his ‘movable wall.’ It was a six, six and a half foot high by twenty-foot long wall built on wheels and placed on a track. It was ingenious. He placed studs every ten inches as opposed to the standard eighteen for added strength. Covered with drywall and with small wheels attached to the bottom, with some muscle power the gate could be retracted to either let someone in or out as the case might be.
We were as fearful of ‘gangs’ or desperate mobs as we were of the zombies. Normal humans would have an easy time breaching any of our defenses, so as much as we wanted to cut down on the number of sentries, we just didn’t dare. Every hundred yards or so we had either a tall stepladder or a small sliding ladder set up against the wall. These were manned 24/7. I spent nearly six hours a day on guard duty. I didn’t mind so much at the gates. The camaraderie heralded me back to my days in the Marines Corps. The time on the ladders, however, was excruciating. When I got off the ladder at the end of my shift, my feet and legs throbbed in pain for almost as long as I had been on it. When the opportunity to go on a supply run came, I jumped at it. A chance meeting with zombies seemed much better than the known pain of ‘the ladders’ (modern societies’ newest form of torture). Thank God for Alex, he had already come up with a design for small gun towers to take the place of ‘the ladders.’
The raid was set up specifically to search for food and batteries and that type of stuff, but when Alex came to us with his list of building materials, we promised to make sure to leave room in the van. Who knew what invaluable contraption he was going to come up with next?
Six of us went out in that van. Between all the guns and ammo we carried I didn’t know how we were going to fit any food in here. Me, Justin, Travis, Brendon, Alex (he left his kids with Jed and his wife) and a slightly built man that barely looked like he could hold up his rifle; Spindler was his name. He said he had been a principal once upon a time in a town called Walpole or something like that. I didn’t like him much but as long as he helped and didn’t become a liability he was fine with me. Tracy and Nicole were not thrilled that we were heading out, but I assured them everything would be fine. We hadn’t seen more than a dozen or so zombies in the last two days.
“Mike you’ve seen the news,” Tracy pleaded.
And I had, that was all that was on. There were two television stations left and it was ‘All News, All the Time.’ It was horrendous. There was nothing else to report on except for zombies. Even the commentators seemed bored with the subject.
‘Another mass killing in Ohio.’ Yawn, big stretch, the newscaster would state. ‘Film at eleven.’ Stretch. Obviously the yawn and the stretch are figurative, but that was the implied tone. What wasn’t implied, however, was that no matter how seemingly easy we had it at the moment, the worst of it wasn’t over. The zombies were still out there and wherever they went havoc, death and destruction followed.
“Trace,” I consoled. “Lowe’s and Safeway are less than a half mile from here, we’ll be loaded up and back within the hour.” It ended up being a lot longer than an hour and incredibly more dangerous than I had said or figured. And like every Star Trek away team, we ended up losing a crew member.
We left by the minivan exit. It was on the side closest to our destination. Across from the gate on the other side of the road was a Jehovah’s Witness freedom hall. I was wondering how many of the devout followers that went to this church were lucky enough to get one of the coveted 144,000 spots in the Promised Land this last week. When I reigned in my cynicism, I noticed someone standing at the far edge of the church parking lot. My heart beat a little faster. Why was somebody just standing there? Something didn’t seem right. I told Alex, who was driving, to go into the church lot. He was not happy about any detours, he was thinking that Jed was most likely as good a baby-sitter as his near comatose wife. But when I pointed out what I was looking at he readily agreed. We were within twenty-five yards and still she didn’t run away or amble towards us. We could tell it was a woman from the slight build and long hair, but beyond that we had no clue.
“Alex, get about twenty feet away and let’s see what’s going on,” I said.
“This doesn’t feel right, Mike,” Alex said, echoing what we were all thinking.
As we got closer I could tell that in life, this woman had been downright beautiful. Even in death there was a certain majesty to her. Her long raven black hair hid the majority of sores on her face, but her uncovered arms showed the ravages of the disease she was carrying. I could see her arms rippling even though ‘it’ didn’t move a muscle.
Justin had lined up his shot. “Dad do you want me to kill it?” he asked.
I knew deep down in my subconscious she was dangerous, as any beautiful woman was, and she
“Dad?” Justin asked again. He wanted this standoff done.
“Put the gun down. Alex, get us the fuck out of here,” I said, never tearing my eyes from her.
I heard Spindler gasp, so I know he saw what I did. The zombie woman nodded once, as in ‘thank you’ for not killing her. I shuddered, but nobody else in the van was the wiser. Looking back just a few short weeks later, I wish I had let Justin shoot her.
When I got my composure back, I was able to rationalize the nod as stress induced or just perception problems. I knew better though, I’d wished Spindler hadn’t seen it too. It would have made it a lot easier to brush this away if there hadn’t been a corroborating witness.
“Alex, drive behind the Lowe’s store,” I said with a quaver in my voice. Luckily everyone else was too busy scanning the area to notice the octave change.
“Mike, you heard Jed, we need to get food first and then worry about the wood for the turrets,” Alex bemoaned.
“Yeah, Jed would say that, the old geezer hasn’t done one shift on those god-awful things. I can barely sleep because of the pain in my legs.”
Alex opened his mouth to say something but I cut him off. “Come on Alex, I know what I’m doing, how much food do you think we’re going to fit in here anyway? Go to the back of the store, I can almost guarantee they’ll have a big rig there, we’ll fill it with all the supplies and food we’d need for a year.”
“Mike, I don’t know how to drive a rig,” Alex pleaded.
“No sweat,” I said as I put on my best bull-shitting smile. “I drove one back in my Marine Corps days.”
He eyed me a little dubiously, if he had stared at me a little longer I would have cracked and just forgotten the whole damn plan.
My whole half-hour of driving a big rig had started as a dare from a fellow Marine friend of mine. We had been drinking all night at the base watering hole and had just started walking home to the barracks. We had passed the armory and a giant camouflaged truck sat in the parking lot.
“Betcha can’t drive us home in that,” my drinking buddy Chuck Blaylock dared.
“Can so,” I blustered as I began to squeeze my way through the locked gate.
“What the fuck are ya doing?” Chuck asked, almost as if he had already forgotten what he had dared me about.
He had; unfortunately, my short-term memory wasn’t as bad. I got up into the cab and turned over the ignition, which allowed the glow plugs to warm up. There was no need for keys, like all military vehicles there was no such thing as keys. It would do no good if in the heat of battle the driver was killed or blown apart and the keys disappeared with him. You get my point, right? So within half a minute of getting through the gate the truck roared to life. I lurched the truck forward.
“Crap, there’s a bunch of gears,” I mumbled. I was paying more attention to the shift box than I was the gate. I barely looked up as I crashed through it. The truck stalled, Chuck hopped into the cab from the passenger side.
“’Bout time,” he said, and then he started snoring softly.
The barracks was only two streets over but I was so inebriated I had lost all sense of direction. When the eight trailing military police hummers had pulled us over, I was ten miles from home, had destroyed three cars and one guard shack. All in all, not a great ending to a great night. At my court-martial, the officer in charge of the proceedings, Colonel Laret, went easy on me. First off because the truck I was driving hadn’t blown half the state away. Unbeknownst to us the truck was packed with C-4 explosive. I could have served life in prison at Leavenworth for that alone. When it was all said and done, I had lost two stripes (demoted from sergeant to lance corporal), three months' pay and one year of confinement to the barracks. Chuck lost a stripe just for getting in the cab. They also sent him to another duty station, Okinawa, Japan, so we couldn’t be together to cause any more
