Kirk Allmond - What Zombies Fear - A Father's Quest

“He never said nothin’, and I ain’t ask. I just did as I was told, hoping to get away or do what they wanted and get my family back.”

“Leo, I’m done with Butch here. The other one is waking up, would you drag Butch out back and get rid of him?”

Butch screamed as Leo dragged him out of the room “You said! You gave me your word!”

“I’m a man of my word.” I said calmly as Leo took Butch out back and let him go.

“You! What’s your name?” I said as I slapped the second man back to consciousness.

“Huh? What? I’m still alive?” he stammered. “That chick, she moved like a zombie. I thought I was a goner.”

“Shut up. What’s your name?” I asked in same cold voice as before. I’d lost a lot of blood by now and was starting to get a little woozy. I had too much to do and no time for this injury. I had a two mile walk ahead of me, and one more interrogation to complete.

“Lance, Lance Fitzgerald. My buddy Butch and I, we were just walking through town, just the two of us, when this big zed jumped us. We thought we were dead, but he just said, ‘I’ll let you live if you go take over this gun store for me, just bring the guns back’…”

I cut him off with a slap across the cheek. “Don’t lie to me, Lance. Do not lie again.”

“Look man, I don’t know what you want to hear. Butch and I were jumped heading into to…” This time I hit him with a closed fist. Butch had too many details to be lying to me. He knew too much.

“Lance, I’m going to give you one more try,” I said as I took the big black .40 caliber pistol out of my waistband. “Don’t lie to me again. I’ve done a lot of killing today. My friends have done a lot of killing today. What’s one more?” I leveled the gun at his head. “Lance, if you lie to me again, I’m going to do you the favor of shooting you in the head so you can’t become one of them.”

This third time around, Lance told me the exact same story as Butch.

“Lance, thank you,” I said. ”Leo? Can you handle this one? We have a long walk, and I have to go get my rifle back out of the yard.”

I hobbled my way out to the yard, with no idea how I was going to make the two mile walk back to the house . ‘Just put one foot in front of the other, Tookes.’

19. Recovery

I put one foot in front of another, step after step. I made it the first mile on my own, before I had to put an arm around John. With a half mile left, Leo put my other arm around her shoulder. The last hundred yards to the door, they practically carried me. Over the years I have leaned on Leo and John for support in many ways. Never more literally than this day.

Once inside the house, they laid me down on the stainless steel table. I was pretty out of it by then, I remember hearing the words irrigate and infection. Those words were followed by someone hosing my shoulder down with magma. My entire upper body was on fire, and I was out again.

I woke up feeling like I was laying in a pool of hot water, hearing voices, and tried to talk, but my mouth was full of sand. I passed out again trying to croak out the word ‘water’.

The next thing I remembered was waking up and seeing John asleep in a chair. I turned my head a little bit, enough to see that I was in the master bedroom. John’s face was smashed against a book; I think that’s the closest he’s ever come to reading anything. I started to roll, but pain shot down my shoulder. My arm, tied to my chest, was completely immobile. I tried looking at my shoulder, but my neck was so stiff I couldn’t.

My mouth was still full of sand. “John.” My voice was weak. “Can I have some water?”

John woke up with a start. “You gave us quite a scare, mate. I’ll grab you a cup, and let your mum know you’re awake.” He practically ran out of the room.

A few minutes later, Leo, John, and Mom came walking in. Mom had a bowl of chicken broth, Leo had a big glass of water and a pitcher, and John had a grin on his face. They put the soup and water on the end table and both of them came over to the bed.

“Victor,” Mom said, “we’re going to sit you up. This is probably going to hurt. It’s been nine days since you were shot; you’ve mostly been unconscious for that time. Every time you were awake enough to swallow, we were pouring liquids down your throat. With no IV equipment, we were worried you’d die of dehydration. You lost a lot of blood. We’ll have a talk about your reckless behavior later. For now, sit up.”

With that, she yanked my good arm and Leo pushed from behind, together they sat me upright. I winced at the excruciating pain radiating down my chest and back, but it was actually less pain than I was anticipating. My chest was bound; my shoulder wrapped with tape and gauze, my arm was taped to my chest, in addition to having a makeshift sling attached. From this angle, I could see where the bullet wound was in the front, although I was happy to see there was no blood seeping through the gauze. It was going to leave a cool looking scar.

I took the proffered glass of water with my good hand and drained it. Leo refilled it, and set it within reach, as all three of us worked to slide me back up the bed and lean on the wall with a bunch of pillows behind me. Once I was firmly established in an upright position, I considered drinking more water. Unfortunately, more water meant I was going to eventually have to walk to the bathroom and pee. That was a daunting prospect, but I had to get up and start getting strength back. There was the matter of the kids and families at the high school. No wonder we never found any survivors, the zombies had rounded them all up.

“John, what’s been going on around here the last nine days while I was on vacation?”

20. Fortifications

“We’ve been working on fortifications around here. Your brother Marshall is amazing. He’s built walls and chutes and lines of fire all over the property.” John said.

“Leo learned to drive the tractor; she’s a demon digging trenches. We’ve shored up the fences surrounding the whole of the property. Leo dug a trench and berm for about a kilometer from the back of the property down to the river along the front. It’s littered with big boulders, it will stop any vehicles,” John continued. ”Marshall built a gate out of telephone poles down at the end of the driveway.”

I was completely impressed. The amount of work they’d done was astounding. They’d completed almost my entire defensive plan in nine days, without any help from me. “Wow. You’re all amazing. Mom, how are we on resources? Food, fuel, water?” I asked.

“We’re low on fuel, we’ve been conserving propane by using the grills, but we’re down to about four days. We’ve used a lot of diesel the last few days; the big tank is down to a thousand gallons, that won’t last through the weekend at this rate.”

“What day is it?” I asked. It was weird to have no concept of what time or even what day it was.

“It’s Thursday, Vic.”

“They were building that army to come get Max,” I said. “They’re not going to stop.” Acting on a hunch I asked, “When was the last time any of you saw a zombie?”

“We killed one last Friday, six days ago,” said Leo.

“Where are they? We haven’t killed everyone around here. We aren’t even close to that. We’ve been making a huge amount of noise, with the backhoe, with the tractors and chainsaws. We’ve had lights running all night, and been grilling food outside. We’ve made no effort to hide our location, and yet we never see zombies, why is that?” I asked. Without waiting for a response, I continued, “I believe that they’re being drawn off somewhere, and that they’re going to come at us in force. I think that whoever it was learned a lot about us at the gun club, and I’m worried that they won’t make the same mistake twice. We need to be ready. You’ve all made huge progress, but we need to be able to withstand a siege. We need stores and fuel and ammunition, and we need to think about what’s going to happen when a horde shows up at our door.”