The Failed Coward (20 page)

As we wrapped up doing the dishes, we heard the honking of a truck’s horn, and lo and behold, Ollie and Melissa were on the far side of the bridge. Smiles were everywhere.

Vans moved, we directed them to Hall B, and we helped them get settled in. Well, the girls split off to get settled, and the men split off to do work. Ollie had brought a gift from Lenny.

Two huge rolls of chicken wire, wood, nails, screws, and once we get the coop built with all that, he had ten hens and a rooster for us to put in it. How cool is that? Seriously? Mr. Journal… we will have fresh eggs right here on campus in the very near future. As in potentially tomorrow. I cannot believe how awesome that is.

It took us almost the entire day to get a chicken coop built, and that’s with us making sure Gavin stayed with the men. I couldn’t bear to have him stolen away by Abby and forced to deal with all that estrogen again. Two consecutive days of the vagina festival and I think we officially need to pull his man-card. The poor kid’s penis will shrivel up if we don’t look out for it. He’s too young to know how to take proper care of it.

We decided that keeping the coop near Hall B was a good idea. It was a shorter trip for Ollie and Melissa to check the chickens for eggs, and it meant they could keep closer eye on the coop in the event the foxes or raccoons ever come back and try to eat them. Two coops were built, one on one side of the building, the other on the other. We built a sturdy two level coop where the hens could get off the ground on one side of the Hall, and a smaller coop for the rooster. That way the hens aren’t all weirded out by the rooster (which is a problem apparently) and that way Ollie can set up a single hen at a time laying fertile eggs for more chickens. With just a little effort, he says by the end of the year it’s quite likely we’ll have 30 or 40 chickens if we don’t eat them.

I’m all for eggs. I’m also all for eating chickens. This will be a very difficult decision over time. I think there is considerable sense in not eating our own chickens until we’ve got a large, healthy base to work with. Ollie says his dad has something like 80 chickens, and a dozen breeding at any given time, so we can always trade for chickens to eat from them. 

He also was kind enough to let us know that his dad would be willing to trade us a bull, and a cow so we could start breeding our own cattle. However, Ollie said Lenny would likely trade hard for it, and we’d best think of something pretty special. Ollie had some ideas, but he wanted to ruminate on it for a bit. He also used the word ruminate, which I liked. He also asked if I knew of any local farms we might be able to find more cows, or sheep at. I drew a blank.

We took breaks to eat, and at one point we all froze as we heard some noises coming from the woods near the maintenance outbuildings. Actually, we think it came from the area near the building we converted into a smoker, but when we checked it out, there was nothing there. I’m wondering if it was wildlife returning, or if a branch fell or something. Who knows? We’re so on edge when we’re outdoors. Constantly checking for threats and being extra attentive. I’m looking forward to the day when I can let my guard down, and just let the sun hit me in the face without worry.

I think we’ve got a long ways to go before that becomes reality. I think we need a really big fence surrounding campus for that to happen, that’s for damn sure.

After sundown when we wrapped up, we all collapsed inside Hall B, and Ollie and Melissa made us all a dinner. They were exhausted, but they insisted on making something. They brought a meager supply of food for themselves, and made pasta with sauce for us. It wasn’t anything special, but the company was. Dinner with new people, especially ones that you like, makes for a good evening.

Short aside: I definitely need to reassess our food consumption. Three extra mouths to feed will literally eat through our food stores. We had a rough estimate on how long our food would last, but the added people will change that date.

Most of us cracked open a few beers that were still in date (or close to it) and we put our tired feet up, and soaked in each other’s company. However, work had to be done, and with everyone gathered, rested, and largely coherent (prior to the beer soaking in, at least) Gilbert and I decided to address the team.

Basic idea: wtf to do next? Everyone had ideas to share with the exception of Ollie and Melissa. As the fng’s on campus they had no opinion, and would do whatever was asked of them. We forced opinions out of them eventually. New perspectives are important. The same old thinking tends to get you the same old results.

I’ll sum this up as fast as I can. We all universally acknowledged that the town must be cleared. This must happen for several reasons.

• • We need to kill all the remaining zombies at a minimum for the sake of safety. (moral responsibility aside)
  
• • The houses must be checked for survivors so we can help them, and give them the option of joining our little community. Tactically, we also need to know who we are competing with for whatever resources remain in town.
  
• • We need to accumulate as many resources as we possibly can to ensure our survival through NEXT winter. This is where finding out how long our food should last us becomes really fucking important. 
  
• • We still want to set up the safe houses to screen new folks for coming up here. They might also serve us in opening up safe lines of communication with groups that do not want to join us here.
  
• • We need to know what happened, and is happening out there.
  

That was enough to get everyone on board. With the reduced amount of undead in town we all felt that forays deeper and deeper into the center were viable, and survivable. Going by the town’s population of maybe 8k folks, it seemed highly unlikely that all eight thousand people were in town when the shit hit the fan.

Everyone knew that we were a suburb of the city, and that at least 20% of the town’s residents worked there or elsewhere out of town, and were likely at work when it went down. Some folks left town for the north to the more rural areas of the state, and obviously many died, and stayed dead. The X factor was the survivors. How many had made it this far and were still alive somewhere nearby? Were they hostile? Hurt? Gilbert and I felt comfortable with a rough highball estimate of 4,000 zombies right here in town.

Once more for added emphasis: FOUR THOUSAND ZOMBIES.

We’re gonna need to get creative because we cannot afford to fire four thousand rounds clearing this town. There’s a whole world filled with these things out there, and we have to assume they’ll find us sooner or later.

Tomorrow we’re cutting wood for the woodstoves while the weather holds and it stays reasonably warm. Patty and Gilbert are checking the local homes for oil so we can get a firm idea of what we’ve got to work with, and while that’s all going down, I’m gonna scout the fringe of campus and see if I can’t bring down a deer.

The day after that, we are clearing houses moving towards the center of town. 

New standing rule: all daycares are burned flat on sight. 

-Adrian

April 4
^th

The greatest journeys begin with a single step. I forget who said that. Or said something like that. I’d Google it to find out, but I’m dealing with this pesky apocalypse thing, and Google seems to be down. I’m hoping it comes up soon. There’s a LOT of shit I wished I’d looked up.

The meaning stands true, whether or not Google is up, or whether or not I can tell you who said it. It’s true. The smallest steps can build into the biggest journeys, and today, we started to clear the houses of town. 

Yesterday first. Errand day. Yawnville compared to today. I’ll keep it simple, short, and hit the bullet points.

Gavin and Abby took down the trees we’d scored with the chainsaw in preparation for the original Westfield assaults. It was risky leaving them like that all this time anyway, and we need the wood for next winter anyhow. Gavin has some experience with a chainsaw (more on that later) and he made damn quick work of getting the tree down and dissected into Abby sized pieces. The two of them worked that action all day, and last night, they were fucking beat. They fell asleep propped against each other on the living room couch. No risk of sex last night meant Patty slept like a baby.

Speaking of Patty… she and Gilbert hit the entire lengths of Jones Road, Prospect Circle, and Auburn Lake Road checking for home heating oil. (diesel) Of the 45 homes they checked, 38 used oil, and of them, the vast majority were half full tanks or less. They used the existing gauges and a plumb bob thingamajigger Gilbert jury rigged to get the quantities. The majority of the houses had either 275 or 330 gallon tanks, and in reality, those are never more than 80% full. So let’s assume they were ALL 250 gallon tanks, and they were ALL at 40% capacity. That’s 100 gallons per house, and a total of 38 houses.

Carry the one… use my laptop’s calculator, and I get a grand total of 3800 gallons of diesel just here. The other seven houses used wood for heat (one, and we already have that woodstove in Hall A), or propane. 

Here on campus each dorm has a 3,000 gallon underground storage tank. The tanks were on regular bi-weekly delivery schedules and were always topped off. We had 5 halls, admissions, the office building, the main school building , the gymnasium, the cafeteria, the primary maintenance building, the art building, and the woodshop/industrial arts building. Some of those smaller buildings shared a single tank, but as best as we can figure out, there are at least 8 oil tanks on campus. We have only consumed oil from Hall E, and Hall A’s tanks. That’s roughly 24,000 gallons of oil, plus whatever remains in A and E’s tank.

Logistically, if we can stay in three Halls as long as possible, I’m gonna guess and say we will use 1,500 gallons per winter, per Hall (3 Halls), which means we should have heat for at least four to five years, and that’s without the roughly 3,800 gallons in the houses nearby. 

All this is dandy, but the simple fact is that with no gasoline, there’s no gas generator, and with no generator, there’s no need for heating oil. Soooo… we need a lot of gasoline to make that heating useful for heating. We are also exceptionally fortunate that the potency of the gas hasn’t shit the bed. Gas has a shelf life, and I’m not an expert, but we have got to be pushing our luck within the next few months. The alternative is woodstoves and wood, which I KNOW we will source by the end of spring. One wood stove in each of our buildings that we need heat in during the winter, and we essentially have heat forever, and spare diesel to drive vehicles with for a very long time.

When the gasoline dies, our gas powered electric generators die. Then we will be sans hot water, and operating off the solar panels and batteries. I’m starting to think a hydroelectric dam is the way to go…. Mr. Journal if you know how, or know someone who does know how to build and maintain one, now would be a pretty fucking clutch time to speak up.

Aside here: back in medieval ages, most folks lived and died in a few mile radius of where they were born. Long trips were too expensive, and too dangerous to undertake unless you were martially skilled, or very wealthy. You’d live in your parent’s home until they died, probably marry your neighbor, probably have a few malnourished kids with them, and they’d live in your house until you kicked off. Lather, rinse, repeat.

That scenario sound disturbingly familiar to you Mr. Journal? Cuz long trips for us are too dangerous, and wasteful of fuel for us to undertake… We’ve regressed 800 years in nine months. Really sit back and think about that. Honestly, it’s kind of neat, and also horrifying at the same time. How fragile our society was. 

Ollie and Melissa got things in their place just so, and Ollie finished the chicken coops (coopi? Is that the plural for coop? Not a word I use a lot Mr. Journal…) and started to assess what we would be needing for fences for crops, and any cattle we’d be acquiring down the line. Ollie also did some pretty clever measuring of our needs for a campus perimeter fence. He tied a length of rope between his feet, and each stride he took was a set measurement. He counted his paces, and at the end, he had a near perfect number of feet and yards for the fences. Melissa covered him in the event they were jumped. 

He felt that fencing the cattle into a small area was stupid, as they could easily eat all the grass on campus that we would need to mow anyway, and why build a fence for the cattle, then another fence for the zombies, then another fence for the crops? One perimeter fence, then perhaps a barbed wire fence around the crops to keep the cows out of the field.

Fart smella that Ollie.

Everyone hit the rack early, and we woke up with the sun at about six am to start a long day of house clearing.

There’s a small gathering of streets off of Route 18 that’s somewhat separate from the mass of downtown. If you were look at the layout of those streets on paper, there’s a central street called Hickory Road. Off of Hickory Road on both sides are loops that make it look like a 9 and a P back to back. Like a skeleton key? Mouse ears? That make sense? Anyway, the left side loop is called Adams Way, and the right side loop is called Harold Way. In total, there are seven houses on all three streets. They aren’t connected to anything else, other than Route 18, and there’s at least a few hundred yards of forest between the houses there, and anything else of note.

It was an excellent chance for us to do a small house clearing run to work out the kinks, and see how Gavin fit in. As it turns out… it went excellent. Excellent…-ish. As excellent as anything involving me, the human unlucky anal pwnage rabbit’s foot can be.

Gilbert’s Chevy, the plow, and the HRT were our three vehicles for the day. They gave us cargo capacity, good ground clearance, mobility, and versatility. Two houses on Hickory are near the main road, and are across from one another. We did quick loops of the roads off of Hickory, dropped a few walkers with melee weapons that were moving around free, and then returned to the two houses to start the dirty work. We really need to make a concentrated effort to conserve ammo when we can.