Get Off My L@wn - A Zombie Novel (3 page)

W
e were friendly only with two neighbors. The
Boetche’s were across the street to the north of us and their neighbor to the
northeast, the Flynn’s. Denny Boetche was a day trader leveraging the super high
speed of the neighborhood’s fiber based Internet. Meg Boetche was a
stay-at-home mom though their son Ryan was off at school at UW Green Bay. They
were transplants from New York.

Robert and Nancy Flynn were native
Wisconsinites. Bob owned a company specializing in asbestos abatement and
replacing older office building lighting systems with energy efficient
lighting. To be honest, I don’t know what Nancy did with her days but Ruth Ann
did. I knew Bob was a hunter. We’d been in his house for cocktails and saw a
few mounted trophies.

He and Ruth Ann talked hunting talk while I
talked to Nancy about the weather, the Packers and computer malware. They had
lots. I wish I had worn my black tee shirt from ThinkGeek that said “No I won’t
fix your computer.” But, I didn’t, so I did.

This afternoon Denny Boetche was in his
backyard. He saw me while I was walking the grounds with a 10 inch tablet
checking the field of view on our security cameras. He came over to talk.

“Hey Doug. Looks like you and Ruth Ann are going
to make a stand,” he said.

“We think we’ll be better off here than who
knows where. What are your plans?”

“We’ll be leaving soon. The news is so
incredible. It has to burn itself out. Meg and I will sit tight at our
cottage in Door County. It’ll be over before we get the cottage cleaned up.”

“You think so? You haven’t seen enough zombie
movies.”

“There you go again, always thinking the worst
is going to happen.”

“It usually does. What was that truck delivering
last week?”

“Oh, for Meg’s herbs. We put in a generator to
keep the sun lamps on in the basement. She’s got prize oregano and basil coming
in. We don’t want to lose it.”

“I didn’t know you guys were so serious about
gardening.”

“Yeah Ruth Ann’s been a huge help. What do you
think she and Meg talk about during their afternoon teas on your roof?”

“I figured they talked about me and you,
mostly.”

“That too. Listen, I had a hard time finding
enough gas to fill the generator’s tanks. Do you have any to spare?”

“I could loan you a five gallon can,” I hated to
let go of one of the cans Ruth Ann just filled up but Denny saw us unload them.
I couldn’t say no.

“Thanks. That’ll add about 10 hours to the weeks’
worth we have now.”

“You think all you’ll need is a week? Come on
Denny, it’s almost been a week since we lost a whole city for shit’s sake.
Things are getting worse, not better.”

“Well, whatever. Come over tomorrow morning
before we go, OK? I have something for you to remember us by.”

“Sure. About nine OK?”

“Make it eight. See you.”

T
urns out Denny and Meg were timely in deciding
to leave. On the radio Sunday morning (Day 11), the state emergency preparedness
agency started advising all persons to join up with National Guard units
escorting folks to “safe zones” that were being set up. For our area, Chippewa
Valley Regional Airport was being turned into a refugee center.

It was a good choice for a safe zone. The
airport had plenty of open space, not too many homes nearby and was protected
on three sides by the Chippewa River. At only ten miles away, Denny and Meg
might even be able to come back to take care of their herbs from time to time. However,
they were set on heading to their cottage instead. I could not blame them, as
it was a beautiful place far from population centers.

Denny and Meg were all packed up in their SUV
when I went over there at eight. A Humvee had already come through the
neighborhood announcing that there would be a rally point on U.S. 12 a little
bit east of here for an eight thirty departure over to the airport. The
destination was so close and familiar one had to wonder why an escort might be
needed.

Denny handed me a tall potted plant wrapped for
protection in a black plastic garbage bag.

“Thanks, Denny. I’ll bring this up to the
greenhouse,” I said.

“It’ll do great up there in all that sunshine. We’ve
always envied that greenhouse you’ve got hidden up there.”

“Are you heading to the airport safe zone?”

“No, our plans are still Door County. We’re
going to head out now before we get stuck behind the group heading to the
airport.”

We shook hands. “Well, send us a postcard.”

“Will do Doug. Take care. Say goodbye to Ruth
Ann for us.”

Denny and Meg Boetche drove away in their packed
up SUV. We never saw them again. Months later, their SUV was found in the
parking lot of a Comfort Inn off WI 29 near Shawano. The roads near there were
unnavigable later on but when Denny and Meg left, there should have been smooth
sailing. We will never know why they stopped there or what happened to them.

I brought the plant back to our house and handed
it off to Ruth Ann. She brought it into the kitchen to unwrap it. While
checking my email I called out to Ruth Ann “Is it the oregano or the basil?”

“What?”

“Is the plant oregano or basil? Denny said they
had a prize winning crop coming in.”

“It’s a prize winner alright but I don’t think
it’s oregano
or
basil. Come here and take a look for yourself.”

I poked my head into the kitchen to see Ruth Ann
watering what she told me was a fine example of Mendocino Mind Fuck. I wondered
how she knew what variety the plant was. The Berkeley of the Midwest might
belong to the undead but the Mendocino of the Midwest would be alive and well,
and living on my roof.

T
he remainder of the day was surreal.

A new word had been seared into the public’s
consciousness, “horde.” The undead were not solitary creatures. They seemed to
be attracted by whatever attracts one of their colleagues. Like a snowball
rolling downhill they collect more of themselves into bigger and bigger groups.
As they increase in numbers, they become unstoppable. They simply overwhelm any
defense put in their path. In China, hordes were said to number in the hundreds
of thousands and were still growing.

They were like a plague of locusts leaving
nothing alive as they move through. There was an aerial shot of a horde moving
through the dormitories and factories in Shenzhen. Repetitive metaphors be
damned, they were like a horde of worker ants. Like a tsunami, the force of so
many bodies compressed in small spaces burst windows and caved in storefronts.
They oozed through tight spaces widening gaps until torrents flowed through the
broken and crushed obstacle. After a few minutes of watching, metaphors failed.
A horde was not like anything else.

At two PM, the Governor declared martial law to
be in effect within the borders of the State Of Wisconsin. As the virus
originated at a research lab at the University of Wisconsin Madison, there has never
been nor likely ever be a more compelling example of the Wisconsin Idea that
says the fruits of the University should have an impact felt across the whole
state.

The Governor advised all citizens to proceed to
one of several safe zones in the state, a list of which scrolled continuously
at the bottom of the screen. He told us that emergency information would be
broadcast continuously on several AM frequencies. He blessed us, wished us luck
and scurried off to wherever it is that the rich and powerful go when the dead
go walking.

Throughout the rest of the day, we watched our
neighbors leave one by one. It was irritating when an adult face stared at us
as they drove past. The adult faces read, “You assholes think you’re so smart,
don’t you.” It was heartbreaking however, when the face peered out of the car
window belonged to a child. The children’s faces read fear, confusion and
sadness.

B
y Tuesday (Day 13), events finally overwhelmed
the legal debate freeing the Federal government to act. And act decisively they
did: to quarantine.

Quarantine was predicted to be the opposite of
the right course of action by Munz et al. In actuality, it ensured a steady
supply of prey to the predators, much like misguided zoning laws aimed at
increasing diversity. Quarantine doomed urban survivors to virtually certain death,
as hordes grew in size with every passing minute.

Troops manned makeshift fortified lines
surrounding major population centers. It was a hopeless waste of time,
resources and the precious treasure of human life. One look at the Shenzhen
footage should have convinced everyone that short defensive lines keeping them
out would be better than long thinly stretched lines trying to keep them in.

Almost two weeks after TMZ broadcast the first
zombie attack and two days since the declaration of martial law in the state
the most amazing and unexpected thing happened. A UPS truck pulled up to the
house and delivered some of the items I had ordered on Friday! The driver had a
real sense of humor. He laughed maniacally when he told us we were his last
delivery. I was glad when he left. He was scary.

W
ednesday (Day 14), brought several more changes.
I noticed the news items on the major sites were not being updated as
frequently as they had been. CNN’s web site was the most sporadic.

Their broadcast news showed the Atlanta streets
around CNN Center teeming with moving corpses. Wolf Blitzer was not on the air
any longer. Instead, someone much younger I had never seen before was on
standing in what looked like a stairwell.

“The dead have crashed through all the glass at
street level. The elevators have been disabled for our security and the lower
level stairwells have been blocked with whatever people can find.”

The camera tilted downward. While there wasn’t
anything but the next landing to see there was a terrific pounding booming up
from below.

“The sounds you are hearing are the dead. They
are beating against the elevator and stairwell doors. They don’t stop. No one
here expects the doors to last indefinitely. We have CNN security and Atlanta
PD here with us but we just showed you the crush outside. If they beat down the
doors there isn’t anything we’ll be able to do to stop them.”

The camera was back on the newcomer. Camera and
reporter moved out of the stairwell into a floor of cubicles.

“And even if the doors hold, you can see we’re
not exactly equipped for a siege. When the emergency supplies are exhausted and
the vending machine food is gone, we know we are going to starve. Water
pressure here in CNN Center has been fluctuating. There’s a chance we will run
out of water before we run out of food.”

The camera centered on the kid’s face. Its youth
was gone. His eyes were wet, tired, red and puffy. He had several days of
stubble that would have been considered a risky career move before all this. He
said nothing for a bit. Then he began shaking his head. The camera pulled back.
The kid was looking away from the camera and waving his hand to shut down.

“Bob, that’s it. I can’t do this anymore. Go
find Deborah. I can’t do this” An infographic replaced the kid.

I had to think that an organization like CNN
would keep things together better than the kid was making it out to be. There
must be a helipad on their building, right? There is no way an organization
like that would let their people die, trapped in their own headquarters. But
that is what happened.

I do not know what became of the kid. I haven’t
seen him since broadcasts resumed. His report was the last broadcast television
Ruth Ann and I saw for a very long time.

The power grid failed later that evening. I took
a camp light to the mechanical room and made the necessary changes at the
breaker panel and electrical box. We would be running key services off the
solar charged batteries in the basement from here on out. At the breaker panel,
I made sure breakers for lines we weren’t going to use were switched off to
prevent mistakes. The loss of local power took down our Internet access as
well. The world as Ruth Ann and I appreciated it was shutting down.

The other big change was the police scanner.
Teams of deputies were pairing with National Guard troops to engage the dead as
they were found near the safe zone at the airport. Their strategy was sound.
Engage the dead only from intersections to maximize escape options. They picked
off ghouls from outside their patrol vehicles. If the dead got close, they’d
get back into their car and move to another intersection. The dispatch center
helped the teams to keep to intersections where they could render mutual aid.

We heard no one lose his or her life on this
day.

Ruth Ann wondered aloud “If all the deputies are
in Chippewa Falls, who is patrolling out here?”

She knew the answer.

T
he answer was confirmed the next morning,
Thursday (Day 15). Dispatchers on the scanner told any officers listening that
looting was taking place across the area. They were ordered
not
to
intercede if they saw any. In fact, law enforcement was ordered to stop
enforcing
any
laws. All personnel were needed at the safe zone.

Ruth Ann and I were up on the roof. She was
tending the garden, getting some fresh greens together for lunch. I was keeping
watch. That is to say, I was keeping her company and was aimlessly looking at
the scenery. I heard a crash from the road to our east. Across the open yards
and tall grasses, a large blue pickup truck sat in the driveway two houses
north, the Xian’s house. I quietly called Ruth Ann over and we watched from the
cover of the parapet wall. The bed of the pickup was partially filled with
stuff. The stuff looked tossed together, not like someone packing their own
possessions in an organized way.

A front window had been bashed in to make entry
into the home. The front door was open now. A large man with a rifle stepped
out the front door, looked around then looked back at the door. He made a “come
on” motion with his hand. Two other men with rifles slung on their backs came
out of the door carrying boxes. We could not see what they had; just that it
was boxes piled with more differently colored stuff.

Looters had come to the neighborhood.

We watched them make a few more trips back into
the house. Two of the men walked to the next house in our direction belonging
to the James’. The big man got in the truck and drove it to the next driveway.
Getting out of the truck with a baseball bat, he walked up to the front door
and bashed in the sidelight near the door lock. As he strode back to the truck
to toss the bat in the cab, a partner reached in through the broken glass and
undid the door’s lock. The big guy resumed his watch and the other two went to
work clearing out what they wanted.

“We better get ready for them,” I said to my
wife.

She went for her hunting rifle and the carbine
with a supply of ammunition for both. I went to the garage and brought up an
old portable P.A. system I had from my days doing trade shows. At 150 watts it
would be ear splitting in what was otherwise silence. I would speak loudly and
Ruth Ann would carry a high powered stick.

While I was setting up and trying to remember
how the P.A. worked, Ruth Ann set up in a prone position with a view of our own
road and driveway through a drainage port. We were set and had agreed on a plan
by the time the men cleared out the last house, the Olson’s, before ours. They
all hopped in the truck to make the slightly longer trip to our road. I watched
them approach our road with the security camera tablet app so that I remained
completely hidden. I flipped on the P.A.

As they made the turn to enter our road I put on
my best “boss” voice.

“Driver! Halt! Halt or be fired upon.”

The truck lurched to a stop, heads turned inside
the cab trying to pinpoint the source of the sound.

“You had your fun. Back up and leave.”

We could see the movement inside the cab. Ruth
Ann and I agreed we would push them fast and hard to keep them disoriented. We
figured these were not professional looters but more “looters of opportunity.”
We wouldn’t give them a chance to form a plan. Ruth Ann fired a round that
exploded the driver’s side headlight.

“Driver! That was your headlight. The next one
will be your head. Leave now. No more warnings.” That was the coolest thing I’ve
ever said out loud.

The truck backed up and burned rubber away out
of the neighborhood.

“We better keep a close watch tonight,” Ruth Ann
said.

“Think they’ll come back, do you?”

“They’re males. Males always want something more
when somebody says they can’t have it. We just told them they can’t have this
house. If they’re like most men, they’ll be back.”

“Ah,” time to change subject I thought. “We can’t
risk losing any of our cameras and I’d hate to lose a window,” I said. The
shutters upstairs were closed matching the inoperable shutters on the first
floor. They were there to protect the second floor glass from windblown debris.
I didn’t expect them to fair well against bullets.

“The cameras are up high, they may not have even
noticed them. The real windows are on the second floor so they’re up high too.
Sounds like we need to keep their attention on the first floor where they can’t
hurt anything.”

Ruth Ann was right. The thugs had already
demonstrated their preferred means of breaking in, a baseball bat to a ground
floor window or door. I wasn’t worried about our front door. Even if they did
to us what they did to the James’ house, it would do them no good. They could
get to the door’s deadbolt but they couldn’t reach its twin hasps. It would be
hilarious to watch them try and break into our first floor “windows.” Good luck
to them with that.

“Laser gun sights are intimidating, right?” I
said.

“Yeah very, but they tell the bad guys exactly
where you are.”

“Perfect.”

I told Ruth Ann what I had in mind for a
diversion. She thought it was worth a try. Over the remainder of our lunch we
talked strategy.

“If we’re going to defend our castle Doug, you
are going to have to shoot somebody. Lucky for us, too bad for them, it is a
full moon tonight. I’ll put a red dot scope on the carbine. All you have to do
is put the red dot on your target and squeeze the trigger.”

“But a laser will tell them where I am, you
said.”

“A laser is different from a red dot. A laser
reaches out and touches the target. A red dot glows just inside your own scope.
Nobody else can see it.”

“Got it. But I’ve never shot anything before.
Let alone a person.”

“At this range all you have to do is line up the
dot, relax and squeeze. If you’re having an inner moral conflict it’s the
easiest one of all to work out. Either you kill them or they kill you. Any
questions?”

I opened my mouth to say something. But I closed
it again. There was nothing to say.