Turning down the side road to the older part of town, we parked the truck and got out. There were several streets but oddly there were no cars. I wondered if they were on the road above us but was shaken out of my reflection by Tommy jostling my arm.
“Look over there” he said, pointing to the river.
I looked and smiled back at him. A small marina was tucked up next to the river, and a boat landing was evident. There weren’t any boats, and I hadn’t expected any, but we had our waterway access. Looking back to the town, I realized that the older homes and businesses had been spared the devastation, and the newer part of the town up the hill had been destroyed. A cathedral was still standing, as well as a large school. Either would make a good defensive point if necessary, and the bell tower was perfect as a watchtower. The lands around would do nicely for farming and raising animals, if we ever found any, and the woods would provide shelter and materials.
All right, then. I waved Charlie and Tommy over and we spent the next two hours going through businesses and houses. We found no survivors, but we did find quite a few zombies frozen in the snow and ice. We dispatched all that we found, fifty-six total. We found signs of violence here and there, but this part of the city seemed to be mostly abandoned. Charlie found a child’s clothing store, and came out with armloads of clothes for little Julia. Tommy checked every bar he found, but there wasn’t a drop of liquor in the town. I happened across a construction company and found a back hoe and a bulldozer, which would be useful later if we could get them running.
Getting back in the truck, we headed back to the condo complex. Our mood was sobered when we passed the burning mansion but lightened as we came within sight of our condo complex. I wouldn’t call it a good day, but it was productive.
Sarah and Jake met me and I told Sarah about the mansion and what we had found and what had occurred. She looked thoughtful for a second, and then asked, “Do you think there might be a connection between this incident and the one you had at the drugstore last year?”
I thought about it and realized that was what had been nagging at my mind when I came across the scene. “Now that you mention it, it does seem similar. I guess it would be too much to hope for that I had stopped them back then, wouldn’t it.?”
Sarah nodded and handed me a hot cup of coffee. “Nate called in and wanted to know how things were going. I told him you would get back to him later tonight.”
I sipped the coffee and nodded. “I made it to the river today.”
Sarah suddenly smiled. “You did! I knew you would! How did the town look?”
I turned serious. “There’s a lot of work to do, but it will serve. It most certainly will.” I spent the next hour talking about what we had found and what we were going to do before Jake demanded to be fed and played with. Duty called.
30
The next month was a whirlwind of activity as we cleared the town of Leport and started to move ourselves in that direction. I decided to use the big school on the hill as a temporary base, as it provided the best source of protection in case of attack. We had found several more homes that had shown signs of violence, and many individuals who had died of gunshot wounds, not infection. We found a large population of zombies in the upper west neighborhood, and Duncan concluded that these must have come from the freeway that was near that area. We killed them all, and dumped them in houses that we set on fire. By the middle of February, we had cleared the area around the old part of town and were just about ready to start our move.
Charlie had come up with an interesting idea. He had found a chain link dog pen around four feet by six feet by six feet tall. He secured it to the ground using some tent pegs and chain, and disappeared for the day. When he came back, he surprised all of us by dragging and tossing in the cage a zombie popsicle that hadn’t been neutralized yet.
When I asked him about it he just shrugged. “I figure the best way to know when these things are thawing out and moving again would be to have one nearby and when it starts to get active, that’s when we know the rest are likely active as well and had better be ready once again.”
I just shook my head once again at what Charlie called ‘country-boy-brilliance’ and let it go. I did call Nate and tell him about it and was rewarded with just one word. Nate then said he would be heading out to do just the same thing in the morning. I also told Nate about what we were finding, and he said he had begun to find similar things to the south. I started to wonder if perhaps there was a group operating right in between us, but I didn’t have the resources to go checking thoroughly. Any group that could behead as many zombies as we had seen was one to use caution with.
March brought warming weather, and keeping an eye on our imprisoned friend, we started to see increased activity. At around thirty degrees, our pet Z’s movements were slow, but definitely dangerous in a swarm. At forty degrees, the movements became faster, and on a particularly warm day, one of those rare sixty degree days we sometimes saw in March, our zombie friend was moving quite well and seemed back to normal.
About the second week in March I decided that the threat was real enough, the zombies were able to revive after being frozen, and we needed to be on the lookout once again. The areas around us had been cleared and could be counted on to be relatively safe, but after three months of being frozen, I figured the little critters were going to be hungry as hell and would be on the roam worse than they had been before. I warned my people to be as on guard as they had ever been, even with areas that had been cleared; if there was any chance a zombie could have gotten in, treat it as a hostile environment.
On the morning of the third week of March, Sarah, Kristen, and Jason were out on a search for a boat or something for the river. I had directed them towards the town of Freeport, as I figured there would more likely be a boat in that direction. I was helping John Reef, our resident plumber, with a water system that would allow us to have running water. The good news was we could still use the sewer system in place, although at some point things were going to get ugly, but we would cross the bridge later. This was going to be a trial run for the condos, but we would move the system to Leport when we moved out there permanently. John said if we could get a power source to the pumping system, we could have running water for a lot of homes, but since that required a foray into the city, I opted for local control.
Charlie was spending the day with Julia and Rebecca, and it was amusing to see the three of them outside walking around, with Charlie armed to the teeth. Tommy and Duncan were hunting a couple of ghouls that had been spotted in the woods, and Pamela was helping Mark Wells, our electrician, re-wire some of the lines so we could have electricity on a fairly regular basis.
I was wearing about thirty feet of garden hose and wet up to my knees when the Honda came rolling in. I could immediately see something was wrong. One tire was flat and there were bullet holes in the windshield. I dropped my hose and ran over to the vehicle as it limped to a stop. Charlie saw me running and came over to see what was going on.
I pulled open the driver’s door and jumped back as Jason fell at my feet. He had been shot twice, and how the hell he managed to make it back here was a mystery. He rolled onto his back and I yelled for Rebecca, who came running over with Julia.