Losers vs. Zombies, page 14
There was some small talk after that but nothing of importance. I was really tired when they left. Miranda was making me try to eat small amounts now. I had lost a lot of weight from not eating. The pain wasn’t letting me get the nourishment that my body needed. I managed small amounts okay but a real meal would be vomited. Miranda also put me on a strict vitamin regimen because of the lack of food. Wouldn’t you know it, I finally don’t care how much I eat and I am limited by the pain. Life still sucks.
The locals were disappointed we were leaving. I believed they were ready though. They threw us a party on our last night to say farewell.
“What ever happened to Mark and Lenny?” I asked one of the local women. I was sitting at a picnic table with some of my people and some of the locals.
“They skulk around not talking to anyone. We are a lot happier now.” The local woman said with a smile.
Miranda announced she would be coming with us. Laura and Angie were extremely happy about that.
A good time was had by all.
Chapter 20
The next morning we loaded up the trucks and headed for Chicago. Fred and his crew came with us. They really enjoyed this new way of life. My crew grew to like them a lot. We made it to Chicago and found zombie density resembling Manhattan. The Chicago roadways made for perfect traps. We reached one area on our way in that I had to stop for.
At a section of overpasses and different levels of highway, there was a natural pit of sorts. I called Harold and Bob up to my truck and pointed it out to them.
“Put a blockage there and there. Open up the safety walls on these two overpasses. Suspend a stereo there. This is an easy set up that will be reusable without any effort. Keep the stereo going and the pit will refill constantly.” I looked to Bob and Harold as I finished speaking. They saw it too. “This is centrally located so zombies will be constantly coming through here. This is as close to perfect as I have seen.”
“Hell, we could have this one ready in two hours.” Harold said.
“Why don’t we? We can do it right now.” Bob suggested.
Our group got to work. One hour and forty-five minutes later, the pit started filling with zombies.
“Let’s find a place to call home and then you guys can come back and check on the progress. Make sure you bring accelerant back with you. With this kind of density, the pit will fill up quickly.” I told them.
The rest of Chicago wasn’t as easy as that first pit. Our group would regularly find anywhere from two to two hundred survivors. We rounded them up as best we could and cleared an apartment high rise for them. We immediately started teaching them our ways and Chicago slowly became habitable. We ended up staying there for a month. It took that long to get the zombie population under enough control where the locals could manage on their own. We didn’t get a party this time.
Chapter 21
We continued west on I-80. We would spend a day here and there doing some cleansing in small towns. We picked up a few new survivors along the way. It took several days to reach Des Moines.
Our caravan now consisted of seventeen trucks and eighty-eight people. We rolled into Des Moines to find a huge shock. We didn’t see any zombies at all. The townspeople were walking around smiling and acting like nothing ever happened. We were directed to the local council to meet their leaders.
“We were somewhat lucky. We had our share of zombies but even early on, we banded together and fought back. We have a man named Riley Thornton. He figured out better ways of killing the zombies. We built several holes all around town. We--” I cut her off.
“You used a stereo or something noisy to lure the zombies into the holes and then set them on fire.” I finished for her.
“How did you know? We all thought it was brilliant!” She said with a smile.
“We’ve been doing the same kind of thing. Some of us started out in Mobile, Alabama. We built a hole just like you. We were getting the zombie population under control when we heard of some survivors in New York City who needed help. We went there and got them out of a jam and showed them how to kill the zombies themselves. Since then, we’ve done the same thing in Cleveland and Chicago.”
“Wow. So there are new holes all over the place now.” She said laughing.
“Not as many as you think. Places like New York and Chicago don’t have many places you can dig a hole. We needed to improvise. We developed a way to use roads like we would a hole. We also used some of the larger buildings like Madison Square Garden. We would lure them in and set them on fire.”
“That was fantastic. We didn’t need to do that thankfully. I need to make sure you meet Riley. Stay here for a minute.” The woman we were talking to, Sara, left to tell someone to find Riley and bring him here immediately. She was back in less than a minute. “Are you hungry? We were going to eat soon.”
“Some of my people might be. We have food though. All I need is some water if you have it. Is there anything your town needs?” I asked.
“Not really. We might start running out of stuff eventually but at the moment we are doing great.” Sara said. She brought me a glass of water.
I took my pills out of my pocket and shook three out of it. Miranda was standing behind me. She did that meaningful throat clearing thing and gave me a mean look. I took all three pills anyway.
“Sorry, Miranda, but all this travelling is rough on my back. It isn’t just my feet right now.” I told her.
“I didn’t want to ask but now that you said that, what’s wrong? I saw your legs move some earlier so I knew you weren’t paralyzed.” Sara asked.
“I have some chronic conditions that I pushed too far. The damage to my feet was bad before the zombies but I managed the pain by making sure not to push them too hard. Once all this got going, I couldn’t make sure I took the care my feet needed. I don’t know if I will ever be able to walk again. My back isn’t much better.” I explained.
“Why are you still travelling then? Let these others you have gathered go from city to city. You could stay here with us.” Sara suggested.
“Excuse me ma’am, I know you mean well but Brad is the one who thinks up all of these things for us. He has taught us ways to kill huge amounts of zombies but some cities and some areas need more imagination. We aren’t always able to solve those problems like he can. We would be severely limited without him.” Harold said.
“I can understand that. We feel the same about Riley.” Sara said.
We all heard the door open and the heavy footsteps approaching us. A huge man walked in. He was maybe 6’9 and over three hundred pounds. He was carrying a hat in his hand. He appeared to be around my age.
“Hey, Sara. I was told you wanted to see me.” The huge man said.
“Riley, I want you to meet this man. This is Brad. He came up with the same idea for the holes that you did. He and his people have been travelling the country showing people how to kill all the zombies.” Sara told him.
“Really! I tried to tell you guys there wasn’t anything special about that idea!” Riley was smiling from ear to ear. He turned to me and held out his hand. “It’s very nice to meet you. I was starting to think there was something wrong with me for thinking up those holes the way I did. Nobody else had considered it.”
“I’ve been trying to tell everyone the same thing.” I laughed. I was glad to have found a kindred whatever. It wasn’t exactly a kindred spirit but we were alike in this one way at least. “I keep being called a genius when it was pretty obvious to me!”
“Right!” Riley sat down so we were almost eye to eye. He was so tall it was hurting my neck to look up at him until then. “What did you do before all this started? Maybe that has something to do with it.”
“I was a writer. What about you?”
“I painted houses. Oh well, it was an idea. So you guys have been digging a lot of holes?” Riley asked.
“Only in Mobile, Alabama. We flew to New York and there really wasn’t any good places for a hole. The road design worked in our favor though. We found places where there were streets at different elevations.” I was illustrating it with hand gestures. “We started--”
“Wait! You could block the ends and the lower street becomes a hole!” Riley surprised me. I laughed and nodded. “That’s fantastic! What else did you guys do?”
“We lured them into huge buildings, like Madison Square Garden.” I began. Riley’s face lit up and I knew he had the rest.
“Which you had already set up to burn! But how would you light the fire?” Riley thought for a second. Harold was about to speak but I held up my hand to stop him. “I am thinking maybe a flare gun. That could be risky though. You might miss. Would a fuse of some sort work with that, like you would have with dynamite?”
“Holy shit!” Bob exclaimed. He grew flustered and turned red. “Sorry about the language but you just nailed it. We used a flare gun on the first few jobs we did until Brad decided to make a fuse by soaking sheets in flammables and tying the ends together.”
“I think you were right in saying ‘Holy shit!’ now.” Sara said with a smile. “How can you two see these things so clearly when no one else can?”
“I have no idea. Like we’ve both said, it seemed obvious to us.” I told her. Riley smiled and nodded his agreement.
“This is really weird.” Harold said.
“Have you thought up any other ideas?” I asked him.
“I fiddled with a few thoughts about luring them into houses but that would only be able to kill a few at a time.” Riley said.
“Alright stop this! That’s going too far!” Angie said.
“What’s wrong?” Sara asked alarmed.
“We did that.” I said simply.
Both Riley and Sara’s jaw dropped.
We spent the day in Des Moines and decided to spend the night. Riley and I became inseparable for the rest of the day. We passed ideas back and forth. I told him about the tunnel job. He hadn’t considered that one since he had never driven through a tunnel. He was impressed with it though.
The rest of my people enjoyed their day off. They sat around talking to the locals. It was nice to see them getting some well-deserved rest.
I waited as long as I could but I asked Miranda to bring me some more water so I could take more pills. She reluctantly went and got it for me.
“If I’m being rude just tell me. Why the wheelchair?” Riley asked.
“Pain. I struggled with gout for over 20 years. It did some serious permanent damage to my feet. I also have a chronic back problem. Before all this zombie stuff happened I could manage it well enough. I didn’t push myself past what I could handle. Once all this happened, I had to be on my feet all day. Sometimes even running and dragging or carrying bodies. The pain grew worse and worse. I lasted as long as I could. We were in New York, had been there for some time, when the pain got so bad I couldn’t walk anymore.”
“I’ve seen that kind of thing before. My grandfather spent the last ten years of his life in a wheelchair for the same reason.” Riley shook his head sadly. “Riding like you guys are doing must be hell for you.”
“It is. I have shown my people enough to be able to help the cities we go to on their own. They are still worried about that occasional problem they can’t solve. It does happen sometimes that they still need me. Most of the time, I feel like I’m a useless burden to them.” I admitted.
“It isn’t your fault. They probably know that. Your group seems to be pretty close knit. How did that happen?” Riley asked.
“Harold, Bob, Angie, Laura, and unfortunately Amy were all there from the beginning. We, along with some others, were the original losers. We burned down a Fred’s Dollar Store on our first zombie killing job.” I told him with a big smile on my face.
“You didn’t tell me about that one.”
“It was the first time I thought of using fire. We were hiding inside the store with a lot of zombies out front...” I gave him the whole story.
“So it was almost an accident that you thought of fire in the first place. That sounds like me too. I was running from some zombies. I didn’t have a weapon at all. I wanted a cigarette so bad. I decided to stop since I had put some distance between us. You know how slow those zombies are. Anyway, I was lighting my cigarette and the flame from my lighter made me think of using fire on the zombies. Once I had that idea, the rest fell into place.”
“You should be careful, cigarettes can stunt your growth.” I laughed and he guffawed loud enough for people to start staring at us. I didn’t think it was that funny but Riley seemed to have a really easy-going way about him. He seemed like the kind who liked to laugh but hadn’t had a good enough reason in a long time.
We continued to talk. Miranda laid down on the bench she was sitting on and took a nap. I really liked Riley. He was the kind I might have been able to be friends with even before the zombie trouble. Believe me, that is a huge statement.
Most of my group had turned in for the night. Riley and I were still talking. I knew what I needed to do but I didn’t want to do it no matter how much better it would be for me. Finally, I couldn’t put it off any longer.
“Look, Riley, this is going to hurt me to say but I think you have probably thought the same thing by now. I--”
“You think I should be the one to go with your group. You know your travelling days need to end. I thought the same thing hours ago.” Riley told me.
“Would you be willing? If not I will continue on. Don’t feel pressured in any way.” I really hoped he understood.
“I was going to offer to go for you. Sara will welcome you here. She is a really good person. I think you will like her.”
“I already do. I guess I should fill you in on the group dynamic.” I took a moment to figure out where to start. “Bob and Harold have been doing the planning lately. They are really good and very thorough. If they need a creative solution, they will need you. Otherwise, they could do all of this on their own.”
“Bob and Harold. They were the two men who were with you at Sara’s house right?” Riley asked.
“Yep. They are a little quiet but they are nice enough. Pete is the lead soldier now. He is excellent. He knows all about the police station thing. He--”
“What police station thing?”
“That’s where you find the most guns when you are in a new city. That’s how I got guns for my group back in Mobile when all this started. Anyway, he usually keeps himself lined out with getting the guns and training the locals to use them. He is also pretty smart. You will like him too. He has a funny side as well.” I paused. “You will be burdened by Amy, because if she stays here, I will leave.”
It took Riley a good five minutes to regain control of himself. Again, I didn’t think it was that funny but he loved it.
“Tell me about her.” Riley said after he quit laughing.
“She is a real bitch. She complains about everything. Her favorite word seems to be dumbass. At least that is what she calls everyone. She will do what you tell her to, but you might get an earful before she leaves to go do it.” I shook my head and continued. “Then there is Laura and Angie. They usually handle the more domestic things like organizing the locals so they have certain groups that handle the food, medicines, and things like that. They do a good job. You don’t really even have to tell them anything. They know what to do.”
“That’s good because I have never done anything along those lines. I wouldn’t know where to begin.” Riley admitted.
“There is a unit of trucks that are equipped with good stereo systems. They lure zombies to our traps when we are not in a high density area. Again, they know their jobs. You might have to decide when they are used but Bob and Harold will probably tell them one way or another without having to ask.”
“Trucks luring the zombies. I had these same thoughts but never got to implement them. Are they good at staying safe?”
“Yes. Steve, one of our original losers, trained them well. Unfortunately he died but the men had learned their jobs by then.”
“How did he die?”
“He brought some medicine to a sick woman in New York. She had died without anyone knowing it. She bit two people. Steve was one of them. He would have been the one who took over for me. He was getting to where he saw things the way we do. He might never have been as good at it but he would have got the job done. He was a really good man and a great friend. I still miss him.”
“Have you lost any men in the field?”
“Nope. Not one. I am very proud of that. Unfortunately, it will happen. We, well y’all, are dealing with zombies and fire. It will happen sooner or later no matter how safely you plan.” I hung my head. I was still thinking about Steve.
Riley seemed to know I needed a minute. He sat quietly thinking his own thoughts. I believed he would fit in well with my guys. He had the right personality for them.
“Did you think of flamethrowers? I tossed the idea around and decided against them.” Riley finally spoke again.
“Yes. I figured since it takes the fire a minute or two to kill the zombies, I would rather have a zombie coming at me who wasn’t on fire.” I said.
“Me too.”
“Does Des Moines still get any zombies? I would think you guys would have made holes around the outskirts of the city.” I asked.
“That’s exactly what we did. We still get an occasional zombie in town since the generators aren’t overly reliable.” Riley admitted.
“Trucks. Is there anyone here who used to drive a truck for a living?”
“I think Paul did. I am not too sure though. How would that help?”
“Trucks can idle for up to a week on full tanks of fuel. They can supply the batteries that run a stereo to lure the zombies in.” I explained.
“I never knew that! Damn, we could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble.”
“I drove a truck for a few years. That’s how I knew to use them.” I paused thinking. “Maybe we should put off the convoy leaving for another day. I would like for you to show me around town so I can see the set up. Plus, it would give me a better chance to talk to my people and prepare them.”
