time, it is about a mile outside of Doraville.' said Leon.
'Not helping.'
'No, but seriously we are going to make up a position so he doesn't have to do anything?'
'I wanted to exile him, boot his ass out, you are the ones who said he won't go. Then I offered to shoot him…' Dora said.
'All I am saying is it a drain on food, gas and other resources.'
'I got that Leon. I will still shoot him.'
'No, let's just try this, we can mention to him that maybe Leon can do a wireless thing in a few weeks and we won't need him there anymore. And I will go have a heart to heart talk with him when we drop him off. I won't hold anything back. See Dora? You're not the only one who can handle the shit details.' said Steven.
'She'd have too much fun doing it anyway.' Paige added.
Dora nodded, 'Well water got mentioned, I think we should try and find the water mains and cut off the other neighborhoods.'
'We are trying. Paige mentioned it to me this morning, Tim obviously didn't go today, but I've got the address of the water building from the phone book and I think I can get over there tomorrow with a few of the older kids. If we have to dig up and cut off a few water pipes I think we could do it, I know where to get the heavy equipment. Plus we still have the bulldozer.' They had used the bulldozer to push the zombie bodies into the bombed out area to the north of Doraville.
'Food wise we are looking great, the army brought us enough stuff to last us for months yesterday. We won't like it much now, but it will keep us from starving.' Mary said.
'So we get the hall done, get the water squared away and we are all set. Is that about right?' asked Dora.
'I think we need to get more for people to do during the winter.' said Freddie, 'Not now, but I've lived here for four years, winter could be long and boring, people are going to go stir-crazy. Do we have enough video games for all the kids to play?'
'Not a bad idea. Could we raid a toy store or Wal-Mart or something just for toys and games? Even the adults might want to play after two months inside. But later, say after the first snow? We gotta get that hall finished.'
'That takes labor and between guarding twenty four hours a day, feeding the kids and scavenging the other things we need for winter we have no one really left to work. Every person counts. I say we give Alex no more than two days to find the water mains, after that he gets to work on the hall with Freddie to help tell the kids what to do.' said Paige.
'I could use the help.' Freddie admitted, 'I can't supervise so many and the kids I have are fourteen years old. I am going to need more than one other adult with me on the project. We have everything for the outside walls and roof now, probably too much stuff for the roof. And I know Tim didn't do shit for the foundation, it's on pylons, even I read the book that said that isn't suitable for buildings.'
'Well lucky us, there are no building codes any more. We have to make it work for this year. Next year we can build a new hall. So Alex goes for two days?' asked Dora. The council members all nodded yes. 'And Tim is offered the job at the water tower or to go to Iowa?' again a series of nods. 'Thanks, Steven for offering to take care of that. I am going to be there when you tell him, so he knows we mean it. Just for the record does everyone still feel we need to build the bunkhouse?'
The other council members nodded or answered 'Yes' one by one.
'Okay then we'll proceed with building it. Maybe some more adults will wander in and help out with it. Unless anyone has anything else…no?' Dora paused to let the others bring up other issues, no one did. 'Then I pronounce the meeting adjourned.'
Chapter 27
Jeff Harvey was in his element. He was hunting slow zombies out in the wreckage of the waste land with three of the older children. The kids all had guns and knew how to act around the living dead. They kept their pistols in hand and the safeties off. Jeff had a shotgun slung over his shoulder, not one of the newer ones they had taken from a raid on the sporting department, but an old double barreled model he had inherited from his grandfather before z-day.
The barrel was short, it might have been legal before the fall of civilization, or perhaps it hadn't been. His grandfather and dad always referred to it as a 'coach gun', it used standard twelve gauge shells and kicked like a mule when fired. Jeff loved using it for close fighting; there was nothing better to drop zombies in his opinion.
The pistols they all carried had make shift silencers on them, twenty ounce plastic pop bottles duct taped over the barrels. Everyone carried more duct tape and an extra empty bottle or two in case the ones they had now were damaged. The idea was to suppress the noise of firing enough so that other zombies would not come running and mob the group. So far the strategy had worked well.
Jeff and the kids had left a middle aged housewife named Sally and the doctor's son, Peter, back at the trench at the edge between Doraville and the wasteland. Those two would be on watch and act as a backup should Jeff and the kids run into trouble.
Jeff's team had an afternoon of hunting and if they could make it out of the bombed out section of town they would try their hand at a little looting too. The kids Jeff was going out with were Jack, Willy and Nadine. The youngest was Nadine at twelve, Jack and Willy were both fourteen and practically inseparable. People had tried to split them up and have them work in different areas, but sooner or later, usually within an hour, both boys would be doing whatever one had been assigned to. Now no one even tried to keep them apart, it was just easier to work them together. Today they were partnered up to the right side of Jeff and Nadine and they were getting a little ahead of the others. So far Willy had been the only one to take a zed down; he put killed a morbidly obese zombie that was stuck in the watery mud at the bottom of one of the many craters littering the area.
Jeff had a theory about the zombies; it was like when one of them died the others around the dead one knew about it and swarmed to the area. Kind of like bees would emit a chemical to let their colony know there was danger present when they were killed. Of course Jeff was not too well educated, that was just something he recalled reading in a magazine at the dentist's office one day when he was a kid.
The light zombie activity was unusual, typically the zombies wandered in aimlessly to fill any voids or open space. The slow ones, tended to group if something interesting happened, like say, someone started screaming. Today Jeff wanted to see what lay beyond the wasteland, he knew that it ended in a series of houses, but he thought there were some stores in that direction too. The group had not scouted this direction before and there might be some good loot they could use. The main reason no one had made it too far in this direction is that every time someone tried they ended up in a pitched battle and had to retreat to the trench at the edge of Doraville.
'
If he could he would test his theory at the same time. He had gone so far as to tell the kids not to kill any zombies they could avoid, to pull the trigger only as a last resort if someone's life were in danger. The kids had wanted to know why and he explained it to them. Will and Nadine thought Jeff might be right, Jack was more skeptical, but was willing to test the theory.
For the trip the group had brought along a set of Motorola walkie-talkies and small digital video camera, the thing only took low resolution videos, but had the benefit of operating on double 'A' batteries, which were still plentiful. Jeff really doubted he would use any of the electrical gear, noise tended to draw unwanted attention.
The other radio was back in the trench with Sally and his radio was turned off, the kids didn't carry any electric gear at all. This was against the official rules of the town, but radios, no matter how small, added bulk and
