Zombie Dawn (20 page)

For the wandering Z, we decided on a few simple defensive rules.  First, everyone over the age of 12 was armed at all times—and trained in the use of their weapons.  Second, we all moved in pairs or groups at all times.  Third, we took great care in confined areas, such as in and between buildings, and in forests or woods, where visibility was limited.  We spent a lot of time clearing brush to keep open lines of fire.

The best practice, though, was to constantly clear and re-clear a constantly expanding “Safe Zone.”  House to house, farm to farm, village to village, town to town.  The more clear space we had, the safer we were.

A third threat would be zombie hordes.  We hoped and prayed that we simply wouldn’t have to deal with this one, but we had to prepare anyway.  We mostly used ham radio reports to track them.  As we expected, they were prevalent in and around population centers so our move to the sticks was a good one.

But, according to Springfield and a ham in Pittsfield, a horde was forming itself out of mini-hordes and heading west and north; we kept a close eye on this one.  Apparently, some of the Brains had the ability to open doors and free zombies from houses and cars.  Some of the reports made it seem like there were other types of zombies as well, including some who used primitive weapons.  Made me wish we’d had time to really clean up on the way up here, because we’d passed thousands and thousands on the way. 

They were the fourth group—Brains and Wolves—and whatever else developed in terms of zombie upgrades.   These could appear alone, in small groups, or in control of hordes.  They were a constant threat.

A fifth would be organized military.  It was always in the back of our mind that some government, whether ours or a new one, or even a quasi-military group of some type, would feel the need to attack us.  Or, maybe, firebomb or nuke us in an effort to rid the world of zombies.  We were too busy trying to survive to spend much time trying to figure out how to operate tanks, attack helicopters, and things like that, but no doubt someone out there had the time to do it.   

We decided to add a sixth source of attack—the unknown.  And a seventh—rebellion from within.  At that point, we realized that we had to slow down or we’d die of anxiety even without an attack!

We also analyzed the type of attacks that we might face and broke them down into three primary modes—land, air, or water.  And the water could become ice at times, which would remove one of our primary advantages.

The initial threat was land attack, which we initially addressed by “cutting” the two bridges that led to the island.  The witches had made a six foot cut in the northern bridge, and we made a similar gap in the southern bridge.  Each could be covered with a thick metal plate when we needed to cross with light vehicles.  We figured the gap was wide enough to stop hordes but that survivors would still have a chance to jump across.  We decided to rig the bridges with explosives to blow more sections if we had to.  We put that on our “to do” list. 

A second threat was air attack.  There was very little we could do to defend ourselves from high altitude bombing.   We decided to cut an American flag image into a large field so that it would be visible from the air or from satellites, and we maintained a radio presence on military channels.  We also put bunker construction on our “to do” list.

We had thought quite a bit about the number of survivors around the world.  It was one of our favorite evening campfire discussions—who survived and where?

Kate liked to believe that groups of survivors had holed up in some of the great art museums in New York and around the world.  She would tell us wonderful stories about each museum, the famous and brilliant works of art in each, and the people who had dedicated their lives to protecting them. 

Stan’s survivor fantasies hinged on secret military installations.  He believed that the entire United States government lived the life of Reilly in posh underground bunkers.  Li told stories of a reunited Korea, where almost everyone had survived except corrupt North Korean generals.  The stories were pure fantasy—and a lot of fun.

My stories, and they were only stories (I can attest to this based on the amount of time that I spent making them up) were intended to keep our group alert to different scenarios that might occur.  I presented them as fact.  I knew that I was getting too far off course, or too repetitive, when the kids would roll their eyes at me.

“How many times are you going to remind us that Zs can live underwater?”

This was after a long story in which killer Zs battled killer whales.

Or, “We know that some of them are fast and smart.  We’re always careful!”

This was after a story in which a few Zs dragged down a rider on a galloping horse.  I had patterned this one after the raptors in “Jurassic Park.”

Speaking of movies, everyone knows that the greatest movie in the history of the world is “The Godfather.”  Some people believe that “The Godfather II” is better, and although I’m able to understand those people, I disagree.  Part I is a simple, brilliant, mob movie with a brilliant conclusion.  Guys with leather patches on their sport coats pick II.  Enough said.

But the best war movie of all time, or at the least the best war movie with application to our present situation, is “Zulu.”  Not “Zulu Dawn,” a prequel made 15 years later focused on the massive defeat of the British at Islandlwana, but “Zulu,” where a force of 125 Brits held off 4,000 Zulus at Rorke’s Drift for days while under constant attack. 

Our situation was not that similar to Rorke’s Drift, since “our” Z’s were brainless and slow, while the actual Zulus were smart, brave and fierce.  Nor were we short on ammo—we hoped.  But what I did take away from “Zulu” was the importance of location and the availability of successive fallback positions.  Plus a final “redoubt.”

A redoubt is a fort inside another fort.  It is smaller, easier to defend, and more heavily fortified than the main wall.   It’s used as a last resort.  We decided that our fort and its redoubt would be useful against almost all of the various groups that might attack us, so we designed ours very carefully.

Chapter Twenty Four:  The Fort

We started with a group of three small, rocky hills in the middle of a series of large, cleared fields belonging to several farms.  The peaks were about fifty feet above the surrounding area, and formed an irregular triangle.  A small stream meandered through the hills.

Bobbie, Tyler, Sean and Cody had discovered a cave in the side of one of the hills while they were searching for a missing goat.  It led down into a large network of caverns beneath the island.  It was dangerous down there, so we told the kids to stay out.  I asked Julie and Christina to explore it bit by bit.  They would carefully examine each small section, then mark it off with ropes and leave lanterns down there so we could use it in the future.  Mike and Jake stored some weapons and ammo down there, too.

We decided that Darnell and Cleve would be in charge of fort construction, since the rest of us were working on farming, ranching, security, and general survival.  We really couldn’t farm, since winter was coming, but we were busy nonetheless.  Danny and Dave thought we were nuts when we told them about the fort, but they agreed to come there in the event of a large concentrated attack.

Darnell was a talented, if not formally trained, engineer and draftsman.  He prepared a plan showing the height of the hills and the areas in between them and calculated that he could build a “moat” around the base of the three hills.   The moat would be at least 20 feet deep and at least 20 feet wide.  We figured we’d get groundwater at the bottom of it.  It would be supported by large pine trees driven into the ground on each side of it to retain the earthen walls.

The earthen wall would be the same, 20 feet high and 20 feet thick.  The ground between the hills was littered with huge boulders, which would be used to reinforce the various walls. The outside wall would be about 1200 feet long in total.  It seemed like a pretty huge construction project, but Darnell said he could handle it in less than a year if we let him have Cleve, Mike, and Susan as helpers.

Darnell calculated that he could knock the top fifteen feet off of the three hills and use that earth to level a plateau between the hills.  That level area would be about 35 feet above the surrounding fields and fifteen feet higher than the walls.  The high area would be about the same shape as the wall, but would be separated from the wall by a fifty foot wide open area.  Darnell called this the “Kill Zone.” 

The Kill Zone would be a nasty area filled with sharpened stakes and courses of barbed wire.  If enemies breached the outside wall, they’d have to get through the Kill Zone to reach the plateau.  We hoped to mine that area as well, although we didn’t have any mines yet.

Cleve sketched out how he’d build wooden fighting platforms on the inside of the wall to provide fighting positions.  We’d use these platforms if we were fighting an enemy that could shoot back.  If we were fighting zombies, we could simply stand on top of the wall and fire down on them.

The fighting platforms would be connected to the plateau with three wooden walkways.  The walkways were designed to come down if the wall were breached.   Darnell wanted to be able to blow the wall up if enemies occupied it and we added explosives to our wish list. 

Chapter Twenty Five:  Caterpillar

 Darnell and Cleve needed heavy equipment, so a group of us (Darnell, Cleve, Stan, Jake, Mike and I) took a road trip to get them some.   Darnell had located several small pieces of equipment around the island.  His favorite was a mid-sized excavator with a post hole attachment on it. He showed us how quickly this piece could be used to build walls and fences.  But he needed larger equipment to build the “Fort.”

We hoped to return with new vehicles (tractors pulling trailers loaded with equipment) so we brought the old “horse trailer” pickup.  We figured we’d end up dumping it.   Darnell fortified it with front and rear I-beam push bars, a .30 cal machine gun in the rear, and a chain link enclosure over the rear and the windows.  We all loaded up with M4s and .45s.  Mike also brought the M-107.  Food and water was loaded in the back.  The cab was too tight for all six of us, so Mike and I rode in back, Mike with the M-107 trained over the front, and me with the .30 cal covering the rear.  We set up a couple of comfortable chairs back there and set off. 

Just east of Burlington was a large Cat dealer.  We took Route 2 down to Route 7; the dealer was right on Route 7.   We took care to make sure that the road was cleared enough for wide loads on the way back.  It took us awhile to push some cars off of the road.  We freed and ended all of the zombies trapped in the cars; we did not want them joining a horde and showing up on our doorstep some day.  (End review May 15)

 We needed a big excavator, a bulldozer, track loader, and a dump truck, plus as much diesel fuel as we could get.  Stan, Darnell, and Cleve were excellent truck drivers but Jake and I were a bit worried about driving one of those wide loads on the way back.  No way was I letting Mike drive one!

We almost lost Jake and Mike that morning.  We were clearing the lot and the building before we chose our equipment.  Jake was working between lines of new equipment, covered by Mike.  The equipment was very tall, and Jake was directing his attention higher up when something grabbed him.  We all wore heavy motorcycle boots so it did not rip through; it just held him.  Mike rushed forward to help, when he was grabbed and held by a second one.  They pulled their .45s and radioed for help.

As everyone headed over to help, we saw three Brains and a dozen Wolves running over the top of the heavy equipment towards Mike and Jake.  This was a coordinated attack, and it seemed like they were trying to capture them rather than kill them.   I’d never seen anything like this in the past.

Mike and Jake had their upper bodies clear so they were able to move.  Mike pulled his katana and cut the arm off of the Wolf holding him.  Jake shot his through the elbow and broke free, with the hand and forearm still attached.  They went back to back and each dropped a Wolf.  The rest quickly disappeared.  One minute they were there; the next they were gone.  We found a hole in the fence a few rows over; they must have used that for their entry and their escape.   I quickly wired the hole in the fence but noticed that it had been cut open neatly.  I wondered who had done that.

Earlier, Stan and I had ended four Zs in the building and another six in the garage; most of them wore the Cat overalls and were dealership employees.  They were all slow and easy.  We had located the rack of keys in the manager’s office and brought it out back.

We decided to stay together and provide cover for Darnell and Cleve while they cleared all of the trucks in the lot.  We’d decided to completely clear the lot and all of its vehicles to avoid future problems, and we needed to keep a close eye on the pack that had escaped.  From the top of a huge dump truck, I covered Darnell and Cleve with my M4.  Mike and Stan were on the roof scanning the entire lot.  Jake was on the .30 cal in the pickup.

Darnell opened each door, and Cleve covered him while he checked the cab for occupants.  The Cat place did not sell trucks, and these trucks belonged to various excavators who’d brought their machines in for repair.  There were at least a dozen.  No zombies, but a few desiccated corpses.  A few guys had decided to die of dehydration rather than risk leaving their trucks.

Despite the danger, Darnell and Cleve were like kids on Christmas morning.  They selected and lined up the four best tractors and four large trailers.  I thought they’d go for the machines, but they started immediately loading tools, spare parts, and equipment into the cab of each truck.  What good were the machines if we couldn’t fix them?  They grabbed a box truck and started loading it with a forklift.  Crates, pallets, diagnostic machines—they loaded it all.  I did the math and it looked like Mike would be driving a truck, too.