All That I See - 02 (35 page)

The van had no windshield, and the cab was probably ankle deep in rainwater by that time. The hay truck had a manual transmission, which I still hadn’t mastered. My other transportation options were a small tractor, a four-wheeler, and a horse—all would leave me open to attack. I thought it might be a good idea to secure another vehicle while the weather was bad since the zombies didn’t seem to like moving around in the rain. Besides, I really needed a distraction to keep my mind from wandering to Sara’s and Mr. Somerville’s safety.

I covered the shotgun with plastic sheeting and strapped it to the four-wheeler. I didn’t like it being so difficult to get at, but I couldn’t hold it and steer. I cranked the machine and headed east back to where Ben Parks’ group had been staying. I knew there was a car over there, and I knew the place was free of infected.

The tires of the four-wheeler hummed and whined on the paved road. There was also a faint buzzing sound added in because the road was wet with rain. The engine itself wasn’t that loud. It was a quieter way to travel, but I didn’t like being exposed. I liked having a door or windshield between me and them. It wasn’t a problem that particular trip, because I didn’t see any out. I kind of figured that even if they were out, the steady, heavy rain would make it difficult for them to get a fix on me.

The vehicle left at the old house was a late 1990s Volvo station wagon. It was white, with a red passenger side door. It had a half tank of gas, and it started up just fine. I didn’t feel like going back to the stables, so I drove around checking out houses. I needed more guns anyway. I was soaked through and shivering, so I turned on the heat in the car. I figured I could change into something dry from the closets of one of the houses I entered.

I saw one I liked. It was a small manufactured home and the front door was standing wide open. There was a row of three homemade deer stands in the front yard with for sale signs on them. A big, new Dodge Ram 4x4 was parked in the driveway. I pulled up next to the truck. It was black and had been pimped out redneck style with a winch on the front, roll bar, those awful chrome bull’s testicles hanging from the back bumper, tires that were entirely too big, mud flaps with Calvin pissing on the Chevrolet logo, tailgate painted as the Confederate Flag, and a big decal in white letters on the back window that said “Ram F*ckin’ Fo’ by Fo’.” I shook my head at that irrelevant asterisk.

Naturally, I wanted that truck. Two months ago, I wouldn’t be caught dead even parking near it, but this was now. That was an ass-kicking truck, and these were ass-kicking times. There was an NRA sticker on the bumper near the bull scrotum.

I figured I’d find a gun or two inside the house. I couldn’t imagine looters sacking the house and not taking that truck. I also couldn’t imagine there being any zombies inside since the door
was
standing open. This was going to be a good score.

I was right.

“Holy shit,” I said when I walked in. The first thing I noticed was that the living room looked like a taxidermy exhibit. The place was full of dead animals, some of them not indigenous to Kentucky. One of the deer heads had been pulled from the wall and torn apart in the floor, but otherwise nothing looked disturbed.

Then I started seeing the guns. All four walls in the living room each had a gun rack to display particularly beautiful firearms. This guy was a collector. There was even a flintlock, and it didn’t look like a replica. Of course, I wasn’t interested in sullying these museum pieces by kill
ing zombies with them. I knew
there would be more. I wasn’t disappointed.

In a spare room, I found not one, but five gun cabinets. On the wall, there were all these pictures of the guy’s not-so-attractive girlfriend posing with guns and posing next to kills. In the only bedroom, I found a gun safe. There were replicas of medieval weapons hanging on the wall in there—mace, sword, lance, flail, and a shield. There were more pictures of the guy’s girlfriend, too.

I looked in his closet, for something to change into and was surprised to find women’s jeans and shirts. All were too small to fit me. I went to his dresser and found panties and bras in the top drawer. That’s when I realized that the owner of all the guns, dead animals, and ass-kicking truck was a woman—probably the woman in the pictures.

I wasn’t going to find any dry clothes there that would fit me, and I really didn’t want to drag all those guns out into the rain, so I decided to spend the night there. Other than the deer head and some wet carpet in the front doorway, the place was very clean.

I closed and locked the front door then stripped down and hung my clothes up to dry in the bathroom. Then I dried off with a very soft and fluffy Harley Davidson bath towel (I had no idea they made those), wrapped it around my waist and did a full investigation of the house.

There was plenty to eat and drink, and there was a gas heater in the living room. The blower didn’t work, but it wasn’t really that cold anyway, so all I really needed was for it to ignite. I cooked some canned chili on the gas range then looked through a few of her gun magazines while I ate. Later, I was surprised to find a generous supply of romance novels under her bed. If nothing else, the zombie apocalypse
had given me a good look into
people’s lives. Like they used to say, “You just never know about some people.”

That afternoon and evening, I moved all of the weapons into the living room so I could see what I had. This was my haul: two AR-15s (one painted camo, one black), one .30-30 lever action, one .30-30 semi-auto, five .22 semi-automatic rifles, three 12 gauge shotguns (one break action, one semi-auto, one pump action), one .30-06, one 20 gauge shotgun (pump action), one double-barrel .410 shotgun made to look like a lupara, two 9mm semi-auto pistols, a .45 revolver, a .22 revolver, a pistol I couldn’t identify (something Russian, I think), and various fully-functional antique guns, including a very old blunderbuss and a pepperbox . In addition to that, there were perhaps 10,000 rounds of mixed ammunition for the newer guns. All of that came out of the gun cabinets. I couldn’t get into the gun safe….I could only imagine what must have been in there.

I also found a Kevlar vest and a Kevlar helmet.

I put the helmet and vest on then grabbed the camo AR-15 and looked at myself in the mirror. Helmet, vest, gun, and Harley Davidson bath towel. Then the towel fell off.

“
Dork
,” I said then laughed.

Chapter 42

From what I could gather by the mail and other items around the house, the woman’s name was Michelle, and she was single. However, reading her diary, I found that she did have a serious interest in one of the troopers at the local state police post. She was also planning to go on a hunting trip to Canada. There were other things in the diary that were quite tender, like how she talked about her younger sister and how they were dealing with the death of their mother. I found myself tearing up a little, and I welcomed it. Her last entry was made in February. She was worried that she had caught “that bug that’s going around.” I guess she did.

I slept in her bed that night. It was one of the most restful sleeps I had gotten in a long time. I woke up late the next day (after eight). It was still gray out, but the rain had stopped. I had a peanut butter protein bar and some instant coffee from her pantry then got dressed. I used her first aid supplies to clean up my missing earlobe stub.

I decided to leave all the antique guns behind. I loaded up everything else, including the medieval weapons from the bedroom. I didn’t know if it was wise; they were made for display purposes, and I didn’t know how much punishment they could take. I loaded them all into the back of the truck and headed back over to the stables.

The creatures I’d killed the day before were still dead in the driveway. After taking the guns into the house, I dragged the dead zombies out into one of the front pastures, poured kerosene on them and set them on fire. I watched them burn for a while, but the smell was getting to me, so I went inside.

Of course, in the back of my mind, Sara’s absence was nagging at me. I forced myself to think about other things like the location of the garden, the location of the cistern, and finding more chickens and maybe some goats. These were necessary things, but thinking about them left me feeling hollow inside.

I didn’t see any farming implements anywhere on the property except the tractor. I would need to break the ground, and I didn’t like the idea of having to do that with a shovel. I would probably have to do that the next year, unless I could figure out how to train a horse to do it. This time around, I saw no reason why I shouldn’t make use of the tractor while it still worked. It would be noisy, but maybe I could come up with something to counter that. I was feeling anxious trying to keep Sara out of my head, so I decided to just go out again and check the usual places one more time. I armed myself with one of the AR-15s, a holstered 9mm, and extra magazines for both.

I made the rounds to all the county locations then I drove into Clayfield. I pulled into the museum lot, parked in my normal spot, and got out. Walking around the back of the truck, I noticed that metal bull’s scrotum swinging on the bumper.

“Ridiculous,” I said, but I made no effort to remove it.

S
ara
wasn’t in the museum either and being in there made me feel sad. I walked around looking at the dusty exhibits with new eyes. I suppose it had been pointless to have all that stuff before, but it felt especially pointless at that moment. When I got to the Prohibition display, I stopped. Eventually, all the gasoline in the area would go bad. The moonshine still in
the
museum could be made to work. I could generate not only drinkable alcohol but also fuel. I only had a cursory understanding of how to operate a still—just enough to discuss the topic when giving tours—but maybe I could learn through trial and error. Hopefully, I wouldn’t kill myself in the process. I would just have to find vehicles that ran on ethanol. I knew the
Riverton
city transit system did, but I had no interest in driving around in a city bus. Maybe they had switched their government vehicles to it too. I would have to look into it. Hell, I might just try it out on normal gasoline engines; it’s not like I had to be concerned about damaging them.

I heard a very deep boom outside. I thought it must have been a gunshot, but it was so much deeper and louder than anything I had heard lately. It almost reminded me of those big fireworks the City of Clayfield would set off on the Fourth of July. I got very excited, because that meant there were healthy people around.

I went outside and waited for a second shot. There was another, and I felt the sound vibrate in my chest. It didn’t sound like any gun I’d ever heard. It was difficult to tell with all the buildings around, but I thought the sound was coming from farther north. A block over, three scrawny creatures emerged from behind the newspaper office on their way toward the sound. I got in the truck so I could also investigate.

I headed north on 8th Street. There was another boom. I really didn
’t want to just drive up on who
ever was shooting, but I couldn’t get a fix on their location. I was coming up on the edge of the city limits, and I found the source of the noise. It was
a
tank about a quarter of a mile up the road. It was surrounded by a couple of hundred zombies. I immediately stopped.

The cannon on the thing was pointed away from me toward a used car dealership. There was smoke coming up from two buildings farther down the road. The turret turned a little then stopped. The whole machine jerked, fire belched out of the end of the cannon, and dust and smoke swirled. One of the cars in
the
dealership lot was immediately engulfed in black smoke. Then the boom from the gun rattled everything around me and in me. The black smoke cleared enough that I could see the car burning.

The turret moved again, turning my direction. I put the truck in reverse, but didn’t pull away just yet. It stopped moving before it was pointed directly at me. There was a long pause then the hatch opened on the top. A man stuck his head out and looked my direction. He ducked back inside then came out again with binoculars. He watched me for a while then he brought what looked like a walkie-talkie or cell phone up to his mouth.

He dropped inside again and closed the hatch. I waited. Then the turret started moving again, swinging around to point at me. I put my arm on the back of the seat and stomped the accelerator.

“Sons of bitches sons of bitches sons of bitches,” I chanted through my teeth.

Mud and asphalt erupted in front of the truck. Then I felt funny in my stomach like when I ride an elevator. The front end of the truck went up and up and paused and down. Then the sound of the cannon arrived with a deep
boom!
  The front end of the truck connected with the road again and bounced, throwing me against the ceiling. When I landed in my seat, I put my foot on the gas again. I lost control, but fortunately, my careening took me around the corner of a building, shielding me from a second shot.

That didn’t stop them, however. The side of the building blew out and brick sprayed out in front of me. Then:
Boom!
I stopped the truck and rubbed at the pain in my neck cause by me hitting the ceiling. I took a couple of deep breaths then continued to back down the side street until I was a block over. I grabbed the AR-15 I’d brought along and climbed out to take a look at my ride.