'You better, you have to live with her, not me.'
'What? No, she's going with you, she said they were.'
Jeremy shook his head, 'We'll see, huh? I don't think that's going to happen. We are live in five, four…' Jeremy counted down the rest of the way using his hand and holding up three, then two then one finger, which he pointed at Ned. The red light came on almost the same time.
Dora was so busy thinking 'He is good!' that she missed the first part of Ned's statement, giving a synopsis of what happened in the house and how they fought their way over to it. She was not sure if she, Paige and Mike were on camera yet, or just in the wings, but she put a smile on her face anyway.
'Finally when all the dust settled we met up with the other survivors here. One had been bitten and, sadly, nothing could be done for her. She passed away and we had to make sure she didn't come back.' Ned paused and it took Dora a moment to realize he was listening to a question from the studio in his earphone. 'Yes, Diane, the best, the only way, to make sure the zombie stays down is massive head trauma, take out the brain and the zombie does not come back.' He paused again. 'We are safe for now, taking a brief rest before we leave the house of Dora Sturges. Dora is here with me now and has agreed to answer a few questions for us.' Ned turned and addressed Dora directly. 'Dora how long have you and your friends been holding out here?'
Dora paused, took a slow sip from her coffee mug, then hefted the shotgun up into better view and said straight into the camera, 'For about two days now.'
'What steps have you taken to survive?'
'Well Ned, right now we have been using the power and gas as much as we can, none of us think it is going to stay on much longer. We took out all the meat from the freezer and we are making beef jerky in the oven and on the grill. Who knows how long it will take before the markets will open again?'
'Did you have any trouble with zombies?'
'Oh, yes we did! They were very troublesome. Fortunately my friends, Paige and Mike are really good at killing them. We must have killed thirty of the bastards yesterday and today, well, when my husband Roger came by to drop off his mistress we killed another twenty or so and when you got here, there has to be fifty more corpses out there.'
'Marge?' Ned said, surprised. Before he could recover Dora took the opening.
'Yes, that's right, my husband was having an affair with my best friend, she is no saint either, but he was a rotten bastard. I don't know where you are Roger, but leaving all of us here to die was a terrible thing to do. Why would anyone do that, Ned?' Behind the camera Jeremy was making a horizontal slashing motion with his hand, Dora waved at him from the waist with her off hand. Cameron was grinning and trying not to laugh.
'Well, I…Let's talk to your friends here and see if they can give us any tips on putting the undead down? Mike, Paige, you two fought alongside Dora, how did you do it? There were just the three of you and you have accounted for more than sixty dead as a group.'
Paige started talking first, 'Guns help. At first all we had were table legs and logs. Once we got our weapons it made a huge difference. My advice is to get onto a roof or shoot from higher up, like in a building. Mike only taught us to fire the guns yesterday and we do okay now.'
'In only a day? Mike, was it hard to teach them how to shoot?'
'Dora was a…challenging student. I covered gun safety with them first, then how to load and unload the guns, then finally how to shoot. That is really what got us into trouble. We shot all our ammo learning and the noise attracted a bunch of zombies. We had to fight our way out of them with just the fire wood out back.'
'Quite a story, Mike!' Ned turned back to the camera, 'So noise seems to attract them, it doesn't seem that we can get a break does it, Diane? The one thing that makes it easier to kill the things also draws their attention.' turning back to the three of them Ned asked, 'You have been following the news that we have right?'
The three of them answered 'yes' while nodding, 'Does it concern you that you sit less than a mile from the major highway that the masses of zombies are traveling down?'
Dora answered, 'Oh no, we feel really confident now, yesterday I was not able to do much to defend myself and my friends, but now, I am sure we can handle ourselves.'
'Even against the estimated three to four hundred thousand zombies shambling down from Denver?'
'They won't all come here, the national guard will kill a bunch of them along the way. We'll be able to mop up any survivors that get through. It would help if we had more ammunition.' Dora answered.
'So you're not evacuating?'
'Not a chance, Ned. Not a chance.'
'Can other survivors come here if they cannot make it to the safe zones?'
'Only if they want to fight instead of run away, we don't need any slackers here. I am standing up to them. If they drag me down I will go down fighting. Never give up. Never give in.'
'Mike, Paige, do you feel the same?'
Dora watched as her friends gave some less than enthusiastic nods back to the question. 'Hopefully the soldiers will get here soon and drive them off. We can hold on until then.' said Paige.
Ned turned back to the camera, 'Well there you have it, Diane, this is one group that is going to be hard to dislodge. If everyone is as successful as this group then the grocery stores should be opening up again very soon.' Ned paused to listen to another question and Cameron motioned Dora, Mike and Paige to step away from the front of the camera.
'No, Diane, I cannot, in good faith tell people to stay and fight it out. The government has made it clear that that people need to evacuate to give the military a clear firing ground to meet the threat. This is American, however, and if the citizens want to stay and defend their homes and each other, I cannot, because of the things I hold dear, tell them not to do that either.' He paused again, listening, before saying, 'We have come about as far west as I was hoping, we plan on looping around to the south and then heading east to get behind the lines, if we can. Unless we run into trouble we should be back at the station this evening. Thank you, Diane. Stay safe!'
Ned cut off and immediately sagged back to a tired looking middle aged man.
'Are you mad at me?' Dora asked him.
Ned looked over at her, shook his head and smiled, 'Forget about it. I wasn't sure what you would do and that went…better than I had hoped. We got the message out. Thanks for the interview. Can we use your address later? For others to come here? Can we give it to the military?'
Dora thought about it for a moment then nodded. 'Sure, Ned. Sure thing.' She stepped forward and gave the man a long hug, whispering in his ear, 'I think I hate Roger now.'
'That's better than feeling nothing at all.'
'I think you might be right.'
'Well, right or wrong, I wouldn't want to be him.'
Dora pulled back from the hug and said, 'You say the sweetest things sometimes, Ned! Is that how you got Diane?'
'Now, Dora, don't believe everything you hear.'
Looking over at the camera Dora saw that the red light was still on, she pulled back from Ned and asked, 'You still recording Jeremy?'
The green light came on and Jeremy popped his head out from the screen behind the camera, 'Recording, not broadcasting. We can use the footage later with some edits. Mind if I get you saying your address and if Ned asks you a few more questions for a canned interview we can broadcast later?'
'Sure I will do that stuff. Later…'
Ned stepped up and touched Dora's arm, turning her to face him, 'There won't be a later Dora, we are not looping down south and heading east. The five of us agreed to that. We will send your interview in, but depending on how things go, it might air posthumously.'
Chapter 25
Ned took turns interviewing all of the people at the house and at the end each of his crew spent three or
