Get Off My L@wn - A Zombie Novel Read online

  After lunch, we rounded up all the cash we had on hand. Ruth Ann put her carbine in the car with spare ammo. There were two mom-and-pop arms dealers within four miles of our house. Ah, Wisconsin! We figured that the bigger dealers would run out of inventory first. Our intent was to stock up on anything she found to augment our own supplies. We agreed someone should remain at the house. That someone would be me as my weapons knowledge extended no further than the Military Channel before it went all reality TV.

  As we opened the garage, we could see nothing much out of the ordinary except for more kids than one would expect at this time on a weekday. Our neighborhood had many young families so with schools closed now across the state there were kids out playing. One thing that was odd was every child had an active and watchful set of adult eyes on them. No child was unsupervised. Neighbors talked together in driveways or backyards with eyes locked on their kids.

  “Hey Ruth Ann,” a woman Ruth Ann knew waved her down.

  “Hi Amanda, how are you?”

  “Pissed off! I went to my yoga class this morning and the damn place was closed. So I went for a latte at Starbucks and it was closed too. I waited around a whole hour for my nail appointment and they closed up shop while I was sitting there! I am not having a good day!”

  “I’m sure it will get better Amanda, just give it a chance.”

  “It better. Emma’s school being closed is really cramping my day. What am I supposed to do with my time, clean and cook?” Amanda burst out laughing.

  Ruth Ann feigned a giggle and made her good byes.

  On turning west onto US 12 Ruth Ann noticed a little more traffic than usual made up of loaded family cars with suitcases and such on roof racks. These stood out because we lived far off the path beaten by FIPs (“Friendly” Illinois People) to their vacation homes. Folks from the Twin Cities did not vacation much around here either. She stopped at the BP, topped off the Volvo, and filled a pair of small gas cans. She said there were a couple of cars waiting ahead of her for one of the four pumps. Having to wait at all was a bit unusual.

  There were a number of cars parked along 12 and the side street at the gun shop. If they were having a sale, that wouldn’t be unusual but they didn’t have sales even before the zombie apocalypse. The little shop was quite crowded. Prices had gone up a lot too.

  “Hey Freddie. The place is hopping,” Ruth Ann said to the owner. “I haven’t seen this many people in here since never.”

  “Yeah, been like this since Tuesday when the Governor brought out the Guard in Dane County. There is nothing like a crisis to pay for fixing my kid’s teeth. Orthodontia, there’s a criminal enterprise.”

  “What’s with the prices Freddie, you’re practically a war profiteer.”

  “Supply and demand Ruth Ann. I didn’t invent it. What do you need?”

  “Need? I hope I don’t need anything. But what I want is more ammo. What do you have left in .308 and .30? I want to have some punch when I reach out and touch something.”

  “I can let you have four boxes of .308 hollow points, they make a big impression, and six boxes of .30 unless you want to take a spam can off my hands.”

  Ruth Ann looked at the price on the huge box of .30 carbine rounds known as a “spam can” and whistled.

  “I can’t afford that Freddy. I will take the others. Can’t hook me up with more?”

  “Ruth Ann, after I sell these to you I’m going to raise the price another 20 percent. I’m just about out of these.”

  “I appreciate the deal Freddie. Can you spare some 38 Specials too? We can use it if things look grim.”

  “Yeah, I can sell you four boxes. How are you fixed for shotgun shells, I have a lot of 20 and 28 gauge left. Seems folks want more punch.”

  “I don’t have any shotguns.”

  Freddie’s head notched back a tad in surprise. He thought she was a native Badger. He changed the subject.

  “So you going to stay in that bunker of yours?”

  At this, a smelly man in hunter’s blaze orange covers perked up, looking directly at Ruth Ann.

  “Oh, Freddie, you know it’s not a bunker. I’m hurt that you think so,” Ruth Ann said coyly.

  She settled up and was on her way out when she noticed the guy in orange talking with Freddie and pointing rather obviously at her.

  Ruth Ann came away with about half the ammo she thought our money would buy. On the way back, Ruth Ann stopped at the BP again and was surprisingly able to withdraw a modest amount from the ATM. She figured we might need the cash later on, past when ATM machines ceased to function. When she left, she thought she saw a guy in a pickup pull out onto 12. He was wearing orange.

  That night we started keeping our police scanner on. I used to tell people that every family should have a scanner if only to get a sense of how hard working and courageous their local law enforcement was. Some disembodied voice tells a policewoman to investigate a report of shots fired in the middle of a moonless night alone and her only answer might be, “Four minutes out.” People just had no appreciation for how good they had it.

  This night’s radio calls mostly centered upon rotating vehicles into maintenance garages to pick up extra supplies and equipment. There were also more than the usual amount of assisting distressed motorists, traffic violations and accidents. It sounded more like a summer Saturday night than an October Friday.

  The news had finally gone O.J. over the virus. It was now “all virus, all the time.” CNN reduced their commercials and put on Wolf Blitzer to repeat the same stories over and over again hour after hour. Wolf Blitzer is like the Jerry Lewis MDA telethon of bad news. If Wolf is on screen for more than an hour, something is terribly wrong in the world.

  Metropolitan areas across the U.S. were showing the beginning signs of a terminal spiral into chaos. The Feds were still operating with an arm tied behind their backs. Use of the regular service branches was still held up in court. Across the globe, however, U.S. assets were heading home. Now we know what it takes to bring all the troops home.

  Bases across the country were running on a war footing and were feverishly, sorry - bad choice of words - hurriedly laying in supplies and bulking up defenses.

  Components of the Military Sealift Command and Ready Reserve Fleet that weren’t already underway or prepositioned were being loaded out around the clock. Ships that were prepositioned overseas were steaming homeward. Efforts were underway to make ready lesser-used merchant marine assets.

  In retrospect, it is obvious that those in charge of logistics and force disposition were showing a vote of no confidence in a strategy focused on containing the infected. If outbreaks were expected to be contained, it would mean that overland transport, perhaps agriculture and some manufacturing might continue. Putting massive quantities of supplies out to sea showed planners were preparing for the necessity to resupply through extraordinary means, not through the usual channels. Clearly, some parts of the Federal government were on top of their game.

  On this day, Saturday (Day 10), we had a list of things to do around the house. Our goal of remaining at home seemed realistic because of its bunker-like construction. The exterior walls were made entirely of poured reinforced concrete. Our living areas were on the second floor. Our first floor had guest bedrooms, an office, laundry, main entry and a den. All of the windows visible on the exterior of the first floor were facades; window shutters covering concrete. Instead, natural lighting on the first floor came from narrow horizontal strip windows high up.

  Tough as our shell might have been, we figured our survival also depended on stealth. Before we could enforce “light discipline”, we needed to implement it. First, we spray painted all first floor glass black. When that paint ran out, we switched to the kind used for weather proofing outdoor furniture. We wadded much of our bed linens into the strip windows to backstop the paint.

  On the second floor, we began by closing the shutters to match the fakes below. We saved our heavier fabrics for use upstairs especially o
ver the sliding glass door at the deck. These were stapled in place with the exception of using Velcro at the deck door.

  We were friendly only with two neighbors. The Boetche’s were across the street to the north of us and their neighbor to the northeast, the Flynn’s. Denny Boetche was a day trader leveraging the super high speed of the neighborhood’s fiber based Internet. Meg Boetche was a stay-at-home mom though their son Ryan was off at school at UW Green Bay. They were transplants from New York.

  Robert and Nancy Flynn were native Wisconsinites. Bob owned a company specializing in asbestos abatement and replacing older office building lighting systems with energy efficient lighting. To be honest, I don’t know what Nancy did with her days but Ruth Ann did. I knew Bob was a hunter. We’d been in his house for cocktails and saw a few mounted trophies.

  He and Ruth Ann talked hunting talk while I talked to Nancy about the weather, the Packers and computer malware. They had lots. I wish I had worn my black tee shirt from ThinkGeek that said “No I won’t fix your computer.” But, I didn’t, so I did.

  This afternoon Denny Boetche was in his backyard. He saw me while I was walking the grounds with a 10 inch tablet checking the field of view on our security cameras. He came over to talk.

  “Hey Doug. Looks like you and Ruth Ann are going to make a stand,” he said.

  “We think we’ll be better off here than who knows where. What are your plans?”

  “We’ll be leaving soon. The news is so incredible. It has to burn itself out. Meg and I will sit tight at our cottage in Door County. It’ll be over before we get the cottage cleaned up.”

  “You think so? You haven’t seen enough zombie movies.”

  “There you go again, always thinking the worst is going to happen.”

  “It usually does. What was that truck delivering last week?”

  “Oh, for Meg’s herbs. We put in a generator to keep the sun lamps on in the basement. She’s got prize oregano and basil coming in. We don’t want to lose it.”

  “I didn’t know you guys were so serious about gardening.”

  “Yeah Ruth Ann’s been a huge help. What do you think she and Meg talk about during their afternoon teas on your roof?”

  “I figured they talked about me and you, mostly.”

  “That too. Listen, I had a hard time finding enough gas to fill the generator’s tanks. Do you have any to spare?”

  “I could loan you a five gallon can,” I hated to let go of one of the cans Ruth Ann just filled up but Denny saw us unload them. I couldn’t say no.

  “Thanks. That’ll add about 10 hours to the weeks’ worth we have now.”

  “You think all you’ll need is a week? Come on Denny, it’s almost been a week since we lost a whole city for shit’s sake. Things are getting worse, not better.”

  “Well, whatever. Come over tomorrow morning before we go, OK? I have something for you to remember us by.”

  “Sure. About nine OK?”

  “Make it eight. See you.”

  Turns out Denny and Meg were timely in deciding to leave. On the radio Sunday morning (Day 11), the state emergency preparedness agency started advising all persons to join up with National Guard units escorting folks to “safe zones” that were being set up. For our area, Chippewa Valley Regional Airport was being turned into a refugee center.

  It was a good choice for a safe zone. The airport had plenty of open space, not too many homes nearby and was protected on three sides by the Chippewa River. At only ten miles away, Denny and Meg might even be able to come back to take care of their herbs from time to time. However, they were set on heading to their cottage instead. I could not blame them, as it was a beautiful place far from population centers.

  Denny and Meg were all packed up in their SUV when I went over there at eight. A Humvee had already come through the neighborhood announcing that there would be a rally point on U.S. 12 a little bit east of here for an eight thirty departure over to the airport. The destination was so close and familiar one had to wonder why an escort might be needed.

  Denny handed me a tall potted plant wrapped for protection in a black plastic garbage bag.

  “Thanks, Denny. I’ll bring this up to the greenhouse,” I said.

  “It’ll do great up there in all that sunshine. We’ve always envied that greenhouse you’ve got hidden up there.”

  “Are you heading to the airport safe zone?”

  “No, our plans are still Door County. We’re going to head out now before we get stuck behind the group heading to the airport.”

  We shook hands. “Well, send us a postcard.”

  “Will do Doug. Take care. Say goodbye to Ruth Ann for us.”

  Denny and Meg Boetche drove away in their packed up SUV. We never saw them again. Months later, their SUV was found in the parking lot of a Comfort Inn off WI 29 near Shawano. The roads near there were unnavigable later on but when Denny and Meg left, there should have been smooth sailing. We will never know why they stopped there or what happened to them.

  I brought the plant back to our house and handed it off to Ruth Ann. She brought it into the kitchen to unwrap it. While checking my email I called out to Ruth Ann “Is it the oregano or the basil?”

  “What?”

  “Is the plant oregano or basil? Denny said they had a prize winning crop coming in.”

  “It’s a prize winner alright but I don’t think it’s oregano or basil. Come here and take a look for yourself.”

  I poked my head into the kitchen to see Ruth Ann watering what she told me was a fine example of Mendocino Mind Fuck. I wondered how she knew what variety the plant was. The Berkeley of the Midwest might belong to the undead but the Mendocino of the Midwest would be alive and well, and living on my roof.

  The remainder of the day was surreal.

  A new word had been seared into the public’s consciousness, “horde.” The undead were not solitary creatures. They seemed to be attracted by whatever attracts one of their colleagues. Like a snowball rolling downhill they collect more of themselves into bigger and bigger groups. As they increase in numbers, they become unstoppable. They simply overwhelm any defense put in their path. In China, hordes were said to number in the hundreds of thousands and were still growing.

  They were like a plague of locusts leaving nothing alive as they move through. There was an aerial shot of a horde moving through the dormitories and factories in Shenzhen. Repetitive metaphors be damned, they were like a horde of worker ants. Like a tsunami, the force of so many bodies compressed in small spaces burst windows and caved in storefronts. They oozed through tight spaces widening gaps until torrents flowed through the broken and crushed obstacle. After a few minutes of watching, metaphors failed. A horde was not like anything else.

  At two PM, the Governor declared martial law to be in effect within the borders of the State Of Wisconsin. As the virus originated at a research lab at the University of Wisconsin Madison, there has never been nor likely ever be a more compelling example of the Wisconsin Idea that says the fruits of the University should have an impact felt across the whole state.

  The Governor advised all citizens to proceed to one of several safe zones in the state, a list of which scrolled continuously at the bottom of the screen. He told us that emergency information would be broadcast continuously on several AM frequencies. He blessed us, wished us luck and scurried off to wherever it is that the rich and powerful go when the dead go walking.

  Throughout the rest of the day, we watched our neighbors leave one by one. It was irritating when an adult face stared at us as they drove past. The adult faces read, “You assholes think you’re so smart, don’t you.” It was heartbreaking however, when the face peered out of the car window belonged to a child. The children’s faces read fear, confusion and sadness.

  By Tuesday (Day 13), events finally overwhelmed the legal debate freeing the Federal government to act. And act decisively they did: to quarantine.

  Quarantine was predicted to be the opposite of the ri
ght course of action by Munz et al. In actuality, it ensured a steady supply of prey to the predators, much like misguided zoning laws aimed at increasing diversity. Quarantine doomed urban survivors to virtually certain death, as hordes grew in size with every passing minute.

  Troops manned makeshift fortified lines surrounding major population centers. It was a hopeless waste of time, resources and the precious treasure of human life. One look at the Shenzhen footage should have convinced everyone that short defensive lines keeping them out would be better than long thinly stretched lines trying to keep them in.

  Almost two weeks after TMZ broadcast the first zombie attack and two days since the declaration of martial law in the state the most amazing and unexpected thing happened. A UPS truck pulled up to the house and delivered some of the items I had ordered on Friday! The driver had a real sense of humor. He laughed maniacally when he told us we were his last delivery. I was glad when he left. He was scary.

  Wednesday (Day 14), brought several more changes. I noticed the news items on the major sites were not being updated as frequently as they had been. CNN’s web site was the most sporadic.

  Their broadcast news showed the Atlanta streets around CNN Center teeming with moving corpses. Wolf Blitzer was not on the air any longer. Instead, someone much younger I had never seen before was on standing in what looked like a stairwell.

  “The dead have crashed through all the glass at street level. The elevators have been disabled for our security and the lower level stairwells have been blocked with whatever people can find.”

  The camera tilted downward. While there wasn’t anything but the next landing to see there was a terrific pounding booming up from below.

  “The sounds you are hearing are the dead. They are beating against the elevator and stairwell doors. They don’t stop. No one here expects the doors to last indefinitely. We have CNN security and Atlanta PD here with us but we just showed you the crush outside. If they beat down the doors there isn’t anything we’ll be able to do to stop them.”