Meanwhile, myself, Gayle, Morgan, and Wyatt went down to a side street at the whole other end of the small town. We pulled up to the last house. Gayle had the AR. I had my Crovel, and the boys had pitchforks. We also had pistols, all of us. The idea, though, was to go quiet and check the houses.
The first one was a piece of cake. Tapped on the door, all quiet. The house was unlocked, nobody inside. We checked for medicines and food, found a pretty good stash of cans. Some good food in the fridge, too, but it was all rotten. No medicines. No weapons. Some old lady clothes, that’s about it. We stacked the cans on the porch for later pickup.
Second house, we could see Zach standing inside, trying to get out through the door. Erin, and Lorrie, were shooting pretty regularly at the end of town. We saw a couple zachs here and there amble along in their direction.
I wanted the boys to get some training, so we had Gayle stand behind the door, and she yanked it open. Morgan went first and jabbed the fucker right in the eye. He dropped. Morgan let out a whoop and went to high-five his brother when I clamped him hard on the shoulder.
“Shut the fuck up!” I whisper-hollered at him. He was sorry, wouldn’t do it again.
Found a little food, a .38 revolver with 9 shells, some 42-year old Playboys, and some dirty clothes. But we took everything we could find. Candles, aluminum foil, baggies, toilet paper, matches, dog food.
Next house, we tapped on the window. We couldn’t see through the windows as the curtains were drawn.
“Who is it?” a female voice called out.
We were stunned. I motioned for one of the boys to answer.
“It’s us! Morgan and Wyatt Masters. From the store!”
The lady came and opened the door cautiously, then let us in. The lady was probably 65+. She eyeballed us.
“You the ones making all the racket?”
“Yes,” I answered. “I’m Michael. This is Gayle. We’re just trying to clean up the town. You uh, you ok? you need anything?”
“Naw. I’m good for the winter. Come springtime, I’ll be needing some supplies, though. You reckon we’ll get some power and food by then?”
“Uh, no, Missus…”
“It’s Miss. Thompson. Never had much need for no man. Although, I do kind of like your style, Slim.” She let that hang. I wasn’t sure what to say. Wasn’t expecting to be hit on today, least not by an old lady. She wasn’t bad looking, for 65.
“Hmph… well… Miss Thompson, we’ll be around a lot. If you see us, flag us down if you need something, okay?”
We left, Gayle snickered and patted me on the butt. “Stud,” she whispered and laughed.
We went through 30 more houses, but no other living folks. Lots of dead bodies, though; human and zombie. Did find a decent 1911 like mine, four hunting rifles in various calibers with a few boxes of shells for each.
Suddenly, the radio crackled to life.
“Michael! It’s Erin! We need you NOW!”
We piled into the Jeep and shot back towards main street. We got some more info from Erin; they had moved the truck to try and get a better location to shoot from.
“I told you not to do that!”
“I know Michael, I’m sorry. But Lorrie’s trapped. Hurry!”
We pulled up next to the Unimog, running over a couple Zachs. It was now more in the center of town. It was supposed to be away from the buildings.
“She’s up on the second floor. hurry!”
We broke into the lower floor of the real estate office. I killed two zeds with my Crovel. I could hear more of them moaning upstairs. Racing up the stairs, I hollered “Look out below” and threw a couple more zeds down the stairs. Gunshots followed as Erin or someone killed them dead.
Gayle came up behind me. The zeds were now converging on us. We each fired our pistols until they were empty. The floor was slippery from all the ichor and gore, but I charged forward, hacking and slashing at Zed heads. I worked my way into what seemed a bedroom, and there was Lorrie.
She was between the bed and a wall, holding back two zombies with just her rifle barrel. Crying and screaming, she was going to lose the battle in the next few seconds as the combined weight of the two big man zombies was probably 400 pounds.
I hacked at a nearby zombie, then leapt on to the bed. I hacked with all my might on the zed closest to Lorrie, burying my Crovel so hard I couldn’t get it back out from Zach’s body. I yanked out my USMC Ka-Bar and buried it into the skull of the second zed. I pulled Lorrie out from under both of them as they began falling. Clutching me for dear life, Lorrie sobbed into my neck.
Everyone just stood around as I came downstairs.
“Come on! Form a perimeter! What have I been talking to you about for the last 4 days? And somebody go get my Crovel!”
We finally formed a walking convoy and made our way down to Master’s Hardware. Wyatt drove the Jeep, running down zeds while I carried Lorrie. Erin and Gayle covered us as Morgan followed in the Unimog. We finally got inside the store.
We laid Lorrie on the counter, checking for bites, but she was clear. Her mom held her, they rocked together slowly in an old rocking chair by the front door.
I sat down and held my head in my hands. Jesus I almost fucked up again! We need more training before we can do this kind of thing!
Erin came over to me. “Michael… Daddy… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have–”
“No,” I snapped back at her. “You shouldn’t have. You should have done what I said. I can’t be everywhere. You need to think!”
Ashamed, Erin went up to the staircase. Probably to the clock tower so she could shoot more zeds.
“What should we do?” asked Morgan.
“I don’t know right now, bud. Just… let me be for a few.”
I think it was in that moment where I realized how much I cared for these people. I looked at Gayle and Lorrie. Gayle was whispering softly to Lorrie, who seemed really small right now. They shouldn’t be fighting zombies. They should be helping or something, but they weren’t warriors. This wasn’t fair.
But it wasn’t just them. It was Erin. And the Sisters. And Payton, and Kaitlyn, and Tina. And the boys, too. I can’t let anything happen to these people.
Zombies moaned outside.
Fuckers.
– – –
I took everybody back to the cabin a little after that. We ate an early supper of chicken corn chowder. The mood was a little somber. Erin was very down on herself. Lorrie was not doing so well, neither was Gayle. Lorrie seemed to want to be hugging or holding on to her mom or myself, she didn’t want to be alone. Everyone else just picked up on the vibe and didn’t make a lot of noise.
I talked with the local boys after dinner. I wanted to find out what commercial enterprises were in town or nearby. Gas Stations, stores, welding shops, sporting goods stores, engine repair shops, I wanted it all. Erin tried to go to her room. I told her no, sit down with me and listen. I apologized to her. She cried. We made up. Then we talked strategy.
After a couple hours, we did more P90 training, except for Lorrie. Well, she did a modified version. She isn’t all that flexible yet from her initial wounds.
Then everyone went to bed.
There was scratching at my door. I didn’t open it.
I didn’t deserve any happiness right then.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Chapter 9 – The Recovery
= = = = = = = = = = = = = =
The next three days raced by. I took a team of Wyatt, Erin, and Payton with me and we went to two other nearby towns, just a little bigger than ours. They were as bad or worse than our little town. There’s a larger town to the north of us, but I imagine they are inundated with Zeds.
Anyway, we found what we were looking for; paintball and lacrosse gear. We liked the Lacrosse helmets best as they had a tough face screen and you could talk with them. They were much lighter than Motorcycle helmets. Plus, you could still wear goggles with them. We found all kinds of pads and protective equipment for the legs and arms, also. The object was to make ourselves hard to bite.
Back at the ranch, we all put on our gear for real live training. First, everyone got used to hitting me on the head with broomsticks. Didn’t even reach me through my helmet, but everyone got lots of licks in.
At the Lawnmower repair shop, we got lots of lawnmower blades. We trimmed up one end to fit the gals smaller hands,then wrapped it in paracord to make a nice handle. We sharpened the other end to a razor-like finish. Now everyone had their own personal Zed-Hacker. We also got some yard rakes, the tough kind, not grass rakes. We cut off some of the tines, and bent the middle ones facing forward. I thought this would come in handy.
Then we had one-v-one training, with live zombies.
Many had come up our way over the last few days, we let them be as they circled the fence. Then, carefully, we’d let in one-at-a-time through the gate. We didn’t try to pair them up with a like-sized person, if it was your turn you got what you got.
Being generally shorter, except for Payton, the girls were having a tough time with a one-shot kill; Zed’s arms were too long. The girls learned to hack off an arm or two first, then go for the kill. Or kick them in the knee so Zed fell down. Then it was an easy kill shot.
Then they tried it with the rake. Much better! Hard swing to the knees, down they went. Then they were easy pickins for a rake-shot to the head. So that became our primary tactic; rake them out in the open, blade them when up close.
Lorrie was the most zealous of girls, surpassing even Erin. After she killed one, she would often hack it more, and spit on it. She didn’t like them much. Good.
All the girls did pretty well. And the boys turned out to be much tougher than I first thought. We were finally getting in shape.
– – –
Reports from the outside world were disheartening. Entire cities like New York had fallen into complete shambles. The internet was pretty limited. Only Google and Gmail seemed to be working anymore. Those Silicon valley guys always had great security.
The HAM radio reports were awful. Mostly just lonely calls from people in trouble. We couldn’t go help them, nobody was around us. After a while we quit turning it on.
– – –
Next morning, after our P90 workout, Gayle and Lorrie went to make breakfast while I studied the web. Then, girls and guys all sat me down at the table.
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