Apocalypse Aftermath (36 page)

“You’re the one who said I was asking the right questions.”

He rolled his head around on his neck a few times, then leaned forward.  “Tyler Morris is a good guy.” he said slowly, clearly assembling his thoughts carefully.  “But he’s not really someone I’d say is used to working with a team.”

“He’s used to being in charge.”

“Yes he is.  But in a different sense than how I usually envision leadership.” Austin said, clearly uncomfortable.

“I’m not trying to make this hard for you.” she said quietly.

“I know.  And I know exactly why you’re asking.”

“I don’t have a choice.  I have to ask these questions.”

“I know.” he repeated.  “As long as we don’t end up stuck in the middle of something like we were facing back in Atlanta, we could do a lot worse than Tyler.”

Jessica firmly suppressed the urge to shiver against the chill that rippled through her as she thought of how
bad
things had been in Atlanta.  “And what starts happening if it does?”

“It’ll depend.” Austin said, scrubbing his fingers across his short-cut hair in frustration.

“I can’t take that kind of chance.”

“I know, and I don’t blame you.  But Jessica, I gotta tell you, I’m not the guy who’ll—”

“That’s not what I’m getting at.” she interrupted quickly.  “It’s not.” she added as he gave her a steady look.

“Then what?”

Jessica inhaled and made herself let it out slowly, trying to take solace from the simple rush of air in and out.  “If things
do
get that bad, then I will not be riding everything down in flames with him.”  He kept looking at her, and she sighed again.  “What I’m afraid of is Tyler isn’t above
using
others to do exactly that, if he thinks it’ll work out for him.”

“Maybe it won’t come to that.”

“Maybe’s not good enough.  I can’t go with maybe.”

“We’re okay so far.”

“But if okay starts turning south, I’ll have a decision to make.”

“
I know.  And I understand.”

Jessica searched his face, trying to keep the urgent need to plead with him off hers and out of her voice.  Candice’s question in the infirmary had reminded Jessica she had sort of collapsed her focus a little since joining the Morris group.  At no point had she lost sight of the need to keep Candice safe and protected, but she’d allowed her concern over her own injury, on the security of the group and its activities, to keep her from recognizing the stark truth she needed to.

She couldn’t guarantee something wouldn’t happened to her.  Though she was willing to die for Candice without a second’s thought, that’s what she’d be doing if it came to that;
dying
.  If that happened, she needed to have some sort of plan in place for Candice after her daughter lost her mother.  Right now Jessica didn’t have one, and it scared her worse than the thought of dying.

It absolutely terrified her.

The best solution she could figure out at the moment was to ensure others might be willing to take her place as her daughter’s protector.  And the only possible candidate she trusted was Austin.

“If I make that decision, what’s yours going to be?”  She almost,
almost
, hated to have to ask, but she had to.  She had no choice.

Austin sat back, his face suddenly weary.  She waited silently, anxiously, as he gazed out
the balcony doors.  Finally he shrugged.  “I don’t know.”

“I don’t know Bobo, this just look like a long fucking hole with dirt and rocks in it to me.” Joker said as he leaned on a shovel.

“That cause you ain’t got no fucking clue what you on about.” Bobo said.

“As usual.” Spider laughed.

“Hey fuck you bro.” Joker shot back, though Darryl noted he made sure to turn his head to Spider so Bobo wouldn’t think the comment was directed at him.  Bobo had always held a position of respect as the founder of the Dogz, but since the weekend he was being treated with more care than usual.

“Joker mouthing off as usual, but I still don’t get it.” Perv said.

Bobo pointed at the trench that had been scooped out near the lake.  The Home Depot they’d been leaning on ever since the zombies started eating people had provided the materials Bobo had prescribed for the filter system.  Hauling all of it had been more heavy, sweaty work; made all the more nerve racking by the exposure everyone felt venturing out to the dark store.  But the flatbed trucks had hauled the material back without a problem, and they’d encountered no wandering zombies while they were heaving everything up on the trucks.

Now the plastic sacks of sand and rock were all empty, their contents having been dumped into the trench under Bobo’s direction.  Sand had been laid down near the lake side of the trench, fine grained playground sand nearest the lake with coarser sand behind that.  Then three different sizes of rocks in distinct layers as the trench continued away from the water.  The whole thing was dug at an angle, and the end was a big hole four foot around and about six feet deep; lined with plastic sheeting that had been laboriously fused with heat to ensure the joins between the pieces were water tight.

“Water come in from the lake and have to get through all the sand and rocks before it get into the hole.  By the time it do that, all the crap floating around in it been picked off by the trench, and what go into the hole clean.”

“Still don’t make no sense.” Joker said.

“It ain’t gotta make sense to work.” Bobo grinned.  “How you think people get clean water before modern times?”

“This gonna be clean?”

“Clean enough.  Only real problem gonna be hauling it up the hill.” Bobo gestured at the clubhouse, which sat on a gentle grade above the lake.  “For now we got all them bottles and gallon jugs we picked up, so we can run them down and back up in a truck, but we might be down to doing it on foot at some point.”

“That’s gonna suck.” Goat remarked.
  Darryl agreed; liquids got heavy real quick.  He’d thrown around enough barrels and cans of gas in the past few days to have learned that.

“Yeah, won’t be nothing but work, but water ain’t something we can do without.  Come
on Dogz, grab them shovels and let’s knock out the last bit.”

Darryl lifted one of the shovels and stepped forward with the others.  The backhoe was working on the fence, but it had scooped out the trench and hole before trundling up to start on the
‘moat’.  The truck and trailer that had brought the construction machine over sat on the road next to the lake to the north, out of the way but at hand in case they thought of something else they could do with it.

All that remained for Bobo’s filter trench was to dig out the last couple of feet between the lake so the water could start flowing.  Starting on the trench side, the Dogz began breaking the soft clay up and shoveling it aside.  It only took a couple of minutes before the water rushed in.  Darryl and the others stepped out of the trench and continued shoveling the remaining soil as the trench started filling.  When they had the entire width cleared all the way to the lake, Joker shook his head.

“Bobo, it just pooling on this side.  Hole still dry.”

“Takes time for it to get through the filter fool.  If it run right through it ain’t getting filtered.”

“I guess.” Joker shrugged.  “We done?”

“Yeah, that it.  Come on, we done enough standing around out here in the open.  Let’s get back behind the fence.  There more work to do on the loose fill Tank pulling out.”

Shouldering their shovels, the small group headed back to the clubhouse.  Spider and two of the other bikers piled into the flatbed to head around the lake to one of the empty houses to dump the sacks.  Bobo didn’t want them blowing around, but a couple thousand pounds of bagged material came in a lot of bags.  EZ had suggested they be stuffed into one of the houses where they’d be contained, and no one had come up with a better idea.

Darryl had a feeling those vacant homes were going to turn into garbage dumps as the months went by.  Where else were the Dogz going to put all the trash they generated as they went through canned and boxed food?

As he neared the clubhouse, Darryl saw Tank and Bobo had been correct; the digging the backhoe was doing was going fast, even going down six feet.  Two scoops and a section of trench four feet wide was at the desired depth, spaced a couple of feet from the fence to avoid undermining it unduly.  The loose earth was being dumped inside the fence, where most of the Dogz were busy with more shovels – and their feet – piling any that spilled too far back before packing it down.

What had been a fence was rapidly turning into a wood fronted earth berm, the compacted clay soil behind it reinforcing the boards against any outside pressure that might be put against
them.  Though with the moat, Darryl wasn’t sure how anyone would manage that.  He couldn’t see how zombies would do anything other than just fall in and mill around inside.  As far as he knew, zombies didn’t climb.  They barely even walked.

As for any more able attackers, the trench would still be a significant problem.  Jumping it was possible for someone in shape, but they’d smack into the fence with a good chance of falling back into the moat.  Doing so while carrying a lot of weight would be even
more difficult.  And it would definitely slow down anyone trying, which would give the defenders time to do something about the incursion.  And ramming the fence with a vehicle was right out.  Darryl didn’t like to think of how much of a mess it would make when anything short of an Army tank tried.

The only real problem was the gate.  Some discussion had occurred about some sort of bridge or drawbridge, but neither Tank nor Bobo seemed enthusiastic about the idea.  Tank was certain they could come up with something sturdy enough to hold vehicles crossing over, but Bobo was concerned about getting it pulled up quickly in an emergency.  Even Tank admitted anything sturdy enough to drive over would be a bitch to move
fast.

So a compromise solution had been hit upon.  A series of holes had been dug as deeply as the drilling augers could reach; all the way down until the bits were fully buried and the auger engines were flat against the ground.  Spaced a foot apart and right up against the gate, which was the only section of the fence that wasn’t going to be facing trench, they were intended to hold four-by-four wooden posts.  Darryl couldn’t see how they’d stop
everything
that tried to bust through the fence, but they’d certainly make it hard as hell to do.

The fence posts themselves were sunk in concrete, and with ten additional removable posts supporting the gate if it had to hold off any impacts, even a vehicle would take serious damage trying it.  He thought the Home Depot flatbeds they’d made great use of might manage it, but even they’d likely be wrecked after the attempt.  He certainly wouldn’t want to be the one driving the truck that tackled the task.

Darryl had decided it was as good as they could do short of getting really serious about the engineering involved in something more elaborate.  None of the Dogz had any skill at that level of construction.  And, Darryl had privately decided, if they ended up in some sort of a siege against breathing opponents who looked like ramming their way in, a couple of the Dogz vehicles parked behind the gate and posts would frustrate those attempts quite severely.

He wasn’t expecting they’d need to hold up against anything like that though.  The news still coming in was getting sparser and more local every time Mr. Soul gave them an update
on what he was getting via radio, but there was still nothing about any sort of warlord gangs rampaging around like Vikings or something.  Darryl wasn’t ruling the possibility out, but he didn’t really expect it to happen either.

The Dogz were probably the closest to any kind of group that might be able to transform themselves into something out of a wasteland movie, Mad Max style, and they were all too busy digging themselves in for the long haul.  He couldn’t see how a wandering gang would fare better than simply copying what the Dogz were doing.  Especially considering that fighting anyone who had supplies worth fighting for would probably result in a lot of death and injury
for all involved, even if the attackers won.

But, like everyone else at the clubhouse, Darryl was taking his cues from Bobo.  Plan for the worst, hope for the best.

Shouting alerted him to a problem, and he looked automatically to the clubhouse roof.  Two of the guards were pointing northeast, and Darryl swung around to look in that direction.  A trio of staggering figures were just coming clear of the trees.  He sighed as he checked automatically for his holstered pistol.

Hope was starting to look worse and worse as the days kept ticking by.

“Gunny, Mendez.”

“Go.”

“Got a police checkpoint up here.”

Peter glanced at Barker, who looked up from the map and shrugged.  “Looks like we’re in the right place.”
the Guardsman said.

“Confirm police?” Peter asked into the radio.