We're In The Pipe, Five By Five

Travis Green had made a meticulous plan, but as usual, Ben Graham changed it on the fly, and Travis had followed his lead. Ben had enthusiasm and a certainty of soul that made nay-saying difficult, and Travis, mild and usually quiet, tended to save his conflict energy for serious concerns. Travis lacked the formal education his friends had; he was a skilled handyman and autodidact, but sometimes lacked confidence in his own skills.

Amanda Johnson, the third member of the trio which had been formed originally in kindergarten, paid careful attention to what Travis had to say, but she too tended to follow Ben. Ben had no interest in leading and rarely seemed to realize that was what he was doing, and the other two hardly considered themselves to be following, but Travis knew in practice, that's what the situation was.

They'd planned to be out of town and find some cabin to stay in, according to Travis's roadmap of the apocalypse, as Ben called it, but he'd decided to swing by Gary's apartment first and now they were staying in the Cities and working to help other survivors instead of focusing singly on their own survival. Which was just like Ben – goodhearted, optimistic, and not always completely rational.

“Ok,” Gary said. “You're heading over the Ford Parkway bridge and then going south to the Aubrey Encampment. You'll let me know when you arrive, I'll follow within the week once I have Benjamin the Asshole.” Gary called the Fort the Aubrey Encampment because aside from these three kids, as he saw them, there were few people left he knew he could trust. He'd known them since they were small.  When he'd had a house down along Fairview, Ben had frequently mowed the lawn for him. Benjamin the Asshole Cat was named after Ben, on a suggestion from Amanda a good eight years ago.

“We've packed archery supplies and everything we'd planned to take with us on the bike trip to Utah next year, since we won't be needing it for that anymore,” Amanda said. “And we'll stop at Lunds and get whatever human and cat food we can find, barring any trouble from biters.”

“The biters eat anything that smells like food that they can get their claws on,” Gary said. “There may not be anything but canned goods and dried food. And because it did have food, I am a little worried Lunds is being used as a den.”

“We'll assess when we get there,” Ben said with absolute confidence. “We'll grab a bag of dog food if we can too. We have room on the bike trailers and we may run into a pet dog or something.” His yearning was apparent.

Amanda play-slugged his shoulder. “Poor Ben needs a puppy.”

He play-slugged her back. “Mandy needs some feminine hygiene products.”

“That doesn't even make sense, you dick.”

“It was a pretty bad comeback,” Travis agreed. “But he's not a dick. Dicks are good.”

Ben play-slugged him then, and Gary put on a show of separating them all before dropping the fire ladder off the roof of the apartment building into the parking lot between the apartments and the garage where the bikes were set up and ready to go. They'd barricaded the entire bottom two floors of the building aside from a cat-sized opening in a ground floor apartment Gary was hoping to lure Benjamin in through. This way Gary could leave cat food out and leave a door open for his cat and not risk a much more dangerous visitor. Now the ladder from the roof was the only way in and out.

They had packed a two way radio set that would work better than the walkie talkies, though they had one of those too, from the same set Gary had shared with the Aubrey family. Along with the two way radio set with ten radios that Gary had found in one of the neighboring apartments, they had a solar charger to keep it powered and recharge the handsets. The three friends intended to set up a base camp at Fort Snelling and make it a safe place for other survivors to gather.

“Eve Aubrey's the mother there,” Gary told Travis as first Amanda, then Ben, swung over the edge of the roof and down the ladder at just before eleven AM, as the sun shown brightly in a sky with no trace of the snowstorm Gary's old bones said was coming. “Follow her lead, she kept three children alive in all this. Make sure Ben listens to her, ok?”

“She shall be our glorious leader,” Travis said solemnly, and Gary pretended to shove him off the roof.

“Just do what you can and if there needs to be a boss, let the one with years of experience bossing be that boss, ok?” he said as Travis started down the ladder.

“All hail Eve the Glorious,” Travis said. “I getcha. We'll help her and get Camp Aubrey ready for any survivors.”

“Ok. There's a midwife out there who's been in contact with Rob, I'm going to send them over as soon as you make sure the encampment is safe from any potential biters coming over the walls. She's got a couple pregnant sorts with her.”

“All right, ladies!” Travis said, and Gary wagged a warning finger at him.

“Get off my plane.”

The temp seemed to be hovering at just above freezing. The trio checked their gear one last time and headed up Ford Parkway, biking right down the middle of the street. There was a city bus on its side, but it was only blocking a single lane, and there were only a few cars here and there on the road.

Ben stopped himself from whistling, a long standing, cheerful habit. Now it would just attract undue attention, though he personally felt it wouldn't be long until he could whistle again – he was just waiting until the biters all froze to death, and here in late Minnesota fall, it wouldn't be long. He suspected the storm Gary insisted was coming would be the end of the remaining rioters who hadn't succumbed to starvation or other rioters. As far as he was concerned there was no real need to move to Camp Aubrey, but since there weren't any rotting bodies there and he'd always wanted to camp out at Fort Snelling anyway, he supported the plan. His original objective for wanting to camp out at Fort Snelling was to do some ghost hunting; he'd never seen a ghost and he figured if someone was going to see one, an old fort would be a great place to look. Maybe to spook his friends a few times real good, and he could probably still do that. Plus, he loved helping people, and surely this mother and her three kids could use help and protection.

Just call me Ben the Constable of Camp Aubrey, he though to himself, even though in all honesty that job would suit Amanda way more than himself. She had the training in martial arts, she was stern, and she was quicker to respond to wrongdoing than Ben was.

Ok, he thought. Constable Amanda, Quartermaster Travis because God knows how much Travis likes to organize and make sure everything is fairly distributed. And Ben shall have the job of... Ben can be... Ben can be a ranger! Like Aragorn. Except I'm clearly more likely to refer to myself in third person.

The parking lot to Lunds was empty, the doors broken open. Either the biters had been through here for food and fun bitey times, or other survivors had looted supplies. Ben hoped it was the survivors and that they'd left stuff behind for the trio to find.

They pulled into the parking lot in silence and parked the bikes inside the doors, out of sight. Amanda pointed to herself and to the right, then pointed Ben to the middle and Travis to the left side of the store. She held her machete in her dominant left hand; Travis had bear mace and Ben had a baseball bat at hand.

“I really need a sword,” he whispered.

Amanda held her finger up to her lips to tell him to hush until they'd swept the store and made sure there were no threats.

Remnants of blood spatter and body parts were in evidence in only one aisle, the rest of the store was simply trashed and mostly empty. Even the pet foods aisle was torn up, only toiletries and paper goods avoided most damage. The dry pet foods had been torn open and eaten by either rioters or hungry former pets.

“Reeks in here,” Ben whispered with his hand over his mouth and nose.

“Oh yeah. Like rotten cabbage, death, and unbathed animals,” Amanda agreed.

“You're turned on now, aren't you.” 

She slugged his arm.

Travis rolled his eyes and started gathering up canned pet food. “I can fit a few cases of this in my trailer,” he said quietly. “Why don't you get some canned goods for people, Amanda, and Ben can go get dried food, rice and pasta if any remains.”

“He said remains,” Ben said, and Amanda slugged his arm again. The two went out of the pet food aisle slugging each other in the arm, back and forth.

They all met at the front of the store as they finished up.

“I got matches and lighters, some toilet paper, over the counter meds, and a bunch of canned stuff from Amanda's aisle,” Ben said. “All the dried stuff was torn into.”

“I can't carry any more food,” Amanda said. “I'll be too heavy and won't be able to go very fast – but I did get a pretty decent amount of canned goods packed in, including some raviolis that I am calling dibs on.”

“Once we're set up we can forage more,” Travis said. “We just need to get settled at the encampment and make it safe for others. Then we'll have to bring in as much food and supplies as we can before winter really sets in.”

“We'll need wood,” Amanda said.

“You heard it, Mandy needs wood,” Ben said, and was slugged.

“We will, and we'll have to figure out how to get it without making tons of noise, we should gather deadfall. And maybe we can get some space heaters that run off propane or something.”

“Then we can die a peaceful death in our sleep,” Ben said.

“No, you idiot, there are some made to be used in tents. I think,” she said.

“We're past noon,” Travis reminded them. “We need to go. It gets dark early.”

“And they mostly come out at night. Mostly,” Ben said.

Wibbling Away

Katrin stomped around in her favorite black boots. They were off-brand leather moccasin boots with long fur all over the leg part that came halfway up to her knees; they weren't as warm as good winter boots, but she loved them fiercely. There was at least a faux-shearling liner to keep her feet warm today, when the sun was out and quickly melting the snow into slush; and they were pretty waterproof, though she'd managed to get them soggy anyway.

She was making a drawing of Sonic the Hedgehog in the snow with her footprints, across the parade grounds in the center of the Fort. Her brother and her mom were napping, Val curled up with his mother, his belly full of buttered bread and candy. Eve had taken some water, but couldn't get interested in food. Katrin felt as long as they were resting, she was better off stomping around out here in the outside, where she could listen for Mr Joe's truck and run over to let the guys in.

Several time she heard something that might have been movement, and just in case ran to the top of the Round Tower, but nothing was coming up the road toward the Fort. Just to be sure, she also climbed up on to the Half Moon Battery at the easternmost part of the Fort and looked all around. From here she could see a vast spread of the entire Twin Cities area, with black smoke still rising from parts. With her feet here, on the very old stones of a Fort built in a different era, she felt almost like she was looking through time itself.

“This fort is all wibbley-wobbley timey-wimey,” she announced to the woods below. “And I, Katrin Aubrey, am a Time Lord.”

Far below the Fort, along the trails, she saw what looked like a pack of dogs running toward the south. At first she mistook them for wolves and shivered, feeling even more like the Fort was a-sail in Time, but when she looked more carefully she could see they were pet dogs, or had been. Before.

Kat slushed back through the melting snow to the front door of the house, and walked in as quietly as she could to check on her family and her cats. Eve and Val were both still asleep, Val's curly hair barely showing from behind Eve as he cuddled beneath the blankets on the side of the bed closest to the wall. Eve's cheeks were red.

The preteen found her cat, Leah, sleeping in front of the fire in Eve's room, and Cassie up in the window in the parlor. She set out a little food for them, just out of gratitude that they were safe, and hurried back outside, leaving a small trail of puddled footprints that would surely have aggravated Eve if she was feeling better.

This time, up on top of the Round Tower so she could both check her progress on Sonic and look for her brother and Mr Joe and the truck, she actually saw the truck coming up from the visitor's center parking lot area. It was moving very slowly and almost unsteadily, and she knew instinctively that her brother was driving.

“Probably a mistake,” she said under her breath, and ran down to open the vehicle gate after making sure nothing resembling a rioter was anywhere she could see.

She had several funny things to say planned out to make fun of her brother's driving, but fell silent when she saw Will pull in with no sign of Mr Joe, Will's face stricken and grey.  She closed the vehicle door in silence.

Will pulled up beside the gun shed and parked the truck. He got out very slowly, closed the door and leaned against it, his forehead on the cold metal of the truck door.

“Mr Joe?” Katrin asked softly.

`

“There were zombies at the pharmacy. They... they got him,” Will said, his voice thick with tears. Kat ran over and wrapped her arms around him and let him cry for a moment, just a moment, before he manfully stood fully upright and patted her on the back.

“Let's get Mom her meds,” he said. “Let's unpack.”

Night fell, and Will taught himself how to make toast in a fireplace for Val and Kat. He placed the bread slices directly on the surface of a hot, dry pan, flipping them carefully with his fingers and only singing himself once. When the toast was done, he fried up a can of Spam and made cheese cubes of the last of the cheese. The last loaf of bread was nearly gone, and Eve was too ill to eat, and more worrisome for Val, too ill to cook.

For dessert Katrin passed around hard candy and bottles of fancy soda from the gift shop she'd kept cool on the little landing outside the back door of the house.

“There's a big kitchen in the basement,” she said as Will poked at the fire. She wasn't sure what to do with the used dishes, so she gathered them all up into one of the plastic bins. “It's got a real oven in the fireplace where people used to bake things like bread.”

“I don't think we can bake bread – we don't have any yeast.”

“Also, remember? You can bake bread in the dutch ovens in the fire – Mom did that at a pow-wow before.”

“No yeast,” Will repeated.

“We could make fry bread.”

“Fry bread!” Val chirped. “I love it fry bread! Make mine cheese on top!”

“We're out of cheese,” Kat reminded him.

“Oh, no, my cheeses,” Val said mournfully.

“Joe might still have some in his quarters,” Will said after a moment, and his siblings fell silent too.

Val finally cleared his throat. “Joe like me have cheeses,” he said firmly.

“He wouldn't want us to waste it,” Will agreed. “I'll go see what we can use in the morning.”

Kat tucked Val in while Will emptied the commode out into one of the modern visitor's bathrooms; the one in the building used by the former employees had a shower in it and Will wondered if he could rig something up so they could shower there instead of having to sponge bathe.

“You read me story,” Val demanded. “I want Where Wild Things Are.”

“I don't have that book,” Kat said. “We left it at the apartment.”

“You get me new one?”

“I'll try,” she said, and kissed his forehead.

“You tell me story. About Sharknado.”

Will checked his mother and gave her another dose of the antibiotics and pain meds, then went up to his room. He pulled the walkie talkie out and pinged Gary.

“Young Will!” Gary said through the static just as Will was dozing off, exhausted.

“Gary. Hi. We're here. Joe has been killed – the medic. He died today.”

“I'm sorry to hear that, man. I'll have three young folks coming your way the day after tomorrow, though, you won't be out there alone long. How's Mother Eve?”

“Her fever's going down, I think, but she's still pretty ill. We have the medicine for her though.”

“Still not Red Flu?”

“Definitely not. She was bitten, human bites are filthy.”

“At least it's not like the movies – we don't turn from being bitten. And I do have some good news, for me at least. I saw Benjamin the jerk cat today! I'm tempting him into the apartment with food. I have to be careful because the biters eat the cat food if they smell it, and then they're crawling all over here again. But as soon as I have Benjamin, I'll be over too. I've got some solar power rechargers and stuff like that. Not a lot, but enough to recharge some batteries. And power the radios.” A long moment of silence followed. “Will? Will Aubrey?”

Will snored softly, the sound not picked up by the walkie talkie.

“Will?” Gary tried one more time. Katrin heard him as she came in to check on her brother and tell him she intended to curl up with Eve for the night. She covered her sleeping brother up and picked up the walkie talkie.

“He fell asleep,” she said loudly into the hand-held device, holding it in front of her. Will snored through the disturbance.

“Well, goodnight, fair maiden, and keep safe.”

“You too,” she said, giggling a little.

Driving Lesson

Joe drove slowly up 54^th street and turned toward the hospital on Minnehaha. The snow had melted off the roads and sidewalks already, and it appeared the military had kept the roads fairly clear of cars over here while they'd still been around.

“When we come out of the hospital, I'm going to have you drive us back to the Fort,” Joe said, his voice inviting no argument. It was important the boy know how to get around and how to drive the truck.

“I've driven before,” Will said, offhand, desperately casual. “My aunt let me drive around her parking lot.”

“Got a license?”

“No – driver's ed is expensive, and you don't need it to get your license after you turn 18, so I was waiting.”

“Well, you get us back to the Fort and I'll call you a licensed provisional driver,” Joe Raymond said, with a half-smile. He came to a stop in front of the main drive into the hospital, beside the metro train station. “We'll come out, and then drive the wrong way on this road – we'll go straight down that way, and end up back at the Fort without a lot of lollygagging.”

“I've never driven on the wrong side of the road before,” Will said nervously.

“I hope you don't get a ticket.”

Joe pulled up to the outpatient entrance and parked on the sidewalk just outside the broken doors. They sat quietly for a while, Joe holding a finger to his lips. The door was broken and still, a massive revolving door with the glass broken and twisted bits of debris wedged between the door sides and the walls.

Human remains littered the foyer, but only bits and pieces. Everything else, Will realized, was long since eaten. He held in a gag.

Nothing moved inside the hospital. A tiny dusting of snow sifted down from the rooftops, the small icy tinkle as it fell against the truck the only sound Will could discern outside of their own breathing.

Joe pointed at the crowbar on the floor on the passenger side of the truck, indicating that Will should take it as a weapon, and then the truck door, and then into the hospital foyer. He pointed at his own eyes and then all around them.

Will nodded. The younger man slid quietly out of the truck, leaving his door open. He slipped into the hospital, alert, his heart pounding, his vision sharp.

Inside to the right was a small hallway and what appeared to be a coffee shop, then a security desk. Beyond that the entrance split into hallways that had been closed off and locked with heavy doors. A couple of these doors were also chained shut.

He stood there for long moments, adjusting to the difference in light inside the hospital, listening for any hint of human or once-human movement.

After long moments he gestured a thumbs up to Joe, who slid out of his side of the truck as well, leaving it running. In preparation for hauling supplies out of the hospital, Joe opened the back of his truck. He left his rifle behind, but took an axe and his backpack with him. The rifle would be less useful inside, and loud – if there were rioters nearby, the sound of the rifle firing would draw them in.

Will hurried along behind Joe as the older man moved with surprising speed and silence, following him behind the security desk. Joe looked at him and mimed turning a key in a lock, and they both searched for keys. Will mostly stuck to the desk; Joe, with some reluctance, sorted through what was left of a security guard's torn and bloody uniform on the floor. Some hair and bone remained, but little else of the actual security guard.

They found no keys, and Will again followed Joe as quickly and silently as he could as Joe led him to the pharmacy.

At the blocked off intersection of hallways, Joe turned right. The pharmacy was just a slight bit down the hallway on the left side, this hallway was opened a little further, and blocked off at the next intersection with chained doors and piles of furniture. The young man suppressed a shiver.

Someone had managed to close the place down pretty securely, probably in hopes of a rescuing force.

Will stood between Joe and the foyer, keeping guard with Joe's axe, while Joe popped the pharmacy door open with the crowbar. They switched weapons back and flipped on their flashlights going in to the unlit, unwindowed room.

Joe swept the pharmacy with the beam of his flashlight, then, seeing it was empty of life, closed the pharmacy door and propped a chair beneath the lever handle. He pulled a small camp lantern out of his backpack and turned in on, setting it on the pharmacy counter. The two jumped over the counter. Joe pulled out a plastic bin from a pile stacked to the side and handed it to Will, gesturing for the boy to follow him. He held his flashlight in his teeth as he combed through the shelves, much more sparsely stocked than he had hoped.

He filled two bins total with medications and first aid supplies. In the back they found some left behind scarfs, hats and mittens, and they packed those into the two bins as well.

“There's some food back here in the break room,” Joe said. “Lets get these bins in the truck then come back for a couple more, if we can find enough to fill them.” Will nodded eagerly.

Will dropped the crow bar as he slid his bin into the back of the truck, making a loud clash that stopped his heart. He froze, but Joe quickly and silently got both bins secured and shut the back of the truck, dragging them both around to the driver side door, where they crouched, waiting to hear any noise indicating a hungry creature had heard them.

There was nothing, not even animal sounds – no crows, no small birds.

“Lets make this quick,” Joe muttered, and they hurried back in, Will grabbing the crowbar on his way past.

They filled two more bins up with the rest of the medications and the snacks from the cupboards and the lockers in the break room. Joe hugged a canister of coffee with some glee.

Will followed him out into the pharmacy as they made to leave, and nearly bumped into his back when Joe stopped suddenly.

“We left the door open,” Joe whispered, and was answered by an unintelligible, slobbery growl.

“You don't,” another voice whispered back.

“Back up, back up,” Joe said. “Back inside the break room!” Will hurried to obey, stumbling backwards as Joe hurled his bin at the four painfully thin, shaking zombies climbing up over the counters and toward them. The boy handed him his bin and Joe hurled that too, just as they both stepped back behind the threshold, and Joe slammed the break room door between them and the zombies.

“You don't!” one of the creatures snarled, and they hit the door with force. While they seemed to have some trouble with doorknobs, this door opened with a lever handle, and did not lock. Joe and Will both grabbed for the handle and held it upright with all their strength just in time as one of the creatures managed to press against the lever.

The break room was dark, their flashlights dropped out in the pharmacy, the lantern still on the counter out there.

“Shit. Shit,” Will whispered frantically.

“Got your weapon?” Joe asked, calmly.

“It's by my feet,” Will said.

“Reach down and pick it up.”

“I can't let go of the handle!”

“Boy, I said reach down and pick it up,” Joe barked, and Will bent down instinctively and grabbed the crowbar. “Now, hold the handle for me. They're not jogging it on purpose, I don't think. I'm going to go to the back of the room with my axe. You're going to pull the door open when I say so, and stay behind the door. Then when they run in after me -”

“No, no-” Will began.

“Shut it, kid. Listen up now. When they run in after me, you're going to run out into the pharmacy, jump over the counter, and start making noise out in the hallway. Then when they come after you, I'll follow them out. Run out to the truck and get in, ok? Shut the doors. Slide over to the driver's seat. Drive around the circle there just fast enough to lead them, get ahead a bit, drive back here, and I'll jump in, ok?”

“I could go lure them to the back of the break room.”

“No good. You run faster than me, it has to be you out in the hallway.”

Will struggled without speaking for a moment, holding the handle tightly against the bumping of the creatures making a hungry racket on the other side of the door.

“You run faster. You're the best chance to get those medicines back to your mother. Give her the 500 milligram Augmentin, every 8 hours.”

“We need you to be there,” Will said, his voice breaking. For a moment he sounded barely adolescent.

“I'm gonna do my best, kid, but we gotta be ready for contingencies. Weren't you ever a boy scout?”

“Thought about it...”

“Enough talking. Let's do it already. Ready?” He felt Will nod and let go of the handle. Will heard him back up against the far wall. Joe started banging his axe handle on the wall and shouting.

The creatures on the other side of the door fell silent for a moment, then began calling and scrabbling again with more insistence.

“I'm ready, Will,” Joe said, and Will opened the door, pulling it in and then tightly against him against the inside wall. “Wait... wait... GO!” the old man roared.

Will slid around the door and bolted for the counters, crowbar in hand. He leapt up on the counter and turned around to see what was happening, hesitating for a moment.

The old man was down already. Will heard him scream in sudden pain, and he screamed too. Two of the creatures looked up, turned those bulging red eyes on Will, and growled like animals.

“GET OUT!” Joe screamed, the sound choked off suddenly.

“Shit!” Will turned and jumped down off the counters, bolting for the pharmacy door, managing to slam it shut just as the two creatures cleared the counters themselves. He felt the impact of their bodies on the other side of the door as he braced himself against it, before remembering the door opened inwards, and their own bodies would hold it shut.

“No no no no NOT!” one of them shrieked.

“You fucking fucks!” Will shrieked back, and hit the door with the crowbar. They scrabbled and howled even louder, and he realized what he was doing – yelling at some things that had no ability to even understand human speech any more.

“I hate you,” he muttered. The bins were both lost. Joe Raymond was lost, too, his voice silenced in death. “I hate you things.”

Shoulders slumped, hands shaking and eyes red with tears he wasn't aware of, Will headed back to the truck to try and get home and save his mother.

Sorry about this!

Unexpected health issues mean there will be a two week hiatus.  Meanwhile, here's a picture of Eve Aubrey as a clothespin doll.

With stun gun!

Gone Away Is The Bluebird

The young man went to work with a desperate sense of urgency, flinging snow to the side as fast as he could to make a path between Joe's door and the commander's door. The parade ground between the two buildings was far longer than he'd realized before, and he was wet with sweat and worry by the time he reached his own door, with Joe finally behind him. Joe carried his suitcase-sized first aid kit in one hand and a duffel bag in the other. He wore boots on his feet and wore a real winter coat, thick mittens, a hat and a scarf.

“I was ready for the weather,” Joe said at Will's envious look. “It's Minnesota, for goodness sake.”

While Joe went into his mother's room to talk to Eve, Will sorted through some of the stuff they'd managed to haul back to the house yesterday, looking for dry clothes. Among the stuff his mother had dragged back from the store, he found some boots, too small for his own size 15 feet, but he set them out for Val and Katrin. He changed his pants and socks for the time being, hanging his wet things over the back of a chair near the parlor fire, setting his shoes near the hearth to dry as well as they could.

Joe changed Eve's bandages, paying particular attention to the wound he'd stitched up on her left forearm. Her ankle was no longer swollen, and he was pleased with how well it had healed in a couple days of rest, but the stitched bite wound looked angry and oozed pus.

“No doubt, Eve. You need real antibiotics.”

“I'm not sure my insurance is current,” she joked. He cleaned out the wound, releasing the stitches he'd placed over a flappy part of the wound, slathered it with antibiotic ointment, and rebandaged it.

“I'll take a check,” he said, so gravely at first she was worried he really wanted payment and began to catalog in her head what she could offer as a useful barter. His wink was all that gave him away. “Look, I'm going to have to steal your son for a bit. The VA hospital is not far. I have some antibiotics here, but you'll need more, and there's a pharmacy there.”

“How far?”

“Couple miles, but I have a truck parked out by the cannon shed. We'll drive. I just need his help carrying stuff, I may as well grab all I can while I'm there. God knows I don't want to leave the walls here again anytime soon.”

“It snowed,” she said, her voice wavering.

“It'll melt by midday, we'll leave before noon and be back before dusk. It's best to go in the brightest part of the day.”

She nodded, her face still pinched with worry.

He gave her a couple of pills and her tin mug of water. “This is amoxicillin. It's not my first choice here, but it's what I have. I'll get you something better. Are you allergic to penicillin?”

She shook her head and lay back down.

“Rest then. I'll go talk to Will. We'll be back before too long.”

“You need to look out for Val for a bit,” Will told Katrin. “We're gonna go get some medicine for Mom. We won't be gone long. I need you to come close the vehicle doors behind us, ok?”

The sun was high enough and warm enough that the snow had begun to melt. Mr Joe climbed to the top of the Round Tower to watch for movement while Will and Katrin moved the barrels he'd set up against the vehicle gate in the northwestern wall.

Seeing no movement, he went down to his truck and started it up. It was an older Toyota, brown, with a truck topper covering the truck bed. He'd always maintained it properly, and it started now without any complaint.

The ground was slippery and slushy, but he had four wheel drive and the snow itself was only half a foot deep here. He pulled outside of the vehicle gates and watched while Will pulled and Katrin pushed them closed behind him.

Will listened for the sound of the gates being locked. “Ok, go get warm and take care of Val. I'll be back soon. I'll grab you some chocolate if I see some over there.”

“Ok,” she said softly.

He climbed into the passenger seat of the truck and pulled the door closed. “All right,” he said to Mr Joe. “Ready.”

Joe Raymond drove around the visitors center and through the parking lot to the Fort. Where the road was blocked, he simply drove up on the curb and around the blockage.

“Will we just run the zombies down?” Will asked, curiously. He leaned forward, searching the way ahead with interest.

“Lord, no. Just imagine. You ever see a car hit a deer?”

“Oh, yeah,” Will said. The family had lived in the Northwoods for his early life, until Eve had gathered her children and fled their father. Deer were all over the roads at times, and Will had been a small boy riding in the front seat of his father's small sedan when they'd hit a deer, barely more than a fawn, one year.

“What happened to the car?”

“Oh. Cracked the radiator and smashed up the hood, and broke the windshield.”

“Bad thing to happen with an angry infected Rioter running around, or a few of 'em, right?”

Will shuddered. “Right.”

“We're heading to Coldwater Spring to get some water, first,” Joe said. “When they built the Fort, the soldiers camped down at the spring until the Fort was ready to live in. After that, they got most of their water from the spring. I got some hose and a hand pump and such in my toolbox back there.”

Will had seen the huge metal box, as wide and deep as the truck bed itself, when they were loading the barrels in.

“Ok,” he said, though waiting even a little to get his mother medicine worried him. They needed water.

“You kids packed what, five barrels back there? With that plus what we have still at the Fort, we should be good for water for a couple weeks. As long as we don't get any more people in without getting more water in.”

“Gary says he's sending three people over when the snow melts, but they'll be bringing supplies.”

Joe harrumphed. “Three? They could take a couple rooms in the barracks. Or an officers apartment. If you've got someone out there sending more people this way, we're gonna have to start portioning space out to make sure there's enough room.”

“We can sort out a plan when we get back,” Will said. “When we can walk around and look at stuff directly.”

“Yup,” Joe said shortly. They turned down a dirt path, almost heading back to the Fort, as far as Will could tell. “It'll get noisy, and then interesting to the infected, if we get more folks. We'll have to do something about the northwest wall, or we'll get infected coming over it.”

“Maybe we should set a watch up.”

“Yup. Tonight we can take 4 hour shifts. Sleep in the gatehouse and we'll trade off walking around – the Round Tower and the walkway over the gate should do it. Snow will melt soon enough and we can trade off with the new folks.”

“Will you be in charge then?”

Joe sighed. “I don't think we need to worry about that yet. We can discuss it when your mom is well.” There was not a single part of Joe that was interested in being the boss of anything more than the hospital ward and the doctor's quarters, as long as the Fort stayed safe and free of the rioters. He'd turn over the hospital ward except for his own quarters if a real doctor showed up, but as far as he was concerned, his quarters were his now, and the hospital his in the meanwhile.

They pulled up in front of a swampy area, unencumbered with ice on the surface of the water. A building, little more than four connecting arches made from the same stone as Fort Snelling, stood at the edge of the water on the upper side of the mild slope, and fresh water spilled from a spout at the water's side of the building.

“I was hoping the spring would face this way,” Joe said. “So we could more easily get it into the barrels. But I can work with this.”

They parked with the back of the truck as close to the spring as possible. Joe rummaged around in his tool box, then directed Will in hanging a bucket, suspended from two ropes looped around the arches closes to the spring spout, so that the water from the spout spilled into the bucket and was caught there before falling out into the swamp. They lowered a hose into the bucket, and Joe assembled an apparatus of hoses and his hand pump that allowed Will to sit at the edge of the building and work the hand pump while Joe directed the pumped water into the barrels in the back of his truck.

“Pump faster, kid,” Joe said, looking at the sky. “We're getting close to noon here, and we want to be moving back home before it starts to get even a little dark. Nice bright day today.”

Will agreed. The sun was high and the light bounced blindingly off the melting snow. He couldn't imagine the zombies would like to be out in this light with their bulging red eyes.

“My name's Will, Mr Joe,” he said, leaning forward to pump harder.

“Doesn't matter, kid. I won't remember. I'll just call you kid.”

At last the fifth barrel was filled and covered again, and they packed the hoses and the pump carefully away. Joe decided to leave the bucket where it was for ease of future use.

“All right. Time to hit the VA hospital. There might be people there,” he said abruptly, and gestured Will to the passenger door of the truck.

“People, or...”

“People, or something.”

Robbie Rocket

“Sorry about that, folks,” Robbie Rocket said. “Just let me say this much – don't get the regular flu in the middle of the zombie epidemic, or things will really get rough and gross. All better now, generator's up and running again, I've got some music queued up for you this evening while I sleep – again – but first, the news.

“I don't know how many of us are left. I don't know how many of us there are here in the Twin Cities. I don't know how many of the rioters remain, either.

“I do know there's a storm hitting the Cities as I speak; I hope you are bundled up and prepared and I wish I had been well in time to warn you.

“What I am hearing from Las Vegas – the only city I have contact with this evening – is that there are about 900 survivors down there, mostly holed up at the Hoover Dam, of all places. That's 900 of about half a million, not including visitors.” Robbie Rocket was silent for a moment. Inside the commander's house, more than a thousand miles away from the destruction of Las Vegas, Eve, Will, and Katrin lowered their heads.

Val rocked slowly back and forth in place in his wheelchair, his helicopter on his lap, grizzled Cassiopeia asleep wedged against his thigh. He had no strong understanding of what Robbie Rocket was talking about.

“I'm told they have a military presence at the Dam. I have not spoken to anyone in the military there, but I am told there's about twenty soldiers lead by a previously retired lieutenant. I hope to speak to one of the members of the military there and find out if they have continuing contact with other groups.

“But tonight, I have not heard from my previous contacts. I have not heard from Duluth. I have not heard from Chicago. I have not heard from North Dakota. And I have not heard from our nation's capital.”

There was another moment of silence.

“But I am still here, and you are still here. My friend Gary is still here, and still annoying. He says he has a few survivors in his building, and a few more he's heard from; we are not divulging locations today but I wanted you to know we are still here, that there are more of us, and that we're making plans to help survivors find each other.

“And now, I'm recovering from the flu, the plain old regular flu that doesn't make you a crazy cannibal, and I am exhausted. So here's some music for a stormy evening, starting with Katrina and the Waves, because I damn well need to hear something cheerful, and I'm betting you do too. Good night, Twin Cities, my home, my neighbors, my brothers and sisters.”

“I love this song!” Val squealed, rocking faster.

Katrin wanted to sleep with her mother, but decided against doing so even though she was still afraid of the storm.  Eve looked worn out, blue circles beneath her eyes, and her pain was apparent. Katrin worried about bumping her mother's bitten arm, or her broken arm, or the sore ankle.

Will gave his mother more ibuprofen and helped her get settled on the newly thickly padded master bed; then he helped Val into bed in the nursery.

“Look,” he told Katrin, showing her the deep window wells. “Very thick walls, and heavy wooden shutters. It's safer here even in a storm than our basement out there was. You'll be ok.”

“I need Bertram,” Katrin said.

Will tucked his siblings into the double bed in the nursery, Katrin near the wall and Val closer to the commode, and tucked the stuffed tiger in between them. The cats arranged themselves near the siblings' heads.

“I wish Todd was here,” Katrin said forlornly.

“Todd comin',” Val said.

“I do too,” Will said. In an unexpected moment of paternal-like feeling, he kissed his siblings on the head. “Goodnight, brats.”

“Goodnight, jerk,” Katrin said affectionately, her eyes already drifting closed.

“Goodnight... ASSteroid,” Val said, and giggled out loud, tilting his head back.

“Doggone it, Val...”

Upstairs, in one of the attic rooms, Will had found a four poster bed with ropes where there'd be a box spring in a regular modern bed. This room was nearly empty (and the one like it at the other end of the attic was empty), with just one dormer window. There were a few small decorations – hatboxes, a suitcase, a navy and white bedspread – and a single dormer window. Will padded the double bed with his extra mattress from the previous night in the hospital ward; the mattresses here at the Fort were all relatively hard and uncomfortable to his modern tastes. He'd covered the mattress with a wool blanket and then a softer quilt for insulation, then piled more blankets on top to lay beneath for warmth. There was no fireplace up here, but heat rises, so he suspected he'd be warm enough.

If he wasn't, he'd drag the mattresses back down to the parlor and sleep there tonight.

In the pale light of his battery-powered LED camping lantern, he checked his watch and found it was time to talk to Gary. Only 9 o'clock; usually his mother would be up late into the night and he and Val would only now be getting sleepy.

He turned on the walkie talkie.

“Gary?” he asked.

“Young William!” Gary's voice boomed. He sounded perhaps a little tipsy. “I was hoping to hear from you tonight. How's your mother and family?”

“Mom's doing all right. The kids are asleep. How are you?”

“Staying warm enough. I've got a few other survivors here, and my living room has a gas fireplace. We've got food, and candles, all that. It's not really cold enough yet for the snow to stick around, but it's makin' it plenty clear we need to get moving over there for the winter.”

“There's plenty of room here,” Will said. “And we have a medic. We're low on food, though, for a crowd.”

“Check, check. I'm sending three young people over as soon as the snow melts after the storm. We have food and supplies – they brought some, and they'll stop at Lunds on the way over. And they have some archery supplies as well. Guns too, but we learned today that gunshots bring the infected running.”

“Ok. We'll be ready. When should I check in again?”

“Let's ping each other every odd hour of daylight once the snow starts melting, ok? Then I can let you know when they're heading over. They have bikes, and I'm sending them over the Ford Parkway bridge, then south to the Fort.”

“When will you come?”

“I saw Benjamin today. I'll come as soon as that asshole cat comes in so I can bring him with. I have a snowmobile in my garage so I'm not too worried about the snow if it comes back before Benjamin stops being stupid.”

“Do you know Robbie Rocket?” Will asked.

“We talk now and then. He's not as stupid as Benjamin.”

Will laughed. “Goodnight, Gary!”

“Goodnight, Wilfred, Champion of Snelling!”

“Just Will,” he said, but there was no answer; Gary had turned off his set.

Val felt the storm subside and woke in the quiet pre-dawn. The fire was low, coals only, but the room was still warm enough. He swung his feet carefully over the edge of the bed, holding onto the tall post near his pillow to help himself up. He used the mantle of the fireplace to help him get over to the commode. While on the commode – never all that concerned about privacy – he pulled open the shutters.

The sky was just turning pink to the east, and the ground outside was white and smooth.

“Snow!” he said, cheerfully. “Snow came.”

He couldn't retie his pants after he was finished, so he kicked them off and used his wheelchair as a walker, holding on to the handles and pushing it, thin legs bare beneath the bottom of the long shirt.

Val sat on the edge of his mother's bed.

“Hungry, Mama,” he said, patting her. “Your boy hungry.”

Heat radiated off of her.

“You like oven,” he told her, smiling. “Silly Mama.” He sat next to her for a while, rocking in place, then wobbled over to open her shutters. She woke when he sat down next to her again.

“Not feeling so hot, little man,” she told him, shivering. “Let me sleep a little longer.”

“Hungry, Mama.”

“Ok. Get your sister. Tell her to get Will up and have him come here.”

“You get Will?”

“Have Katrin get Will, please, Val.”

Katrin was not happy to be woken up, Will even less so, but he blearily came to see his mother, rubbing his eyes, his hair sticking up in the back.

“Do the fires,” she said weakly. “Give them some bread and butter for breakfast, please. Not feeling well right now. My arm hurts. Not the broken one, the bitten one.”

Concerned, Will felt his mother's head and found her feverish. “Mom, you are really warm. I'm going to go get Mr Joe.”

She managed to level a glare at him, one eyed, her face half-buried in her pillow yet. “You make sure they're fed and warm first, Will. I mean it.”

He dithered for a moment, then gave Eve some ibuprofen and a glass of water. As quickly as he could, he got the fires set up in the downstairs rooms to warm the house and fed his siblings and the cats in the dining room. He helped Val back into his pants and tied them in place.

“I wear no pants!” Val said, laughing at his brother.

“Too cold for that, Val, doggone it,” Will said sternly.

By the time Will got over to Mr Joe's room, the sun was making a clear appearance over the horizon. The air itself was crisp and felt thin, and the snow just deep enough that Will's shoes were filled with it and his feet icy.

Joe answered his polite but urgent knock.

“My mom has a fever,” Will said.

“Damn it,” Joe said. “I'll be there soon. Let me get dressed and get my supplies. Meanwhile, here.” He handed Will a shovel.

Will held the shovel in both hands, confused. He wasn't a medic, but he couldn't figure out how to use the shovel to help his mother.

“Shovel a path, boy,” Joe said, exasperated. “I'll meet you there.”

Go In

Will pulled the canvas sled as he and his mother headed for the door of the Fort. He assumed it was a sled, it looked like a canvas sleigh, and it slid well across the ground.

As they passed the powder magazine, where in the past explosive material was housed, Eve pointed out the wooden carts sheltered by the deep eaves.

“I think tomorrow we should see about moving furniture around to make a comfortable house for us. You and Kat can help, and we can use those.”

“We should probably use those to bring more wood and water up for us and Mr Joe before it storms. Val says a storm is coming. And if there's one thing he seems to know, it's storms,” Will said.

“And trains. And when visitors are coming.”

“Ok, three things.”

“And he keeps complete maps in his head,” Eve added.

“In video games!”

“It might translate into real life,” Eve said. “I guess we'll see.” She opened the inset door at the front gate. “Hurry. I'll go up to the top of the Round Tower and I'll warn you if I see anything.”

“How will you do that? You can't whistle, and shouting seems like it'll cause trouble.”

She held up a plastic whistle he knew to have a piercing sound. “My rape whistle.”

“Ok, just remember to be clear about which way you're blowing it – yes-rape or no-rape.”

“Get out,” she said, deadpan, and he laughed. She shut and bolted the door behind him.

He waited near the Fort until he saw her reach the top of the Round Tower, then waved and was on his way, dragging the sled with one hand, his hoe ready in the other.

“I really should name you,” he said to his weapon. “A man should know what to call his hoe.” He glanced guiltily back up at the tower where his mother was watching. She gave a thumbs up, not having heard him, and tucked her hand back inside the blanket she'd wrapped around herself.

He hummed to himself the rest of the way to the visitor's center.

The doors were locked. “Of course,” he said. He walked around the front of the building, alert for movement, saw nothing, returned to the back doors. With no one around – no infected – and no power, he felt justified in knocking the glass out of the back doors with his hoe, since the back doors were closer to the Fort itself.

It was dark enough inside he lit his camp lantern, frowning at having to use up batteries. He used his hoe to break into the gift shop.

Inside, he loaded the sled up with whatever he saw that looked useful, remembering to grab some extras for Mr Joe. There was very little food; he did find pancake mix and syrup, jams, wild rice, almonds, and lots of candy.  A room temperature cooler held sodas and bottled water, and on the counter near the cash register he found energy bars. There were various tshirts and themed socks, he grabbed those too; then pens and some empty journals for his mother to write in and for his sister to draw in.

A recipe book of Fort Snelling-related recipes, scented candles and candle holders.  Some Red Wing crockery and a bunch of the blue and white dishes his mother loved.  A magnifier, a cribbage board, sunbonnets, scented soaps and lotions. He didn't grab any of the throws or pillows because there were plenty of those at the Fort.

He found playing cards and dice, various historical paper dolls and coloring books, colored pencils, and crayons. Val would like the toy soldiers, he knew, and a couple sets of Lincoln Logs, and a toy flute. There were books with histories of Fort Snelling, of the Dakota, of Minnesota, Will grabbed them for Eve. 

Then he started to worry about time, and began to drag his sled toward the back doors.

Someone stood just outside of the bathrooms, watching silently, their chest heaving.

“Uh, hello?” Will said, dropping the rope for the sled and gripping his hoe in both hands.

“Go in,” the person said, a male voice, though the person was either a small man or an older child.

“Go where?”

“Go. IN!” the man snarled and lurched toward Will, slipping and falling to one knee, scrabbling forward. “Go in!”

Will hesitated for only a second before energy surged through his hands and he brought the hoe down on the Red Flu zombie before it could gain its feet. His swing took it hard in the shoulder and the metal head of the hoe bounced off the floor of the visitor center with an audible crack.

He tried to yank his hoe back but it was lodged pretty firmly inside his enemy. “Shitshitshit,” he shouted.

“GOWIN!” the creature gurgled, grabbing his leg. The hoe jerked free, but the creature was too close now for a good swing. Instead Will bopped it hard on the head with the hoe, straight up and down.

The creature was not stunned, but hissed in rage.

Will kicked it hard with his other foot, falling backwards. He continued kicking, cold fear lending strength and swiftness he did not usually exhibit. The zombie's head rocked back and forth from the force of the kicks, and confused, it released his leg. Will was on his feet and back far enough for a good swing of his hoe in a blur of motion, and this time he hit the creature square in the top of its head.

Dark blood poured onto the ground, the creature shuddered and lay still. He left the bloodied hoe, its handle now broken, where it was.

“Gross,” Will said, then hurried to get the sled out of the path of the blood. He realized he was shaking, and took a deep breath.

“Hasta la... ah, sayonara,” he said to the dead thing, and headed home with his sled full of pancake mix.

Though he felt strangely exhausted, he and Katrin loaded one of the wooden carts with firewood and delivered it to Mr Joe and to the commander's house. Eve stood at Mr Joe's door and they sorted through the sled. Mr Joe took some of the food and two tshirts, one of the six journals and a handful of pens. He dragged the sled to the commander's house for Eve while Katrin and Will finished unloading the firewood, storing it in a woodbox in the hospital and in the entry hall of the house. The kids then parked the cart inside the powder magazine. Katrin stayed and dragged the other cart in as well, and shut the door firmly before running off to help Will drag water containers to both homes.

Joe went down to the workshops and brought up four shovels, leaving three with Eve at the commander's house and taking one back to his own quarters. He made sure he had extra blankets, his bones felt the storm coming.

While Will had been off at the visitor center gathering gift baskets and killing a zombie, Katrin had covered the bottom of a bin that had been emptied of water with dirt for the cats. She had set it on the stair landing leading up to the attic, and she'd set out in the parlor a wooden plate of cat food and a couple fresh tin cups of water, so each cat could have her own cup. Will felt this was a pretty good set up, all things considered.

“One more thing,” Will said, when they finished up with the water. Taking Kat by the hand, he hurried them down to the employee area again, this time making a small train of bins that had not been used for water, tying a long rope around all four bins with knots between them. He and Katrin filled the bins with clean clothes – reenactor costumes, including woolen socks and mittens and military style woolen coats; there were also calico dresses, shawls, canvas pants and cotton shirts.

“Now we can have a bath,” he said, and they dragged the train of clothing all the way back to the house.

Katrin let go of the rope and ran off toward the store; Will started to yell at her but stopped when he saw his mother struggling in the doorway of the store, dragging the sled out with the same hand she had to try to control her crutch. Katrin glared at her mother and reached for the rope pull for the sled.

They all made it back into the house just as the wind began to howl and the first flakes began to fall.

Inside the windows rattled and worried Katrin; as they were inside a home that had basement access only by going out the back door, and she no longer had her tornado box handy. She sat near the fire in the parlor, hugging Bertram and Leah tightly. Eve and Will closed the shutters and made sure the doors were tightly bolted. Candles were lit in each room and provided a warm, soft light over the main floor of the house.

“Looks like pancakes for dinner!” Eve said brightly. “Baths first – sponge baths, but better than we've had for more than a week!”

Will dragged one water bin into the dining room and set a fire in the fireplace, then dragged another bin of water into the parlor. Eve scooped water out of the bins into two big three-legged pots in each room, placing both pots into the fireplace to heat in each room.

When the water was boiling, she had Will pour the pots of water back into the bins, warming the water enough to bathe. They all picked out scented soap from the loot stacked in the hallway, where they'd stored for now all the stuff from the gift shop and the clothing from the reenactors area. Eve handed them all small towels from the gift shop and clothes from the bins. “Tomorrow we'll get this all put away,” she said. “And we'll get set up to live here for a while.”

“How long?” Katrin asked. “Is this our house now?”

“Our house now,” Val said, making his stubborn face. “This my house now.”

“Let's guess the winter, eh?” Eve said. “It seems safe enough here.”

The boys went into the dining room, Eve and Katrin went into the parlor, and they closed those doors and bathed in privacy. Will bathed his grumpy, protesting brother first, carefully pouring water from a crockery pitcher over his brother's head as Val leaned over the bin to wash his hair. He helped his brother dress in a soft tshirt, a loose cotton shirt with long sleeves and a tied neck, and draw string pants. He went to pull socks with small loons patterned all over them onto his brother's feet, but Val, seated back in his wheelchair, snatched the socks away.

“I do it myself!”

When everyone was clean and dressed, Eve and Katrin in warm shirts and long johns beneath bright calico dresses, Eve had Will store the bins of bathwater in the front of the hallway away from the clean water. “We can use it to flush the toilets in the public bathrooms,” Eve said. “No point dumping it out.” She showed him how to bank the fire in the dining room, and they laid a fire in the children's room and built up the fire in the master bedroom.

While Eve made pancakes over the fire in the parlor, Will and Katrin worked together, adding extra mattresses to the beds in the children's room of the commander's house and in the master bedroom, setting out extra blankets and pillows. Their mother was amazed; in the past, the two could not be trusted to manage chores together without furious squabbling.

As Will began to drag an extra mattress up the stairs, claiming the guest room in the attic for himself, the family heard a voice in the parlor.

“Robbie Rocket!” Val squealed. Will dropped his bedroll rushed into the parlor to be near his family and listen to the radio by the soft light of the candles.