Day 329 - Untitled Zombie Story Chapter 2 - (1,071 words)

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UNTITLED ZOMBIE STORY

By Wayne Webb

Chapter 2 

The smell from the fire lasted much longer than they expected, the lingering odour was both repulsive and attractive at the same time. The smell was pervasive and in their clothes and, then when washing was not enough they burned their clothes and settled on newly purloined garments from a local, but obviously now abandoned, shop.

The hard part was the hunger the smell caused, the desire it created for a good piece of steak or pork. Something with substance and depth to it, a real meal instead of the pickings they had made from abandoned stores and a seemingly endless supply of canned goods and dried foods. The butchers, there were none anymore and the freezers in supermarkets had gone off long ago. The off meat was originally used to try to trick and trap the zombies, but their sense of smell gave the meat away.

Not human meant not wanted.

The smell of cooking meat, even rotted human flesh, was overwhelming and made their mouths water while at the same time filling them with guilt and revulsion. They put a few blocks between them and the smoldering ashes, which smelled like a lingering BBQ on the street, the wind that crept around the town square and made the sound amplified, had the same effect with scents. The smell was wafted on the same breeze and the whole town square area smelled like food, crispy and tasty and utterly soul destroying.

They moved camp to a new building, it was not as well situated and was not the prime spot for seeing all and having multiple escape routes like the first one was but now they had these sonic devices the risk had lessened somewhat.

“How long do you think the batteries last on these?” James was musing as Derek was setting fire to another set of straggling zombies who had wandered into town. Each day they come to the street where the newcomers had hammered the sonic wands into the ground and checked for newly arrived undead.

There were nowhere near as many as when the group arrived, but that set had built over three days while they were pinned down up on the roof of the town center buildings.

“I don’t know, but we should use them as long as we can while we set up a new base.” Derek was still dismissive about the people who James credited with their ‘rescue’. His conspiracy meter was working overtime and suspected that this group lead by the man and his mother had engineered the problem as well as the solution.

“Maybe we can go find them, see what else they have. We don’t have to join them you know. Maybe they have solar powered versions of these Zombie Sticks?”

“Zombie Sticks? What are we like five years old?” Derek was not interested in any plan that meant hooking up with the Johnson family again.

“Well I don’t know what to call them? Do you?” James retorted.

“Pretty sure I would not call them Zombie Sticks now would I?”

“Call them whatever you want. This is technology that can help us, technology we need.” James had been arguing every day to get back with the group that had come to save them and see what else they could get from those people. Maybe even join with them, though this was an idea he could not say out loud to his brother.

Derek had a tendency to push himself into a corner, finding an opinion or an argument he could not easily come down from and then he would hunker down. Direct, frontal assault was never going to work. He had to be swayed, brought around to the idea and where possible be made to think it was his own.

Of course that was easier said than done and subtle was not working, hence his dropping of more salient points, like they did not need the people they needed the technology to help them survive on their own.

James did not want to be alone; he wanted company of something or someone other than his brother. However family was also paramount so no matter how much of a dick Derek was being? He was still the only family they had left. His closest and dearest had died gruesomely and pointlessly, the sacrifices his grandfather made only underlined who the closest to him was, and how much they meant to each other.

“Maybe we should turn them off during the day and then only turn them on at night? Conserve some energy; maybe double the life expectancy on them? Where do the batteries go? Can we pry them up? Take the little bastards and move them? Can we?”

James smiled to himself and did not let his brother see it, which would have undoubtedly been interpreted badly. This was the first time that Derek acknowledged the need for the devices, whatever he wanted to call them now. The Zombie Sticks were the in, and the end of that path lead to the new society that was being set up in a safe-ish zombie-free-ish world outside the bounds of the impromptu barricades.

“I don’t know a thing about them, anymore than you do. Don’t. We should have askd for a manual or some instructions or something before taking them.” James finally answered his brother’s question.

“We did not take them remember, these were given… no not even given to us, they were left. Left behind, left for whatever reason that has nothing to do with us. These are disposable to them, they must be configurable or rechargeable or something right?”

“If only we had someone to ask these questions of.” Where direct demands did not work, indirect sarcasm did have the desired effect.

“Yeah whatever dickhead. Just see if there is a battery compartment or a way to open them or something?”

They worked in the street for another hour and did not find any way into the Zombie attractors,  and a few stragglers turned up while they were still there, forcing Derek to take matters in hand. It was an opportunity for him to express himself on the undead, to take out the anger, frustration and rage at being cornered like this in his own town.

They were safer and better prepared than ever before and yet he still resented that and resented them for handing over the tools of their survival.