All That I See - 02 (2 page)

“Good idea.”

At the bottom I painted “9 A.M.”

Then Sara and I climbed on the roof with our sign and some rope. We strung the rope from the TV antenna across the roof and tied it to a tree limb on the other side. Then, using the rope like a clothes line, we hung the sheet on it. I strained to see if there was any movement in the window, but it was difficult to tell from that distance without the scope. I was hoping that by that time they would have seen the flag.

“When we go back down, you might want to take the scope off the rifle,” Sara said. “We wouldn’t want them to think you were trying to shoot them when you looked over there tomorrow morning.”

That afternoon and evening, Sara and I got serious about our future plans. Now that we knew our move was imminent, we felt it was prudent to make all of our decisions beforehand so we wouldn’t have to do it under stress. We tried to think of every possible contingency for the next few days.

We would have to locate a permanent, or at least a seasonal, residence where we could plant a garden. We were going to need to set up a system for collecting clean water. We’d been talking about distributing supply caches and vehicles around town, and we felt that it was time to implement that as well. Then there was the matter of the “dirty work” which we would have to do while we did everything else. It was really all too much for only two people. We’d love to have others help us, but we’d been having trouble finding people we could trust or who would trust us.

“The very first thing we’ll need to do
tomorrow is take care of Spite F
ace,” Sara said.

“I guess by ‘we’ you mean me,” I said.

“
Well, yeah
.”

It would have to be done quietly, so I’d have to get close to him. I hadn’t killed a zombie in almost two weeks.

“
No time like the present,
”
I said.

I put on my raincoat and mask and went outside with a baseball bat while Sara watched from the upstairs window. She had a rifle, just in case I got into trouble. I wasn’t stupid enough to go outside without a gun; I had a .45 holstered on my hip. The guns were backups. The real work needed to be done with the bat.

I went out into the yard looking for him, but I didn’t see him right away. Sara tapped on the window. I looked up at her, and she pointed towar
d the corner of the yard. Spite F
ace was standing in the shadows behind
a
short evergreen. I went directly there. I saw n
o reason to sneak around. Spite F
ace saw me coming and shuffled out to meet me. His mouth opened and let out a dry, raspy sound.

We should have taken care of him days before, but we were both being lazy. He hadn’t really been hurting anything, but he would be a nuisance soon when we were loading the vehicles to leave.

I stopped and took a stance like I was in the batter’s box. A normal person, seeing me like this, would have gotten into a defensive posture, or at least raised their ar
ms to protect themselves. Spite F
ace just kept shambling along. When he got close enough, I swung for the fences.

His face caved in around the bat, and everything north of his mouth sort
of
shifted upward. It wouldn’t be enough. I would have to make sure the brain was mush. I kept beating his head until was just a pulpy smear in the mud.

“I didn’t kill you,” I said to the foul-smelling corpse. “You were dead already.”

I don’t know why I said that, but it made me feel better.

“I need a bath.”

Sara must have read my mind, because she had a pot of water heating on the stove for my bath when I came back inside.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I think I deserve something special,” I said. “Let’s pull the cork on that expensive cabernet we picked up.”

I went into the bathroom and got the kerosene heater going. When I came out, Sara handed me the wine and the corkscrew.

“Want to join me?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “You know I only drink when I’ve been exposed.”

“Oh, come on,” I said.

“No,” she said. “Anyway, it would be a waste to drink it if I didn’t need to. What would happen if I needed it and it wasn’t there?”

“We have plenty of booze,” I said. “Besides, this is the good stuff. This here isn’t zombie medicine. This is strictly for recreational use. This is like liquid art.”

“Okay,” she said, “but only a small glass, and only with dinner.”

I grinned and stepped past her to the kitchen. I opened the bottle and sat it on the counter to breathe a bit while I took my bath. My water was boiling, so I took it off the stove and poured it in the tub. Then I poured an equal amount of unheated water in there. It was about an inch deep. I undressed and eased down into the tub.

“Ah yeah,” I said, sarcastically. “This is living.”

I got soaped up, paying special attention to any areas that m
ight have been exposed to Spite F
ace’s splatter. Then Sara knocked on the door.

“I’m in the tub already,” I said. “What do you need?”

“Do you hear that?” she said.

I got as still as I could and listened.

“I don’t hear anything,” I said.

“It sounds like a siren or something,” she said.

I listened again. It was faint, but I heard it.

“No,” I said. “It’s coyotes, I think.”

Sara was quiet for a moment.

“But we’re so close to town,” she said. “I didn’t think coyotes got this close to people.”

“What people?” I said.

The sound was getting louder. They were howling and yelping. It gave me shivers. They were very close, and it wasn’t even dark outside yet.

“They sound like the hounds of hell or something,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “They do sound creepy.”

There was another sound mixing in with them now—something similar to the lowing of cattle.

It was the moans and howls of the undead.

“I’m going out to see what’s up,” Sara said.

“Out?”

“On the roof,” she said.

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll be right up.”

I heard her footsteps on the staircase, and I started rinsing away the soap. The noise outside had migrated past the house and
had
settled in at
a
location nearby.

I dried, put on some clean clothes, and stepped out of the bathroom. It was dusk, and it would be dark soon. I went to the living room and grabbed a pair of the night vision goggles that I’d taken from the Chinook helicopter.

The window was open in the bedroom upstairs and the sounds from outside were coming in clearer. I climbed out then up to the roof. Sara was seated on the chimney,
silhouetted
against the dim sky. She had the rifle to her shoulder, and she was looking in the direction of the house we’d been trying to signal. I ducked under our bed sheet sign and walked along the peak of the roof until I was next to her.

“What do you see?” I said.

“They’re not coyotes,” she said. “They’re dogs—lots of dogs.”

She handed me the rifle. I looked through the scope.

There were maybe ten dogs down there. They were family pets that had been forced to fend for themselves. Most of them were still wearing collars. There was a collie and a yellow lab and two beagles. The rest didn’t look to be any specific breed.

There was a fight going on between them and the undead, but I couldn’t tell who was attacking whom. It might have been both ways. I’d never seen a dog eat one of the infected, but I knew they would eat a carcass, and that was really all these things were—ambulatory carcasses. I knew the infected would go after live animals. Jen had shot a man eating a dog, and they’d killed and partially eaten our goat.

Two of the infected creatures had a beagle and were pulling it in opposite directions while the animal tried to writhe out of their grip. Just a few feet away from them
,
a zombie was on the ground and three dogs were tearing into it.

“This is new,” I said.

“Do you think the dogs are hungry?” Sara said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It looks like they’re feral, but I can’t imagine why they would want to eat those things when there are still plenty of penned up goats and chickens out there.”

“Maybe the smell is attracting them,” she said. “I’ve noticed it more now that the weather is warming.”

“Could be,” I said.

“Look,” Sara said.

“I see it.”

There was movement in
the
window of the house we’d been watching. There was a man standing in the window. He was wearing a
dirty white
sweatshirt and a cap. His face was gaunt behind a thick horseshoe mustache and soul patch. He looked down at the commotion outside then, after a few seconds, looked directly at me. He stared at us then stuck his arm out of the window and gave us a big wave. I saw Sara wave back out of the corner of my eye.

I put the rifle down, so I wouldn’t shoot him by accident, and continued to watch the fray down the street. The man made a few gestures at us, but I couldn’t tell what he was trying to say. Eventually, it got too dark, and I put on the goggles.

“Great minds thing alike,” Sara said, sliding her own pair of goggle
s
down over her head.

The goggles had a zoom feature on them with a 4x magnification—not as good as the scope or a pair of binoculars, but good enough.

The yelping and howling had died down to just barking now. The moans of the undead had escalated. The dogs were making a retreat to the east. They moved at a trot, with heads down. Their posture didn’t indicate that they were defeated. Their tails weren’t tucked between their legs. It was almost like they were falling back. I’d never seen dogs act like that. The pack split up and cut around houses and cars, then rejoined each other as a group and headed north out of my field of vision. A large mass of zombies moved after them, following the barking, but at a much slower pace. Once the main group of undead was about a half of a block away, another group of dogs—twenty at least--came in silently from the west.

“Holy shit,” I said. “Are you seeing this?”

Once they were close to those
near
the house they began to yelp to each other. The
y
moved in on two of the nearest infected people and took them down. The other zombies that had stayed behind came into investigate, but the dogs were dragging away the bodies.

“Disgusting,” Sara said.

I put my hand on her shoulder.

“Listen to me,” I said. “Whatever you do, stay away from dogs.”

She chuckled a little.

“I mean it,” I said. “That down there scares me. They might know there is a difference between people like us and people like them, and then again, they might not. We can’t risk it.”

“I think it’s because they smell the death,” Sara said.

“Maybe,” I said. “These dogs are going wild. Look at them. They’re hunting in packs, and they’re hunting people. If you see them out, shoot them.”

“Really?” she looked up at me with those goggles.

Then I saw the green figure of a man running below. He wasn’t moving like the others, and he was carrying a bag. He was toward us.

“It looks like our neighbor will be dropping by,” I said. “Stay armed at all times.”

CHAPTER 3

The man was being pursued by four of the creatures. Only one of them was moving fast enough to have a chance
at catching him
, but the man easily outdistanced all of them. The dogs were too distracted by their meal to pay him any attention.

The man reached our back fence, threw his bag over,
and
then climbed over into the yard. Once inside, he picked up his bag and looked up at the roof. He turn
ed on a flashlight and aimed it at
us.

"Evenin'," he said.

"Hello," I said.

"Be awright if I come in?"

This was a contingency for which we hadn't planned.

"We'll be right down," I said.

"I'm going
to
climb down to the ground," I said softly to Sara. "You go back in through the window. We're not going to let him in until I get a chance to talk with him."

Sara nodded.

"Here," she said, handing me one of the pistols. "I'll take the rifle."

I took the pistol, stuffed it in my pants, and climbed down.

Once down, I found him waiting by the back door. He shined his flashlight in my face, and I had to tilt up my goggles.

"Sorry 'bout that," he said. "I was jus' checkin'."

"No problem," I said, "but keep it aimed down, if you don't mind."