The Dead Circle (24 page)

Chris and Sarah stand on the roof watching them.

He puts his hands in his pockets. It’s chilly today. He can feel winter at their heels. “They’ll eventually disperse, but it could be days or even weeks before its safe enough to venture out again.”

“Which we need to do soon because our fancy new generator is worthless without fuel.”

“Yeah. Now that we’ve isolated the garage, we get gas from the cars safely, but obviously it wouldn’t be nearly enough. We should figure out how much we’re going to need.”

She nods. “Way ahead of you. I already did the math. The generator burns about fourteen gallons a day if we run it 24/7. Even if we ration it, we might get what, a month out of the cars? We shouldn’t use them unless there’s an emergency. Right now we need to think bigger. A lot bigger.”

“Are you going to be coy or are you going to tell me your idea?”

Sarah smiles at him. “A tanker truck.”

“A tanker truck? Where on earth do we get one of those?”

“I don’t know. There must be one somewhere. We can check around the gas stations, the highway maybe. Somebody had to be refueling the day it happened. If we look hard enough, we’ll find one. It will be fun. We can plan a truck heist.”

“Oceans Apocalypse?”

“Exactly.”

Chris kicks his boot, thinking. “I really don’t like the idea of being out there exposed for an indeterminate amount of time looking for something in an indeterminate location.”

“I’m not sure we have any other choice.”

“I guess. I can’t think of anything else. Gas stations have fuel, but the pumps don’t have power and we’d have no way of transporting it.”

They look down at the walking corpses milling about below. Sarah nods. The decision has been made, but they both know they can’t leave until the crowd disperses.

Sarah turns away from the street and looks at the hole Chris cut in the fence separating their roof from the parking garage. “So in the meantime, we’ve got to unload the bus. We can’t get in from the street and the generator will never fit through the trapdoor on the roof. What are we going to do?”

Chris grins. Now he’s being coy. He picks the sledge-hammer from the stack of tools he pulled out of the bus. “
I
have a brilliant plan for that.”

*

When the library was designed, there was supposed to be a small, staff-only, flight of stairs connecting the head librarian’s office down to the administrative area on the ground floor. Like so many of the other plans, they were never built. Eventually someone came along and bricked up the doorway that was supposed to lead to them. Chris points to the outline of the door. The bricks had been painted, but they still stand out against the otherwise plastered wall.

“Ever wondered what’s on the other side of these bricks?”

“Girls suck at spatial reasoning.”

“You’re an architect!”

“I’m great with blueprints.”

Chris smiles. “OK, help me with this.”

Together they use duct tape to affix several layers of blankets and towels over the brick. When they finish, Chris grins like a naughty little boy and swings his sledge hammer into the wall as hard as he can. The blankets and towels serve as a muffle of sorts and soon bits of brick and dust start falling at their feet. It takes ten minutes of exhausting—and louder than they hoped—pounding before Chris pulls the muffle back to reveal a large hole in the brick wall exposing another wall of grey cinderblock.

“Huzzah. You’ve found cinderblock.”

Chris wipes some sweat from his brow and turns back to his wife. “Yeah, but what’s
behind
the cinderblock?”

He puts the blankets back down and continues breaking through. After another five minutes of smashing, he pulls the blanket back and there is a small hole in the cinderblock. A shaft of dim light shines through onto his face.

“Take a look.”

Sarah looks through the hole. She sees a white surface with green letters painted on it. She turns back, gleefully.

“DDOT. Our bus! We’ll connect with the garage!”

“Yep! We just quadrupled our square footage.”

*

Two hours later, they have created a crude but effective passageway between the office and the third floor of the parking garage. They stack box after box of food, water and supplies, creating a pantry in the office. In one corner, they have cases of canned soup, beans and vegetables next to hundreds of pounds of pasta, flour, sugar and rice. There are large containers of olive oil, canola oil and every sauce they could find. There are stacks and stacks of cookies, crackers, coffee and many boxes of candy. Next to the food sit several pallets of water, soda, juice and pretty much anything sealed and liquid.

In the far corner of the room is a veritable drug store of medications, first aid supplies and toiletries—including a comically large stack of toilet paper. Next to that sits all sorts of tools, hardware, batteries and candles. And of course there was the fun corner filled with cases of wine, beer, liquor, books, games, DVDs and of course, a prodigious stack of pornography.

Sarah surveys the room. “Pretty good haul. I think we should be fine through the winter.”

“As long as we get enough fuel.”

“Right. In the meantime, how are we going to get the generator inside? I don’t think our new entrance is big enough.”

“It’s not. We’re going to run a cable in through the hole. We don’t want to be breathing the exhaust anyway. The garage is perfect for ventilation.”

Sarah nods.

“Let’s go set it up, shall we?”

“Set it up, sure. But remember, until we have a real fuel source we shouldn’t run it unless we’re in an emergency.”

They go back into the parking garage and together lift the generator out of the bus. Chris stares at the instructions while Sarah goes to the side of the garage and looks down at the street.

“Oh shit.” Sarah says gravely.

Chris joins her at the edge.

“Look at all of them. There’s even more than before!”

There are now at least two hundred zombies down below. Several of them are pushing on the garage’s gate. They heard the pounding and are now trying to get at the source of the noise.

“Oh my god. They can’t get in can they?”

“I don’t think so, but if many more come, all bets are off.”

“I guess the blankets weren’t enough.”

“Damn. We’ve got to be so quiet.”

Sarah frowns for a second. “That and we need to turn this library into a fortress.”

*

The next morning Sarah sits on the floor going over the library’s blueprints again. She draws several ideas with a Sharpie while Chris carries some of the tools down from the office. When Chris has collected all of the supplies, he stands over her shoulder for instructions.

“OK, let’s review. Basement: Flooded, but no outside access. Ground floor: Bedroom, bathroom and kitchen. We’ll have to board up all of the windows and the front door. If they get in, they’ll start here. Second floor: Main library level. It’s only accessible from the stairs off the kitchen. It’s a convenient bottleneck, easier to defend. Third floor: Balcony level and office. Good news is there are no stairs to the balcony.  The ladder should be easy to get rid of in an attack. All of our food and water is up there and we have an emergency exit into the garage. That’s our last retreat point. Obviously the garage is our only door in or out now.”

“OK. Makes sense to me.”

“Now, we have fifteen two by fours and ten sheets of plywood left over from renovations. We’ll use them to board up the ground floor windows and buttress the front door.” Sarah brushes her hair back from her eyes unconsciously marking her forehead with the Sharpie.

“I’ll start moving the wood downstairs.”

“Great, I’ll join you. Now do you understand this design? The strongest shape is a triangle. We nail the door shut, but then we buttress it with two triangular braces. Nail them right into the floor and into the door itself. It will take a pretty impressive amount of force to break through.”

“You got it professor. Although, it’s hard to take you seriously when you’ve tagged your forehead.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. OK, then what?”

“Next we nail the windows shut and back them with plywood and angled braces.”

Chris nods. He only sort of gets what she’s going for, but trusts her design. Sarah instinctually understands the exponential strength you get from good geometry. He was an ‘A’ student in English and art, but he gave up on math class when he knew he was going to a music school that didn’t care about his academic record.

They set to the task of measuring and cutting the lumber. They brought home a menagerie of power tools from Home Depot, but they don’t have the power to run them yet and even if they did, they couldn’t risk the noise. So they are left with no choice but to cut the wood with hand saws. It’s difficult, tiring work and they are soon covered in blisters and drop countless beads of sweat onto the little piles of dust they leave all over the floor, but Sarah’s plan starts to come to fruition. The doors are now nailed shut and braced and plywood has been put up over all of the windows. The ground floor is now completely dark, only illuminated by their lanterns. It looks gloomy, like a tomb, but it feels secure.

Chris salutes his wife. “OK. That should keep them out pretty well!”

Sarah looks up at him from the floor. “That’s only the first line of protection. I’m designing our defense like a medieval castle. If they want us, they’re going to have to get through several layers of obstacles. We can retreat through the house as each level gets breached.”

“Oh yikes. Are we planning to get overrun?”

“Survivors prepare for the worst-case scenario. You really want to be improvising when they get through the windows?”

“No, I guess you’re right. What’s the next level?”

“Level two is the second floor. Since there’s only one flight of stairs up to the library we know they have to go up them to get us.”

“So we booby trap the stairs ‘Home Alone’ style?”

“Nope. We take them out entirely. They’re wooden. We can just cut them out and replace them with a rope ladder that we could pull up if there’s trouble.”

“Like a tree fort!”

“Yeah, no zombies allowed.”

Chris shakes his head, she never ceases to surprise him with her ingenuity, “You’re a genius.”

She hands him the saw and walks him over to the stairs. “Yes I am. But an idea is useless until it gets put into action. Start sawing.”

 “Are you sure we need to do this? This is going to be a pain in the ass when I want a snack in the middle of the night.”

“Well at least you won’t
be
the snack. Besides I know about the Oreos you have stashed under your side of the bed.”

“Hmm… hard to argue with that logic.” He stares mournfully at his hands which have already cracked and blistered from the repetitive sawing, but he knows she’s right. “Alright. Let’s do this.”

Two hours later, there are no stairs. Chris stands in the spot where they used to be and looks up at the—now empty—doorway above his head. “Yeah, that’s a decent obstacle. Must be ten feet.”

“Nine feet two inches. We’ll need to be disciplined not to leave anything on the floor that could be used to help climb up.”

"So is there another line of defense?”

“Of course, but that one’s easy. It’s already built. The balcony level.”

“Right. Duh. So we’re fortified? Should we get some crossbows and boiling oil?”

Sarah laughs. “No, no. Only suicidal idiots would try and fight an overwhelming force. Anybody who has any sense of self-preservation knows survival is mostly about retreating.”

“You know this from all of your vast knowledge of medieval warfare?”

“I played Dungeons and Dragons for a bit.”

“Seriously?”

“It was college. I was experimenting.”

“Eek. Anyway, I guess now we need to go find the tanker truck.”

Sarah nods. “Yeah, as soon as the Fred and Gingers disperse enough for us to sneak out. At the rate they’re leaving, we’re stuck in here for at least another day or two.”

“Jesus. It’s getting colder all the time. We’re playing a dangerous game with the snow.”

“You got a better idea?”

“Nope.”

***

“Those aren’t the notes.”

Chris flinches, startled. He had been so wrapped up in the music that he didn’t hear his father come up behind him. He turns around to see his father swaying unsteadily on his feet. It was already 2:00 in the afternoon, Chris assumed he would have been asleep by then.

“I know Dad. I’m improvising. I’m playing for fun.”

“If you’re going to play, play it right. I don’t want to hear any wrong notes.”

“They’re not wrong Dad. They’re just different. I hear different music when I get excited or when I’m sad or whatever.”

“The hell they are. Look at that page. It doesn’t say play whatever new age nonsense you’re feeling, it’s specific. You kids these days are so arrogant. You think that every little thing that you think or feel is
valid
and
important
.” His voice rises in pitch as his annoyance builds. “Guess what? Your little thoughts are not important. Your feelings are not important.  What you
do
is important. Do your job.”

Chris can feel his temper rising, but knows better than to say anything. He was ten now, and his father had made it very clear that ten was old enough to learn to shut his mouth. His father snatches the music off the piano and roughly pushes it an inch away from Chris’ face.

“Play it right, or not at all.”

Chris never really understood why his father felt so strongly about how he played. He didn’t even like music. He certainly couldn’t read music and probably had no idea what the piece was supposed to sound like, but somehow he could always tell when Chris started improvising and it made him irate. Chris felt boxed in and controlled and years later he realized how hypocritical his father had been. His father had so little control over himself, his drinking, his anger, and even his continence when the drinking got really bad, but he somehow had the wherewithal to keep tabs on every note Chris played.