ZWD: King of an Empty City (15 page)

 It took forever, but they finally shambled past me. None of them noticed and I don’t think I’ve ever held my breath that long before in my life. They traveled west on Seventeenth and disappeared in a few minutes. I heard a high-pitched whistle and looked up; she was waving the all-clear from the roof. She’d been watching the whole time through the binoculars. With guns in hand, I went back to the roof.

              It didn’t take long to see why these guys lost their fight. One box of shells didn’t go to any of the rifles they had. There were hardly any shells in the other boxes, so they probably either fired them all or I missed some in their pockets. A quick trip down there and I found none, they’d fired them all. We had probably nine rounds for all four guns, including a .357 pistol that had three rounds in it. A fucking hand cannon and these guys lost the fight. It gave me comfort in the weapons we’d been using, primitive but effective.

              We decided to leave the guns up here till we could get more ammo. Gathering up our weapons and tools, we headed over to Tommy and John’s to disassemble their deck. It looked like hunting a zombie herd was going to be on the agenda tomorrow, and I so looked forward to hot-wiring another thirty cars.

It didn’t take long to take the deck apart, which surprised me. Even despite the cold and snow and ice. A pry bar and a few screwdrivers and some elbow grease and we had it apart in two hours. I went to the Safeway parking lot and hot-wired a little Mazda truck, driving it down the alley to the back of the house, and we loaded the back with all the wood we had. Moments later we were at the stairs leading to the roof ladder. Carrying everything up the ladder was a bitch and took forever. We moved all we could to the landing and piled it there, then she went to the roof and I went up and down carrying board after board and handing them up to her as she stacked them up. When we were done, I drove the Mazda back up front and was thankful to get out of its gas-smelling cab. Something was very wrong with that little truck, and I feared it was going to burn up at any moment.

              I guess it was about noon by then. I sat there in the tent listening to the wind blow little pellets of ice against the outside. I was exhausted. She called to me for lunch. When I came out I was thinking about how we were going to put the first aboveground garden box together. We needed nails or screws and a drill. A power drill would be better and quieter than a hammer. We needed power, and a crane for the dirt and five thousand men for the pyramid. I wondered if the pharaohs had so much fun in the early days of their kingdoms.

              After lunch I went back into the tent. Since we didn’t have the stuff to put together the boxes yet, we decided to clear another house, this time the one next to Tommy and John’s. I didn’t think there would be much to it since we’d spent most of the morning taking the deck off the back and hadn’t heard anything from inside, but still it had to be done.

ZWD: King of an Empty City Chapter 18

ZWD: Dec. 15.

Black trucks and zombie parades, oh my. I also get an early Christmas gift.

They all had to be done. I had just lain back down and closed my eyes for a quick nap when she said, “You better get out here and look at this.” The black truck with red flames was traveling east slowly down Seventeenth Street. The burly black guy we’d seen before with his red-and-gray-checkered coat was in the back kneeling down messing with a rope. The rope was tied to something somewhere in the bed of the truck. They were moving at a snail’s pace. The passenger window was down and a guy with a knit cap was looking back behind them, half-hanging out the window. The black guy in the back yelled, “Slow down, you’re losing them.” Trailing behind them off the rope was a body. This one I know was alive, and he was kicking and struggling as they dragged him down the road. Just a few yards behind him came the zombie herd we’d seen this morning. The truck was leading them somewhere and using live bait to do it.

              About the time they got to the intersection of Seventeenth and Main, the truck surged forward and sped through the intersection. They were speeding to the three headless bodies we’d left in the road. The guy in the back made his way to the back of the cab; his salt and pepper beard filled with ice and snow, he banged on the hood of the cab and yelled for the driver to slow down. The guy hanging out of the truck turned and looked at the headless bodies next to him, then pointed it out to the black man in the back. Both were now looking at them. The passenger slid out of the window and knelt down beside one of the bodies. I could hear him say, “Cut clean off.” The black man in the back looked around at the blood pools and smears.

“Looks like one man. We got us a warrior out here somewhere.” He looked at the herd getting closer. “Get in the truck, let’s get these back. We’ll worry about our warrior later.” He was looking around at all the buildings and just before his eyes scanned the roof of our Safeway, we ducked down. I don’t think we were spotted. We heard the man in back beat on the hood of the cab again and yell, “Get going,” and the truck slowly rumbled away.

              We’d backed away to the center of the roof and were sitting down listening for the truck to disappear, neither one of us willing to even whisper for fear that they might hear us over the rumble of that engine. When it was silent again she said, “We need to do something about them.”

              “I know, but what?”

              “Kill them?”

              “We can’t do that. Besides, we don’t know how many of them there are,” I pointed out. “Maybe they’re not bad people, maybe this is just their way of surviving? Different from ours.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth I knew that those assumptions were wrong. These bastards were marauders, killers, and very bad men.

              “We have to do something.”

              “Let’s talk to them.”

              “How? We don’t even know where they are. And you remember when they just drove by and killed that person. They didn’t even check to see if that man was a zombie, they just killed him. If we just go up to them and say, ‘Hi, we’re your neighbors, we come in peace’ they’re going to kill us too. Or something worse.” She had a point. I had an idea.

The next hour we’d been in and out of the Safeway with the supplies we needed and were back on the roof making our signs. Several signs said “Notice this way” with an arrow pointing in big black magic marker. The first poster was taped to the front door of the U.S. Drug Store building in bright neon pink. I thought they’d notice it first and follow the trail we left them. We stapled the poster-size sheets to telephone poles that led to the parking lot of the Izard Street Baptist Church, and there on the door we tied a notebook with a pen attached to it and wrote on the first page, “Hi, we need to talk. Let’s meet,” and then we left.

              I know it’s a slow means of communicating, but they wouldn’t know where we were and how many of us we were, so it gave us an advantage, although a small one. Now all we had to do was wait.

              That night on the roof, we talked about how we were going to do this meeting. After they responded to the note, we’d choose a time and place to meet, then wait and see from there. Brilliantly detailed plan, right? I know; it was very adaptable. We did decide that we’d meet at the Save-A-Lot grocery store down on Broadway next to Roosevelt Road. There’d be big trees and plenty of hiding places for us to watch them and see how they acted. We decided that we’d meet just before dawn so we could have plenty of time to hide in trees or wherever. Now all we had to do was wait for them to find the notebook.

              Since we could only check the notebook tomorrow we went ahead and cleared the house next to Tommy and John’s house. Like I thought, it took us ten minutes and we found nothing. Not even anything useful for us. I was sent to get the three heads of the hunters and bring them back to Tommy and John’s house while she started a pot with hot water and vinegar. She was going to boil the skulls clean. The house ended up stinking so I sat outside on the front porch while she worked. I pulled out another Swisher Sweet Peach cigar and chewed the plastic tip. I sat out there till the freezing rain started to fall, and then I went inside.

              She was at the table painting flowers around the eyes of the skulls. Across their foreheads were their names. Inside their mouths, she’d used glue to attach their IDs. So it looked like we were going to the Mount Holly Cemetery again in the morning.

              Back on the roof of the Safeway, we were talking in the tent. We were talking about taking trips and going to the Grand Caymans, or Mexico or Greece, just leaving. I wanted to leave, but where you gonna go? We were just talking about getting away from all this madness and going someplace where we could get back to normal life. I’d mentioned how I’d like to go hunting in Colorado again. The dream with Dylan and Stager kind of made me homesick. That was when she remembered, “Oh! We have to go back to the Pages’ house.”

              “Why?”

“I found something and I think we need it.”

              “What?”

              “The combination to the gun safe,” she offered with a smile.

I thought about the black truck, about the advantage those guns would have for us with them. About going hunting for the winter and how easily we could live off squirrels or small birds. We suddenly had an advantage if she did indeed have the combination to that gun safe at the Page house. All I could do was smile about it; hell, you couldn’t wipe that grin off my face. I slept well that night.   

ZWD: King of an Empty City Chapter 19

ZWD: Dec. 16.

When the electricity went out, keeping a fire became key. Dryer lint is perfect for starting a fire, and there’s lots of it in the city.

The next morning we woke up early and I was excited. We were going to get guns. I went out of the tent and rummaged around in the food bins to see what we could eat. There was a can of mixed fruit and a small bag of fortune cookies. Today was going to be simple. We were going to stop at the base house and pick up the drill and some deck screws and head over to the Page house to get the guns. Once we got back, we were going to build the raised garden boxes and start hot-wiring cars. I thought we could get at least one side of the ramps closed before dark. I stretched and was lacing up my boots when she said, “Where are all the lights?”

               I looked around at the surrounding buildings and absently said, “It’s daylight, they’ve gone out.” And gave it not another thought.

                  “No, not just the streetlights. All of them are out.”

I looked up and started noticing what she was talking about. The lights on the old TCBY building were off; all the streetlights were off. All the lights were off. Turning to the tent, she pointed and said, “Look.” I looked over my shoulder and the rope lights that we’d strung to the tent door were off. The city had lost power.

             
A real tremor of fear shot through my body as I looked at the ladder that was no longer electrified. We were now vulnerable. A lot of things that were easy to us were now going to be much more difficult without electricity. Hot water, heat indoors. I think I started to hyperventilate just thinking about it all when I saw the gargoyle’s eyes pop back on. All the lights popped back on. The TCBY building’s sign lit back up, streetlights came back on, and there was a buzz in the air again that I hadn’t noticed before. The city was alive again. A thought sank into the pit of my stomach—but for how long? I imagined someone in the electrical plant for the city asking, “What does this switch do?” and turning off everything, then going, “Oh no!” and flipping it back on. I didn’t even know where the power plant was for the city, but I told myself that someone was learning how to use it, probably to blackmail us all into paying them for the service. I added “invent alternative power source” to the list of things I needed to do. Nothing spectacular, I’d just whip up a cold fusion reactor. Get me some rubber bands and a can of coke and I’m on it. I’ll just MacGyver that together real quick. Crap, I hate my life.              

                  She gave a satisfied “humph” and asked what we were doing today as if this was normal and not something else to worry about. What were we doing? Hot-wiring cars, clearing houses, taking apart another deck, hiding from the black truck, looking for more food, getting the guns from the safe, take your pick.

“Let’s get the guns first. If the power goes out again I don’t want to be caught up here without firepower.”

              “How are we going to protect this place if the power goes out?”

              “I don’t know. You got any ideas?”

              “Nothing yet, but I’ll work on it.”

              I told her she needed to work fast as I walked over to the ledge facing the alley and looked down. The problem was that there were two entrances to the alley. If we blocked off one of them, we could create a killing zone for anyone below trying to get to the ladder. If we closed off the entrance to Seventeenth Street, then we drew attention to ourselves but we had a perfectly long killing zone. If we closed off the entrance on Eighteenth Street, we couldn’t easily slip in and out of the alley unseen. I’d have to think about this one for a while.

                  A few minutes later, we were dressed and armed, headed for the Page house to pick up the guns and the truck. We’d stop by the church and see if there was any response to the note on the way back. I knew we were dropping off the skulls at Mount Holly Cemetery, and then we were looking for another deck or fence. There was a pretty new six-foot privacy fence on Chester I’d noticed last time we were down that way and I thought we could take it apart in a few hours, dump the wood into the truck, and get back before dark. It was going to be a miserable day taking apart a fence in the icy snow. I don’t like these kinds of days; they stay dark all the time like it’s twilight. The sleet doesn’t help. You just bundle up and try to make the best of it. I was wearing two pairs of socks and boots. My feet were still cold. The coveralls were supposed to be waterproof, but they weren’t damp-proof, and the cold damp was seeping in despite the heat I generated as we walked. Our heads were down and our shoulders set against the wind. The Page house was blocks away, almost a mile from the Safeway. I was thinking about the power outage and fire. It would probably be a good idea to keep a fire going from now on, just in case this happened again, so we’d have light. A few more carpets and we’d be warm enough in the tent. That thing was surprisingly sturdy against the cold and with the added carpets it was almost toasty. I would have liked it if we were in a house, but we didn’t have control of our world yet, so for now it was the tent on the roof.

                  Here’s the thing about fires. To make a fire you need several things: a way to start it, and there are several methods; we had lighters galore and if they ever ran out I had a magnesium stick to start a fire. Those are wonderful when you don’t have lighters. You need kindling; that would be the firewood or anything that burns. In high school we’d burn tree stumps or tires to make bonfires, sometimes scraps from construction sites. Gathering that stuff was easy and living in an old part of town, we had plenty available. You need tinder. That’s the hard part; for that you need paper, wood shavings, dried moss, or anything that’s thin, dry, and flammable. Camping, you must carry your own tinder with you
so you know it is always dry and ready to use
. Here in town there were books everywhere. Hell, one copy of
Moby-Dick
should get us through the winter, perhaps the next one too. But the best tinder of all is dryer lint, and that you can just pull out of the vents of houses at the dryer exhaust. We’d need plastic bags to store it in, but that was no problem.

               Speaking of problems, I’ve noticed that problems can be very big till you come up with a solution. I was worried about the power going out till I started thinking about how to keep a fire going. I’d done this before with Dylan and Stager; I could do it again. Securing the ladder to the roof would be another problem I’d have to work on a little later. Without electricity charging through it, we were vulnerable up there and I didn’t want to start standing watches just to keep us safe.

              At the Page house, I could tell that someone had snooped around the place but not entered. There were tracks in the snow that weren’t ours and someone had tried to pry open one of the windows with little success. A window to the garage where all the gardening stuff was kept had been wiped clean and there was still the oily impression of a chilled face pressed against the glass. We got inside and after a quick check found everything as we left it. The den with all the hunting trophies for Cody hid the gun safe in the closet. She fished out the combination and worked the dial, then punched in the code. Mr. Page wanted to make certain his guns were safely put away with this safe. I’d seen them for sale in gun stores. A hulking, big green chest with decals of swirled lines that gave it the look of an old combination safe.

               Inside was an armory. Stuffed in everywhere, on top of each other, in layers, were guns, rifles, assault rifles, shotguns, small pistols, and a few weapons that looked so deadly I had no idea what the hell they were used for. And there in the back tucked neatly away was a Barrett M107 .50 caliber sniper rifle with an engagement distance of 1500 to 2000 yards of accuracy. And it had the Leupold 4.5x14 Vari-X scope. Mr. Page, you naughty boy, these were illegal for civilians to have now. I’d read about them in magazines, but to see one, hold one, oh yes!

             
There were two drawers inside at the bottom of the safe, and they were filled with boxes and boxes of shells, cartridges, and rounds. Each neatly stacked and lined up. The .38 bullets were all on top of each other right next to the 9mm boxes, next to the 12-gauge shells.

                  A quick look at these boxes told me things I hadn’t understood about Mr. Page and his family before and the M107 just confirmed it. He was a survivalist. His ammo box contained the most common and easily found rounds for someone who was looking to survive for a long time. His kids and family with all the archery skills were getting ready to live off the land, hunting small game and staying quiet. The obscenely well-stocked camping supplies, they were ready to travel and live off the land for a while. I guess someone got bitten and that threw his contingency plan for a loop. But then again, I guess he, like most of them, was preparing for a worldwide economic collapse, not a zombie contagion. He probably had a shelter stocked floor to ceiling somewhere outside of town. That would be a nice place to find.

To one side of the closet were a few big black duffel bags that could hold several guns and a bunch of ammo. That’s what we stuffed the guns into. He had some nice scopes on some of his rifles; hell, he had some nice rifles. I couldn’t wait to check them out when we had the time. We pulled out all the 9mm and .22 caliber rifles as well as a few pistols of the same caliber, thinking it would be easier to follow Page’s lead on this. We left the house with eight rifles and six pistols all stuffed into one bag. In the other we stuffed everything that matched them from the drawers. I also grabbed this space-age looking thing that later I found to be a Barrett M82 sniper rifle, so I grabbed the box and clips of .50 caliber rounds. We didn’t need it and it really wasn’t practical to have such a high-powered specialty rifle, but it looked neat as hell and I wanted it.

             
We lugged all this out to the garage after closing the safe and locking the house and threw them into the back seat of the truck. I’d started it up and was letting the cab get warm while she went to the bathroom before we left.

              We drove over to the church to see if anyone had gotten our message. I stopped just in front of the door and she hopped out to look at the notebook hanging by a string that we had tied to the glass door entrance.

                  Shaking her head as she was getting back in the truck, she said, “There were footprints going up to the door that weren’t ours, but nothing was written there.” I turned the truck around in the lot and was headed for the street when a boy stepped from behind the bushes and stood there. From his coat he pulled out a cigarette and lit it. Judging from his size, he couldn’t have been more than thirteen years old. We quickly looked around for the other children but didn’t see them. I left the truck running but got out and walked over to him. Still looking around, I didn’t see anyone else. She got out of the truck and stopped beside me.

                “You wanted to talk,” he said, gesturing to the notebook hanging from the church door.

                  “Actually, that was meant for the black truck.” His eyes widened as I said it.

                   “The black trucks don’t talk, they take people,” he replied with a glint of fear in his eyes. He glanced around as all three of us stopped for a moment and listened for the sound of its engine.

              “I was hoping that I could arrange a meeting with them and maybe work out a truce.”

              “They won’t go for it.” he offered.

              “Where are the rest of your guys?” she asked.

              “What are you talking about? It’s just me.”

              “I saw you with four other kids the other night at the Safeway,” I said, realizing that if she said anything more they’d know where we lived. “Where are the rest of them?”

              “It’s just me.”

              “Bullshit!” I shouted and then yelled to the sky, “Come on out, we know you’re around here somewhere and we need to talk to all of you. This is important and involves all of you.” A moment later, from different bushes and trees, six kids appeared from the surrounding foliage of the parking lot. The two tallest kids had the potato cannon rifles in hand. Two other kids had similar-looking pistols. All of them wore hoodies under their jackets with the hoods pulled up over their heads, hiding most of their features. They formed a semicircle around us. The two oldest pulled their hoods back so their faces could be seen. They were all trying their best to look like tough men.

              “What’s so important that it concerns the S.O.L.?” said one of the kids holding the potato cannon rifles. I recognized him as the kid who threw up the heavy metal sign in the post office parking lot.

              “The S.O.L?” she asked.

“Sons of Lemmy,” he offered, pointing a finger at everyone in the group. “As in Lemmy of Motörhead.”

              “Nice. You the leader?” I asked.

              “No, that’s Eddie,” he said, and pointed to the thirteen-year-old we’d been talking to. Eddie might have been their leader but they came out of hiding pretty quickly after two adults told them to. My guess was that even with Eddie’s leadership they were starving for some form of adult guidance. I didn’t plan on taking them in and feeding them, and I kind of got the feeling they were proud that the S.O.L. had survived this long without any adults, but if nothing else, I could perhaps recruit them on occasion in doing different things like clearing houses.