My Zombie Honeymoon: Love in the Age of Zombies Book One (6 page)

It’s a whole different experience, looking for beach stones in the fall. Facing north, the view towards Frankfort is spectacular. The slant of light is different than during summer, and at their peak the trees on the dunes are radiant, especially close to sunset when surrounded by darker evergreens and pines. Offshore, the color of the water is darker, and few recreational watercraft dot the surface. No paragliding this time of year. And maybe it’s just my imagination, but the water
sounds
like fall. Less celebratory, more resigned.

It’s almost sacred, being surrounded by such transient beauty while getting distracted by the search for pretty fossils of coral that lived millions of years ago. The brief and the seemingly eternal both impressing themselves upon my consciousness.

So I was daydreaming about the Lake when I heard a scraping/crunching sound. It took me a minute to place it—it was the sound of fallen leaves being walked on. I couldn’t tell exactly where it came from, so I quietly crept to the front corner of the house to look around, being careful not to step on any leaves myself. As I peered around the corner, I saw a man. Or what used to be a man. He was sort of staggering around, aimlessly walking through my yard just shy of the street. I kept out of sight and watched him.

He looked to be in his late fifties, but that’s just a guess. It was hard to tell. He wore what used to be a white V-neck t-shirt. Only now it was filthy, ripped, and stained with dried blood. The whole left side of his face was a dried up, unhealed wound. I could even see some of his sinus cavities. It looked like most of his hair on the other side had been burnt off. Gore had dripped down onto his shoulder, and the left arm hung limply at a strange angle.

It moved forward down the street, occasionally jerking its head this way and that. I can only guess it was looking for flesh. I crept back inside and locked the door, then watched it until it was out of sight. I was nauseated and shaking. What used to be simply a concept for me has now become a reality. I’ve seen a zombie. They are real.

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”—
Walt Kelly (Pogo)

November 1
st

The last ten days have been pretty quiet, if you call hiding in the basement of my house while more and more zombies mill about
quiet
. After my last entry, I started to see one or two a day, then I started seeing more . . . four or five, sometimes six. Sometimes two or three at a time. Yesterday I counted 12.

It feels strange to lurk around my house, listening to the silence. Except for them. Everywhere they go, they make that snarling, rasping noise. When several of them get together, it sounds like a horrible, monstrous Barbershop quartet.

I saw Michelle yesterday. I happened to be upstairs, peeking out the window (no, not toward her bedroom) when a huge explosion rocked the house. If I have my bearings straight, I think it came from the airport. But who knows, surely it wasn’t the Marathon refinery—it’s over twenty miles from here! Wherever it was, the explosion was huge, and like I said, it shook the house. It didn’t seem to frighten the zombies, but they all turned and started gravitating toward the sound. Evidently sound attracts them—which is good to know. Soon most of them were out of sight. I unbolted the side door and sprinted to Michelle’s house. I knocked quietly on the door, nervously looking around. She immediately opened the door and motioned me in. As soon as she closed and bolted the door behind me, she said, “Holy crap, Kevin, you scared the bejesus out of me!”

“Sorry,” I said, “but I wanted to check on you. What do you think that explosion was?”

“I was wondering the same thing. It might have been a gas station. It wasn’t the gas lines—I checked and the natural gas is still on,” she said.

“You holding up okay over here?”

“I’m not fishing for an invitation, but being alone is wearing on me. I feel like I’m in solitary or something. Don’t take that as a hint—I know it’s not safe to go traipsing back and forth between your place and mine. Have you noticed there are more and more of those things out there?!”

“I had noticed. I guess they’re coming from downtown or the university. Who knows, maybe even Detroit. How are you on food and water?”

“To be honest with you, I’ll be glad when this is over. I try to keep a stocked pantry, but I never planned on being stuck inside for weeks at a time. I sure hope things get back to normal soon,” she said ruefully.

I thought,
Back to normal? I’m afraid this is normal. The old normal may be gone forever.
I also wondered who she thought would get control soon—the police? From what I saw on the net before it went down, the chain of command had fallen apart. There are no more police, or none on duty. I haven’t seen a patrol car in weeks.

But I didn’t say it—instead, all I said was “Okay, I just wanted to check on you. Being neighborly and all that.” Parroting her earlier words, of course.

“You don’t have to leave! I could use some company. And we should at least check the, shall we say, traffic before you open the door.”

“True, I need to start remembering that.” I noticed she’d covered her windows with aluminum foil. “You have foil on all your windows?” I said.

“Yep, every window is sealed tight. I did leave a small gap at the top of each window to let light in, otherwise it would be nearly dark in here”

“Nearly?”

“I have a skylight in the kitchen. I spend most of my time either there or by the fireplace, since it gives off light when the fire is lit. Who knows how long the gas will stay on. C’mon, I’ll show you the kitchen.“

She led me through the dim light into the kitchen, which was indeed much brighter.

“How do you see to get around at night? I’ve learned my lesson—you’re not an idiot and didn’t walk around with a flashlight or anything that could be seen,” I said, hoping to regain some ground I lost by implying she wasn’t very bright.

“I mostly feel my way around once it gets dark. Now I know how blind people do it. I know where everything is even when I can’t see it. I’m also going to bed earlier, since there’s nothing else to do. Can’t read, can’t make a fire, can’t cook . . . it’s miserable really.”

“Too bad it’s not safe for you to come visit me now and then,” I said, “I have lights on 18 hours a day. No way any light can possibly leak out. I can cook, and I can watch DVDs, I can even read at night.”

“How can you do all that? The electricity’s been out for weeks!” she asked me.

“I started reading a bunch of end-of-the-world books. I was in an apocalyptic mood. I also read books about tough characters in rough situations. I even went back and read Jack London’s books. It was fascinating to see what the characters would do to survive. A lot of the current books involve survivalists. I took a look around and realized how fragile my lifestyle was. One catastrophe—a pandemic, an electromagnetic pulse bomb, a terrorist attack, a severe climate disruption a hundred times worse than global warming—and I could lose everything and die a horrible death. If the grid went down, life as I knew it would disappear . . . it scared the hell out of me. I started stocking up on food and water, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized food and water wouldn’t do any good if I wasn’t safe and warm. On my roof are several banks of solar panels which charge the batteries downstairs, enough for me to run my LED lights for the plants and keep myself mildly entertained. I have a pretty good set up. I never dreamed I’d have to rely on it this soon.”

I admit it—I was bragging. But I hadn’t been able to brag to anyone else about it, and I am proud of what I accomplished. “I also had professionals come in and renovate the unfinished basement. Took a huge chunk of change, but I had money left from Tammy’s life insurance, plus my 401k. Hah, my 401k. I guess that’s gone forever. Wish I’d spent it all! Everything is VERY energy efficient. What with the hydroponics, the stored goods, the liquor, and the books—“

“And the porn!” She interrupted with the flash of a grin.

“- and the
DVDs
, I’m set for quite a while. I don’t
just
have porn, you know. I have a huge movie collection.”

We started talking about movies. It was refreshing to talk with someone,
anyone
, and I completely enjoyed it. I don’t know if it was just because I was starved for company or if I would have enjoyed her conversation just as much in different circumstances, but it was great.

At one point she said something funny—I think she was talking about a scene from
Date Night
—and I started laughing my head off. “
Shhhh
!!” she shushed me with a look of alarm in her eyes, “you’re being too loud! They’ll hear you!!”

We heard a noise out front. We jumped up from her kitchen table—we’d been there for a while—and bolted to the living room window. Apparently she was right—there was a zombie scratching at her front door, and several zombies ambling toward her house.

“
Shit
!” she whispered.

I immediately felt guilty and a little scared. “I’m sorry,” I whispered back, “I wasn’t thinking.”

“It wasn’t your fault. I was having a good time, too,” she said, touching me on the arm. “I think we’re safe. No way they can get in, and if we’re quiet, maybe they’ll go away.”

I didn’t feel safe, not like I would in my own home. Knowing they were just outside was quite unnerving.

We sat down on the carpet near the window so we could keep an eye on them. Between it being so dim and us having to talk in near whispers, I felt like a kid again, staying up late at a friend’s house. I even said something about it. She agreed and said it felt like we were sneaking around.

“Don’t worry, my parents aren’t expected home for a long time,” I said. “We can do whatever we want. Except make noise. Or build a fire. Or go outside. Or order a pizza. Or watch a movie.”

As we fell silent, a fantasy leapt to my mind of her responding
Or watch porn . . . but wait, we can! Or you can. So far I haven’t been invited to the party,
with a pouting come-hither look.
Now stop it!
another part of me said,
You know you don’t want to go there. There be dragons.
I tried to refocus.

We started quietly talking again. Compared notes on how this came about. Wondering about our friends. Wondering what was going to happen next. Soon we were having an intimate conversation about how we were responding to the horrible mess. She confessed she was stressed out and depressed. I admitted I sometimes wondered what the point was of trying so hard to survive when things were so grim. I admitted it made me miss my wife, and life hadn’t been so great since she died. We fell silent again. And yet, it was a companionable silence. Better than solitary silence.

Eventually the zombies wandered off, since there wasn’t anything else to see or hear. I decided it was time to leave while the coast was clear, and told her so. As I headed for the door, a thought struck me: I had two sets of wireless baby monitors. I planned to keep one upstairs as a cheap security system, so if someone tried to break in, I’d hear them. The other set was a backup in case the first one quit working.

The monitors have two components—a transmitter and a receiver. The part you leave in the baby’s room transmits but doesn’t receive and the one you keep with you receives but doesn’t transmit. Since I had two sets, I could give Michelle the receiver from one kit and the transmitter from the other kit, and we could keep in touch with each other. Since the sets are on different frequencies, anyone listening in would only hear one side of the conversation.

Is it possible anyone’s monitoring the radio frequencies? Or should I say, is it
probable?

Michelle thought the idea was great. I think she’s been much lonelier than she lets on, and I can tell she’s losing weight. She’s still a big girl, but her clothes are looser. I hope she doesn’t lose weight up top.

She’s looking pale. She must be trying to conserve food. At least if we had someone to talk to we wouldn’t go quite as stir crazy, and it adds another layer of security as well. She can watch my back. I can watch her front. Heh.

She even suggested we set up checkers or backgammon, and play over the radio. That sounds like fun, but we’d have to have the honor system for rolling dice.

Tomorrow if the coast is clear, I’ll take the radios over. I have fresh batteries and they should last a couple of weeks before they need to be recharged, which is no problem with my solar battery chargers.

November 3
rd
             

The plans for yesterday didn’t work out for a couple of reasons, the biggest one being the number of zombies milling around. I don’t know if they somehow smell live humans, or sense us in some other way, or if there’s some residual memory of hearing us yesterday, but there are definitely more wandering around today than there were a couple of days ago. Even though they’re pretty slow, I didn’t dare try to take the radios over. I’ll try again tomorrow.

I finally bottled the beer I’ve been neglecting in the carboy. Actually I bottled half of it, and kegged the other half. I sampled it, and even though it was warm and uncarbonated, I could tell it turned out mighty fine. I can pretty much guarantee it’s the best fresh homebrew in town. Unless there’s some Jolly Pumpkin in storage somewhere. Tomorrow or the next day it should be ready to drink. I wonder if Michelle likes beer? Maybe she’s more of a wine kind of gal.