ZWD: King of an Empty City (27 page)

                  “My feelings exactly. I was worried sick.” I chuckled at my own joke and added, “Literally. So what happened to you?”  

She related her story. After she’d taken off running down the street she started doing as I’d done and ran through yards and alleys. She kicked open the door to a house after she had a good lead on them, but realized that with the snow she was easy to track. She tried losing them by doubling back on them and re-entered a house she’d already been in. She thought they wouldn’t double back on her, but they did.

She was in a house between the living room and dining room. There was a floor furnace between the two rooms and when she heard them coming up the steps talking, she looked for a place to hide. Some distraction outside delayed them coming into the house. She lifted up the floor vent to the furnace and pulled the unit up on its hinges.

             
These old units that were set in the floor like that sometimes had hinges and springs similar to those found on attic folding ladders that would make it easier for technicians to get to them and work on them. Under the furnace is usually a crawlspace or ductwork for the return air. She knew the furnace wasn’t on because she could see her breath in the air of the living room.

             
She dropped down into the space and pulled the furnace down on top of her and scooted as far into the small return vent as possible. She lay there as still as possible in the silence and dark for a long time.

“He peed on me,” she cried. “His pee smelled acrid and it was everywhere. In my nose, my mouth, my hair. I hate that man, I’m going to kill him,” she said flatly as she told her story. “He may not have known I was there, but he peed on me and I’m going to kill him.”

I was very proud of her. She did like we’d talked and talked about on so many occasions, about making sure someone was gone when you were hiding. When you’re hiding from someone, you want to out-wait them.

             
After half an hour she was certain they were gone, but when she tried to get out of the space under the furnace, she found she was stuck. Her arms were not in a position where from under the furnace she could reach up and release the springs that would fold the furnace out. The latch was inches away from her fingers, but she couldn’t straighten her arm far enough to do it. She tried to readjust in her position in the small space, but something on her belt behind her back caught on something in the small space. She found the more she moved the more trapped she became.

             
She heard someone outside after a long while.               The only weapon she could get to was a knife she had clipped to her belt. Two people came into the house. Moving cautiously, they paused inside the door and one flipped on the light. The other moved forward with soft, deliberate steps. Before he got to the furnace, a flashlight clicked on and shone into the space, blinding her. “Commander?” came Joseph’s voice.

              “Mind giving me a hand? I can’t reach the lever over there.”

             
When they noticed the fire of the house I’d been trapped under, the S.O.L. had sent out scouts to see what was going on. One of them came across Lonnie’s body and the search for us started.

              “I’m just thankful that you’re ok,” I said to her when she finished.

             
“You too, sweetie,” she said, moving over to me and placing my soup bowl on the floor. We hugged for a long time. It felt like she was trying to press me inside her chest, she was hugging me so hard. I was probably trying to do the same. I didn’t want to let go of her ever again. Right then, I put that at the top of my to-do list, my greatest priority. Regardless of what was going on, once a day without fail, I’d cherish this woman. I’d tell her I loved her; I’d kiss her and hold her and absorb every moment with her as if it were the last. Other things on that list might change, but she must always be there. When we let go of each other, it was only to better kiss each other. That kiss was deep and passionate, or as passionate as I could manage at the time. I was still weak.

               Jr. stepped into the doorway and stood there watching, not saying a word, but he coughed politely to let us know he was there. When we broke the kiss we bowed our heads till our foreheads were touching. “Yes, Jr., what is it?” I asked.

“First off, it’s good to see you up again, sheriff,” said the ten-year-old boy with a bowl haircut that made him look a lot like Alfalfa from the
Little Rascals
. “I was very worried about you. Commander, when you get a chance, they need to talk to you next door about the Paris Towers plans,” he finished.

“Thanks, Jr.,” I said to him. “What Paris Towers plans?” I asked her.

“Don’t worry about that now, you need to rest some more. The plans are far from complete now. When you’re stronger, we’ll go over them.” She kissed me again and left with Jr. I lay back down and in a few moments I was asleep again.

A loud crash from the hallway startled me awake.

ZWD: King of an Empty City Chapter 27

ZWD: Dec. 23.

On top of Safeway. Built fire and used shopping cart to grill meat. Easier to store that way. Z-heads gathering below. Will wait them out.

One of the kids coming down the hall carrying an armful of baking sheets had dropped them and they clattered everywhere. That was what woke me up. I’d been dreaming of Stager again, He’d been trying to warn me about the black truck, but I was awakened before the important part of his warning. What he did say was still fresh in my brain. He was right; I did have to deal with the black truck right away. Maybe next time he invaded my dreams, I’d get a chance to ask him how he suggested I do that; right now I was hungry. Apparently I’d been out for two days and all I’d had to eat was that boiled potato in ketchup soup.

                  We were in a house on the corner of Louisiana and Seventeenth Streets, across the street and down from Trinity Church where the S.O.L. had been housing themselves. Their military HQ was in this house, I guess. It was a big, beautiful house with gingerbread features and hand-painted wallpaper that had been beautifully restored. I could go on and on about this house and its beauty, but I’m sure it has been featured somewhere in some magazine. I’d been sleeping in a small room just off the kitchen, a servant’s room. It looked like it had been converted into a nursery for the downstairs part of the house.

                  The kids apologized to me as they gathered things up and I asked them where my girl was hiding. I got blank stares. “The Commander, where’s the Commander?”

                  “Oh! Next door. Go out the back door here and in the back door there. Don’t go in the front yard, strict orders.”

              “Whose orders?”

              “The Commander’s.”

              “Why can’t we go in the front yard?”

              “We’re supposed to be ghosts now,” said the girl.

              “What are all the baking pans for?”

              “I don’t know. We were just told to gather as many as we can and take them to the basement.”

              “What’s in the basement?”

              “That’s where we put the armory. They’re making the weapons there.”

              “How do I get there?”

She gave me directions to the basement door and I took the armful of baking pans and sent her to fetch the Commander. The basement was bigger than I expected. They’d set up five long folding tables and suspended a light over each one. Each table was filled with stuff of one kind or another and several kids were bent over the tables working on various projects. In the world before, I know there were a lot of complaints that kids had no focus, that you couldn’t keep their interest on anything unless it was a video game. In this new world, the kids who could focus certainly survived. Each was busy concentrating on whatever it was they were working on. I asked one kid where to put the baking sheets and I was directed to a far table across the basement.

             
I sat them down on the table and watched as two kids worked on baking sheets of their own. They were using tin snips and punches to bust holes in the sheets, then fitting the holes with leather belts. They were using rivet guns to secure them into place, making shields. Next to the kids on the floor were a dozen such shields. “How many of those do you need to make?” I asked one kid.

“We have to make about forty,” he said, hardly looking up. I picked up the finished product and tried it on. It was made well, sturdy, and it fit my arm pretty well.

             
I moved to the next table where four girls and two guys were sewing. They had several bolts of silk cloth and as they demonstrated for me, they were making detention nets. They consisted of two six-foot poles sewn into either end of a six-by-six section of silk. There were handgrips sewn onto the poles and the idea was that two people could run at one or two zombies and surround them with the silk, then with a quick tie of two strands of silk dangling from the hand grips, they could immobilize the zombies inside till others could come and kill them. When I asked why silk, I was told, “It’s because of something to do with the Chinese and arrows.”

             
I knew exactly what she was talking about. Silk, despite its smooth feel against the skin, is one of the toughest materials on the planet. The Chinese horsemen used to fly silk flags behind them as they rode. When the enemy would shoot arrows at them, instead of going into their backs and killing them, the arrows would get caught in the silk, losing all their energy and never doing more than bruising the rider. So if you couldn’t tear it with an arrow, it made sense that a zombie couldn’t escape it by clawing his way out. I saw my beloved Commander’s hand in this.

             
When I walked over to the next table, she and Eddie, along with Donny and several others, came down the basement steps. I remembered my to-do list and the first thing I did was kiss her. My actions drew a long “ohhh” from the girls in the room and a few “yuck”s from the boys. Perhaps I held the kiss with her a little longer than I should have in front of the kids, but I really didn’t care.

             
“Good to see you too, but can we wait till later tonight?” she said as she winked at one of the older girls at the table next to us. “Who knows, then you might get lucky,” she said, looking back at me from the corner of her eyes. I knew I blushed as I glanced at Eddie, who was grinning from ear to ear. Donny was looking down at the floor. I put my hand in hers and turned to the table next to us, trying to change the subject, although I didn’t want to let her go.

             
We’d been so hard for so long. All of us, the kids included, that I felt strongly at that moment that something needed to be done to show these kids that affection was also important. You could be hard, steeled against the outside world filled with zombies and bad men, but you could still love and care for each other. The old world had a prudish sensibility towards public displays of affection. Better that these kids knew there was a time to be hard, and the rest of the time you fill with love and appreciation for everyone. I might be wrong, only time will tell. With her hand in mine I asked what was happening at this table, which was filled with aerosol cans and fireworks.

              “When we found out that the zombies were losing their sense of sight,” started Donny, “and relying on their sense of smell, we started thinking of ways to mask ourselves. These are scent bombs.”

              “Scent bombs?”

              “We tape an M-80 to the can. Light the fuse and throw them into an area where we’re going. When the M-80 goes off, it blows the can and the room is filled with,” he picked up one of the cans and read the description from the label,

“‘Tropical Rain Forest.’ There’s smoke too, but not as strong as the odor in the can. Once it blows, it smells like that for at least three hours.”

Proudly Eddie said, “We tested it yesterday.”

“Won’t the explosion attract them?”

              “It won’t matter,” continued Donny. “When we set these off in a room, the idea is for them to come to us. We’re going to use their weaknesses to our advantage. When the can blows, they’re going to come see what’s up. Once in the room, they can’t smell us, and if they can see us, it’s going to be too late.” My girl squeezed my hand tightly and smiled at me with pride.

              “Where are we planning to use this?”

              “Paris Towers,” the Commander said. I wasn’t sure we were ready for Paris Towers. That was a lot of building to clear, a lot of rooms. I looked around the basement at all the preparations that were being made and realized I was the one who wasn’t ready. They’d been planning something while I slept and I didn’t know what it was. I squeezed her hand and nodded several times, convincing myself that they had a plan and it would work.

“Alright, walk me through this since I’m coming to this late in the game. What do you guys have planned?”

             
Donny told me the M-80 scent bombs were part of the assault tactic, masking their scent as they went into the building and set up choke spots in hallways to limit the number of zombies that would come at them at one time. The baking pan shields were just one layer of defense to protect against zombie bites. Kids were scavenging now for sports equipment like shoulder pads and shin guards, helmets, and anything else they could think of to protect their bodies. The silk catchers were for any that wandered outside or past the other defenses. The littler kids were practicing with them now in the backyard.

             
On another table, they were attaching baby monitors and web cameras to remote-controlled cars and trying to get a signal to a laptop computer to make a monitoring system. So far they were only having luck with the baby monitors. The idea was to send the cars in first to see or hear if anything was in the room. If there were, then they’d throw in a scent bomb and wake it up. Better to have a moving zombie than a dormant one you overlooked. They’d kill it and move on to the next room. This was for the door-to-door stuff, those rooms where a zombie might be trapped inside. Before that, they planned to clear the hall by playing loud music from a boom box and drawing the zombies to them, getting them to a choke point on the floor and picking them off one by one. The silk squad took care of those that made it past.

             
It was a good, solid plan and they’d made it come together very quickly. They’d started on it the night we left the house after looking at the zombie Ashley dissected. While I’d been trapped under a burning building and burning up with fever, they were testing their ideas. I was very proud of them. The battle for Paris Towers was done that night.