Zombie Fallout 9 (36 page)

“I did.” MJ said, coming over.

“You going to help dig these holes?” I asked.

“I invented this.” He was using those words as a way of politely saying, “no.”

“Fucking engineers. Okay, tell us what we need to do.”

“You need to dig holes. I would think that part would be self-explanatory.”

“He's kidding, right?” I asked BT. The big man merely shrugged.

“Okay, egghead, where do you want the holes? How far apart should the posts be and what is the layout?”

MJ merely pointed; there were small sticks in the ground with orange flags attached to them all around our perimeter.

“Shit, now I look like the asshole.”

“Nothing ever really changes with you, man.” BT said, grabbing the post hole digger while handing me a shovel.

If we were in Florida, we would have finished the job in five or six hours. After ten, we were about halfway there. One does not have a firm grasp on frustration until they have dug dirt in Maine, the birthplace of rocks, apparently. The first hole had been a set-up, I think, because of the ease with which we had dug it. Every one after that had boulders that needed to be removed. I had argued heatedly that we should move the hole; Mad Jack, who was supervising the labor, had told us, in no uncertain terms, that could not happen. I wondered a few times that day if he could survive a shovel strike to the side of the head.

Justin and Travis came out after a while to help. Justin looked like shit.

“How you doing?” I asked him, fearful he'd spent the entire night thinking about Jess.

“I'm okay.” He had a smile. “Avalyn didn't sleep much. I stayed up with her.”

“Avalyn?”

“The baby needed a name.”

“I guess she did. She doing all right?”

“I don't want to get gross, Dad, but, umm, Nicole is helping out.”

“With feeding?”

“Yeah, Dad, geez. You ever walk in on your sister breastfeeding two babies?”

“No.”

“It was horrible.”

On a fundamental level, I knew it was a beautiful act of nourishment and maternal bonding. That it was only a corporate greed that infused the unnatural aspect of this onto our perverse Western culture. Still though, I'm not ashamed to say I didn't want to watch my daughter breastfeeding. Maybe it made me realize she was no longer daddy's little girl. I don't know the reasons. I'm male. I don't dwell on my feelings much. Suffice it to say, I thought it was hilarious Justin was scarred and thrilled it wasn't me.

“You'll be fine. Watch out for the task master.” I pointed to MJ. BT and I pulled up a seat a few feet away from the work. My hands were raw, blistered, and in some spots, bleeding. I was about to ask BT how his hands were doing when I saw him take off heavy leather gloves.

“You been wearing them things the whole time?”

“You're fucking clueless, man.” He set them to the side and took a long drink of water. “And don't even look at them. They'd look like boxing gloves on you, anyway.”

He was right. Gary and Trip took a shift as well. By the time night descended, we were nearly done. When we'd decided to call it a night, Mad Jack had looked pissed that we were so close and not finishing. He actually picked up the post digger. When the first impact sent vibrations up his arms, he'd wisely put the implement down.

He cleared his throat then announced, “I think this is as good a stopping point as any.”

Most of us were already in the house. The next day, we only had five holes to dig, and I almost couldn't do it, my hands hurt so damn bad. MJ was already having the old fencing removed a section at a time and was adhering it to the new posts. Luckily, the zombies just watched from a distance.

It was while I was helping move the old fencing into the new position I finally thought to ask why in the hell we were doing that. I initially had thought we'd be putting up more fencing, not just moving the old.

“The fence was grounded; I needed the wooden posts.”

“The transformers, Mike. Remember those?” BT asked.

“Yeah, I remember them. So?”

“Pretend we're on Sesame Street. I'm going to give you two words and then you put them together, okay?” he asked in that condescending teacher to thick pupil way. “Electric.” He paused then said, “Fence.”

“Your mom must have been a saint, having to put up with you,” I told him. “This going to be worth it?” I asked MJ. That was like asking the inventor of sliced bread if he thought it was a good idea. I could have not gotten a more biased answer if I'd tried.

“Sometimes I think someone has forgot to flip your pancakes.” BT laughed.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“He thinks you're only half done!” Trip shouted, though he'd come up to my ear with his hand cupped around his mouth as if he were going to whisper that.

I had to pull back. “Better than being over cooked,” I told him.

The fence moving procedure had gone much smoother than the digging, and more people could help out. We were done right around lunchtime. Which was perfect; I was starving.

“Aren't you guys going to stick around for the test?” Mad Jack looked distraught we were all leaving.

“I'll be back. I'm going to get a sandwich.” All the thinking about sliced bread made me hanker for one.

When I returned with some food, I found Mad Jack by the side of the house. He had a huge lever nailed to a board stuck to the house, with a cable nearly as thick as my forearm attached to it.

“Don't touch that.” I was insulted he felt the need to tell me that. As if the red signs painted with huge warnings weren't enough. I looked around him. The cable went to a bank of three of the transformers.

“You sure this isn't going to blow? I've seen what you could do with a nine volt.”

“Should be fine.”

“What should be fine?” BT had what looked like leg of cow and was gnawing on it.

“Mad Jack is pretty convinced this set up isn't going to blow up.”

BT swallowed down hard on whatever had almost just got lodged in his throat.

“All right, flip the switch,” I told him.

“Anybody else coming?” He was looking for a bigger audience.

“I think we're it for now.” And the only reason I was there was because I wanted to see if all the tearing up of my hands had been worth it.

“Fine.” He flipped the switch. I'll be honest, I didn't think anything had happened, then there was the buildup of a slight hum. “It works!” His face lit up like the angels had come down from the heavens and were singing just for him.

I turned to look at BT. “I'm going back in to finish eating,” I said.

Trip had come outside along with Gary. “Hey, man.” He hit my shoulder. “What are the lights for?” He pointed to small safety poles MJ had had us install that housed small red safety lights to let people know the fence was live.

I told Trip as much.

“Oh, I figured they were for an alien runway.”

“Really? That's the first thing that came into your mind?” BT asked.

“Why wouldn't it be? Aliens are real.”

“Nice job,” I told MJ as I started to walk away.

“Nice job? That's all you can say?” He seemed pretty perturbed.

“Umm, it's a fence that hums. What else do you want me to say?” I took another bite of my sandwich.

MJ looked on the verge of exploding. He took two quick steps toward me, snatching the sandwich from my hands. “I'll show you nice job!”

“That's not cool, man. I'm eating that.” My hands were still up by my face, maybe hoping the food would magically reappear.

He got within ten or so feet from the fence and tossed my sandwich at it. I don't even know if disintegrate is the right word. There was the
zzziiittt
sound like a bug zapper, and then there were atomized bits of my sandwich falling to the ground like some sort of strange protein snow shower.

“How's that for a nice
fucking
job?” If anything, MJ seemed to be getting hotter as he strode back and ripped out the cow leg from BT's hands. I think BT was just as shocked as I was. MJ once again tossed this into the fence. The
zzziiit
sound was a lot louder; the outcome nearly the same.

Trip fell to his knees, his head in his hands. “The horror! The horror, man! All that food, gone!”

“Holy shit. Sorry, man,” I told MJ. “That's unreal!” That seemed to quell him a little. Good thing too; I don't think he would have stopped his demonstration until he started throwing people on that thing to prove his point.

“Yeah, it's unreal. I'm not using much more electricity than if I were running a hair dryer.”

He started to go into the specifics of what he'd done and how it was being done. None of us moved. Honestly, he'd lost me at “invertor,” but I was going to let him speak his piece, as it seemed he may have solved at least one problem. It wouldn't be long until we got our first test.

It wasn't a decade or even close to it, like I'd wanted. It was two more weeks, and just like I'd predicted, we'd started going back to our normal routine, to those things that made us feel more comfortable. I'd had to pull Gary by his ear to have him leave his personal bird's nest.

“We've been through this, brother, you can't go out there. You can't possibly have forgotten what happened the last time.”

“Mike, you're hurting my ear. I'm your big brother!” He swatted my hand away.

“Then start acting like it. They're out there, just waiting.”

“Tommy says he can't find them.”

“That in no way implies they're gone. That just means he can't find them. Ever play hide and seek and not find someone?”

“Yeah.”

“I think I just proved my point.”

“It's just hard being in the house. Ron is so down, and he doesn't want anybody near him. Angel, Sty, and Ryan, too. It's tough. This is the only place I can hold on to a little of what life used to be like.”

I sympathized with him, I did; still didn't mean I was going to let him stay.

“You smell that?” he asked as we traversed across the yard.

And I had. Smelled like sour milk and wet trash on a hundred-plus degree day.

“Run!”

We hadn't taken two steps when the cry of alarm rang out from the deck, and it wasn't from Justin, who was on duty, but rather Carol, her voice incredibly loud and clear though she was just coming off a serious bout of bronchitis. We'd used expired antibiotics to get her healthy. What were we going to do when even those were not effective anymore?

The ground began to rumble and bounce as if a stampeding herd of rhinos were heading our way. The ground was moving so much, it was impeding Gary's and my progress. It was like trying to run in a bouncy house. We'd go more to the side or up in the air than forward. Unlike the bouncy house, this wasn't fun. The sound of the fence being struck and the resulting
fzzzt
was overbearing. I couldn't even hear the blood pumping through my ears or my heavy breaths of exertion. The only thing louder was the intense arcing of electricity and then a massive explosion. Organic material of the most disgusting kind rained down on Gary and me as we made good our escape. Large lard-like jelly masses of yellow goo struck all around and on us. It looked like an old, decaying sperm whale had fucking blown up with large chunks of blubbery meat flopping wetly to the ground.

Gary retched, I turned to him to notice a reddish green mass was sliding down his head and onto his neck. I wanted to reach up and swat it away; I … I just couldn't. He was on his own.

“Come on, man!”

He nodded while he was puking. That was as good a response as he was going to be able to deliver. Gunfire started; rounds were whizzing by over our heads. Justin was motioning for us to hurry. The more things change, the more they stay the same. There were more loud
fzzzzzts
. Luckily, we were not showered with any more debris. I didn't stop until I'd dragged Gary under the deck. I pushed him inside before I finally turned. Zombies were literally at the gate. Where the bulker had tried to get us, the fencing material was pushed inward, the normal diamond shapes were pulled so taut, looked more like slits. It had held and it had completely fried a bulker, but how long could it hold up to that kind of abuse? Along with the increase in head size, it appeared that the bulkers had also improved their brain mass. A solid ring of them surrounded us, yet none moved forward having witnessed the violent end to their comrade.

I would so love to end this chapter and say this was it; realizing their futility, they decided to pack up and go home. Yeah, that didn't happen. It got weird real quick, and then that changed to terrifying in a hurry. A couple of the bulkers in front of me started reaching behind them, not really looking at what they were doing, indiscriminately grabbing the more familiar zombie and then hurtling them at the fence. There was a downpour of zombie fragments as they threw body after body at the fence, looking for weak spots. Once the regular zombies finally got the picture that they were not going to be able to charge through holes left by the bulkers and were now being used as splattering rams, they backed up and out of range of the grasping bulkers. For a minute, nothing happened. The bulkers just glared at us as if they were pissed off that meat had the audacity to stay alive and well instead of inside of their bellies.

I don't know which of the smart bastards had the idea first, but it spread like wild fire. The bulkers did turn but not to leave. It was to grab at zombies who did not try to get out of their way, like they were all on the same page again. Personally, I was fine with them incinerating their buddies. Less we had to deal with, and unlike the brute force and weight of the torturous bulkers, the fence seemed to hold up exceedingly well under the assault of the much lighter zombies.