Not the Best Plan

I feel like Punxsutawney Phil, having stuck my nose out of the hole after a seemingly long hibernation. Yeah. It's been a week.

The air had smelled of smoke for a few days. Those fires I told you about had spread, and evolved since my last entry. And it isn't like woodsmoke. That smell you get when the wildfires are roaring is not the smell in the air. The air is acrid, and irritating to my throat. Mom has had her face stuffed in a pillow or wet rag for a couple days. Her allergies were always ruinous, so I can't imagine how this smoke feels.

I'm fine. I just don't like the smell.

I never knew the definition of stir crazy until the past couple of days. Those military patrols had told everyone to stay put. No one was to leave their homes without permission. Dad promptly shoved that aside.

We left through the garage, putting a door between our exit and outside. As soon as I stepped into open air my heart rate doubled. I shouldered my backpack, which was mostly empty. We whispered to each other, debating on whether we should lock the door behind us. Neither of us felt confident that we could unlock the door fast enough, and that it would be easier to kill an invader or two inside the garage than it would be to fight off a group of them as someone tried to jam a key into a lock. We would both be sorry for our choices within the next hour.

The purpose of getting out was to stretch our legs and forage. We reached the edge of that patch of trees I was talking about. It seems the heat has begun to yellow the leaves on the trees. The cedar trees, of course, will retain its moisture indefinitely. I was right. There were no soldiers on the footpath. But there was a wandering . . . thing. This one confirmed it for me. When he spotted us he lolled his head and charged toward us. The thing is, half his neck was missing, so when he turned his head and stepped in our direction his head fell over his shoulder.

If Mr. Brooks is right you have to destroy the brain to kill the zombie. Now that I knew that zombie was the creature I was dealing with, I felt closure. I closed the book on my life, and accepted new reality. There was just one scary detail. Dad and I had agreed not to use the gun. We packed a baseball bat and my trusty pipe. Let me tell you that having a fancy stick, and a slim piece of metal while a seemingly headless, mindless body is running toward you at a sprint makes one feel ill prepared. Dad drew the pistol on the sucker. I put my hand up and stopped him. I lined him up, and waited.

When he was just a couple feet away I swung hard at his knees. I heard a horrible crunch. Into the dirt he went. His head lolled forward and slammed off the desert floor. He turned almost 180 degrees and glared at  me, his teeth bared. Dad finished him with a blow to the skull that opened his brains to the air. I turned and wretched. I could hear Dad getting sick, too. We didn't bother looking at the body. We just wiped our mouths and went on with our business. I didn't know what that was, so I just looked out for anything of use.

The path leads to an empty lot in an otherwise dense subdivision. We felt nervous going out into the open, so we spied out a path, first. Some of the homes in our neighborhood have red biohazard flowers on their doors. Dad and I figure it means there have been incidences in there, and the homes are no longer occupied.

"Ok, son." he said as we lay in the yellow grass, the smell of hot soil and smoke wafting around us. "You may not like this, but I have an idea."
"Oh good." I answered.
"We spy the homes that are quarantined, break in, and salvage whatever we can."
"You're right." I answered, "I don't like that idea. Aren't we good on food? We have ammo. What else do we need?"
Dad almost teared up as he breathed hard through his nose. "We're well prepared, son." he answered, "But we lack First Aid supplies. In situations like this, where a cut, or even a scratch can get infected and kill you, we need antiseptic, antibiotics, painkillers, anything that can help us survive."
"I am suddenly liking your idea."
He chuckled and rubbed my head.
"So why are we doing this in broad daylight?"
"Do you want to be outside in the dark with one of those things?" he asked, pointing over his shoulder.
No I did not.
"Besides, most of the houses in this area are ground floor, and they've boarded up their windows."
I nodded.
"Alright," he said, "That one across the street from this lot. Just walk. No running, no sneaking. Just follow my lead."

So we walked through the lot, across the street, and between two houses. Then Dad took a hard left and I followed. First he tried the doorknob. Locked. He cracked a glass pane and reached in, cutting his hand on a shard that protruded from the frame. We entered.

Right away we knew something awful had happened. The kitchen looked like Mike Myer's favorite murder spot. We stepped over the mess, and headed into a hall to the right looking for a bathroom. I found the bath everyone but the owners used, and Dad found a bath off of the master bed. Rummaging around I came up with some alcohol and a few bandages. Dad found some triple antibiotic, some cotton balls, and a fresh pack of Q-tips. He seemed disappointed. He took a moment to dress and clean his cut. Had I not been so on edge I would have thought it eerie that we were looting in a house where there had been a grisly murder. I could once again feel my perceptions shift.

We left the house. Dad took a couple minutes to tape up the pane of glass he had broken after locking the door.

We decided to check the house that was behind the one we had broken into. The yards were connected by a gate between the fences. It had a bloody handprint on it, and it creaked as we swung it the rest of the way open. That's when we learned about zombie sign.

That bloody handprint? It was fresh. That wasn't the problem. What really killed us was that we couldn't immediately identify which zombie had left it. Five of them were trapped in that backyard, and all five of them had their eyes on us. Dad backed me up through the gate and shut it, but the lock wasn't on our side.

"Run." he said.
I did.

We heard the gate open, and worse, we heard rapid footsteps following. We made sure our feet were moving faster. It wasn't long before we realized there was nowhere to hide. We crossed the empty lot, but apparently not the same way we had come because a hidden pipe came out of the ground and grabbed my foot, sending me sprawling into the dirt, wherein I cut up my elbow. As the dust cloud of my crash rose up around me, those footsteps got closer, and faster. I got up on my feet, stumbled again, and felt a strong, warm hand grab me under the arm. I almost swung out at it, but then saw the glint of my Father's glasses.

He pushed me behind him as he drew his pistol. He fired three times, with one kill. Now we were in trouble. My ears rang with the shots. We had to book it home. We had four zombies on our tail. If Dad shot again, the military would hear, come running, and I honestly don't know what would have happened. Two on four didn't seem like a great idea, either.

When we cleared the footpath out of the woods we could see the back of our house. I felt an instant of relief, followed by terror. The backdoor to the garage was open.

My ankle was hurting, and I had definitely stubbed a toe. By the time we reached my lawn I was hobbling. In my mind I pictured a shoe full of blood. That didn't help my heart rate. Worse, when we looked inside there were two Zed flopping against the back door to the house. The four had touched the edge of our lawn, a mere 10 yards away. Dad had four rounds left. The creatures at the door saw us, stopped their knocking, and ran our way.

Dad, breathing hard, purple in the face, and utterly bewildered, held me in front of the door. I couldn't move. I told you how strong that man is. I just watched two gaping maws heading my way, and wondered in an instant what it would feel like to be torn to pieces by these ravenous freaks. I closed my eyes. The four were just feet away. I was a zombie taco.

I felt the breath of one of them, a nauseating smell I can't even describe. Suddenly Dad yanked me to the side. The two from the garage smashed into the four that came from behind, and they all hit the ground. Dad yanked me into the garage, slammed the door, and locked it.

The heebie jeebies were hard at work as we ran inside the house. I wanted to shake off the feeling of almost being a zombie snack, but Dad employed me to follow him upstairs. We heard sirens as we went up the stairs.

In his room he handed me the rifle. He reloaded his pistol. We shot zombies in a barrel as they growled up at us from the lawn, shooting out the bedroom window. We shut it back up and got ready for the boarding party to knock on the front door.

They never did. We went back to Dad's bedroom and looked outside.

The soldiers swept around the house, guns drawn, and when they discovered our target practice they shouldered their weapons. The commanding officer, as it were, shouted up at us in the window.
"Nice shooting. You guys ok?"
"Yes," said Dad, "Thank you."
"We don't get this many sniffing around houses, usually. Did you provoke them?"
Dad shook his head, smiling. The officer nodded. He signaled his men, who had formed a perimeter, and two of them ran to the street. They returned with seven body bags, cleaned up our mess, and left with a wave. We waved back.

"Can we ask them for supplies?" I asked, remembering the purpose of our outing.
"I want to be as little involved as possible," he replied, "I trust in staying off the radar."
I had to disagree a little. If that were truly the case I think Dad should have just asked them for supplies rather than go out looking for trouble.

He's going to have a time trying to get me to go back out.

It turns out I purpled up my middle toe, maybe broke it. I cut up my ankle a bit, nothing bad. I didn't have a shoe full of blood. That's a blessing.

My thirst for adventure is satiated, thank you very much.