Get Off My L@wn - A Zombie Novel (13 page)

W
e watched the steady crush of dead lessen
slowly to a consistent but lighter flow past our house. The percentage of badly
burned creatures had dropped to almost zero.

I suppose we can all take pride in the diversity
of the dead. A butcher, a baker and probably a candlestick maker had
undoubtedly passed our cameras amidst the slowly advancing horde. Every race,
color and from what we could tell by jewelry and apparel most creeds were
represented. We are all clearly equal in the end.

Just watch the time-lapse stills from our
cameras that DHS put up at the War Memorial website. It turns out our house’s
camera feed was the first ground level “live and in-the-round” look at the
inside of a horde of undead.

We had been watching a long time now. The
density of the dead had come down to the point where we could once again
concentrate on individuals. Ruth Ann stopped watching completely after a woman
passed right under camera five wearing a wrap style baby carrier. That’s the
type where the infant faces mom or dad, arms and legs poking out like a
starfish. The woman and child were truly heartbreaking as the infant’s arms and
legs were where they were supposed to be but there was no head on the child.
Instead, the remains of a spine poked up from the bloody baby sling. The woman’s
face, hands and arms were stained with the dried blood of her own baby. You can
see the mother and child about two hours and twenty-one minutes into the time-lapse
video. You can see it if you want to. We’ve tried desperately to forget it.

I asked Ryan what he meant about staying
overnight in our garage being better than what they do at the camps.

“If you come in by car, soldiers guide you
inside a big garage. You drive up to really tight lanes made from those
temporary concrete guardrails from when they do road work, you know? There isn’t
enough room to open your doors. They tell you to put your car in neutral, roll
up all your windows except for the driver’s. That one stays open enough to pass
water bottles and food in. They give you enough water and protein bars to last
24 hours. From there on in, if you start your car they’ll shoot you right
through the window.”

Wow. Martial law really means martial law.

“They push you down the lane until you bump the
car ahead of you. You stay like that for 24 hours. If anyone turns inside your
car, you’ll all be dead. If the zombie doesn’t kill you they don’t take any
chances. They shoot everyone in the car anyway.”

This made perfect sense and must be very
effective.

“What if you don’t come with a car?” Ruth Ann
asked.

“They zip cord your feet together and stuff you
in a sleeping bag. Then they zip cord your hands and close up the bag. They put
a straw next to your face for water. No protein bars. Then you wait 24 hours.
If you have to pee, you pee. If you have to crap, you crap. It is way less
comfortable than being in a car. At least you can move around in a car. But
then again, you won’t get eaten by a family member if they turn. That happened
a lot,” Ryan was looking downwards as he talked.

“So after 24 hours they look you over. If you
look sick it’s a .45 to the head. If a family member looks sick, it’s a .45 to
the head. If you’ve turned, it’s a .45 to the head. Simple. And no chance to
spread the infection.” Ryan made the motion of shooting a pistol into the side
of his head.

“If you make it through, you spray down and wash
you up. They give you new clothes. That’s pretty much it. Once in a camp there’s
hardly ever an infection. They do this to every person coming in. Even soldiers
coming in from patrol. If you refuse, it’s a .45 to the head. Sort of like “Is
that your final answer?” Bang!” he finished.

Later with Ryan out of earshot, Ruth Ann and I
discussed his story of camp life.

“Do you think he’s exaggerating at all?” I said.

“Definitely, he’s got it wrong.”

“Really? What part?”

“The .45 hasn’t been standard issue for years.”

When the cameras switched from daylight color to
infrared black and white I realized how long we had been transfixed by the
scene outside. I did not want leave the quiet of the basement but I wanted to
let Lambeau Field know we were doing OK. The radio, however, remained on the
second floor.

I typed up a message and saved it to a file
called ‘readme.txt”. In it, I gave Frank an update saying we were safe in the
basement for reasons of maintaining sanity. We would check in by voice when the
horde had passed. I copied the readme file to the radio and sure enough within seconds,
it disappeared, deleted by the radio itself after transmission.

I
was dozing off and Ruth Ann was sewing when
Ryan shouted for us to come to the laptop. The all-camera view was up. Ryan
pointed at camera six, which showed a view along the front of the house looking
northeast. Where the front door would be I could see a spastically waving arm
connected to an immobile shoulder. Part of an upper torso seemed to stick out
of the wall. I instantly knew what had happened. Murphy, you mother fucker.

I hit a key to fill the screen with camera six.
A monster was wedged partially through one of the sidelights at the front door.
Its head was through the opening along with its left arm. It was wedged at its
chest. Perhaps it hung up on its clothes or maybe by the size of his body. I
could not tell.

I pulled the laptop to me and opened the baby
monitor’s built-in web server. In pristine infrared HD we looked directly at a
shoulder and wildly waving downward pointed arm. There were jagged glass pieces
on the floor. It fingers and jaw snapped open and closed. It could almost rake
jagged fingernails across the smooth tile floor. What we could see of its head
was covered with matted blood-caked hair as it continuously flailed about.
After a moment, we could clearly see the thing had sliced or torn its own ears
off possibly when getting through the opening. It snarled and snapped at the
air around it.

For a moment I enabled the monitor’s audio, our
end muted. The sound of a horde is terrible. The sound of just one monster only
a few feet away is even more terrifying. I muted the audio immediately.

Its head was clearly through the opening. It was
bashing its left arm against the inside of the door itself and against the wood
trim below the broken sidelight. We still could not tell if it was hung up on
clothes that could suddenly tear loose. Or, was it unable to get its torso
through? One alternative meant some security while the other meant none. We had
to act.

“I am loading the crossbow!” Ruth Ann said.

“Are you going up there?” I said.

“We have to kill that thing before it gets in.
Where it is we can use its body to plug up the break. We have to do it now!”

“And by “we” you mean you again, right?”

She looked at me. “How many crossbows have you
fired, Doug?” Ruth Ann got the crossbow, cocked it and made sure the safety was
on. Then she snapped a stubby evil looking bolt in place. She picked up the
revolver and put it in her pocket. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Easier than
shooting fish in a barrel.”

I grabbed the carbine. With Ryan carrying the
laptop so we could watch the baby monitor, all three of us made our way up the
stairs to the bolted door. We clicked the one camp light we brought off and
waited in total darkness for our pupils to dilate. We checked the baby monitor.
The beast was still wedged in the sidelight. Ruth Ann unbolted the door leading
out of the basement. There was no mute button now.

I moved out first so I could ready myself behind
Ruth Ann as backup. Ruth Ann settled into a crouch with the cross bow at the
ready. Ryan watched the laptop. His face glowed faintly. There was minimally
enough light for us to see. Ryan nodded at Ruth Ann and whispered, “He’s still
stuck - no change.”

“OK. You ready hon?” she said softly. I love it
when my wife uses endearments before we shoot a snarling ghoul. Actually, this
was the first time this situation had come up.

“Yeah.”

“OK, on three.” She stood up just behind the
wall turning into our entryway. The crossbow was up and ready. She counted to
three. Ruth Ann pivoted around the corner. The beast looked up and roared. The
crossbow answered.

The beast fell silent instantly.

Ruth Ann pivoted back towards the open basement
door. Ryan scurried down using the laptop screen for light, followed by Ruth
Ann. I bolted the door behind us.

At the base of the stairs, Ruth Ann and Ryan
stared at the laptop. When I could see the screen too, I saw the creature’s arm
drooped and motionless, its head folded over its shoulder. Only a tiny nub of
the missile’s tail protruded from its skull. I flipped to outside camera six.
We could see the now really dead undead thing poking out from the doorway just
as limp on the outside (of the house) as it was on the inside.

“Doug?” said Ryan. “What’s up with those
windows? They’re easy to get into.”

“I’d rather not talk about it right now.”

To calm myself I went about making a copy of the
H.264 video file containing the whole movie of the home invader. I transferred
the copy over to the radio for transmission to Lambeau Field. They saw the set up;
they might as well get to see the big finish.

For the next hour, we watched the cameras
intently. We saw the ghouls bounce around the creature stuffing the hole in our
house without processing the opportunity they had. We saw the remaining
structure of the deck we had torn down completely disappear under a pile of
human shaped spastic worker ants. Finally, we saw their density thin down to a
relative trickle. On the all-camera view, we could see only a few dozen
stragglers wandering around.

We felt safe enough to take turns sleeping two
at a time.

R
uth Ann nudged me awake on Tuesday (Day 34),
what would have been Election Day. Down in the basement there was no way to
judge time. A tablet said it was a little after seven in the morning. The
all-camera view showed clouds mixed with sprinkles of undead. The land looked
like it was trampled by a horde of zombies. Oh wait, it was.

There was no change on the baby monitor except
the pristine HD infrared picture was now a pristine HD color picture. What a
miserable mess. The webcam in the garage showed nothing had changed in there.
No breaches of any kind.

We gathered much of our things and walked up the
flight of steps to the first floor. We stopped to scan the cameras again and
listened to the stillness on the other side of the door. Opening up, nothing
looked different as long as we did not look to the front door. We quietly made
our way to the second floor where comforts including the kitchen awaited. I had
a date with some coffee.

Actually, coffee presented the first of what
would prove to be a day of changing directions. While still only thinking about
firing up the brewing machine I glanced at the tactical radio sitting on the
kitchen table. I remembered we had new demands on our power and wondered if I
could use the ready-made cups with an electric kettle instead. I tried. It does
not work. I tossed the box of stale samples in the back of the pantry and
settled for some of the instant coffee we found at the Flynn’s now off-limits house.

Breakfast consisted of cold cereal with powdered
milk. Homemade strawberry jam mixed in made it palatable. Objectively we were
still living like kings compared to most of the planet but it did not feel that
way.

None of us wanted to talk. For my part, I did
not know enough about the coming day to have anything worth saying and I did
not want to talk about the past. We did and saw things in the last 24 hours
that took the desire for conversation right out of us. What I wanted
desperately was to get out on the roof and see things with my own eyes.

We bundled up. It was in the high 20’s. On
opening the door, there were moans and screams here and there from the assorted
detritus roaming around below. We were grateful not to hear the sound of a whole
horde.

We heard jets and explosions. Looking east, we
could see smoke rising from the direction of Eau Claire only about seven miles
away. Through our binoculars, I could clearly see shapes over the city. We had
slept through the heaviest of the bombardment. What we saw and heard now was
the tail end. The horde would have moved beyond the Chippewa River by now.

Ruth Ann and I want to take a moment to digress.
We want to acknowledge the Carson Park survivors. Both you and we lived through
the experience of praying that a horde would pass through without tearing our
limbs apart and eating our beating hearts. We however endured nothing compared
to you folks who, in addition to the horde, hunkered down amidst bombs, missiles
and the carnage that comes with them. We will see you at the reunions and for
as long as we live, the first round will always be on Ruth Ann and me.

It was a good thing that the sanctuary at
Chippewa Valley Regional was evacuated two weeks ago. There was no possibility
anyone there would have survived.

T
he clouds said snow. They get a somber gray
pregnant look before the flakes begin to fall. I imagined the land would look
almost normal when covered in white. Sound would be deadened a bit, especially
during the snow itself. That could be a good thing, as the deadening would
deaden the sound of the dead.

We walked the periphery of the roof, surveying
both out to the horizon and the state of things immediately below us. I had not
noticed before that some of the fake first floor window shutters were torn off
the house and were nowhere to be found. Some of the trees we argued with the
ARC about so long ago were gone completely while others were denuded sticks
without leaf or needle. Who knows if the perennial flowers we fought over were
still safe underground, oblivious to the changes taking place above?

From what we could see of the Flynn’s house, not
a single window or door on the three levels facing us remained intact. Drapes
fluttered outside. Looking through our binoculars Ruth Ann said there were
things moving upright inside. There was movement visible under the wreckage of
their deck.

Everywhere we looked the tall prairie grasses
that we loved to watch wave in the wind were beaten down. Everything was
trampled.

A covering of virginal white would be welcome.

Looking at the home to our east that had been
looted we saw what Frank had warned us about. If the Olson’s ever returned they
would find every portal to their home crushed and debris everywhere. The back
door leading out of their garage was off its hinges. The garage door itself was
in pieces. The picture window that had once provided them a lovely view of our
backyard was smashed out completely. There was movement in their home.

In every direction sprinkled here and there,
including at the base of our house, were dead walking around or standing still
like statues. Not counting creatures inside buildings that we could not see, we
estimated about 80 dead remained in our immediate area.

As to the Boetche’s house, Ryan’s home, we
couldn’t really tell anything. It looked intact from our direction suggesting
the front side was not breached. If the front had been breached, the back would
surely have been as blown out at the Flynn’s place.

I am sure the kid was anxious to check out his
house, having left a safe area to drive two hundred miles through the dead to
get here.