All That I See - 02 (39 page)

I used the RV to force my way through the chain link fence that surrounded the tower. I strapped my other AR-15 to my back, put my binoculars and lunch in my backpack, and started climbing. My shoulder was stiff, but I took it easy; I wasn’t in a rush. From the heavy mesh platform that encircled the huge, bulbous reservoir, I could see all of downtown Clayfield and some of the surrounding area.

The town was overrun with zombies from Clayfield, Singletree,
Riverton
, and from southern Illinois. A couple of the buildings near the court square were blackened from fire. The dome on the First Christian Church had a big hole in it, probably from a tank shell. Seeing the church—Sara’s church--just irritated the wound that was Sara’s absence. I lowered the binoculars and let them hang around my neck by the strap. Then I took it all in. I was probably the last healthy person left in Clayfield. I ha
d inherited an entire town. I remembered
Sara’s discussion about
Yertle the Turtle
when she was on that
roof.

“
I am the
ruler
of all that I see,” I whispered. There was nothing gratifying about the statement. It was hollow, pointless. I knew if I stayed in Clayfield by myself my sanity would be tested, but I had to stay for a little while. I needed to be in Clayfield in case Sara came back. I had to act as if she would return. If she did not, then I could assess the situation at a later time. I didn’t know how much later, just later.

I drove into Clayfield almost every day
for the next two weeks
. Gradually, the undead dispersed. They were still around; they just weren’t all congregating in downtown Clayfield. Sometimes, I would be out driving and see two or three hundred of them out in an open field or bunched up on a street. I don’t know why they did it. Maybe they heard something and would zone in on that location. Maybe they went there to feed on an animal. Maybe there were healthy people ar
ound that I didn’t know about.
Later, when I would pass by the same location, they would be gone.

In the weeks that followed, I spent most of my time at the stables. The garden had to be planted, the cisterns had to be set up to collect rainwater, firewood had to be gathered, and I worked on fortifying the property. I tried to go into Clayfield every couple of days to look around, but my main focus was on making myself a home. It never felt like home, and I never called it that. In my head, it was always the Lassiters’ place. I’d never met them, but it always felt like I was a guest.

I put up an additional fence across the front of the property. It wasn’t anything fancy—welded wire loosely stretched a few feet out from the board fence secured to T-posts. I could have used barbed wire, but I didn’t see a reason since zombies aren’t really slowed by pain. I put in a gate across the driveway too. Around the rest of the property, I added more welded wire, but I just attached it to
the
existing fencing.

I built ladders on the side of the house from the second story windows so I could escape either to the ground or to the roof. I also kept my vehicle parked next to the back door so if I ever needed to get away quickly, I could. I supplied every room in the house and barn with a gun, and every building got a bug-out bag containing at least 24 hours of provisions.

Having extra cars parked around at strategic locations would have been nice, but collecting vehicles was too much of a hassle for one person, so I didn’t do it. One day, I did drop off a few bicycles around town, but I was never brave enough or desperate enough to use them.

I planted the garden in the front pasture to the right of the driveway. It was
the
flattest area, and it got the most sun. It was also a little lower than the house, and I thought I could rig up a gravity-fed irrigation system from one of the cisterns if I needed to.

I broke up about an acre out there using a tractor with a disc attachment I had taken from one of the local farms. On the day I used the tractor, I set off a car alarm to lure the undead away from my location. A few of them still came in to investigate the noise of the tractor then followed me back over to the farm when I traded the tractor for my truck. I left the tractor running, and they stayed with it.

The garden was almost too big for me to tend by myself. After that first day, I didn’t use any machinery except basic hand tools like shovel, rake, and hoe. I committed at least a couple of hours every morning to maintaining it but that wasn’t really enough. I tried to be in it longer when I could, but there were so many other things that needed to be done. I never let the weeds take over in there, but the plot was never really clean either.

The weeds did take over everywhere else. By the middle of May, Clayfield and Grace County looked very differently. Grass in most lawns, including the courthouse lawn, was nearly waist high and some weeds had gotten even taller. The roads felt narrower because of the growth. I drove by the Sons of the Confederacy Cemetery around that time, and I could only see the tallest of the headstones and mausoleums. The grass there was thick and lush, fertilized by hundreds of decomposing corpses.

The undead didn’t go away. Some of them had wasted away to the point where they could no longer walk, but they didn’t die and were still quite dangerous. One afternoon I came up on one that was on the ground like that in the weeds. It looked like a skeleton with skin stretched over it. I thought it was dead, but it grabbed me when I stepped over it and bit my boot. Most, however, were still up and walking. They were finding nourishment somewhere, probably from livestock. I had noticed a huge reduction in the number of cows.

The flies were awful everywhere. The vultures, crows, dogs, and coyotes were abundant. I had to be extra careful when I was out on foot, because I never knew what predators would be lurking in the tall grass.

I planted my sweet potatoes the last week of May. Those shriveled potatoes Jen, Sara, and I had collect
ed
from Wal-Mart back in late winter had produced
thirty
-three slips and would continue to produce them so long as I kept them watered. I broke off the short, leafy vines and stuck them in the ground. I had grown sweets before in my tiny garden on 17
th
Street. The slips would wilt for a day or so, but I knew they would recover. Soon they would spread, and their leaves would help shade the ground and smother the weeds, making my job a little easier.

No matter how hard I worked and distracted myself, my
thoughts were never far from Sara and the Somervilles. Some days, I would get an overwhelming urge to drive into Clayfield to see if they had returned; and almost every evening, I would go to the end of the driveway and look down the road hoping to see them coming.

The water tower became a regular stop for me when I drove into town. I climbed up there at least once a week. I never saw any indication that other healthy people were still around. Every time I looked out from that tower, I hoped to see smoke from a cooking fire or a car
driving on one of the streets, but
I was all that was left.
I was never comfortable with that thought, but I did grow comfortable with the idea that Clayfield was mine
.
I was the king of all that I saw. I had earned it.

End of Book Two