'
The original crew was all still alive, Mary, Alex and Peter were living in Russell's old house with a pack of almost twenty kids. The two adults fought like a married couple and Peter was left with a lot of work bullying the younger kids into behaving. Paige and Mike stayed with Dora, they each had their own room upstairs. Dora had kept the master bedroom and most nights she slept alone. Sometimes there was a frightened kid in there with her. Paige seemed to take unnatural delight that some of the kids were comforted by Dora's presence.
The living room of Dora's house was officially called the 'Clinic', where all refugees were brought when they arrived, anyone who had been bitten was given the option of leaving or being shot, anyone judged 'clean' by Mary was set up with housing somewhere. Yesterday the army had brought in the three kids, four really, and they were all stripped naked, washed off and examined following the usual procedure Mary had gotten from one of her military counterparts.
'You puking in there?' asked Paige from the open doorway into the master bedroom.
'No, just brushing my fucking teeth with vomit.' Dora called out, before leaning forward and puking again.
'Wow, I knew water was scarce, but using toilet water to brush your teeth…that takes balls, Dora.'
Dora held up her middle finger at the woman and threw up one more time. Rising to her knees, she said, 'You'll have the fucking bug soon enough bitch.'
Paige shook her head, 'Somehow I doubt it. I never get sick, it's always you. You don't have to be there when the new kids come in you know. Let us deal with it and you can go do 'Mayor' things somewhere else.'
'It's my town, right? So I should approve the new arrivals. What else did the army drop off yesterday?'
'Another rifle, an old M4, plus a thousand rounds of.223 ammo, we need it, we were getting low. Oh and some food.'
'Oh god, don't tell me, more dehydrated eggs?'
Paige nodded, 'Another whole pallet. And two pallets of MREs. Dora?' she stepped forward as Dora leaned over and threw up again. The MREs were packaged military food that the entire town had already grown weary of.
'God, don't speak to me of food again! Fucking dehydrated eggs? That's shit. The MREs are shit too.'
'We are going to need the food when winter comes.' Winter was on the minds of all of them in town these days. They were a hundred and forty two people living here in western Kansas City, the official border of the Midwestern state was only about a twenty miles to the east, on the outskirts of the city. The Iowan's had pulled even further north because they could not control the city itself, there were too many zombies running around.
'Any other news this morning?' Dora asked. The group had raided a big box store and had taken all of the walkie-talkies they could find, as well as every battery they could fit into the pickup truck bed, right now they were using rechargeable batteries and saving the other ones for emergencies. In addition to the batteries and walkie- talkies they had all sorts of flashlights, bedding and blankets. None of them were under any illusions that winter would be anything but miserable if they didn't find some way to heat the houses. Of the large houses they were in only a few had real fireplaces, most ran on natural gas. Dora's was one of the few that had a fire place that actually burned wood and wasn't just for looks. The group had decided to build a long, low bunkhouse in the backyard of Dora's neighbor. They had most of the wood in piles around the neighborhood, as well as roofing materials, a few windows and four wood burning stoves. They planned on keeping the ceilings down to eight feet high and to double insulate the walls and attic to help keep things warm. At least that was the plan.
Some of the men had construction experience, one had actually been a general contractor, and he was in charge of the construction. Dora's yard would be filled with firewood for the winter. So far the reality of the construction was that Dora's yard was filled with firewood, not much work had actually been done on the new bunkhouse. Tim, the contractor, seemed to have less experience actually building things then he had led them to believe.
'No, no word on any attacks last night.'
'Did Tim say anything this morning?'
'He found more firewood yesterday, about a cord of it.'
'We got nothing to heat, let alone heat it with! Goddamn it, we need the fucking bunkhouse built!'
'Yeah, we all know that. You gonna fire him?'
'And do what with him? Send him out searching for firewood? And who would take over for him?'
Paige just looked at Dora silently. Dora stood up and turned on the tap, a thin trickle of water came out, she arched her eyebrow in surprise. 'What is this?' The water had been sporadic at best the last few weeks.
'Surprise!' said Paige.
'They found the water tower and got the pump working?'
'They found the water tower and attached a generator to the pump. We need to go around and shut off the water to all the houses the tower uses.'
'Wait, wait…I am not letting you off the hook on the Tim stuff, you have an idea and I want to hear it, first though, isn't that a lot of houses to cut off from the water tower?'
'Thousands.'
'When the fuck will we have time to do that? And who?'
'Ed Bradly is taking some of the ten year olds around and doing it.' The water issue had come up in the town meetings many times before and Tim had been going over the maps they had trying to find the water tower that served this section of the city. The problem was they needed to shut off all the house attached to the tower or in the winter the pipes would freeze, leak and then the tower would run out of water again. It was a low priority on the list, they had access to creek water, but for morale it made a huge difference, which is why Dora kept someone on the job. Dora suspected that there would be water mains that could shut off entire blocks of houses, but no one had any idea on how to find out where they were.
'Does he think he can get them all shut off before it gets cold?'
'No, but he thinks he can shut a lot of them down, if less pipes freeze it will be less of a drain on our resources. It might keep us in water for the winter at least. By spring maybe things will change.'
Dora looked at Paige, 'No, nothing will change. I can't believe there were not any attacks last night, not even by the twins?'
Paige shook her head, 'the twins' were girls that haunted the area, picking off anyone they could get. The zombies had evolved in the past month and a half; some of them moved quickly, used tools and even spoke. Head trauma still killed them, but they were faster than humans. The twins, nicknamed Dee and Dum by Dora had been a constant pain in the town's side. They had made their presence known after the horde had arrived in town from Denver about five weeks ago and had been seen several times since; they always seemed to be seen when there were no guns pointed at them too. They had an uncanny ability to disappear before a gun barrel could point their way.
'Nothing, all quiet on the lines last night.'
Doraville was small, the core of the community lived up and down the street in the McMansions on either side. There were always gunners on the roofs watching out from the core of the community and the fences that had been built around it did a good job of keeping the zombies out. Building the fences had been the first thing the group had done when people started arriving. After the interview with Ned had gone out people had started flocking towards Dora, they arrived in time to help build what was now the outer fence and haul in generators and the first few loads of food from abandoned stores.
When the zombies hit town in force almost everyone was killed. There was a terrible slaughter and the outer fence was overwhelmed in the first few hours of the onslaught. The army had flow in helicopters and helped defend the enclave, but they stopped short of actually moving up troops. As the battle raged the Air National guard from Iowa had actually bombed the horde as well, it was something none of them wanted to live through again. The houses to the north and west of Dora's were bombed, the destruction started about three blocks away and an area for about five blocks beyond that was just gone. The wasteland was a favorite hangout spot for lone zombies
