“We need that ladder.” I said, and continued down the street.
It was blue, the fiberglass kind used by electricians, extendable to twenty feet. Sophia helped me carry it the short distance back to the cabin. “One down,” she said. “Where do you want to start looking for the next one?”
I looked back the way we came. A bug flew in front of my face, buzzing furiously. “Your guess is as good as mine,” I said, shooing the bug away. “Let’s split up, we can cover more ground that way.”
“Works for me. I’ll search this side of the street.”
“Fine. Yell if you find one. If I don’t answer, fire a shot in the air.”
The sound of hammering reached my ears on the fourth house I checked. After having no luck finding a ladder there, I returned to the street and looked back toward the cabin. Lance was nailing a piece of plywood over one of the downstairs windows.
I looked to the other side of the lake to see how much time we had. The swarm was about halfway across and closing steadily. Looking away, my eyes drifted to the cabin cruiser floating about a hundred feet from shore.
I smacked myself in the forehead.
“Why the hell didn’t I think of that earlier?”
I started running back toward the cabin, but then heard a single shot echo from about ten houses down. I stopped in front of the cabin and briefly debated what to do before heading in Sophia’s direction. She appeared in a yard ahead of me and waved an arm over her head. I waved back.
When I reached her, she went into the house behind her and opened the garage. A ladder nearly identical to the other one we found hung from a wall on a set of hooks. “Nice work,” I said.
“Thanks. Now help me carry it.”
“I don’t think we’ll need it, but we’ll take it anyway.”
“What do you mean?” she asked as we took the ladder down.
“Dale’s boat.”
Sophia went still. “Son of a bitch. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Probably the same reason I didn’t. Come on, let’s get back.”
Lance worked quickly; nearly all the downstairs windows had a sheet of plywood and several two-by-sixes covering them. When we returned, he was swinging a big framing hammer with deft precision, driving each nail home with no more than three swings.
“Tell me something,” I said as Sophia and I dropped the ladder on the sparse lawn. “Why are we bothering with all this? Dale’s boat is right there.”
“I know,” Lance said. “But I don’t want those things getting into your house tonight. Or mine, for that matter.”
Just then, Lauren came out the back door with a wheelbarrow half full of food and half full of loaded rifle magazines. “Just in time,” Lance said. “Caleb, why don’t you help her roll that off the porch?”
I looked at Lauren, then back at Lance, and hooked a thumb over my shoulder toward the boat. “You could have told me that was your plan all along.”
His face twitched in what on another person might have been a smile. “And rob you of the joy of figuring it out for yourself?”
“Asshole.” I grabbed the front of the wheelbarrow and lifted it while Lauren came down the steps. She thanked me, then began pushing it across the yard toward the dinghy. After retrieving the outboard motor from the garage and gassing it up, I attached it to the dinghy and helped Lauren load the supplies and ammo inside. Once finished, Lauren and I pushed the little boat into the water. The motor started on the first try.
“You good, or do you need me to come with you?” I asked Lauren.
“I can handle it. Go help Lance.” She motored away.
Back at the cabin, I said, “What do you want me to do with these ladders?”
“Take one of them in the house and put it on the second floor landing,” he said. “Leave the other one on the porch. You find a crowbar yet?”
“Be right back.” I had seen one in the garage where we found the second ladder. After retrieving it, I asked Lance what he wanted me to do with it.
“Get that splitting maul and tear out the stairs below the first landing.”
I stared at him for a good ten heartbeats. “I’m sorry, you want me to do what?”
“You remember fighting those corpses on the balcony, right?”
“Yeah. So?”
“You see anything from ‘em to make you think they’re smart enough to climb?”
I thought about it, and shook my head. “Not really. But we don’t know for sure what those things are capable of.”
“I think they’re dumb as bricks,” Lance said. “How many of them did we shoot down while the others just watched? No matter how many we killed, they just kept coming. That seem like evidence of high-order intelligence to you?”
Again, I couldn’t argue. “No, it doesn’t.”
“Well there you go. Now go on, get to work.”
I couldn’t think of a good reason not to, so I did. While I worked, Sophia helped Lauren cart supplies, fuel, and ammunition to the boat. Lance finished barricading the downstairs portion of the cabin but left the back door open. He placed the lumber he planned to seal it with beside the entrance, then went to his house and set to work barricading it as well.
Dismantling the stairs was surprisingly easy. After clearing away the drywall with the crowbar, I used the maul to bash apart the steps and knock over the support posts. After that, it was just a question of levering the remaining boards apart with the crowbar. In ten minutes, a ragged mess of shattered lumber lay where the first eight steps of the staircase once stood. Sophia came over and stared at my handiwork, hands on her shapely hips.
“Looks like we finally found something you’re good at.”
“Puts me one up on you.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Again with the language.” I dropped the crowbar and started toward the back door. “If anybody asks, tell them I went up the street to get Lola.”
“Are we bringing her with us?”
I stopped and looked over my shoulder. “You think we shouldn’t?”
“Doesn’t she have her own boat?”
“Safety in numbers, Sophia.”
“That what it is?”
I faced her. “What do you mean?”
“She’s pretty. You think I haven’t noticed you looking at her?”
I blinked twice, mouth hanging open. “Are you kidding me?”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?”
I blinked again, still not believing what I was hearing. “I don’t have time for this.” I walked out the back door without another word.
Lola answered on the third round of knocking, eyes glassy. She swayed unsteadily in the doorway, trying to focus her vision and not finding much success. “Caleb?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Sumthin’ I’cn do for you?” Her breath reeked of wine.
“We have a problem. A big one.”
The eyes settled, coming to rest somewhere around my chin. I wondered how many of me she was seeing. “Wha’ problem?”
“You should come take a look.”
She stepped outside, not bothering to shut the door, weaving a drunken line across the front yard. “Wha’ isit?”
I grabbed her around the shoulders to keep her from falling over. “How well can you see right now, Lola?”
“Jus’ fine.” She tapped her glasses.
“You see that over there?” I asked, turning her to face northward.
She looked, squinting in the distance. “S’people over there.”
“Not people, Lola.” She looked up at me. “Infected.”
She looked again and went rigid in my arms. “Oh shit. Oh fuck, ohfuckohfuckohfuck no. We hav’ta get outta here.”
She struggled, trying to run away down the street. I held her by the arm. “We’re going to do that Lola, but running won’t help. You see that boat down there?”
Her eyes tracked down my arm to where I pointed. “We’re going to take it out and wait until they move on.”