Cities of the Dead: Stories From The Zombie Apocalypse (13 page)

“On the upside, there’s no taxes anymore.”

“Yeah, there’s that,” Roy said, a wry smile accompanying a roll of his eyes.

They both sipped their beer for a while in silence, each man inside his own head. Almost like when they would go fishing and not talk for hours, just sitting in the boat casting, reeling in walleye or perch. You didn’t need to talk to each other when you both knew what to do. They had rebuilt the farm largely in silence, too. Each man had taken over a specific aspect, Roy working on the structures and Milton on the livestock and garden, each man working to his strengths, helping each other when necessary. Sara and Nancy had gravitated equally naturally to the cooking and family-raising aspects of life, and though life was significantly more difficult absent everything technological that humanity had done to make life easier, they were, for the most part, happy.

Except for the kids. Life without cell phones had totally demoralized Roy’s daughters, which confounded Roy since there was nobody to talk or text. Eli occasionally despaired over his inability to play on a PlayStation. The sudden descent from modernity had shocked the three teenagers in ways their parents hadn’t imagined, and Milton got the sense that the kids felt they had been robbed of some birthright. They did their chores around the farm without too much complaining, but it was obvious they expected things to return to normal at some point. None of them expected the world to remain two-hundred years in the  past for long.

It didn’t help that they weren’t without modern conveniences. The group had several solar powered battery chargers which they used to recharge the batteries to the walkie-talkies, GPS devices, mp3 players and assorted other electronic gadgets they had on the farm. Rechargeable batteries were still rechargeable and the crank-handle emergency radios they had could still - on a clear night - pull in a signal from somewhere from some lonely soul who was broadcasting on a ham set. They all knew they weren’t alone, that there was still life out there on the fringes.

“Eli wants to see if we can take a cow from that dairy farm off County Highway S,” Milton said.

“We already have two.”

“He wants to eat it.”

“Are they still worth eating? Last time we went by there the few that were around to look at were pretty skinny.”

“He wants a hamburger,” Milton shrugged. “I’d like a steak, come to think of it. Rabbit, deer and turkey are getting kind of old.”

“Ayup,” Roy said. “Lots of dead ones around, now, though.”

Milton nodded.

“I don’t know that we should be risking our young on hamburger. Not with so many of the undead so close to that place.”

“I ain’t arguing in favor of it, I’m just sayin’ maybe it’s worth considering,” Milton said. “We could scout it and make a decision then.”

“The last two times we tried something like that we nearly got eaten alive by the dead walkers,” Roy said. “I think we should just stay put, stay out of the way, and learn to like living in the 1800s.”

“We ain’t going to live long that way,” Milton said, thinking about the prospects. “And our teeth will fall out.”

The sun outside had set, and the small propane lamp sitting on the floor between them cast a circle of light around their legs, exaggerated shadows and made them realize the direness of their current situation. Each man finished his beer and went to bed. The night watch was manned first by Eli, then by Roy’s daughters until the wives woke to prepare breakfast. Even this far off a road, one had to be ready for zombies. They had no rhyme, no reason, no predictability, a lesson Milton had learned in the early days of the apocalypse when foraging for the necessities of a life he hadn’t ever - really - anticipated living, and he had anticipated a lot of end-of-the-world scenarios.

But all of them had been based around the actions of people and what people would do in the event of a once-in-a-thousand-year natural disaster or sudden nuclear attack. It had never occurred to him to prepare for Night of the Living Dead. And, anyway, he had never watched zombie movies, so he had no idea.

Milton, Roy and Eli were on their knees in the scrub brush watching five undead mill aimlessly around the barn that housed their four-wheelers. They kept the vehicles a mile away from where they lived so that the sounds of the engines wouldn’t draw the walkers to their actual home. It had been almost a week since they had last used them, and Milton thought it odd that there was a squad of zombies standing around the structure.

“The cost of these steaks just got a bit more expensive,” Roy said.

Milton turned to him and nodded.

Eli looked at them with incredulity. “We can take them out easy from this distance, Dad. They’ll never know what hit them.”

Milton looked at his son and gave him the “patience, son” face. His son was always too eager to take a shot, to claim the victory, to walk home with the game.

“That doesn’t make a whole lotta sense,” Roy said, watching through binoculars.  “They can’t know what’s in the shack, since they weren’t anywhere around here when we locked ‘em up last week. But, there they are, almost as if they were told to guard it.”

“You know, from all we’ve seen them doing the last year or so, it’s starting to make me wonder if maybe they’re not completely dead inside, like there might be some small bit of the person left inside,” Milton said, watching the undead mill about and scanning the horizon for some sign of something intentional. “Maybe they’re aware of the world? Maybe they remember things? Maybe they have some intelligence?”

Roy looked at him and shrugged. “Let’s hope not. On the plus side, they’re slow. But on the other side, they usually come in packs.”

Milton nodded in thought. “I’m starting to wonder if they’re some sort of pack-hunting ... species. They can’t succeed well individually, but as a large group, they have a good chance of surviving an encounter through attrition.”

“Let’s just kill ‘em,” Eli said, pulling the arrow back-and-forth in his bow.

“Eli, relax,” Milton said, waving his palm toward the ground. “We need to get a sense of the situation before we do anything.”

“You two hold here,” Roy said, “I’ll flank ‘em from the right side and get a view of what’s goin’ on behind the structure and down the road towards town. If they’ve started figuring out how we’re operating, we’re going to need to start adapting. Just plain killing them might not always be the best first option if we want to figure out how it is they operate.”

With that, Roy melted into the underbrush and made his way off, following a dry creek bed and disappearing into the earth tones of the landscape. Milton watched his friend and then turned to his son. Eli resembled him, was almost a duplicate, and yet had the personality traits of his ex-wife: stubborn, impetuous, too quick to make a decision that would turn into a mistake. He had spent years in the woods with Eli, trying to teach him the patience necessary before taking a shot, the importance of doing nothing but observing for long periods of time. But Milton suspected the electronics lifestyle Eli had gravitated to more readily influenced his actions: his son wanted a button to mash, a joystick to move and instant gratification or a re-spawn point for another try.

But out here on the cold, windswept countryside, there were no re-spawn points. And less instant gratification.

After a while, the walkie talkie clipped to Milton’s belt clicked twice, a double-hiccup indicating Roy was about to initiate transmission. Milton held it up to his ear and adjusted the volume downward.

“Whatchya got?” Milton asked, his voice low and calm.

“Just what you’re looking at, nothing else around.”

“Alright, then, I’ll start with the one on the far left and move in, you take the one on your end and do the same, and Eli will shoot the center and then cover wide in case we miss anything,” Milton said. “Thirty seconds and let loose.”

Milton turned to Eli. “Take the one in the middle, then pay attention to everything else but the zombies in front of the building, got it? We don’t want any surprises while Roy and I pick off the last ones.”

Eli nodded and readied his bow.

It was over in seconds. The two zombies not hit in the initial volley had no reaction to the sudden demise of their comrades. They just stood there and stared at the fallen ones until they were felled by arrows seconds later. Eli started to move and Milton grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back.

“Wait. Just to make sure, we wait.”

Eli bent down on a knee, readied an arrow in his bow, and scanned the desolate countryside. Nothing. Milton looked at his son and wondered what he was thinking, if he was here in this moment or if he was somewhere else, thinking of whatever it was his son thought about but didn’t talk with him about.

The walkie clicked twice.

“What do you make of it?” Milton said into his walkie.

“Seems clear.”

“Alright,” Milton said, tapping his son on his shoulder, “let’s go get some hamburger.”

Twenty-minutes later they had stashed the ATVs in a dry storm water ditch and made their way on foot the half-mile to the farm. They moved slowly, in a staggered formation with about ten yards between each of them, Milton in the lead and Roy in trail. All had an arrow at the ready and were scanning the landscape. They made the road bordering the farm and each man and the boy took a knee, Milton setting his bow down and looking through his binoculars across the farm.

“Well, there are two cows still alive, and I don’t see any undead,” Milton said.

Roy took the glasses from Milton and scanned the farm. “Looks like grass-fed free-range beef.”

“Maybe we could take them back to the farm?” Eli asked suddenly, his voice filled with optimism.

Milton looked at his son and shook his head. “That we can’t do. We’re too far away from home; we’d be exposing ourselves out here for too long. There’s too many walkers on the roads to risk the time it’d take to get them back.”

“I have to agree with your dad on this one, Eli, those two cows aren’t worth it.” Roy said. If we’re going to do this, we need to get in and out.”

Eli sighed. “Why don’t we just kill one of them and take back what we can, then? It’s got to be better than squirrel.”

“You know, Milton, we are here. They are cows. And if we don’t eat them, they’re just gonna die when the winter really hits, so we might be doing them a favor if we take them out and get what we can.,” Roy said.

“Alright, alright, you’ve got a point, both of you,” Milton said. “We might as well take them both while we’re here.”

Two hours later, Roy and Milton were mostly finished with cleaning the two cows, each man pleased with the decision to risk the journey. This meat would get them through winter easily. Eli stood watch near the entrance to the barn, standing in the shadows and scanning the outdoors for undead.

“How’s it looking, Eli?” Milton said, wiping the blade of his Dozier K-7 knife and slipping it back into its sheath.

Eli shrugged. “Haven’t seen anything since that foursome walked down the road an hour or so ago.”

That group had stopped for a while on the road and given Eli the creeps. He couldn’t tell for sure from the distance, but it had seemed to him the foursome of undead were looking at him. And then they had trundled along five minutes later.

Milton didn’t know what to make of the way the zombies organized themselves or how they decided to move. Mostly, they congregated in population centers, accumulating new members over time until they reached some sort of density that caused them to disperse. Almost as if they knew, somehow, that the size of their group was now no longer good for hunting the living. There was no way to predict it, but downtown had seen the zombie hordes infest and abandon it several times, so Roy and Milton constantly monitored the activity in town for the times when it was empty. It was then they made raiding trips on the stores for supplies.

Right now, the zombies seemed to be in a building phase, collecting at the state fairgrounds for whatever reason, and one had to be careful when moving through the world because there was no shortage of groups of undead making their way to the collection point. He and Roy had come across a group of seven a month ago after a day of fishing on Tainter Lake. They were standing around the ATVs and he and Roy had had to pick them off with bowshots before returning home for the night’s fish fry. They now hid the ATVs when they weren’t on them.

“They know we’re here,” Milton said suddenly.

“Who does?”

“The zombies. That’s why they were guarding the shack. Somehow, they know people are using the ATVs to get around,” Milton said. “And those people are us.”

Roy gave him a curious look. “We killed all the zombies guarding the shack. We hid the four-wheelers in a ditch under branches so they can’t be seen. We’re good.”

“I dunno,” Milton said. “We need to get out of here, soon. I think they know we’re out here somewhere and they’re looking for us. I mean, they keep changing their pattern. Sometimes they’re a large group somewhere, like they’re trying to draw us in to kill them, and then they’re everywhere in little groups, roaming the landscape. I think that’s a pattern, like they’re trying to figure out how to find those of us in hiding and trap us somewhere we think is safe.”

Just then a runner zombie turned the corner of the barn and skip-hopped past Eli into the middle of the barn, its mouth foaming, its teeth sharp in an elongated mouth. It growled, not groaned. It took a few steps closer to Milton and Roy, who were stepping away from the cow carcasses, their eyes tracking the undead monster, both of their bows on the ground several feet away.