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

“Jimmy’s dead. There’s so many, they go one for a mile or more. I lost count at a thousand, and I hadn’t even counted a tenth.”

“Good work Tom, now get back here and let’s get ready to kill them.” Bookbinder replied.

“I can’t come back, Lieutenant. I’m bit. I can feel it taking over. I’m parked on the side of the road, I’d like permission to take my pickup and drive it right into them. I think I could take a hundred with me. I’d like to try; I don’t want to end up like one of them.”

“Tom, are you sure you’re gonna turn?” I asked.

“Yes sir, Mr. Tookes, I’m sure.”

“Tom, do what you have to. You’re a hero, getting us this information probably saved all of our lives.”

36. The Beginning

By late afternoon we’d finished all of our preparations, and the waiting game began. I spent about an hour playing Frisbee with Max and the other small kids in the back yard. For Max, it was about keeping life kind of normal. For me, it was time that I could just be Daddy, and not be in charge of the safety and welfare of over three hundred people. A little after five, Bookbinder came to get me.

“Max, can you stay here for a few minutes and keep playing Frisbee? Daddy has to go talk to Mr. Bookbinder.” I said.

“Daddy, are you talking about all the bad guys coming?” he asked, his face turned up and glowing in the evening sun.

“Yeah, Max monster. There are lots of bad guys coming, but don’t worry, Mister John, Miss Leo, Uncle Marshall and I will make sure they don’t hurt us.”

“I like Mr. John. He talks funny.”

“I think so too!” I laughed. “He has an accent. An accent is when someone says words differently than we do. He thinks we sound funny! How crazy is that?” We both had a good laugh.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes. Stay right here.”

I walked off a bit with Charlie, around the corner to the front of the house. Three of the locals were working on boarding up the windows using fence rails bolted all the way through thick brick walls. They had a generator running to power the drills they were using. We moved off to the side, behind the huge three hundred year old boxwood bushes.

“They’re about eight miles out. They didn’t even slow down going through Culpeper. It’s about time to get this show on the road, they’re making roughly four miles an hour.”

“Alright, Charlie. Let’s get everyone wrapped up and get some food into them. It’s going to be a long night.”

“Leo,” I spoke into my radio. “Can you come to the front of the house? It’s time.”

“On my way, Tookes.” She replied, and was standing in front of me before the radio static died.

“Have you eaten anything Leo? You’re going to burn a lot of calories; I need you on your A-game.” I said, concern clearly prevalent in my voice.

“Walk with me to the kitchen; I’ll grab something to throw in my backpack.”

“Charlie, can you get the word out that its time? Discretely, we don’t need to frighten the children.”

Leo and I walked back around the house to where Max was playing. I resisted the urge to hold her hand; I wasn’t quite ready for it to be public knowledge. Anyone that knew us, knew that we were developing feelings for each other, in the old days we would have called it dating. These days our idea of a date was clearing and looting a convenience store. Times change.

“Max, it’s time to go inside buddy. Can you take your Frisbee and put it in the toy-box on the porch? Then go find Grandma, please.”

“You got it, Dad.” he said.

Leo and I continued on around the house towards the kitchens outside door. About halfway there, we stopped and I took her hand. “Leo, don’t do anything crazy. Try to get their attention and lead them off, but if it’s not working, don’t be a hero out there by yourself.”

I leaned forward and kissed her, which she returned more passionately than I expected. We kissed for several minutes, enjoying some quiet time together before we both had to go to work. At last we broke the kiss, and walked inside the kitchen.

Inside, my mother was a whirlwind. She had almost a hundred and fifty bags laid out. In each, she had a sandwich with thinly cut grilled deer, roasted red pepper, lettuce and mustard. There was a rolled oat granola bar, and a bottle of water. To this day, I have no idea how she managed to bake that much bread in twelve hours. There’s no way she slept. I handed Leo one of the bags.

“Vic, I made this one for Leo. She needs more calories than you; you’re still a little pudgy.” She said with a smile on her face.

Mom handed Leo a much heavier looking bag. “Here you go, honey. You be safe out there. Don’t let Vic get you in trouble.”

“Vic, here’s yours, two granola bars and a bottle of water.”

I knew that this was my mother’s way of saying, ‘I don’t have a sandwich for everyone, so I gave yours to Leo’. I gave her a hug and said, “I love you, Mom. You’re amazing, none of this would happen without you.” I walked Leo down to the road, where I kissed her one more time and hopped into the big truck Marshall had attached the old plow blade to. She was off in a flash; trails of leaves swirling in her wake. She was getting faster. I followed her purple and green swirling aura, and discovered that I could ‘see’ her aura, even when she stopped running, somewhere between six and seven miles away.

“Interesting.” I said out loud to myself.

I focused on Max’s aura, and spun around, and saw his beautiful pale blue light coming from the main house. John was down by the barn; Marshall was up at the carriage house. Bookbinder was several hundred yards out behind the house; I wondered what he was doing there.

I started up the big truck, and let it idle long enough for the brakes to air up. Once I could release the brakes, I pulled the huge rig out onto the road, and backed it about a quarter mile down to the bridge.

“John and Charlie, it’s time for the advance team to get into position, I’m heading that direction.” I started jogging up the road, heading roughly towards where Leo was. I watched her aura bounce east and west. It looked like she was running in to attack the flanks of the group, and then moving off west, trying to draw them with her. Based on the number of times she ran east and west, it didn’t appear to be working. I jogged at a fairly quick pace, and had come to the pre-marked location one mile from the property. Bookbinder came jogging up second, not breathing anything over his normal rate.

“Wow, Charlie, you must have sprinted here.”

“I found a four-wheeler at the neighbor’s farm, and got it running. I thought it might come in handy, I have ideas, too. I parked it back at the first ammo dump.”

“I like the sound of that!” I said as Marshall and John walked up with the rest of Bookbinder’s team.

Marshall was carrying two shotguns with two home made bandoliers of shells strapped to his back, and a Ruger 10/22 rifle with thirty round magazines duct taped together back to back, so that when one was empty, he could just flip the magazine and have another thirty rounds.

John tossed me the same rifle, a small .22 gauge carbine, with the same magazine configuration, and when I got the strap over my shoulder, he tossed me four more of the double-magazine configurations.

“That’s three hundred rounds, Tookes, make 'em count. There are two more double-magazines each four hundred meters behind us. Start firing when I say fire, not when I do. These are small rounds; you might have to put two in their head to put them down, unless you can hit them in the eye.”

Leo flew up to us. Her hair, which she normally kept braided when she worked, was flying somewhat loose, but matted down with sweat and gore. Her clothes were covered in blood, and she had a cut on her knee. “They’re coming, about half a kilometer ahead, maybe ten minutes from being in range.” She opened up one of Mom’s granola bars and shoved it in her mouth, washing it down with half a bottle of water.