Get Off My L@wn - A Zombie Novel (22 page)

I
found Lieutenant Mancheski at the back of the
house by the fuel cell generator. He, and several of his men, were looking into
whatever could be done to silence what we thought was attracting the dead in a
near continual dribble of ones and twos. The snipers on the roof kept walkers
from encroaching upon the enclosed area surrounding the generator.

The bodies already spread around the fence were
not uniformly distributed. Most lay nearest the spot where the natural gas used
as a catalyst fed into the fuel cell itself. There was a distinct high-pitched
hissing sound there. Bill had sent a pair of men out into the backyard to see
how far the sound carried. Both reported they could no longer hear the sound a
mere ten yards away.

Yet, the troops sent out on the home supply
warehouse raid reported zombies walking with purpose in the direction of
Christmas Tree from half a mile away.

Barry Clark, one of the men from the raid said
“It has to be the hissing LT.”

“That’s the best lead we have. Hell, the hissing
is the only lead we have. Lambeau has been no help at all,” Mancheski said.

“When theaters in the home were first getting
big…” I began.

“You mean home theaters?” interrupted Barry.

“
You
might mean home theater;
I
mean theaters in the home. This was California, after all. Anyway, an important
step was sound absorbing blankets in the walls, floor and ceiling. They are
dense felt blankets that are used like insulation only for sound,” I said.

“And…” said Bill.

“I don’t have any sound absorbing blankets on
hand, but I do have insulation. You can send one of your men into the attic
crawl space and bring some down. We might lose a little heat this winter, but
it won’t matter if we’re dead.”

“Barry, take Evans and pull down enough batting
to wrap this whole section.”

“Yes sir.”

“I’ll show you where the attic access is.” I
showed the two soldiers up to the second floor where, in a hallway ceiling
there was an access panel leading to the crawl space above.

Soon the men had pulled down about eighty linear
feet of insulation, enough to wrap several times over the area of pipes and
tubes we believed was the corpse magnet.

Before the men applied the insulation I wanted
to give the area one more sniff for leaking natural gas. I nosed around the
area and smelled nothing but Barry Clark’s body odor. That says a lot
considering there were rotting zombies only a few feet away, but then again,
they were well chilled.

Barry, on the other hand, had reached his “full
flavor bouquet.”

We had not had much snow since the day after the
Twin Cities horde walked through Christmas Tree. The clouds filling in overhead
suggested we’d get more snow soon. In fact, while I stood there watching the men
wrap the insulation around the pipes, a few flakes began to fall.

It occurred to me that between the insulation
now surrounding the natural gas pipes and the snow that was surely going to
accumulate on the batting, if there was a gas leak there, it would make a
nicely contained volume of gas. Enough to make a big boom. I dismissed this
however as I had a sensitive nose and neither myself nor any of the men smelled
gas when we poked around this area smelling for leaks.

A
t eleven, Bill and I had our meeting with
Frank.

“Thanks for getting all those backups to us
Walter. Your people here tell me you were very thorough.”

“They found the build and deployment
instructions I wrote?” I was as solicitous as could be without reaching through
the radio and nibbling on Frank’s ears.

“I don’t know what that means, but your people
seemed happy. You’ll be glad to know more resources are coming back online to
help out in the event Christmas Tree needs evacuation.”

“But the plan is till to hold tight, keep the
datacenter running and hope CB2 passes us by?”

“Correct, that is still the plan. The battalion
of self-propelled guns Lt. Mancheski requested has moved into position eleven
miles south of you. They will be in touch with you later today to dial in their
guns. Lieutenant, expect to hear from White Mountain Six, understood?”

“Heard and understood sir.”

“Frank, this morning Mrs. Christmas Tree and I
saw earth movers operating in Carson Park in Eau Claire. Do you know about an
encampment there?”

“Hold Walter,” Frank was probably bringing up
maps.

“Carson Park, you say? No Walter, we have no
knowledge of an encampment there. I wonder how they survived the thinning
operations over Eau Claire.”

“Do you have a current high resolution shot of
the area in front of you?”

“I do now.”

“OK. Look at Carson Park Drive as it starts into
the park. You should see it being interrupted by an earthen embankment and the
road in is cut. See that?”

“Yes I do. Pretty smart. The horde could pass
them by. We figure CB2 will be on their position around 6 AM.”

“That’s what I estimate as well. Now look north
northeast about five hundred yards. In the trees. You see the earth movers?”

“Got them Christmas Tree. If we bomb there again
we will try to avoid Carson Park. Looks like we already demolished the little
causeway leading to the park from the eastern side.”

“I was thinking maybe you could swing by them sometime
and drop supplies. Or maybe even pick them up when you get a chance.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you.”

“Something else I was thinking about.”

“Yes…”

“We shouldn’t have missed spotting them in the
first place. The optimizers take in multiple high-resolution captures to
measure size, speed and direction of the hordes. It would not be hard to extend
my part of the code to look for infrared signatures indicating small fires at night.
I’m sure we could find a lot of survivors that way. I’d like to add that
feature after CB2 passes by or we’re evacuated.”

Nudge, nudge.

I continued, “So it is OK with you if I just
keep existing things running until after CB2 passes? I can keep up with my
people by email to keep them making progress but for me I don’t think I can
wrap my head around new coding right now.”

“It’s a good idea Walter. One more time you are
ahead of the curve for us. Finding isolated survivors will rise in priority as
the security of the established safe zones becomes more certain.”

“Speaking of that, how are things looking for
you in Door County?”

“Good. Things are looking good. We have a solid
defensive line set up including all the mobile pill boxes the command authority
can spare. Demolition charges are strategically placed throughout Green Bay and
the bridges across the Fox River to help direct the horde’s flow if it notices
us. We’re still hopeful they will flow past us to the west and through Green
Bay proper.”

“I hope all the entrances to the real Lambeau
are shut tight.”

“They are. We sent teams in there to ensure that
facility was secured. Once this is over Packer football will return to Green
Bay. The rumors are that the Bears will share Lambeau while Chicago is decontaminated.
Reconnaissance flights over Chicago still show considerable activity in the
city. Even inside Soldier Field.”

 “Bears being the home team in Lambeau? I would
rather share the stadium with zombies.”

“Walter…”

“Yes Frank.”

“I’m from Chicago.”

“My condolences to you.”

O
ver lunch, we listened to the public broadcast
from Lambeau. Steady progress had been made in Puerto Rico since I last wrote
about the world beyond Christmas Tree. As I said at the outset of this book, other
authors can provide more details about the larger world than I.

What makes today special is that the first
session of the reconstituted United States Senate was held in the nation’s new
Capitol. The House of Representatives couldn’t meet because no one can agree on
how many representatives should be allotted to each state. Ruth Ann’s Mendocino
Mind Fuck fueled prediction of a demographic and population change taking place,
because of the apocalypse, was coming true.

Even as Conservatives appeared to be cementing
power, one of the cornerstones of their delusion, religion, was taking a
beating. A newly minted Senator from Texas wanted a statement of thanks to God
for preserving the Union read into the record. He was shouted down and,
borrowing from a lesson on decorum from the South Korean National Assembly, was
pelted with (full) water bottles and trash.

Apparently, people were waking up to the idea
that God couldn’t be thanked without taking the blame for the horrific events
of the past six weeks. God’s get-out-jail-free card had been suspended at least
for a while.

My own thought was, why should we believe
reconstituting the Senate was something worth being thankful for in the first
place?

The news segment closed with the announcement
that hearings into the Benghazi embassy attack would resume.

Changing the members of the Senate, changing the
location of the Senate, killing hundreds of millions of constituents of the
Senate could not change the ideology of the Senate. Back to square gridlock.

A
t one in the afternoon Bill Mancheski invited
Ruth Ann and I up to our roof to observe “something really cool.” When we arrived,
Bill was talking into his personal radio. Bill handed Ruth Ann and I each a
Kevlar helmet borrowed from the men who were off duty.

He said, “Just in case.”

“In case of what?” I asked.

As the words left my lips an enormous burst of colored
smoke appeared near where the Xian’s house had stood.

“White Mountain Six, this is Christmas Tree Six.
Correction twenty meters east, ten meters south.”

I thought I heard something sharp coming through
the softly falling snow.

Another giant ball of colored smoke appeared
directly over the wreckage of Xian’s house.

“White Mountain Six, this is Christmas Tree Six.
Mark last shot two houses north one block east of Christmas Tree.” Bill said to
the other end of the conversation.

He listened then motioned for us to move to the
eastern facing parapet wall and get down lower.

In a moment I heard the sound I heard before
only more clearly. Sort of like a quickly repeated crack of a baseball bat.

An enormous burst of colored smoke burst over
the wreckage of Olson’s house directly east of us.

“White Mountain Six, you are dialed in,” Bill
said. Then he listened for a moment then nodded his head.

“We hope we don’t need you too. Christmas Tree
Six out.”

Bill turned to us and said, “Cool huh? They’re
eleven miles away.”

“How can they be so accurate over the distance?
How do they account for wind variations?” asked Ruth Ann.

“They use a variant of PFM,” Bill said in reply.

“PFM?”

“Pure Magic. I am completely satisfied knowing
they
can
be that accurate. I don’t really care
how
.”

“What is the variation?” I stupidly said.

“The missing letter F,” said Bill.

I should have seen that coming.

“How is artillery going to be useful to us?”
said Ruth Ann.

“I don’t know. It may help to burn what’s left
of your neighbor’s houses.”

With the exception of the Boetch’s house to our
west, all of the homes nearby were breached, either by looters, or by the
undead or by looters and the undead. Any home that showed a sign of having been
breached had been demolished by Bill’s squad or the other team that arrived one
week before.

“Or, maybe shrouding us in smoke might help. I
won’t know until I know,” Bill finished.

“I wish Frank would be forthcoming with details about
the resources he has available for us should things go south here,” Ruth Ann
said.

“He mentioned assets from the North Western
Administrative Zone would be shifted our way. Do you know thing more about that
Bill?”

I said this with a sideways glance at Bill Mancheski.
Apart from a willingness to put a gun to my head and pull the trigger if
ordered to do so, Bill hadn’t given me any reason to believe he wasn’t playing
straight with us. Then again, Brandt hadn’t given me any cause to doubt him
either.

“I heard Lambeau welcome two flights of gunships
from North Dakota into their command and control net.”

“Do you know where they went?”

“Yes, they are using Brainerd Lakes Regional
Airport as a base of operations.”

“Where is that exactly?”

I felt like I was talking to Ryan Boetch again.
If Bill used the word “fine,” I swear I would have put a gun to his head and
pulled the trigger. No offense to Bill intended.

Bill shrugged and said “Minnesota.”

I made a beeline to my laptop. On it, I had a travel-planning
package with good maps. All I needed was the latitude and longitude of the
airport and I would be able to figure out how far away they are. Maybe I’d even
get a look at their hardware from a satellite view.

Go figure, I found Brainerd Lakes Regional
Airport near Brainerd, in central Minnesota. The small airport was a little
over 150 miles from Christmas Tree.

I pulled up a current high-resolution satellite
image of the area and saw no military hardware of any kind. There was a helipad
and hangars but nothing else. The only thing suggestive of any presence by
anyone was that all of the aviation fuel trucks I could see were gathered near
the larger hangars at the main runway. There was more than enough room in front
of the building to launch and land many helicopters.

“I hope there is somebody in there,” Ruth Ann
said over my shoulder.

“Me too. They are close enough. That’s good.”

P
reparations inside the house were relatively
little. To sum up, there was nothing we could do to shore up defenses inside
Christmas Tree.

If we lost the second floor, there was no way to
hold the first floor with just open plan staircases between them. Knowing this
to be true did not make me feel any better as I watched explosive charges being
wired to the stairs.

Ruth Ann directed two soldiers in stockpiling
supplies in the basement. There were already stores of emergency food and
canned goods down there, though the home canned delicacies such as strawberry
jam were all but gone.

As electricity might fail and with it the water
pump after my own batteries gave out, anything that could contain water was
brought down stairs and filled.

I took Brandt into the machine room for “last
instructions.” Brandt was to be stationed in the basement along with Ruth Ann
and I to defend us or the machines, I don’t know which.

“I backed everything up to Lambeau this morning
so this shouldn’t be important. But, just in case, the one thing in this room
you should care about taking out of here is this box right here.”

I pointed to one of the two Networked Attached
Storage boxes, about the size of a four small loaves of bread stacked two by
two.

“This box has a complete copy of the backup I
sent this morning. It is off, disconnected and ready to go. This box. Not that
one. OK?”

“Got it. This one, not that one.” Brandt took
out a small roll of tape from one of the hundreds of little pockets the
soldiers seemed to have. He stuck a strip of tape on the correct box making it
visibly different from its twin.

“I showed you this when you got here but it wouldn’t
hurt to show you again. This is the switch from the mains to battery power. If,
…”

“We lose the generator, throw that switch if it
doesn’t switch automatically,” Brandt interrupted.

“The machines will cut out when, sorry, if the
generator cuts out. The Internet will still be live, as will the cameras. They
run off the batteries. If we lose the solar panels and the generator, we have
to use hand-cranked devices as much as possible. At minimal consumption, we
have enough batteries to last a week. Then we are blind and dry with hand
cranked devices only.”

At least we would have lights and a radio.
Brandt had finished bringing the tactical radio into the basement and rigging a
means of getting the external antenna outside the house. I did not ask nor did
I want to know how he breached my precious concrete walls.

Ruth Ann had gone up to the roof with Bill.

“Do you believe for a minute that the horde
won’t pile up enough bodies to reach the roof?” said Ruth Ann.

“No. You are right Mrs. Handsman. The fuel cell
is just a step from the side of the house. If they pile on top of each other
enough to get over the fence, they will definitely get onto the top of the
generator then hoist themselves onto the roof.”

“Yet you won’t board up the roof door. There are
no physical barriers between the roof door all the way downstairs to the
basement door.”

“My orders are to keep the datacenter running as
long as possible. To do that I need men on the roof keeping Zeke off the
generator. The men have to have a way down. We can rig the stairways to blow.”

“That works when zombies are below you Bill, not
for zombies above you. Doug and I saw zombies fall out of the Flynn’s deck door
to the ground and get right back up. They’ll drop right through like lemmings
over a cliff, only they won’t die when the hit the bottom.”

“Those are my orders. Keep the datacenter
running.”

“At least take the second hasp from the front
door and put it up here on the roof.”

“I’ll do that. The front door isn’t going to
budge.”

Bill made it so.

We spent the rest of the day in nervous boredom.
I watched the horde advance. The soldiers cleaned and checked their weapons. I
asked Barry Clark to take a long shower.