Infected: They Will Eat You!: A Story of Family Survival in a Zombie Apocalypse (7 page)

“Something will.” I said, “We just need to be ready.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“You think they did this in Israel and England and they don’t plan something for the U. S.?” I said, “The same or something is coming. Even if it is a shutdown of the infrastructure by the government to restrict travel it will cause food shortages. That means people will panic. Not a good thing.”

“I hope not.” she said, “Are you doing anything to get ready if something does happen?”

“We’ve been stocking up on food and water for a few days.” I answered, “I have materials to board up the house. We have a semi-plan but need to make some decisions.”

“Decisions about what?” she asked.

“If it gets bad, what
bad
is, how long we’ll stay, where we’ll go, how to go…that sort of thing.” I answered.

“Do you want to come here?” she asked.

“Too many people.” I answered.

“Where would you go?” she asked, “The mountains, North Carolina…?”

“I think there would be too many people heading there.” I said, “You’ve got New York and Baltimore, D. C., Philly….there’s millions of people who could head there. I’m thinking west.”

“Colorado?” she asked.

“Maybe.” I said, “Or Montana, Wyoming…..”

“That far?” she said.

“Further away but fewer people.” I said, “Fewer people seems safer to me.”

“Is everyone OK?” she asked, “Everyone’s healthy?”

“Yep, everyone’s good.” I answered, “Tired, concerned about what might happen, but healthy.”

We chatted for a few more minutes but my mind was on other things. “Well, when you decide what you’re plans are if something happens let up know.” she said.

“I will.” I said, “I love you.”

“I love you too.” she responded.

When we hung up I put took the phone inside and got more coffee. The boys were making breakfast, Christine was on the phone while still watching TV. I walked into the living room and asked “Anything new?”

“Hold on.” she said into the phone, “It looks like the same type of thing is happening in London as in Israel. They are trying to get the vaccinations to people there. I think they are going to force us to take the vaccine and soon!”

“OK.” I said and went back to the kitchen.

“You want some eggs Daddy?” asked Caleb.

“Yep,” I answered, “I’m hungry.”

“I’m cooking the bacon.” said Jesse.

“Good, let’s have a big breakfast, we have a lot of work to do today. Let me know when it’s ready.” I said as I went back outside.

We worked most of the day on organizing and making lists of what we had. We cleaned up our work areas around the garage, straightened up inside the garage so we could get to everything more easily and talked about defending the house. We lived in town and houses were close together. There would be plenty of places for attackers to hide so we wanted to have a plan in place. Our best strategy we decided was to just be quiet.

It started getting dark so we packed everything up and went inside. We ate in front of the TV. It didn’t take the boys long to fall asleep. About nine I was nodding off so I got them up to brush their teeth and we went upstairs. Christine stayed watching events on TV and talking on the phone.

CHAPTER FOUR

“Get up. I need your help.” I was patting Caleb on the shoulder to wake him up.

“What time is it?” he didn’t really care about the time that was just a common response when he was over tired.

“Four-thirty.” I said, “I need your help. Get up now. Be quiet, I don’t want anyone else up yet.”

“Why?” he asked a little more awake.

“We need to get movin’ and I don’t want distractions.” I answered.

I’d been up for a half hour and the news on TV was not good. Vaccinations had started yesterday in London and last night in D. C., Atlanta and New York City. It wasn’t going well. The vaccines were making people sick, sicker than it should.

“We’re going to start boarding up the windows.” I told him on the way down the stairs, “We’ll start with the basement windows and door then ones on the back of the house. We also need to get the stairs to the balcony down as soon as we can.”

“OK.” He said still groggy, “Can I eat something first?

My mouth opened to say no but I paused and said “Sure, I’m hungry too.”

He made oatmeal while I started lugging the plywood we’d cut and laid the pieces by windows. We ate quickly and got to work.

“Why are we doing this now?” he finally asked as we sealed up the first window.

“The vaccines are not working. They are actually making people sick.” I answered, “Do you know how a vaccine works?”

“No.” he said.

“It gives you a tiny dose of whatever it’s for.” I started, “Like a flu shot gives you a little amount of flu so your body can fight it and then it remembers how to fight it the next time. If you have gotten a certain illness you are less likely to get it again. You become immune because the body knows what to do next time. Understand?”

“Yeah.” he answered.

“What they’re saying on TV” I continued, “is that people can’t handle the virus, even as small dose as is in the vaccine. Instead of people’s body fighting it off and becoming immune they are getting sick.”

“That’s not good.” was all he said.

“No, it’s not.” I said, “If this continues it could get dangerous.”

“That’s why we’re boarding up the house now.” he said.

“Yep.” I answered.

We worked for another hour getting the basement secured along with the windows in the back. We placed the plywood for the front windows on the porch and leaned the rest against the house by their respective windows. Someone would have to look closely to notice we’d done anything and since our yard always looked “played in” seeing boards wouldn’t be unusual.

By the time we got back inside Christine was up sipping coffee on the couch with the TV on and phone to her ear. It was easy to see she’d been crying.

“This is terrible.” she said looking up at me, “These poor people.”

“Yeah.” I answered, “We need to get together and talk about a few things.”

“I’m talking to Jen, I’ll be off in a minute.” she said, “She says people are leaving Washington D. C. and that the roads are backed up for miles.”

“Humph.” I grunted and left.

My thought was that if people were leaving the D. C. area they were leaving Philly and New York and everywhere along the coast. Probably we’d start seeing floods of traffic around midday. More people meant more stress on local supplies. A couple days ago we bought extra gas cans and filled them. We had about a hundred gallons stored away but the tanks in our cars should be topped off before people started streaming into the area. One more trip to the grocery store couldn’t hurt either.

“Caleb,” I hollered out.

“Yeah.” he answered.

“We’re going to gas the cars up. Get ready.” Walking by the living room I let Christine know what we were doing. “I’ll stop at Wegman’s as well. Do we need anything specific?”

“Not that I can think of.” she answered.

It was a little past seven and the town was active, much more active that a normal Sunday morning. We took Christine’s SUV to get gas first and filled it with no issue. By the time we returned with my truck there was a line of cars three deep at each pump. Once full we headed for the grocery store but just drove by.

“I’m not going in there.” I thought aloud.

“Why not?” asked Caleb.

“Too many people, it’s going to be stupid in there.”

The parking lot was full of cars. People were streaming in and out with carts piled high. There was no way we were going to waste time going inside. The rush had started.

By ten we were all watching the news. Christine was talking on the phone, the boys were silent watching and eating. I was writing another list of what to do next and looking at the atlas. I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention until Jesse said, “They are zombies.”

I looked up and saw what looked like a zombie movie on the TV. There were hordes of people moving through the streets attacking anyone who was not a zombie. Police lines were firing on them with little effect, mostly they were just mowed down. It looked like a swelling wave moving through the streets.

“Where is this?” I said.

“London.” Caleb answered.

“Let me know if they show the U. S.”

I looked at the atlas and started to calculate mileage and routes to places that were less densely populated. There were many places just close. We had over a third of the nation’s population within 300 miles of us and I wanted to put some distance between them and us.

“Daddy, they’re showing New York City.” the boys said in unison. It was a similar sight as we saw in London. Smaller hordes but the snowballing effect was the same. The image switched to an aerial view of D. C. then Atlanta.

“
Scenes like these are coming in from all over;
” the woman on TV was saying, “
Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas have National Guard being sent in to help contain the mobs
.

“
Looting has started in cities across the country as some people try to take advantage of the chaos and others just to get food and water in case the situation gets worse
.

“
On the east coast the roads are blocked with traffic many backed up for over ten miles in Washington D. C. and Boston. All access to Manhattan has been closed as well as the bridges and tunnels around the city.
”

“Let’s go.” I said, “Time to do the rest of the windows and doors.”

We all jumped up and went to the front porch. “We’ll do the windows first, then the ones upstairs you can reach from the roof. We also have to finish getting the balcony stairs down.”

We worked efficiently and quietly and within a couple hours were done. There were still the front and back doors to do but they were a bit trickier. We had devised a way to board them up and have them be usable but didn’t want to wait too long to secure them. The stairs from the back deck to the balcony were down.

By noon both Christine and I were getting phone calls constantly. Well, she was, I got a few. We also had friends stop by to check out what we had done. Christine couldn’t keep quiet about out preparations. It was what it was and did no good for me to get upset. If we were seeing the beginning of a
zombie apocalypse
our friends and family would be welcome.

The TV was on constantly. I’d stop and watch from time to time to try and catch anything new. So far China, had closed its borders. They had not accepted the vaccine and could be free of the virus. There were some reports of outbreaks in Australia and South America. Northern Africa and the Middle East were seeing an escalation of the infection. It was quickly becoming a worldwide epidemic.

We were now getting information about the origin of the cause. Speculation was that Iraq had been working on a virus to use on Israel and the U. S. that would drive people crazy and cause them to attack each other. Kind of like a cancer where a country would be devoured from within by its own people. These and other WMD’s were found but not disclosed to the public. We were seeing U. N. and other governments representatives talking about reports and papers but it was what that guy yesterday had said, the information was buried and so hard to decipher no one understood, except those hiding it.

Within a few hours we had a clearer picture. These were chemicals developed in Iraq under the direction of the Hussein regime for the purpose of attacking Israel, the U. S., England and other western countries. He was able to hide most of the labs and weapons before the fall of Bagdad, some made it into Syria. United Nations investigators started finding evidence of these in late 2007 and found the first products in 2008.

The frightening thing was that everything wasn’t destroyed, some was taken to laboratories in Europe for “further research”. This is how there was a vaccine so quickly. Which, of course, didn’t seem to be working, in fact, from all accounts the vaccine was making the situation worse. It was not only failing to protect people from the virus it was making them sick, turning them into, zombies. A new batch of vaccines was reported to have been shipped out but no one knew where or how or if it even worked. The world was a mess.

By early evening we were seeing some containment of the plague. Countries around the world were closing their borders. Militaries were using all means available to quarantine affected areas. Portions of the U. S. were without power but the outbreaks looked like they were controlled. As night fell we were secured in the house with electricity.

Sleep was not easy but eventually we all fell off.

-——————————————

I woke with a start and looked around. We were all still in the living room the boys sleeping on the floor, Christine on the couch. I had fallen asleep in a chair. The TV was still on, volume low. I turned it up.

“….
and the fact that all of this could have been prevented is unconscionable. Deceiving the public to this extent and endangering people not only in this country but around the world is an offence beyond measure.
” Some guy was going off on a rant. I was too tired to tell what about exactly or who he was. I sat in a stupor for a few seconds and then groaned as I got to my feet. Coffee would no doubt help.

When I got back someone else was going on about the “
mess they had brought on us all
”. After a few minutes I woke up enough to realize they were talking about the weapons and chemical labs found in Iraq and that this was not shared with the public. They went on about what should have happened and what should now happen and that
government
had failed us.

“Ya know what,” I thought out loud, “who cares? How do we fix this now?”

I switched channels looking for information on whether the virus was contained or not. Most of what I found was more talking about who did what and didn’t do what and who was to blame and who should be thrown out of office and who should be charged for crimes. It was nuts that these people were talking about this unless….unless the spread of the virus had been stopped overnight and we were back to our
normal
world.