Shake Rattle Rattle Boom Boom Crash
Shake Rattle Rattle Pound Pound Crash
~*~*~
“The fences are shot,” Marcus whispered as we stared at the rusty wire that kept us safe. I felt a shudder roll down my spine, like someone had poured cold water over me.
“Is there any way we could raid Harry’s Hardware and get some more fencing?” I asked and Marcus face was grim.
“Harry’s was low before the virus hit, we got the last, we’d have to try the back rooms and I don’t like the odds going into there, even in daylight,” he grunted.
“Well, we can’t rely on this fence lasting, maybe we should start making trips to the elementary school to grab some of that nice stuff they put up around the school and football field. It’s supposed to last twenty years,” Carol stated, she was rubbing her hands over each other and the motions made me think of spiders in death throes. The thought of death reminded me that the sun was setting in a few hours.
“The days are getting longer but the nights are still cold. It’s not a bad idea,” Drew said, his lips were chapped and his eyes were haunted.
“I’ll go,” I said and they gave me a look. I was much younger than most of the adults who had survived, but I was stronger than the rest of the kids so the adults relied on me a lot. I spent my free time in the gym equipment section of Wally-World Supermart. It was our stronghold against the zombies.
“Jesse, we can’t ask you to do this,” Carol said and I shook my head.
“I’m one of the kids who helped build that fence. I know how to get the panels of wire off without damaging them, how many other people know that?” I asked. It had been a bitch learning how to work the goddamn chain link, but now, I was thankful for that summer of Hell and all the slashes I got on my fingers.
“He’s right, none of us has worked with that shit before,” Drew hissed. “He’s got to be there, but I say we have four trucks going for pick up and drop off.”
“We can have the kids helping to bundle it there and unbundle it here,” Marcus muttered.
“If Jesse teaches us how to put the links back up, we could start doing that here while you all take the fence down,” Carol said and I blushed.
“We need to get the posts ready first, we can get those out of Harry’s yard and the jackhammers are in the shed in the back,” I said. “We need to set the posts up first and then we can start taking down the fences.”
“Oh,” Carol’s disappointment was clear.
“It’s best we start now, they don’t like the bright light. We’ll have the kids power up the generator with the exercise gear starting now. We’ll take as many jackhammers as we can get and start making the holes and setting up the poles. If we work from ten to two, we shouldn’t face more than ten to twenty creepers. If we keep sentries up it shouldn’t be a problem,” Marcus said, rubbing his stubble covered chin. His brown eyes were on me and I felt nervous but I had been the one to find the rust spot. “What about the hanging wire?” I smiled.
“We only used a quarter of what the school bought, it’s in the concession stand,” I said and Marcus grinned.
“Good chance that they won’t use that damn stand as a hiding hold,” Drew muttered as adjusted the strap of his rifle.
“Then let’s get started on the posts, then we’ll worry about the fencing, this will hold for a little while, long enough for us to be safe,” Marcus said and we nodded. I would have to put the knowledge earned through a summer of hard labor to use helping to save the survivors of the zombie plague.
~*~*~
I grunted as the jackhammer started and I put my weight down on it, shoving the tip into the ground. It had been two years since I had helped build the fence around the elementary school. Back then I had been allowed to try and jackhammer only to end up falling over and losing the feeling in my arms for a few hours, this time, I had a good fifty extra pounds of pure muscle to keep the chisel steady. It was hard work but I was good at physical labor, not so much the math and stuff Carol did to figure out how much food we needed to plant, maintain, and store to make it through winter.
As I stared at the hole I was making in the parking lot inside our old fence, I got to thinking. Two years ago, not long after I finished putting up the fence at the elementary school, a pandemic hit. Pandemic was one of the fancy words I learned before learning words became less important than knowing how to shoot a gun.
It was like that stupid swine flu, some people freaked out about it, other people didn’t care about it, until people started dying. At first the people who died from it stayed dead but as the virus mutated it stopped keeping people dead. A lot of people said it was a terrorist weapon, if it was, then those terrorists were dumber than dog crap since it had managed to travel all over the world before going bad horror movie.
If you died of the virus, you came back shortly after you died, twenty to thirty minutes, more than enough time to put a bullet in the head. If you were bitten there were three choices. One, you could immediately cut the arm or leg off and stay human, two, you could shoot yourself in the head and not be a zombie, or three, you could try to hide the bite and then wait three to six hours to become a zombie yourself. Mrs. Montgomery had been the one to find David McArthur hiding in the dressing rooms after he had been bit, she shot him and then herself after he took a chunk out of her shoulder. I helped burn both their bodies.
When the zombies popped up, it was fast, they were still fresh and they would run around biting and eating people if they could. Zombies had to eat fast before their food got up and wanted something to eat too. The last news report said that the plague was spreading at an exponential rate, I know that it’s kind of like squaring something. Two to four, four to sixteen, sixteen to two hundred fifty six, and up and up and up, Carol taught me that.
My town got hit on Thursday morning, a bitten survivor drove in from the city two hours away. He fell down when getting gas and then got up to eat. He infected twenty people who went on to infect three hundred people and on and on. My Pop saw our neighbor, Mister Welsh, running away from little Jennifer Kelly, her throat had been torn out. My Pop got me, my Mom, and my two sisters into the car and high tailed it to Wally-World Supermart, he said it was the best place. It had guns, food, and steel grating over the windows. I’m the only one who made it. Pop’s window was busted in and he got yanked out when we were trying to drive around a four car pile-up. Mom got us to the parking lot where a bunch of other people with guns had the same idea. We couldn’t get close enough so I grabbed Laurie’s hand while Mom picked up Mattie and carried her like a sack of potatoes.
It had been pure chaos and all I focused on was getting to the entrance. I never saw the bastard that grabbed Mattie out of Mom’s arms, but I heard Mom’s screams and then Laurie’s but I didn’t stop dragging her. I only dared to look back when we passed the first man with a gun, then I saw my Mom’s face as she was eaten alive. Six of the bastards were chewing on her, she was on the ground, not looking at me and Laurie. She was looking back where three of the monsters were clustered, I guess it was Mattie they were chewing on, but I didn’t know that at the time. Laurie screamed and I saw the four that overtook the guy with the gun. I dragged Laurie into a run, but something hit us. I got up to see Mr. Spudrick on top of Laurie’s back. I screamed and grabbed the nearest thing to me, a bloody baseball bat, and began pounding on his head and shoulders. I guess I snapped his neck because he fell over and I dragged Laurie out, she was dead. If I had been thinking clearer, I would have bashed her body over the head, but I was panicked and scared so I ran for the entrance. I made it.
I took a breath and leaned off of the jackhammer, the hole was big enough and some of the younger kids were quick to get a pole and the cement poured. I took a few deep breaths and I watched the others working. We could only use four jackhammers, only four us were strong or heavy enough to handle the machines. Marcus had rigged several solar power cells on top of the Supermart as well as hooking up several treadmills to the generator so we could actually get electricity. We still had a freezer, but we didn’t use it in the winter, we just stored the food in the garage and tire center. Among the workers on the ground we had twenty adults, thirty kids, and about seven teenagers.
I could remember that day, making it to the Supermart, I turned around inside of the door in time to see a school bus come flying across the parking lot. It smashed through some of the small groups of zombies, it crushed Mom’s head as it screeched to a halt, blocking the grocery entrance. I was shocked to see Miss Clarke, Carol, hope off the bus, shoving children out. She had been at the day program for five to ten year olds and she had gotten all fifty children out alive and unbitten. Carol was smart enough to get them all inside before she took the bus out and used it like a battering ram. It gave a lot of us time to get in the building while she crushed the undead hordes. That first night we were two hundred, crammed into the Supermart, but now, working on the fence, we were down half that. I got back to work making holes in the ground.
~*~*~
I was excited to be outside of the fence, I hadn’t been out since we had built it from Harry’s supply of chicken wire. Mr. Jeffries was in the back of the truck with me and two of the kids, his rifle was waiting for any zombies, but that didn’t take away from the excitement. It was weird to see the elementary school after so long, there were broken windows but it was the same building I had gone from kindergarten to sixth grade in.
I grabbed the tools and prepared to teach the group how to remove and bundle the wire. Carol would have been a better teacher, but she stayed behind with the little kids. I would have to do my best, but it was easy once you saw it done. I’d show them and then just help. Marcus was going to get the securing wire from the concession stand with a few other adults while I began my lessons. It was weird as the people from the three other trucks moved to surround me.
“I’m not good with words, so I’ll just show you what to do. Of course, you all got to remember to be careful and not cut yourselves. None of us are up to date on our tetanus shots,” I said and several adults laughed. I smiled bashfully as I found a good piece of fencing and began to show them. “It’s really easy once you know how to do it.”
“I got it, thanks Jesse,” Megan said, she was a few years older than me, she would have been in college this year, but things happened.
“No problem,” I grinned as I began to work, it was easy to zone out and think about the zombies, especially when one of our sentries shot one. The zombies lasted a long time. The ones that ate a lot of people stayed the freshest, the more often and more people they ate, the longer they lasted. It was getting kind of nice now because most of the zombies were so rotted that they couldn’t move very fast. At first they were like normal people but now they were like bushes, strong enough to be annoying but not strong enough to hold you down.
The best part about the zombies was that their eyes went bad first. The first three months the zombies were around all day and all night. As their eyes rotted, they became super sensitive to light only coming out at night. That was when we found out that the zombies were drawn to light. If we left the Supermart florescent lights on it would draw the zombies but if we used the small lamps in Supermart, the light didn’t make it out of the sky lights and the zombies didn’t bug us. It’s also why it’s hard to go into buildings we don’t know anymore. If a building is dark zombies will hide in them during the day.
The only problem is when fresh zombies show up. Since nobody knows how many people survived the initial wave of zombies, we get one or two fresh zombies a week. Most of the fresh ones lately aren’t people anyone recognizes. Carol thinks it has to be that some people are travelling in the day and holding up at night. Those people end up not having enough protection and getting attacked.
Really, as long as you don’t make too much noise and make too much light at night, zombies don’t seem very good at finding people. Marcus and Carol are pretty sure that soon the zombies are going to get so rotted that they can’t move, when that happens we can start moving out of the Supermart.
We worked all day and got half of the fence down before Marcus said it was time to call it a day. We headed back to Supermart to see that they were really far along. I grinned at Carol as she and the kids hung up the last of the fencing except what we brought with us in the trucks.
“How’s the action down here been?” Marcus asked and Carol pointed to where Doug and Mike were tossing a zombie on top of a pile.
“Forty of them showed up. We weren’t even that loud,” she whispered and I felt nervous.
“We didn’t see that many when we were jackhammering,” Marcus hissed and Carol gave a sad look.
“I think it’s because they were tracking us, if we had forty in the day can you imagine how many are going to show up after dark?” she asked and I felt my blood go cold. The old fence was fine for one or two zombies but forty would make a mess of it.
“Jesse, you better be ready,” Marcus ordered. “We are all going to have to be.”
~*~*~
Night came too soon and I was on the roof with all the others who were great shots. As soon as the light seemed to vanish from the sky, the world seemed to take a deep breath in. I was shaking as the first zombies began to appear around the fence. It was hard to see the zombies in the limited light of night we couldn’t turn on more lights or more zombies would be drawn to us. I had shot four when we realized that there weren’t enough sentries. Carol was a great shot during the day but her night vision was horrible.
As the night progressed more and more zombies seemed to come out of the night, surrounding the fence, shaking the chicken wire. It was too much and I could see the old fence slowly giving up under the weight of the undead army. I watched the wire crumble under the hands of an withered man. I whimpered in fear as I shot him through the head, what was on in the face of such an army?
“Where did they all come from?” Evan cried as he stared at the massive army waiting for us. I felt the despair and I wondered how long before they made it through the fence and found a way into the Supermart.
“Jesse, how many rounds do you have?” a voice called and I looked.
“Twelve more,” I whispered with slow horror. Had I already gone through two boxes?
“Shit!” someone cried and I remembered that we were low on rounds. It had been two years, of course we were low, of course now would be the time we ran out. Slowly we stopped firing, there were just too many, as soon as we fired then two more took the place of the fallen.
“I didn’t know so many were left,” Carol whispered and I knew that we were in trouble. “Jesse, tell Murphy that he needs to get Plan B ready.” I gasped. Plan B was what we were supposed to do if it looked like we were going to fall. There was a special Smith and Wesson in the manager’s office, it had around a hundred bullets in the box with it.
“You can’t be…” I paused as I saw a flashing light on the horizon. There was a light noise on the wind. I watched as the zombies seemed to stop, like a movie on pause. The light got brighter and I could hear a shaking, like a rattle, there was a boom with a crash like a giant drum set. “What’s that?”
“Anyone got a visual?” Marcus cried. I looked up Main Street, there was a bright light and the sound of motors.
“Whoever they are, they have powerful lights,” someone called and I watched as the zombies began to move towards the light.
Shake, rattle, rattle, boom, boom, crash, again and again. I stared at the zombie army as it moved off. Then the night erupted in gunfire and there was a victory cry.
“Reinforcements!” someone cried and Marcus’ face was still nervous and I looked at him.
“Raiders,” Carol said as she stared towards the light that was approaching. We had always worried about people who were riding around invading towns, but we didn’t know if they were real. I really hoped that the light and gunfire meant that rescue was on the way, not raid.
Shake, rattle, rattle, boom, boom, crash, kept the same rhythm as the guns fired again and again. I could easily make out a strange looking tower with four spotlights. People were hanging off the tower like tacky Christmas decorations on a tree. I stared as two school busses appeared around the corner, the tower growing out of them, like a leg shared by two Siamese twins. On the roof of the busses were people, they each held a long stick, which they shook, making the rattle noise, and banged against the roof of the busses. They each held a cymbal like a miniature shield and after they rattled and banged their sticks, they slammed their cymbal into another’s. They were a well practiced machine and I was shocked as they rolled over zombies, or gunfire slipped from the windows of the busses, turning the zombies into corpses.
The busses were the first, several large cars and trucks followed, a giant tanker trunk was flanked by two more school busses. I watched as the progression approached the Supermart. I stared in shock as the noise suddenly stopped as the busses reached the edge of our chicken wire fence.
“Hello up there!” a voice called and we stared from the roof at the strange group of people on top of the busses. A woman dressed in black stood on the closer bus. “Do you mind if we stop by?” I watched as people seemed to fly off the busses like well oiled machines. Men and women started clearing the dead zombies out of the way as the woman looked up at us with a strange little smile.
That was how we met Priest a woman who fought zombies, collecting the teeth of the dead into rattles to attract the attention of the living dead. She saved us, helping us keep safe as we finished the fence. When she pulled out of town I went with her. How often do you meet a woman like that, besides Carol said it was bad for teenagers to be cooped up.
~*~*~
Author Note: This story was actually the introduction of a character who has been sitting in my head for a while. If you couldn't guess, Priest was the character, that's why when she shows up Jesse cuts it short because to do Priest justice the story would have gone on a few more pages. I decided to go for brief and do another story on Priest if I got the chance.
You didn't really get to meet Priest but let's just say, she's the answer for the religious fanatics that most horror movies have. You know the person that says they need to sacrifice a person for God, well Priest is the person who says "Have faith in God, but remember this mess was our own damn fault so don't blame him and don't waste his time asking him to fix this mess." She's religious, thus why her name is Priest, I won't say much about her history, save it for another story. I plan for a story where Priest comes across fanatics and kicks ass because while Priest is religious, she's trainned herself to survive and God helps those that help themselves.
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