Get Off My L@wn - A Zombie Novel (9 page)

“Doug, get down here we’re leaving now!” barked
Ruth Ann.

“Wait, listen. It’s a helicopter!”

Quickly, out of the east three Blackhawk
helicopters came zooming low. Two of them had weapons on little wings sprouting
from their sides. The third had legs connected to soldiers dangling out of its
sides. We were dumbfounded.

My first thought was that I didn’t want them to
shoot us like random water buffalo in a rice paddy (great movie). And, I didn’t
want to make it look like we were desperately in need of rescue. We had already
said no many times to the National Guard. I did the only neutral thing I could
think of.

I stood up straight and saluted.

As the helicopters passed I could see a lot of
heads slowly turning to look at us. They may have been as dumbfounded as we
were.

As we headed back to our house I said to Ruth
Ann, “At least they weren’t black.”

“What?”

“Black helicopters, those were green.”

“So?”

“In the movies bad things always happen when
black helicopters are around.”

“I see,” she said.

It was just about dark and we were out of range
to connect to the house’s security cameras to help ensure we had no unexpected
company. We left the ladder up figuring the undead couldn’t make use of it.
This allowed us to get back to the house sooner while there was still light.

T
hat night after buttoning up we had a good
dinner including fresh salad from the roof and opened a bottle of wine. We were
both overjoyed at seeing functioning troops again and at our success in
locating some much needed supplies (bow supplies, food and coffee). I checked
the security cameras and was pleased to see the new IR emitter on the Boetche’s
garage gave us a nighttime view all the way to their house.

We hadn’t listened to the radio yet today so we
tuned in to the update. A horde had finally come out of the Twin Cities. It
crossed the river and was headed into Wisconsin rather than away. America’s
Dairyland was not catching any breaks. Karma no doubt, since the plague was a
Wisconsin export.

The Twin Cities horde was estimated at two million.
Add this to Chicago B and hordes in Wisconsin totaled six million walking dead.

The helicopters we saw were heading west to join
what the authorities were calling a “thinning operation.”

Dealing with a horde that numbered in the
millions, wasn’t as simple as going out there with guns blazing. Terrain had to
work in your favor to cause the horde to bunch up. Sort of “would you mind
standing closer together please so my weapons will be more effective?”

We were both curious if we could make out
anything about where the helicopters were going or what they were up to. We
bundled up as it was getting pretty cold at night. Bringing our binoculars we
had a seat on the roof and looked west. In the dark under some cloud cover we
could see flashes and glows of orange across a broad swath of the horizon.
These filled enough of the horizon for us to know it couldn’t be just the three
Blackhawks we saw. There were other forces out there acting in concert.

We couldn’t hear anything except the breeze.
Using the binoculars didn’t help. We could see only glows. Some changed
suddenly brighter or darker others just glowed. We watched for a while but did not
make out any details.

The faint sound of the helicopters came upon us.
We could see three tiny dark holes moving against the glowing background. When
they were no longer backed by the glowing horizon we couldn’t see them at all
but we could hear them getting closer. Soon we could see three sets of dim running
lights blinking.

When they neared, two kept moving east. One circled
slowly around the house.

It was close enough to be really loud. We didn’t
dare raise a rifle in their direction so Ruth Ann detached its night scope and
raised just that to her eye. I knew that in their night vision gear we were
probably the brightest thing for miles around. The helicopter made a complete
circuit of the house and continued its way eastward.

Ruth Ann said the helicopter was marked United
States Army and was one of the ones with the wings for weapons on its sides.
The side doors were closed but Ruth Ann could make out the shape of the pilot
examining us. Before they left, the pilot gave her a slow wave.

W
e didn’t go hunting on Sunday morning (Day 32),
as we had hoped. On checking the cameras, in addition to many agitated dead, we
saw something that rocked us back on our heels. There was a person lying
propped up on both elbows on the Boetche’s garage roof next to the IR emitter
we put up the day before. He had pulled up the ladder we left standing.

We quickly dressed and rushed up to the roof
with our binoculars, both the carbine and hunting rifle and Ruth Ann’s bow.
Immediately upon opening the roof door we could hear the dead bellowing. We
kept out of sight. I poked up just high enough to look through the binoculars.
Ruth Ann did the same through the hunting rifle’s scope.

We counted a baker’s dozen dead visible from our
vantage point. Presently a fourteenth staggered into view from around the
garage. Then a fifteenth appeared. And then still more. The person on the roof
was doomed unless we helped.

The dead don’t scream like people. There were
almost no consonants in their noises, just long vicious vowels. The din was
continuous with each individual pausing only to draw in a resupply of air to
immediately force out again in the form of soulless scream. Even though it was
cold, no steam came from their exhales. They were just as cold as the air they
ejected.

Through our glasses we could see what looked
like spit flying. It was probably bits of whatever was in their mouths because
we’ve never seen them drink anything but blood. They grabbed at the air but
could not gain purchase on the siding. Neither could they reach the garage’s
roof gutters. Even if they could they would probably just rip them down rather
than be able to use them to climb up.

The person bundled up on the roof was safe for
the moment if he could keep himself relatively calm and do nothing stupid. The
thought of this reminded me of an old saying of something like “If you can keep
your calm while those around you…” go nuts or something. I added silently “you
must be on a roof surrounded by zombies.”

“That’s Ryan,” Ruth Ann exclaimed.

“Who?”

“Ryan! Ryan Boetche. He used to mow our lawn for
shit’s sake.”

“Oh yeah…”

Ruth Ann was about to shout out to Ryan but I
stopped her.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“What do you mean “What am I doing?”. That’s our
neighbor’s kid. We have to help him.”

“Just invite him in? What if he’s infected? What
if he doesn’t know he’s infected?”

“What are you saying? We’re not leaving him out
there.”

“I’m not saying that. I’m saying we have to
think this through. We have to have a plan. We’re alive because we think. If we
want to stay alive we can’t go off halfcocked.”

“We have to let him know help is coming.”

“And, we have to get him in on the plan as soon
as we figure one out.” We looked at each other. Then it hit me.

“Do you have your phone?”

“It’s down stairs.”

“Go get it. Get a tablet too. And put a small
bottle of water in a plastic grocery bag, we still have some of those right?
Who knows when he drank last? And an energy bar. But the bottle has to be
small, OK?”

We both moved for the door downstairs.

“OK. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to fly a care basket over to him.”

“What?”

“You’ll see.”

I
rejoined Ruth Ann on the roof. She had what I
asked for. I trailed behind me an Ethernet cable and held an old Linksys access
point with its power brick. When I had taken the old blue box out of service it
was configured as a bridge and none of our security settings had changed. The phone
and tablet should simply connect. I plugged in the box and connected the LAN
cable. Shielding the box from the sun, I confirmed the status lights looked
good.

“Doug, what the hell are you doing?”

“Ryan is safe for the time being. We have to be
able to talk to him without attracting the dead’s attention.”

“The phones don’t work.”

“They have WIFI. Remember the email server I set
up? If we get him a phone hooked up to our network we can email him.”

“How are you going to get him the phone?”

“I told you, I’m going to fly it to him. Trust
me.”

I ducked downstairs again and came back up with
my hexacopter and radio controller. If you aren’t familiar with hexacopters
think “personal UAV.”

I set it down.

“Put this, the bottle, a phone and the energy
bar in the grocery bag and tie it shut.” I handed her a note folded over with
README written on the outside. She did as I asked while I prepped for flight. I
took the bag and gave it a quick heft.

“No problem. It weighs less than my camera.”

My hexacopter could carry a payload of a few
pounds enough for a small DSLR and lens. I looped the bag’s handles through the
hexacopter’s undercarriage and lifted off slowly. The bag remained attached and
rose along with the hexacopter.

Ryan saw it immediately and got to his feet. The
creatures were so engrossed in howling for Ryan’s blood and banging on the
garage that they didn’t notice the hexacopter until it was over them. They
reached up for it and bellowed louder but of course couldn’t reach it.

I couldn’t land the hexacopter because of the
pitch of the garage roof. I hovered the drone a little above Ryan’s head. He
reached up and unhooked that bag carefully. I lifted the drone up higher and
started it back to us.

He opened the bag. He read the note first (good
boy), took the phone out, looked at it and signaled thumbs up confirming the
phone was connected to our WIFI. The trip had taken only a few minutes but the
hexacopter’s batteries don’t last long. I needed the thing for step two of my
plan. On landing the hexacopter I put its batteries into a rapid power dump and
recharge. I could trust them again in forty five minutes.

I tapped out an email:

“Sit tight. We need time to plan. Are you bitten or
scratched or sick?”

I read it to Ruth Ann and sent it to the other
phone. I told Ruth Ann, “You know we can’t trust his answers. If he’s scared he’ll
say anything.”

“I know. We need a way to keep him isolated for
a while.”

We could see Ryan read the email and type a reply.
In a few seconds my tablet buzzed with his answer.

“Tired thirsty hungry no broken skin not sick. Thank
you so much!!”

I wrote back:

“Stay quiet and don’t move. My helicopter needs
45 minutes to recharge. You’ll be OK. We will come up with a plan.”

He read the email and nodded back to us. He laid
down again. I am sure the pounding on the garage walls and the dead’s deafening
howls made it impossible for him to go to a happy place.

I
t didn’t take Ruth Ann and me long to come up
with an idea. We would make a diversion to give Ryan a chance to get on the
ground and run. He could stay in our garage for a day to see if he got sick. If
he did, we’d have to deal with it.

Ruth Ann and I put some blankets, a sleeping
bag, change of clothes, food and water into our garage along with a spray
bottle of bleach water. I released the garage door’s hasps and reengaged the electric
lift mechanism. We left him a tablet and its power brick so he could monitor
the cameras, listen to music and even watch a movie for distraction.

Finally, we included both earplugs and a set of
over-the-ear headphones. We had already learned that the dead can be loud
enough to wake the living and then some.

We emailed Ryan our plan. We told him we were
sorry we would not let him in directly and that staying in the garage for a day
would be safe and relatively comfortable. He wrote back that he understood and
our garage would be better than what he had been through.

While we waited for the hexacopter’s batteries
to recharge the banging and howling continued over at the Boetche’s garage. By
our count there were twenty-two zombies fixated on getting at Ryan. They looked
as if they would climb on each other if they were packed densely enough. They
lacked the cognitive ability to work together so without a crush of others,
Ryan would continue to be safe. The thought crossed my mind that in the middle
of a horde, even a second floor wouldn’t be safe.

Finally, the battery recharge time had elapsed. We
wrote to Ryan:

“We are ready to draw them off you. Wait for our
signal. When clear, run to our garage. Don’t trip on the body in the tall
grass. Sorry again about quarantine – can’t take chances. We’ll open the door
when you get close. You close it. Button is near inner door. Hang on to our
phone, OK?”

Ryan gave us the thumbs up. My drone lifted off.
Slung beneath it was another light plastic grocery bag with our second phone in
it. Its volume was turned up to its maximum and was playing MP3 files. Before
you wonder, Barry Manilow and Barry White were far less effective in getting
the ghoul’s attention than B.I.G and Dr. Dre. With the phone on random play of
what ever happened to be on it we couldn’t pick and choose.

The dead didn’t hear the music over their own
screaming and pounding until the drone got close to them. Our location went
unnoticed. I hovered above their reach buzzing back and forth until I had the
attention of most of them. I slowly flew just ahead of them and drew more than
a dozen towards Flynn’s house. They moved like a spastic train. I had to loop
back a few times to ensure that I continued to hold their attention while
softer songs played.

I flew as far away from both Ryan and us as I
thought I could safely fly and not lose control of the drone. I hit the “Hold
Station” button on the remote control. The hexacopter would keep itself steady
within a small radius of where I left it several feet above the reach of the
monsters.

Ruth Ann started firing on the dead that I didn’t
draw away. She quickly downed the few on the south west side of the Boetche’s
garage. Ryan put our ladder down and started to descend. I ran downstairs to
the garage with another one of our tablets so I could monitor the surveillance
cameras. Our garage door area remained clear. Ruth Ann continued dropping
whatever ghoul was closest to Ryan as he ran to us. On another camera I saw the
dead that followed the hexacopter were on their way back towards the source of
the louder noise, Ruth Ann’s gunfire.

As Ryan reached our garage I opened the inner
door and depressed the garage door button. As the door lifted I was once more
thankful for the tax credit that allowed us to install our solar panels. I
closed and bolted the inner door. I heard Ryan run into the garage and slam the
button just on the other side of the wall from my head.

“Ryan?”

“Yeah.”

“Strip out of your clothes and throw them in the
corner. Spray yourself with bleach water and wash off. We left you clean
clothes. I have to go back upstairs now. OK?”

I didn’t wait for his answer.