of it. Plus people are finding novel ways to use the big harvests of apples and cherries.”

“Like me!” Brian called from across the room.

“Brian made a cherry farmhouse ale last year and a nice pumpkin ale.”
That explains his questions about my pumpkin beer
, Kevin thought. “He also has been developing some interesting hard ciders. They’re very good. I suspect Frankfort will get back to its roots and a lot of the beverages sold here will be apple based, or cherry based, some of them alcoholic. Even before the grid went down, local apple orchards were selling a lot of hard cider. So we’re likely to have people making alcohol from local crops. But probably not a lot of drinks that are fish-based,” he said with a laugh. “And I’m sure Brian or Rick has some notions about distilling alcohol. The reality is, alcohol takes an edge off the pain of our times. We’ve lost almost everything. It hurts. Alcohol and marijuana help make that loss tolerable.”

“When I started planning my basement,” Kevin offered, “I decided to get plenty of liquor, soft drinks, and beer. I wasn’t thinking of using them as currency—I just figured that being alone, I’d be bored and lonely and want to drink now and then.”

“I thought you said your wife moved in,” Nadine asked.

“That was long after I’d started stocking up. If it’d been up to her, I’d have bought several dozen cases of wine, too.”

“From Michigan, I hope,” Stan said. Nadine and Arthur glanced at each other and laughed.

“It’s a running joke,” Arthur explained. “One of Stan’s jobs before the grid went down was chairing a
buy local
campaign. He got laid off from that job,” he said, still chuckling, “back around October. Now
everybody
buys local and Stan manages one of the nursing homes.”

Stan grinned and shrugged. “I changed jobs slicker’n snot on a doorknob. Find a need and fill it.”

Looking at Nadine, Kevin said, “I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions, but can we go to the hospital? I told my wife I’d be back home just a few days from now. I’m already going to be a day late and don’t want her to worry. I need to ask the doctors some questions.”

“See that lady over there?” she nodded toward a table where a woman sat alone with her head bent over a book. Next to her hand was a barely-touched beer. “She’s our one and only pharmacist. She puts in hours at the hospital. Let’s see if she’ll walk you to the hospital.”