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  When the noodles were done, the freshly scrubbed group gathered in the dining room while Jaime put the final ingredients into the pot. Everyone was surprised how well the makeshift meal came together and complimented the chefs. Grayson volunteered to clean the dishes with some of the pool water while everyone else went to bed.

  The cleanup went quickly and when he was finished, Grayson checked to ensure the windows and doors were locked. The apartment was draped in deep shadows as the last of the day’s light faded outside. He walked back to the bedroom that Jamie had said was theirs and knocked softly on the door so he didn’t accidentally walk in on her changing or something.

  When he opened the door, the room was very dark and one tiny little candle burned beside the bed on the nightstand. Jamie was lying on the bed under a sheet and she smiled at him. He closed the door gently behind him and when he turned back towards the bed, she’d pulled the sheet away to reveal her firm and very naked body. He started to apologize and turn away but she quieted him by saying, “I know this may be temporary. I know you plan on returning to D.C. when this is all over. But right now, we’re right here together. I want to live in the moment and neither of us knows how much longer we’ve got, so get over here and kiss me.”

  Grayson decided quickly that her logic was flawless and complied with her directions.

  ***

  11 May, 0710 hrs local

  Pecan Valley Village

  Indianapolis, Indiana

  The awkwardness that Grayson feared would be there in the morning didn’t manifest itself in any way. Jamie went to the bathroom, brushed her teeth and then jumped onto the bed, straddling him on all fours. She leaned down to kiss him deeply and her erect nipples rubbed across his chest. He felt himself begin to stir and her lips pulled away from his as she smiled, “There’s time for that later Mister. Last night was wonderful, but it’s time to get up so we can go get those seeds.”

  She hopped off the bed and then stepped into her discarded jeans. She bent over deeply when she pulled on her clothes and took an agonizingly long time to pull her pants over her legs and hips. Jamie grinned at him, knowing she was driving him crazy and threw her shirt over her head, then she left the room and he groaned in frustration.

  When Grayson walked into living room, Gretchen and Jamie were talking with their heads close together. Gretchen looked over at him with a knowing grin and said, “Sam has some water boiling on the grill outside and we’ve got an improvised system of pouring the boiling water over a coffee filter, so you can actually have some coffee.” She paused then winked at him and said, “I hear you may need some caffeine since you didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  Jamie’s hand flew to her mouth as the two girls giggled like they were in high school. Grayson stammered a reply, but when he couldn’t think of anything witty to say, he just mumbled, “Yeah.” He could feel his face flush, so he turned and walked into the kitchen to grab a mug from the cabinet so he could enjoy his first cup of coffee in several days.

  After the coffee and a breakfast of packaged oatmeal, the four of them headed back to the community’s sales office where Bill Downs had said to meet. They were surprised to see a flurry of activity already taking place when they got there. An extended cab pickup truck was being loaded with weapons and ammunition. Grayson peeked into the back and saw about forty M16s, a garbage bag of magazines and there were already several cans of 5.56mm ball ammo. Every can holds 1,000 rounds, so the residents of Three Pillars were about to be seriously armed.

  Carrie and her father walked out of the office and waved to Grayson’s group. “We’re giving you thirty-five rifles and ten thousand rounds of ammunition. We rescued a lot more than that from the armory, but we’ll be keeping that here for our defense. I’m also not giving you any of the SAWs since that would require some training on how to use and maintain them, but maybe after a few weeks we can get some of your folks trained up,” Bill said.

  “Wow, I don’t even know how to thank you. This is way more than we expected,” Grayson replied.

  “You can thank us by keeping up your end of the bargain and helping us grow food so we can all survive,” Carrie said. Then she amended herself, “I’m sorry. That sounded harsher than I meant it to. I just meant that by providing land for the farming and helping us with the crops, you’d be repaying us.”

  “That’s ok, I know what you meant.” He gestured towards the other three, “So Sam and Gretchen will go with the weapons and radios back to our neighborhood and Jamie and I will go with you to get the seeds.”

  “I hate to admit it, but I’m too old to go running around outside of our perimeter,” the doctor said. “Carrie will lead the team over to the store. We’ve got a couple large trucks that you can take and fill with all the supplies you can carry.”

  Bill turned towards his daughter and hugged her while he rattled off what seemed like a standard list of combat rules to live by. “Be safe honey. Don’t get into something you can’t get out of. Establish and maintain your security the entire time you’re inside. Always have an escape plan. Stay out of sight and be as quiet as possible.” He shook Grayson’s hand, patted him on the opposite shoulder and said, “Good luck son, we’ll see you in a couple of hours.”

  He turned and took the stairs slowly back into the office. Grayson and Jamie said their goodbyes to their companions and went with Carrie. She detoured them to the sales office garage for a weapons upgrade. Grayson picked up an M4 with a close combat optic attached, several loaded magazines and an M9 pistol. Carrie went to a large wooden crate and handed him a web vest with pockets and a holster for his ammo and sidearm. He placed his 30.06 against the wall and placed the fanny pack with his extra ammunition beside it.

  Jamie chose to keep her fireplace poker on the grounds that she didn’t know how to shoot and would be more of a danger to everyone else if she were carrying. “Are you anti-gun or just never had the opportunity to fire one?” Grayson asked.

  “No, I don’t disagree with using guns or other kinds of weapons. I just never learned how to fire one. Maybe you can teach me when we get back, I’d like to know how.”

  “Deal. Maybe we can get you a better weapon at the gardening store until then,” he said as they followed Carrie out of the garage.

  “I’ve been thinking about that. Maybe a long hammer or an axe, but not anything too heavy if I’ve got to haul it around all the time.”

  “You should get her a tomahawk,” Carrie said over her shoulder. “One of our guys carries one. The thing is bad as shit. It’s longer than an hatchet, but really light and it’s made of titanium so it’s virtually unbreakable. I saw him whack a zombie right in the forehead, put the thing down like it’d been shot.”

  “Sounds like a pretty specialized weapon,” Grayson said skeptically. “I doubt they’d have it at the gardening store. But a long-handled axe may be what she’d need.”

  “Yeah, you’re right, he owned that tomahawk before the zombie outbreak, probably pretty hard to find now.”

  Jamie cleared her throat, “You seem to be pretty comfortable with all of this. What did you do before the bomb?”

  “I was a fitness and yoga instructor at the gym downtown, believe it or not. I grew up with all of my dad’s war stories and I’ve always been pretty tough, so this kinda just fits for me. Don’t get me wrong, I’d kill for a hot bath and some Chinese take-out right now, but for some reason, it hasn’t been as hard for me to adapt as it has been for some of the others.

  “We haven’t actually been inside the gardening store before, but we’re betting that most everything is still there,” Carrie continued as she brought the conversation back to business. “We’re going to take two big National Guard trucks and an SUV. I want to take as many shooters and looters as possible, so we’re bringing about twenty guys. We should be able to grab a lot of stuff in less than an hour with that many folks.”

  The three of them turned down a side street and Grayson saw what Carrie had called “big Nationa
l Guard trucks.” Two Army Palletized Load System vehicles, PLS, sat idling, ready to go. The huge, ten-wheeled vehicles were each carrying the flatbed trailer with the removable side panels in place. “Wow, I thought you were talking about a 5-ton truck or something, we could load up half the store on these two things,” Grayson said.

  “Well, that’s sort of the plan. Since we gotta leave the relative safety of the neighborhood, we want to grab as much stuff as possible in one trip. The benefit to these babies is that we can leave the trailers loaded on the trucks instead of dropping them to the ground and they can double as a defensive position from up high. We don’t think the zombies can climb, so being higher than them benefits us and we can shoot down into them if it comes to that.”

  “It’ll be more work on everybody to lift the equipment into the back of the trailers, but that makes sound tactical advice,” he said with a nod. Then he asked, “Are you sure they can’t climb?”

  “We definitely know they can’t negotiate stairs, so it would stand to reason they couldn’t climb either.”

  “Ok, more information for us. Looks like you guys have thought of almost everything.”

  “Well, don’t go congratulating us yet, we still have a long way to go, but my dad saw a lot of shit in Vietnam and he has been invaluable to us for planning.”

  “Glad to have him on our side then.”

  They loaded into the back seat of the SUV and people who couldn’t fit into the cabs of the trucks simply rode in the trailer. The three vehicles made their way through the front gates of Pecan Valley and onto the freeway. Grayson was amazed at how empty and abandoned everything seemed to be. A month ago, this highway would have been choked with morning rush hour traffic, now their convoy was the only thing moving that he could see.

  Within ten minutes of leaving the safety of the gates, they were at the gardening center. After some maneuvering, the drivers had backed their trucks down the loading ramps to the dock and were within five feet of the large delivery doors in the back. Everyone hopped off of the trucks and move towards the doors except the drivers, who remained behind the wheel. One woman with a hunting rifle and large spotting scope climbed onto the cab of one of the trucks and began searching the distance.

  “Alright, let’s get these doors open and start loading equipment, priority is any and all types of vegetable seeds or bulbs, followed by gardening tools, fertilizer, batteries, full propane tanks and anything else you might think will be useful. We’ve got plenty of room, so get everything you can,” Carrie said in a voice low enough not to be heard too far away, but loud enough that everyone could hear her.

  She sent two men around the front of the store with radios to ensure they didn’t get ambushed from that direction. Another of her guys took a hooligan tool[20] from the SUV and positioned himself in front of the door. When Carrie was satisfied that everybody was ready, she signaled him to pop the door handle off with the claw, then he reversed the tool and used the other end to pry open the door. After a few hard jerks, the door flew inward and the man who’d opened it stepped back quickly.

  “Alright, you four begin opening the garage doors,” she said as she gestured towards four people on one side of the group. “The rest of us will clear the building…”

  “Hold on,” she said as she raised the walkie talkie to her ear. “You’re sure?” she asked into the device. “Ok,” she turned towards her group, “Jeff says that a few of the windows up front are broken out and there’s some blood. When we go in, we’ll try to get these doors opened first for some light, then we’ll clear the place.”

  The doors were easy to open, it was only a matter of unlatching the lock and pulling down on the chains that ran off into the rafters. The problem was the noise. The chains clanked and banged on their way down while the doors squealed and rattled on the way up. Almost as soon as the sound of the doors ended, they heard the moans coming from inside the store.

  Not bothering with whispering anymore, Carrie yelled out, “Defensive perimeter!” to her team. As Grayson moved into line in the semicircle around the open bay doors, he was impressed with the level of competence in the group. Sure, it wasn’t up to military standards, but it was even more impressive since they’d only been doing this a couple of weeks.

  The first of the zombies emerged from an aisle less than ten feet from the group. If he hadn’t been a biologically engineered killing machine, it would have been a pathetic sight. His skin was a grayish-blue that looked like it was sagging off of him. Several sores festered along the exposed skin of his face and arms. The sores leaked some type of milky yellowish fluid, which looked to Grayson like it would smell awful. He moved remarkably well for a dead guy. A little stiff, but he’d probably be able to keep up with someone walking at a brisk pace. Shots rang out in the warehouse as several of the men shot at it, most rounds impacting in the body or in the shelf behind it, until one round finally hit it in the brain and it collapsed.

  Another one, a female in a green apron walked into the open with part of her jaw dangling. Grayson hesitated at shooting a woman, but beside him, Carrie aimed and shot her in the head. A large chunk flew off down the aisle and another zombie stepped onto it and slipped to its knees. It slowly got up and started coming towards them. Again, this one was dispatched quickly. All three of them were dead before Grayson even fired a shot.

  The group waited a full minute before Carrie issued the order to clear the building. She turned towards Grayson, “You better get comfortable shooting these things, even those that used to be women and children, otherwise you and your girlfriend aren’t gonna last too long.”

  “I…You’re right,” he stammered. “Besides the up close fight with the two in our neighborhood, these are the first ones I’ve seen. I’ll be ready next time another one of those things shows up.”

  “You’d better be. With all the noise we just made, we’re sure to attract more of them.” Then she yelled out, “Alright, our timetable just got increased, if you’re not clearing the building, start hauling equipment from back here in the warehouse to the trucks!”

  Grayson turned to Jamie, who’d been behind him during the engagement. “You alright?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I wasn’t expecting that. I thought we’d come over here and get some seeds, then go back to our neighborhood.” She looked him in the eyes and smiled, “I can’t make that mistake again. This is really a different world now and I have to be prepared for anything. I won’t hold you up, I promise.”

  “Hey, no worries. We’ll get through this together,” he said. He really liked the crinkles at the corners of her eyes when she smiled at him…

  The next twenty minutes was a flurry of activity as they basically cleaned the place out. The sniper rifle rang out twice during that time. Each time Carrie ran to the truck and asked the woman what she’d seen. Both times she’d fired, there had been a lone zombie out beyond the highway and she was confident that she’d hit them in the head. Each time there was a shot, the scavengers redoubled their efforts. The general feeling was that it was only a matter of time before more of them were attracted to the sounds of the trucks and the gunfire.

  While they were emptying the inside of the store, Grayson found a great weapon for Jamie. It was a 4-foot long gardening tool called a culti-hoe. It had a virtually indestructible composite plastic handle and a metal head with a 3-prong cultivator on one side and an elongated hoe blade on the other. It gave her standoff range and also had the ability to do some damage. Since it wouldn’t be of use in a confined space, like in the aisles of the gardening center, she kept her fireplace poker and used a pilfered D-ring to attach it to her belt loop.

  After the inside of the store was picked clean, Carrie decided to try to load as much of the fencing, posts and masonry as they could carry. Even though they felt the clock was ticking, the group acknowledged the value of having additional building supplies that could be used for everything from fences to keep out the wildlife to elaborate semi-permanent barriers that could
tangle up their enemies long enough for them to be dispatched at a distance.

  They’d loaded all the bales of wire fencing and fence posts that they could find and were halfway through loading the cinder blocks when the two men watching the front of the store began firing wildly. Carrie began to raise the walkie talkie to her mouth, but stopped as the men rounded the corner firing over their shoulders.

  “We gotta go!” one of them shouted.

  “Very large group…Came out from between the buildings…Almost on top of us,” the other panted.

  Carrie didn’t waste any time. “Drop what you’ve got, everyone get in the trucks, we’re leaving now!” she yelled.

  Grayson let the two blocks he was carrying fall on either side of his legs. “Jamie!” he shouted. He turned completely around, frantically searching for his companion. He saw her auburn hair peek up over a pallet of mulch and she scrambled up off her knees.

  “I’m coming,” she said as she hurried over to his side. “That damn fireplace poker got caught on those bags of mulch and tripped me up,” she explained as he gently propelled her from behind.

  Before they could reach their SUV, the woman on the top of PLS cab began firing rapidly into the field behind the store. “We’ve got a lot of company coming from this way too,” she called out more calmly than Grayson would have if he’d been in her place.

  Carrie got a thumbs up from both trucks that everyone was accounted for and ordered everyone to begin driving. As the large trucks lurched forward behind the lead SUV, the sniper slid down into the trailer and received several high-fives from her companions.

  The SUV turned around the corner that the lookouts had taken when they retreated and less than halfway down the side of the building, a large mob of shambling creatures blocked the way. “Fuck! Back up,” Carrie screamed from the passenger seat. Into her walkie, she said, “We can’t get the SUV through that group. I need truck two to take the lead, we’ll follow behind you.”