The street was deserted. Dora could see waves of heat coming up from off the pavement, distorting the distant houses, making them seem to dance in the heat. Mike led the way sticking to the wide white sidewalk, before braving the hot dark pavement in his bare feet. After the third step he was wishing he had taken his shoes out of the wash, wet shoes were better than burned feet. He made it across, followed by the two women who were yelping as they stepped. All of them were sweating from the heat and the heavy loads of the various packs they were carrying. They made it up to Dora's front door and turned to her to open it.
"You know how you were saying 'no one locks their doors around here'?"
"Oh, for Christsakes! You locked us out?" said Paige.
Dora shrugged and sounded truly apologetic as she said, "I am sorry. We can go through the back, right? I didn't shut the back door."
They made their way to the side of the house to the gate in the stone wall. The wall was still eight feet tall here, but the gate was only six feet and made of iron bars with some wood woven through it for privacy. The top of the gate had pointed spikes on it.
Mike tried it and it was locked. He turned to Dora with a raised eyebrow.
"I thought we could climb it." she said slowly.
"It's got spikes on it!" Paige said.
"Well they are not sharp, not really, just pointy, I am sure Mike could get over it with no problem."
"Spikes, no spikes, I'm the guy with the gun. Why don't you boost Dora over Paige?"
"Why me?" Dora protested, "You're a guy! You're good at climbing over stuff, right?"
"Yeah, but if I do it there won't be anyone to cover you."
"We haven't seen any zombies on the street!"
"Oh for crying out loud, boost me over then!" Paige said.
Dora gave Paige a scathing look, "Fine, my mess. I forgot the key. I'll go. Will you at least help Paige boost me up, oh mighty gunman?"
Mike nodded and all three of them dropped the various bags and packs they were carrying. Paige and Mike boosted Dora up and she carefully balanced herself on the top of the gate, her bare toes curling around the sides to grip it with all the strength she had. Mike kept staring up and Dora realized he was looking at her bare ass.
"Like what you see? I thought you were supposed to be covering us, not getting free looks up a lady's dress." Paige flushed too, giving Dora a good idea of where her eyes had been as well. "You two! What am I going to do with you? Don't you know we are fighting for our survival here?"
"You started it this morning!" Paige protested, "Going all off on poor Mike!"
"Yeah, well this is an emergency now. I didn't understand that then, now I do. If we get all secured in maybe we can talk about other things again but for now watch the street and not my ass!"
Both of them turned diligently towards the street and Dora couldn't help but hike up her shirt and give her ass a little shake before she turned and found a way to let herself down. She heard Mike mutter to Paige, "Did you see her do that?" with Paige giving an affirmative answer, "Only applies to us I guess."
There was no graceful way to get off of the gate, Dora half fell, half climbed down and opened it for them to come through. "Stop sulking I wasn't really mad. In fact if you want to look later I think I would be okay with that. We gotta get this food in the fridge first though and check on the jerky and make fill up some containers with water, just in case. After that some wine and who knows…?"
"Gosh, Dora you make it sound so good!" said Paige with some mocking sarcasm in her voice.
"There's the Paigy I love!" Dora replied.
They picked up the various bags and sacks and headed into the backyard and then went inside to put the food away, the gate swung shut, bounced open slightly behind them, then slowly swung towards the street again, not quite latching closed.
Dora cleaned all of the expired food out of the refrigerator, making a clean sweep by checking everything, down to the last bottle of salad dressing. Mike checked on the meat in the oven and on the low burning grill outside and Paige started setting all the guns out on the table on the back porch. She set the ammunition in a separate pile sorted by size. Everyone met back at the patio table under the shading trellis to look the guns over.
"We'll take turns firing all of them. Mostly you will fire the shotguns, because we have the most ammunition for those. I want you to know how to shoot everything here and load it too. Anything you learn with these guns should apply to any others we might find too." Mike said.
The women nodded and paid unusual attention to the lecture as Mike when on to show each of them how to load, unload and put each gun on 'safety' and take each gun off as well. Then he turned the unloaded weapons over to them and made each of them tell him how to do everything he demonstrated. Through trial and error the women became familiar with the guns until Mike felt comfortable enough to have them try firing them. Dora said they should move behind the changing room and fire towards the back yard.
Mike went back into the kitchen and rummaged in the trash, bringing out a few bottles of various things to use as targets. Behind the changing room there was a wood pile and Mike took a few of the split logs back and set them up about forty feet away. He positioned them in front of a small mound of dirt left over from the pool construction and put a jar on top of each log.
"Now, you need to aim low. If a bullet hits the wall it could ricochet, which means bouncing back, we don't want to be hit by bullet, or have one damage the house or something. So for the first time you fire, keep it a little low until you figure out where the bullet is going." Mike explained how to use the sights on the rifles and how the pistols used a similar system. He cautioned them that the pistols would not be as accurate as the rifles, because it was easier to get a line on a target with a longer barrel.
He picked up a shotgun and then lay down on the grass and propped it up with another chunk of firewood. "The steadier you can keep the barrel the more accurate you will be." With that he squeezed off a shot and shattered one of the jars of salad dressing, knocking over the piece of wood it has been sitting on as well. "See? Slow and steady, take your time and exhale before you pull the trigger, never take your eyes off the target."
The women were still recovering from the loud sound the gun had made when it went off. With Dora conspicuously rubbing her ears.
"Yeah we should use earplugs, but I didn't see any over there around the safe."
"Oh, like little orange bits of foam, right? Roger has some in the garage, for when he is cutting wood. I'll go get some, it's better than being deaf after this session of shooting."
Dora went to the garage and looked around for a few minutes before spying the package of foam ear inserts hanging off of the pegboard behind the work bench. She brought them outside and handed them out to the others. Mike had replaced the bottle he had shattered with another and had Paige lay down in the prone position to fire her first shot. Dora looked at the young woman and thought to herself that some people just were not designed to lie down on their stomachs; she started to giggle and stopped herself. The other two didn't notice, so that was one advantage to having the ear plugs in. Paige's first shot missed, but her second one was dead on. Mike had her fire until she hit all the targets, Paige took nine shots to hit six targets and Mike seemed very pleased. He went and set up new ones and then it was Dora's turn to lie down and fire the shotgun.
Mike was loudly telling her to go slow and breathe slowly and she thought Paige said something too, but when she looked over her shoulder the woman just pointed at Dora's bare ass; Dora hadn't thought to put on anything under her shirt yet. Shrugging her shoulders Dora looked downrange and slowly let out her breath then squeezed the trigger. The recoil of the gun surprised her, but she hit her target on the first try. In fact she knocked all of her six targets off with six shots, although one was not broken; Dora had hit the log out from under it, causing it to topple unharmed into the grass.
Mike was still very pleased and they progressed to standing and firing the shotgun, then moved on to the rifles and finally they tried to shoot the pistols. They practiced for over an hour, loading, firing until the last round Mike had set aside for the training was gone. Finally the practice was over and Dora pulled out her ear plugs and tossed them towards the woodpile, the others did the same.
"That took longer than I thought it would." said Dora.
"Yeah and you get better the more you practice, but we don't have a lot more ammo to practice with, so I think we are done, you'll just have to get better fighting zombies. We have to aim at the head, if Ned was right anyway."
"That is what he said. Should we check the news and jerky and then get some dinner going?" asked Paige.
"Absolutely! And I promised wine!"
The trio came around the side of the changing room, with Dora leading and she stopped dead in her tracks, pushing the other two back. Between them and the house were several people. Dead people. Zombies were invading her back yard.
"Fuck!" Dora whispered loudly as she manhandled the other two behind the small building. "Where the fuck did they come from?" Thinking for a moment she then looked at Mike and Paige, "Tell me one of you latched the gate when you came in?"
They looked at each other and shook their heads, with Mike saying, "It doesn't swing shut on its own?"
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! No it doesn't fucking latch on its own!"
"Sorry Dora! I didn't know!" said Paige.
Dora was about to utter a scathing remark, then stopped herself, remembering she was the reason they had to come through the gate in the first place, the anger left her and she said, "It's my fault not yours. I am not mad at you. I locked the fucking front door, which is why we had to go through the gate. I know the damned thing doesn't always latch. I am just mad at myself. I should have known. Mike, tell me you have more bullets."
He shook his head, "We shot them all. The rest are on the table. Did they see us?"
"I don't think so." Dora said shaking her head, "They must have heard us firing the guns. I didn't know they could hear us."
"What do we do?" asked Paige.
Dora peeked her head around the corner again, one of the zombies was shuffling their direction, it had obviously seen them and was only about twenty steps away. Quickly Dora counted the others, three were gathered at the back patio sliding door, unable to get in, another two were standing by the pool, looking the grill intently. There was another one coming in from the side of the house too. The gate was not visible from where Dora was standing, but she was sure it was still open. Ducking back she said, "One of them is coming, he saw me. There are six others, two by the pool, three by the back door and one coming in from the side of the house. We need to get to the table and get some bullets, then get the god damned gate shut and kill the ones who are in the yard. If there are any more out in the street we better take care of them too, I don't want a mob around the house, what if they draw more?"
"Okay so how do we do this? Do you want to be a distraction while I race for the ammo?" Mike asked.
"Uh, maybe me and Paige together on this side of the changing room. We'll tackle this one and make a lot of noise, you go out from the other side when we tell you to and run for the table around the far side of the pool."
"Okay, we'll keep it simple. After I get the bullets I'll yell for you two to run. You go that way," Mike pointed at her neighbors to the west of her property, "Run behind the shed and make your way back towards me by sticking close to the wall so you won't be in my line of fire."
"We aren't defenseless either." Paige bent over and picked up a stout piece of wood off the wood pile. "We should be able to take the first one out with a few good whacks, right? I mean this is heavier than a pool cue or the table leg."
"Okay, let's do this." Dora said.