family was safe, my friends were close, and we had what we needed to get on with our lives.
The wind picked up suddenly, swaying the treetops and causing a rustle to pick up from the leaves. If I had been poetic, I might have thought the land was saying “Welcome home.”
34
We settled in relatively quickly and made several forays into Utica. The town had largely been abandoned when the Upheaval hit, so we were able to secure a decent amount of supplies. There were, of course, the usual skirmishes with zombies, but I have to say, we were getting fairly good at dealing with them. They weren’t the horrible boogeymen they were in the beginning and we treated them more like vermin to be exterminated. Large, smelly, kill-you-if-it-bites-you vermin, but vermin nonetheless.
Tommy managed to find an old style water pump which allowed us to pull up water from the waterfall basin near the lodge. Charlie got it in his head to try and rig up a waterwheel to a generator to try and provide some low wattage power, but by fall he was still working that one out, getting mostly soaked for his trouble.
When fall finally came, the forest was ablaze in colors, as far as we could see. Charlie and I took Sarah and Rebecca on a surprise trip to Seneca, where Josh steered us in the direction of the local minister. Charlie and I had picked up rings during one of our trips to Utica and eschewing tradition, simply told the women we were getting married. They made a half-hearted attempt to object, but once they realized we were serious, they lined up pretty quickly. After the vows were exchanged, we headed back to the lodge to break the news to the children, who really didn’t seem to care. Jake put a stuffed animal on his head and walked around the main room in celebration, at least we think that’s why he did it.
Christmas was actually a pretty happy affair. We selected a small pine tree from our abundant supply, and decorated it with trimmings gleaned from a few of the abandoned houses. It took a few tries, because some of those people had really bad taste. Jake got some new cars and Julia got some new stuffed animals. I raided a bookstore for Sarah’s gifts, and Charlie did the same for Rebecca, except he went to a craft store. Tommy had made a run to another town, and came back with several dresses for Angela. It was almost normal, except for the cougar growls that drifted upwards from the river valley floor.
We celebrated Jake’s second birthday around this time and since we had no idea about Julia’s birthday, we celebrated hers as well.
Three weeks later, Charlie, Tommy and I were back in the boat, heading north. The ground was covered in snow, and ice chunks bumped into the hull every now and then. We were headed back to Leport to take part in a massive push to clear the area of zombies. Nate and I had planned this push for months, realizing that if we moved when the zombies were frozen, we would stand that much better of a chance when the weather turned warmer. Plus, with all the towns that had survived and the communication network we had set up, we were able to coordinate a massive assault on the undead.
As we ventured farther out, we were meeting with more people and towns that had survived the initial Upheaval. What we needed to do was to make it safe to travel and to let people get on with living, not just surviving. That was why the towns on the railroad were clearing up their counties, marking them safe as they pushed out farther. With luck, we hoped to have an area of over twelve hundred square miles cleared of the Z’s by spring. Next winter, we would do the same. A big hope was that a majority of the zombies would eventually decay to the point of uselessness within a few years.
The three of us were standing with Trevor and his band of merry men on the outskirts of Bolingbrook, a heavily populated suburb of the city. It had been bitterly cold the last two weeks which was perfect for zombie hunting. The ones we encountered were pretty much frozen, moving slowly if at all. There wasn’t the heavy snowfall yet, so we didn’t have to worry about zombies under the snow.
I stood with my long crowbar in my hands, my faithful M1 Carbine slung over my shoulder. There were two pickup trucks waiting behind us and more waiting beyond them. My orders were simple. Eliminate the zombies, drag them outside, and mark the doors according to what was found inside the homes. F if there was salvageable food, W if there were weapons or ammo. Other items would be recovered later to be distributed as needed or sent to the towns on the river or railway.
In a way, it was funny. There was so much stuff that we couldn’t possibly use it all. Much was going to go to waste, but I guess that was the price to be paid for a society that was consumed by consumerism. More of everything, whether we needed it or not.
The cars were being moved to the edges of the roads and placed on their sides to form a wall. Gas was removed from the cars and added to a tanker truck that followed along. Any leftover zombies in the cars were summarily executed.
I looked at the rows of homes with their torn and frayed white flags fluttering from mailboxes and sighed. Gonna be a long day. I thought, hefting my crowbar. I looked at Tommy and Charlie and gave the order.
“Move out.”
We separated into pairs and I went with Trevor. All around me was the sound of men breaking into homes and dispatching zombies. Doors were spray painted, and then the trucks fired up. In the first three homes I didn’t find any zombies, but Trevor found a decent horde of canned goods. That was the way we ran it. One would go in, check only for Z’s, while the other looked for usable goods. It was cold enough that the zombies were pretty much popsicles; some could move, albeit very slowly.
Some homes had that broken-into look, with interesting blood sprays on the walls and ceilings. Body parts were here and there and in some homes you could almost read what happened in the way things were left. One house had a father lying in his bed with a neat hole in his forehead, the bodies of his wife and children in their beds, tied with rope and each sporting a ventilated skull as well. My guess was the family had turned and the father committed suicide after finishing them off.
We found little in the way of arms and ammo, but we had plenty of canned and dry goods. The majority of the trucks taking supplies were laden with food items. We had no use for the vehicles we found, but we rolled them out to the end of the driveways in case we needed them.
The day went fairly smoothly and the sun was beginning its evening decent when Trevor and I approached our last building. It was an older two story home that looked like it had been renovated before the Upheaval. I popped the door open and Trevor stepped inside. He immediately dropped from view, landing with a crash in the basement. I stepped up and saw that the floor had been removed from the front hallway, leaving only studs. Trevor had managed to fall neatly through the studs to the cellar below.
“You okay?” I called down, trying to keep myself from laughing.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Trevor grumbled from below. “Just my pride…Oh, Jesus!” Trevor screamed.
I dropped through the boards and landed heavily next to Trevor, my crowbar clanging loudly on the cement floor. I sprang up, holding the bar in front of me. The basement was dark and cluttered with only the thin light from the upstairs door and window wells providing any illumination. I could hear them shuffling in the dark and I could see what startled Trevor. I saw several pairs of glowing eyes in the darkness and as I looked further, more eyes slowly opened up. A quick count revealed at least fifteen ghouls in this basement. They were coming around corners and crawling out from under workbenches. One was even slowly rising from a large wooden box, unfolding itself. It was all in slow motion, like the worst nightmare someone could have come up with. As I looked, several more pairs of glowing eyes opened up and started to move forward in the darkness. These were just the ones I could see. Chances were, more without glowing eyes were down there as well, shuffling slowly forward, hunger driving them on and on. The noise in the basement suddenly intensified as the dead struggled forward. I had no time to wonder why so many Z’s were in this particular basement.
I swung the crowbar viciously at the nearest one, cracking its skull and killing it.
“You bit?” I hissed at Trevor as the eyes moved slowly forward. This basement had been relatively protected from the cold, so these zombies would be moving a little faster.
“I don’t know!” Trevor cried. “Something got me on my ankle when I fell!”
Inwardly, I cringed. If Trevor had been bit, he was as good as dead. I quickly looked around and didn’t see any Z’s near us. I did see a board with nails sticking out of it, so it was possible Trevor had fallen on that. I didn’t care at that point. We needed to get out of this hole. There was so much clutter and too many zombies to make a
