them since.
Now the council members were all out on the street in front of Dora's house at about nine in the morning. They were looking towards a military supply truck where four soldiers were climbing out of the cab, Sargent Waller was nowhere to be seen.
Dora led the way, confident in her acting ability, 'Where is Waller at?' She arched her eyebrow and looked over the Sargent's replacement, the man was tall and broad shouldered. The man had on the rank designation that Waller used to wear, but Dora had never seen him before.
'Ma'am? I am Sargent Jim Tiller. Were you a friend of his?'
'Friend? No, more like an acquaintance really, something happened to the man? My name is Dora, supposedly I run this place.'
'Some supers jumped this squad last week, Waller got shot, believe it or not.'
Dora stopped and brought her hand to her mouth, then swore, 'Fuck. I knew it. I knew sooner or later they would start using guns. Fucking bastards. Waller going to be okay?' She let her eyes mist up.
'He didn't make it. But the zombies didn't eat him either.'
'Sargent Tiller do you have time to come in and have a sit down conversation with us?'
The man looked over his shoulder at his three men still standing by the truck and said, 'You guys get the supplies unloaded. I am going to talk with Dora. The guys have told me there the town is run by council, is this everyone I need to speak with?'
'Yeah come on in and I will introduce you around and tell you about our problem.'
The group moved inside while the three other soldiers unloaded the truck with the help of some of the older children. Sitting down Dora introduced Nash to the council, Mary, Paige, Alex, Leon, Steven and Freddie who were all there for this meeting. All of them were following roles they had discussed beforehand; Freddie and Steve seemed to be the worst of the actors, looking ill at ease.
'Sargent, we have some problems.'
'Yeah, go on.'
'We are getting worn down by the zombies, did you bring anyone for us today?'
'No we haven't spotted any humans today.'
'See this is part of the problem we have. About a week ago the zombies attacked us again, there is a bombed out section to the north west of town and the zombies came through there, they killed fourteen of our people, most of them adults, this includes four people who went out on patrol and never came back. We have another twelve people who are walking wounded and honestly we cannot cope with the loss of manpower. The zombies are winning and we need to evacuate.'
'What?'
'We need to leave, we don't have enough fuel, we rely more and more on the National Guard to get us food, we have almost no gasoline to power the generators for the winter, in short, we're screwed. The council and I have decided to ask the army to send enough trucks to get the hundred and thirty some of us out of here. Could you pass that along to your superiors and see if they will help? We will do our part, we will try and find gas and scavenge a bus or two to make the trip less resource intensive for you, but we need to leave before winter sets in.'
Sargent Tiller sat looking at them for a moment, 'Maybe we could get you more supplies? Stretch things out a bit?'
'It is not a matter of supplies so much as manpower, we can't hold them back anymore. Every time there is an attack, well, people have to defend against it, if they stay up all night defending against the attack, they can't be expected to go out the next day to scavenge food and fuel. Plus our ammo is low, these people are not trained soldiers, we fired off almost all of the ammo we had in the big fight on Friday night.'
'Ammunition is in short supply. How bad is your situation?'
'We are down to maybe twenty shots per gun, we do have a boat load of the common.22 ammo, but we all know that stuff is just about useless for taking a zombie out.' Steve said.
Tiller grinned, and said, 'Yeah, you would practically have to press your gun against the things head to make that work. Better than a club, but just barely. Okay I will pass this along to my lieutenant and see what he comes up with. Today though, well does anyone know where the closest gun store was? I will go that way as a personal favor and me and the boys will gather up all the bullets we can and bring them back here before we high tail it back to the east side. We should have time if we can find the place. Anyone have a phone book to get the address?'
Paige rose up and went to get the phone book, while Dora said, 'Thanks Sargent, you have no idea what this means to us. I don't suppose the guard could run a few more patrols around us to keep some of the zombies away? If we could only get a few night's sleep I think we could catch up…there is, well, no never mind.'
'What?' Tiller asked.
'Well the decision to leave was not unanimous; if we can catch a break we might consider trying to tough it out. We thought maybe with the nights getting colder maybe the zombie activity would die down. So far we have not noticed a change, if anything it is worse because the nights are longer.'
Tiller nodded, 'I bet they will keep coming. There should be less of them around here though, so many have followed us East and North as we retreated, and we just keep killing more and more every day. I thought that would have drawn them away from you. '
Dora shook her head from side to side, tilting her chin down, 'No, they are still around us, it is like they can sense us or something.'
'That is too bad. Okay let's look and see where we can get ammo. You have shotguns right? So a Wal-mart or Sam's club would be good for shotgun shells.'
The group of them looked in the phone book then brought up a mapping program Paige had on her computer to show the Sargent the best way to get to the stores where he thought he would find ammunition. After that Tiller went back outside and the council members saw him off before coming back into Dora's house to talk again. Paige waited by the window until she could no longer see their truck, then came and sat down at the table again.
'Do you think he bought it?' she asked Dora.
'Hook, line and sinker. I am a good actress.' said Dora beaming.
'You were laying it on a little thick I thought, kind of suspicious, tears? For Fuller? You were supposed to have barely known the man!' Mary said.
'Hey! Steven said to get emotional, what does 'emotional' mean to you? To me it means tears. What does everyone else think? Did we sell this? Did it sound reasonable?'
The council nodded their agreement.
'Well good, now we wait, if he comes back we see what he brings. Over the next week we see how the 'attacks' go, if Steve is right they will die off down to nothing, which will let us send out scouts to get the school buses and diesel so we can make a break for Des Moines.'
'Even if our last long range scouts don't come back?' asked Alex.
Dora nodded, 'Yeah, even if we don't hear from them. I would rather start over somewhere that I knew we weren't just the local zombie's next meal, there has to be someplace safer than this.'
'True enough, so now we wait.'
They did not have to wait long, Sargent Tiller and his crew returned in about three hours. They had brought seventy boxes of shotgun shells and three new shotguns. They had also stopped by a coffee store and cleaned it out of coffee and filters. The last thing they brought out was a heavy card board box, it was lined with a blanket and the Sargent himself presented it to Dora. She looked inside and said, 'What are we supposed to do with these?'
The Sargent set the box down and brought up a squirming puppy by the scruff of its neck, 'Well, raise them. Use them to help guard the perimeter, they can bark and alert you to any danger that is coming your way.'
'That will take months!'
'People like dogs, right?' Tiller asked as several loitering kids came over to the box to get to the puppies. He stepped away from the box and brought Dora with him. 'See the kids love them already, they are good for morale and will turn into guard dogs, eventually.'
'Maybe, it still won't solve our manpower problem. You bring food for them?'
