I turned left and headed south east behind the horse barn, and walked between the barn and the paddock there. The paddock fence was a stout four-board fence, each segment of fence made up of six by six posts and four ten inch sections of 1.5-inch thick lumber. There was just less than four miles of fence on the property.
The barn itself was a cinder block building. There were thirteen exterior facing horse stalls down each side, and a large two-thousand square foot hayloft above. Each end of the hayloft ended with a large door for loading hay. When the barn was built, they’d built a large swinging arm with a pulley on it so a man could pull the bales of hay up to the loft and swing them inside, rather than trying to carry them up a ladder. These days we loaded hay up there with forklifts on a tractor, but our diesel fuel was only going to hold out for so long. At the end of the horse barn was the equipment barn. Inside, there was a large orange Kubota tractor with front bucket. The backhoe attachment was stored in the next bay. The bush hog was currently attached, which would be good for cutting ‘patrol’ paths through the long field grass, if it came to that.
Beside the Kubota was an ancient John Deere 410C backhoe, and a John Deere combine. The combine was pretty new, purchased for cutting the back corn fields. I enjoyed a minute thinking about driving the combine through a horde of zombies, and the spray of corn kernel sized zombie bits flying out the exit shaft. I turned again behind the equipment field, parallel to Route 15, a little over half a mile east of me, and started walking up the front of the manor house. The lawn in the front of the house was roughly triangle shaped, pointing towards the road. The angled sides were formed by four board fencing, which lead all the way down to the brick entrance gates at the road. The top of the triangle was formed by the house, barns, and outbuildings. The house was completely surrounded by four-board fence; we referred to the thirty acres inside that fence as the ‘lawn’. It was all landscaped, manicured grass and gardens. Outside the fence we had another four hundred acres of mostly horse and cornfields.
The fourth edge of the property was the dirt road we ended up on after we’d crossed the Lawsons’s farm on the dry creek bed. Four board horse fences ran up the entire length of the property on that side. The property was a large square, with a balloon shaped ‘inner’ property where the house was. Horse fencing made up the outline of the balloon. There were only two ways onto the property, one from the dirt road that ran up the side, over a cattle guard, or up the main driveway. The main driveway entered through two eight-foot tall brick gates, and then ran a little under half a mile uphill to the manor house.
The manor was a large brick ‘L’ shaped house, with large porches on the front and back. The sides of the house had high windows, at the lowest point I could just barely reach the sills, at the highest point, the bottom sill was a dozen feet off the ground. The windows and doors on the porches were easily accessible though. In the center of the ‘L’ shaped house, there was a large courtyard with a fountain and herb gardens. The first order of business tomorrow would be to start reclaiming fencing and wall off the open sides of the ‘L’, turning it into an enclosed courtyard in the back. I would like to have made that wall two stories tall, but tomorrow we’re going to shoot for seven feet.
I did some quick math in my head. The fence boards are ten feet long, 1.5 inches thick and twelve inches wide. The ‘L’ is roughly thirty feet by eighty feet. That means to hit seven feet of solid wall; I’m going to need eleven boards long by seven boards high, seventy-seven fence boards. Over one hundred ten feet, my boards are ten feet long, eleven posts would do, but I wanted to add strength, and put posts every five feet, so twenty-two posts and seventy-seven boards. At four boards per one post, I’d have to take out twenty-two sections first thing in the morning, which would give me eighty-eight boards, eleven boards to put across the windows on the front porch.
We’d need at least two hours to pull up the fence posts with the front bucket and chain with the Kubota tractor. At the same time I can dig the footer trench and post holes with the backhoe.
For the job, I’d need to make sure we had nails for the nail gun, screws, ideally some big bolts to put through the posts, if we had any concrete. The posts will have concrete on them already, but I’d like to add some more. I brought all of my tools, and the farm had a pretty well stocked tool room. Those boards won’t stop bullets, and they won’t hold forever, but they will give time to get inside the house, and they’ll make it hard to aim at anything/anyone specific.
About five in the morning, just before sunrise, I saw headlights moving fairly slowly down Route 15. I dove into the boxwood bushes that create the formal gardens, and watched, suddenly wishing I’d brought my 30.06 with the scope. The car turned its blinker on, and turned up the driveway, and I sprinted towards the parking area, and stepped into a shadow. The house lights were off. With the light of the full moon, I could see the windshield was smashed out of the car, explaining the slow speed. If you’ve ever driven anywhere at night on a motorcycle you know the bugs are attracted to your headlights.
The car slowly moved up the driveway, but I couldn’t see the driver. It pulled up beside my truck, the headlights blinked off at the same time as the motor. The white car had streaks of blood dried in sideways lines down the doors. When I heard the car door open, I lowered my voice by an octave and said, “Stop where you are. Identify yourself,” trying to sound as intimidating as possible.
“Vic. Shut up and get over here.” was the response.
I grinned from ear to ear and burst out of the bushes.
14. Our New Life
I ran up to my brother and gave him a big hug. “Marshall, glad you made it. How was the trip?”
“Well, I don’t think I’m going to be making many more road trips in that car.” He replied.
“Have you seen my truck? I think we’re both stuck here for a while. Let’s go inside and find some food.”
Just then Leo stepped out of the bushes, and John stepped out from behind one of the brick pillars connecting the main house to the summer kitchen.
“We saw the headlights and came to back you up.” John said.
“Geezus, I didn’t even hear you, and I was listening as hard as I could. You two are freaks!” I joked.
“Tookes, you were making enough noise to disguise an elephant passing by.” Said Leo.
The mood was happy; I hadn’t seen my brother since the previous Christmas. He was looking well considering what he’d just been through.
“Marshall, these are my friends, Leo and John. They saved Max and me on our trip down here, but Candi didn’t make it.”
Over the next two weeks, our new life sort of became normal. We had Candi’s funeral and buried her in the boxwood gardens the first day. The ceremony was nice; Mom and Marshall both gave beautiful speeches. I hope Candi was happy, wherever she was.
We built fortifications around the house, enclosed the garden and fountain in the rear courtyard, we’d started visiting all of the neighbors. Of the five houses within walking distance, only one person was alive, and he was bitten by his wife that morning; she’d been bitten the previous day by a wandering zombie.