Each time, we re-killed the infected, and loaded up the food they had, paying extra attention to cleaning supplies, and personal hygiene products. We had enough soap to last a year or more. We took toilet paper, and Kleenex and paper towels. Anything of use that we didn’t haul off we noted in a spiral notebook. Inventory of tools, materials, gadgets, clothes, things like that. Most of the neighbors had some kind of livestock, cows, pigs, horses, or goats, which we turned out into the fields. We opened up the barns, and all the gates we could find to let the livestock roam. There wasn’t a lot of worry about traffic; we hadn’t seen a car on the road.
We’d lost power at the farm a few days prior in a windstorm, we were prepared for that to happen, and the farmhouse was equipped with a 15kw whole house generator. Power supply was always sketchy this far out on the country, they’d installed the automatic backup generator to keep the well pump running and the place heated if the power went out for an extended period over the winter. The gennie was connected to a thousand gallon buried propane tank, shared by the commercial kitchen and gas fireplaces throughout the house. We unplugged everything in the house except the refrigerators, and were using about forty gallons each day. We were counting on two weeks worth of power for refrigeration before having to refuel the propane tank.
Every adult except Leo carried a gun of some sort. Marshall had taken a liking to the scattergun; he was a surgeon with that shotgun. Leo refused, she was better with her kukri style machete than any of us were with guns, except John. He carried the 9mm Glock, his favorite because it had the largest magazine capacity. I once watched him hit a zombie from four-hundred yards through the scope of my rifle. He hit it square in the head using his hands and eyes to adjust for bullet fall and windage. I’ve never seen him miss. Not even that time he put the AK on full auto while sitting in the window of my truck bouncing across a field.
Even with my stash, we were pretty low on ammunition, lower than we’d like. Of course, knowing that there were over half a billion people on the continent, I’m not sure there was any such thing as ‘enough’ ammunition. In visiting the neighbors looking for survivors, we were able to recover a pretty good haul of various weapons, with a little bit of ammunition for each.
By the time we’d been there a month; the ammunition situation was getting pretty dire. In conversation, I mentioned that there was a sportsman’s club about two miles upstream from the house, and maybe we should go check it out to see if they had anything worthwhile there. From that moment on, John was convinced that we had to go there. I understood, he has this amazing ability, but if we run out of ammunition, he’d be back to normal. Leo on the other hand, had talents that weren’t so specific. Not that it was a competition between them, but I think they did each have a zombie-count. By my tally, John was ahead by four. I was in third place, six behind John, but only because my rifle bullets traveled faster than his 9mm. I was getting pretty good at the 400+ yard shots with the 30.06 I’d named Sammie and scope, but I was hoping to find a more powerful rifle and bigger scope. I wanted to be able to hit a walking zombie at the bottom of the driveway from my spot inside the upstairs balcony. I’d been in that gun shop a few times, mostly when we were visiting mom, and I could sneak away without Candi knowing where I was going. The last time I was there was about a year ago, they had a brand new Barrett .50 cal sniper rifle on a shelf behind the counter. The $9,000 price tag for the rifle and scope combination was laughable.
We started to make our plans for the run up to the gun club. We decided that John and I would go, leaving Leo and Marshall to guard the house, and Mom to watch Max. I knew the woods the best, and there was no way John was going to stay home.
Our plan was to head upriver to the fishing area, where we could get a good view of the back of the club. There were game trails all up and down the river that we could easily follow. I brought my Sig and the 30.06; John had loaded out with his Glock and the small .410 shotgun full of birdshot. I’m not sure what he planned to do with that, even though I’m certain he could hit a zombie in the eye from a hundred yards with it.
We left about seven in the evening, just at twilight, walking up the river. The two miles took us about twenty minutes. It’s amazing how much better shape I was in after only a month of leaving my old sedentary life behind. We crawled into the bushes about fifty yards from the clearing that made up the back ‘yard’ of the sportsman’s club. There was no sign of movement or life anywhere. The outdoor 125-yard shooting range stood empty; there were no arrows in the Styrofoam deer targets in the archery area. There was no one trying for one last trout before full dark.
Something struck me as not quite right though. There were no noises at all. No crickets chirping, no birds singing, no frogs croaking, nothing. Not even a breeze stirring the leaves. I half stood to tell John about the oddness when something slammed into my back and I ended up face down on the ground. I turned my head to see John firing his gun, muzzle flashing so rapidly it looked like one constant jet of fire in the darkness. I was unable to move to see what he was firing at - his hand blurred like Leo’s when she moves at top speed. This was John. I didn’t have to look. I knew each of those bullets were lethal.
He reached down still firing with one hand and flipped one of the two spare magazines out of its pouch in his belt up into the air. A millisecond after he squeezed the trigger on the second to last bullet, the empty, used magazine fell out of the bottom of the gun, and he caught the fresh mag with the pistol’s grip, like he actually threw the magazine into the pistol. His hand came up and slapped the fresh mag in place as he fired the round in the chamber. The entire reloading process had taken less than one second. To this day I’m not sure if I dreamed it, because I blacked out right afterwards.
15. The Sportsman’s Club
I regained consciousness with a start and a gasp. The pain in my back caught my breath at the halfway point. I focused on relaxing the muscles in my back, and breathing slowly. Over the course of what I think was an hour, I focused on breathing. I couldn’t see anything, I was wearing a blindfold, and there was not a single bit of light leaking in around my nose, leading me to believe I was sitting in a dark room. The room was completely quiet. I focused on feeling my bonds, I was duct taped at the wrist, with very little wiggle room. It felt like I was in a wooden chair. I shifted my weight and felt a little give in the chair.
I thought about Max, he’d lost his mother; he’d lost all of his friends, most of his toys, almost everything he knew. Now he was surrounded by paranoid, gun toting adults. At least he had his Gramma and Uncle Marshall. He was at a place he’d been coming to his whole life, and although it had changed a bunch with our defensive improvements, it was still our home.
I began to formulate a plan based on assumption and my senses. I had to be inside the indoor shooting range, it was the only thing I could think of that explained the complete lack of any sound. I’d been inside this range before, there were two doors. One door led out to the stairs heading up, the other to a vault where the owner kept most of his guns. There’s no way it would be open, but I had to check. This group holding me would have to be monumentally stupid to leave me alone in a room full of guns. I couldn’t yet attest to their intelligence level, but they did manage to capture me, even with John on my side.