Mark Clodi - Discovery

"Thanks Claire." Trisha said to her daughter, "I appreciate it. Those boys! I never understand why they won't move into different rooms."

“Well they like to complain. Living with each other is easier than living without each other. When Max hits fourteen, I bet they won't be together. Right now they would rather fight like some old married couple than cower under their covers alone.” said Claire.

The sounds of renewed yelling from the younger boys drifted up the stairs. Bill raised his eyebrows to Trisha, who nodded her head and said, “Let's see if the boys can work this one out on their own, if they are not quiet in five minutes I'll go down there and put Will on the futon for the night, or threaten to.”

The four of them settled in to watch the local news. There were no national feeds, the local news said that cell phone coverage was sporadic now, but some towers had been taken by the state government for police and military use. All citizens, except those with critical job functions, were to stay home and use their land lines to call in any suspicious activity. Suspicious activity really boiled down to anyone stumbling around like they were on drugs. The chilling part was the announcer said if the person did not respond to verbal commands, like to 'stop' or answer simple questions the order was to shoot first and ask questions later. As horrible as that sounded the news that Denver had been bombed, using a nuclear weapons was devastating. Trisha pulled Bill in closely, watching his eyes as they watched the television. Something in his face seemed to flicker for a moment, a sort of recognition that things were worse than he feared. Bill's eyes grew watery, but he didn't turn from the television screen, he just wiped his arm over his face once and continued watching, his face growing harder as the news ticked by. There was news footage from an affiliate station in Kansas City, which had a helicopter fly towards Denver, it did not get close enough to see any damage. To Bill's eyes it looked like quite a large part of the city was intact, there were smoke plumes everywhere, and piles upon piles of auto wrecks as well. Then the footage showed a small town called 'Limon' Colorado. There was a mob of people there, tens of thousands, they were ambling slowly down highway seventy, when the crew got a close up the family could see the damage the people had taken, some of them looked dead. The camera lingered on the mob with the commentator pointing out that none of the people had packs or water bottles or food of any sort. Some footage later in the day showed the mob thirty miles east of Limon, still moving slowly, inexorably onward towards the Kansas border.

Parts of the internet were amazingly still working. The local news desk said that Iowa's server farms, built specifically to house two of the powerhouses in the computer industry were able to keep much of the internet up and running. The newscaster warned that most of the external websites were outdated copies from up to a week ago. The largest websites may have housed their data in Iowa, but the news still came from New York or San Diego or London. After mentioning this last location he said that London was not infected as was previously thought, the last update from Europe was that the United Kingdom had grounded all flights and closed all ports until the current wave of civil unrest had passed. The Britts had apparently used draconian measures to put down their own plague, including the 'shoot any suspicious people on sight' method, to eliminate suspicious people. The governor of Iowa was taking no chances, hence he issued the same order to all Iowans.

The Iowa National Guard was out in full force. All police, fire and medical personal were required to not only report for duty but to stay at their work locations for the duration of the emergency. Also the governor was calling for anyone with any military service to report to the nearest Guard compound immediately. To not do so would be grounds for arrest. A state of emergency had been declared and all non essential personal were ordered to stay in their houses until told otherwise. Anyone one leaving their home could be detained and or even shot on sight.

The news went on to repeat the earlier stories and Bill shut the television down and turned towards his family. “Tomorrow we are going out. I doubt the sheriff will be by every house in the county and we should be able to get the basement windows barred and fortify a few of the upstairs ones as well. I think we should all carry a pistol with us, at all times, just in case. Us four I mean, not the younger kids, though Will could carry a twenty two rifle if he wanted to. We got a couple months until it freezes, so we have to check to see if any vegetables we have could be grown and harvested in that timeframe. I think we might need all the food we can get before winter.”

John nodded, “Okay dad. Want me to sleep in the boy's room tonight, just in case?”

“Yeah, please. It would make me feel better anyway. Bring Fargo in with you, we'll keep Dopey up here and let him roam the house tonight.” said Bill.

“I'll sleep in Trudy's room too.” said Claire.

“Speaking of which we better try to get some sleep, you two say a few prayers tonight okay? Not just for God to watch out for us, but for our friends who might need it too.” Trisha didn't name Max and his family, however they all knew that was who she was referring to.

After a round of good nights and some long, firm hugs, the children went off to bed and the parents retired to their bedroom. That night Bill and Trisha made love for the first time in weeks, the act had a desperate, fearful tinge to it that neither spoke of after reaching release.

Spending the night in an abandoned motel was a good change. Max had decided to pull off at the place alongside the highway because they had seen almost no zombies after taking Paul's tow truck. This didn't mean they had made good time, they were still shy of the Nebraska border, and the motel they stayed in was run down and looked like it had seen little use before 'Z-day', everything was dated. With no electricity the air in the rooms was stale and smelled slightly of sweat and maybe mildew. They parked next to doors that were dead center along one side of the building, facing south so they could see the highway. The place was modern enough to use cards instead of real keys, which had required them to break into the rooms. Stewart had pulled a gadget out of her bag of tricks and broken two windows to get in, the logic being that it was easier to defend a window than a door, so they kept the doors intact. The doors did open fine from the inside and the first thing they had done was to prop them open to try and get some air into the rooms. The wrecker actually had a very small generator on it and an assortment of well used power tools, however they did not turn it on. There might not be any zombies in the neighborhood, then again there might be. One thing was for certain; noise brought zombies out of the woodwork.

Outside of the rooms they backed the cruiser up onto the curb until the rear bumper pressed against one wall, then they backed the tow truck in the same manner on the other side, to form a 'U' with the motel doors in the bottom. Stewart and Tom took the van into town to see if they could scrounge some fresh food, but when they parked the van for the night it would go at the top of the 'U', not quite closing it off. It would make a good defensive area to guard from and provide them with a good field of vision. With Tom and Steward gone that left the others to prepare dinner and get ready for the night, Max fired up the grill while Amelia kept the kids busy inside the motel. There was no fresh meat around, but they had found enormous amounts of canned meat. The kids all seemed to like spam, which drove Max crazy when he thought about it, he always considered it a budge meat that poor people ate, and now it was the delicacy that the kids ate without complaint. The kids and Amelia filed out of the doorway from their prospective rooms, it was about an hour before sunset. The kids were all dressed as if for bed, all wearing shorts with the girls sporting thin t-shirts, Amelia was dressed the same way. They all filed in front of Max and stood staring at him.