The break in the weather was a welcome relief to the group staying in the neighborhood, the power had long ago gone off and while they had generators they limited them to a common entertainment room to power up a television and keep a line of freezers and refrigerators running. Fuel was going to be a problem. It was weighing on Dora's mind heavily this mid September morning. Dora was sick, some bug she had picked up from the last refugees the army had dumped off on her.
'Three more fucking kids and one late teen.' In her mind Dora had expected the refugees to trickle in as family units, all self contained and tough, like survivors should be. 'Instead I get kids, little fucking idiots with no parents.' And they were survivors alright, the little tramps hoarded food and valuables and had to be taught that stealing, lying and cheating were no longer acceptable inside of 'Doraville', which was the common designation of the area around Dora's house.
The original crew was all still alive, Mary, Alex and Peter were living in Russell's old house with a pack of almost twenty kids. The two adults fought like a married couple and Peter was left with a lot of work bullying the younger kids into behaving. Paige and Mike stayed with Dora, they each had their own room upstairs. Dora had kept the master bedroom and most nights she slept alone. Sometimes there was a frightened kid in there with her. Paige seemed to take unnatural delight that some of the kids were comforted by Dora's presence.
The living room of Dora's house was officially called the 'Clinic', where all refugees were brought when they arrived, anyone who had been bitten was given the option of leaving or being shot, anyone judged 'clean' by Mary was set up with housing somewhere. Yesterday the army had brought in the three kids, four really, and they were all stripped naked, washed off and examined following the usual procedure Mary had gotten from one of her military counterparts.
"You puking in there?" asked Paige from the open doorway into the master bedroom.
"No, just brushing my fucking teeth with vomit." Dora called out, before leaning forward and puking again.
"Wow, I knew water was scarce, but using toilet water to brush your teeth…that takes balls, Dora."
Dora held up her middle finger at the woman and threw up one more time. Rising to her knees, she said, "You'll have the fucking bug soon enough bitch."
Paige shook her head, "Somehow I doubt it. I never get sick, it's always you. You don't have to be there when the new kids come in you know. Let us deal with it and you can go do 'Mayor' things somewhere else."
"It's my town, right? So I should approve the new arrivals. What else did the army drop off yesterday?"
"Another rifle, an old M4, plus a thousand rounds of.223 ammo, we need it, we were getting low. Oh and some food."
"Oh god, don't tell me, more dehydrated eggs?"
Paige nodded, "Another whole pallet. And two pallets of MREs. Dora?" she stepped forward as Dora leaned over and threw up again. The MREs were packaged military food that the entire town had already grown weary of.
"God, don't speak to me of food again! Fucking dehydrated eggs? That's shit. The MREs are shit too."
"We are going to need the food when winter comes." Winter was on the minds of all of them in town these days. They were a hundred and forty two people living here in western Kansas City, the official border of the Midwestern state was only about a twenty miles to the east, on the outskirts of the city. The Iowan's had pulled even further north because they could not control the city itself, there were too many zombies running around.
"Any other news this morning?" Dora asked. The group had raided a big box store and had taken all of the walkie-talkies they could find, as well as every battery they could fit into the pickup truck bed, right now they were using rechargeable batteries and saving the other ones for emergencies. In addition to the batteries and walkie-talkies they had all sorts of flashlights, bedding and blankets. None of them were under any illusions that winter would be anything but miserable if they didn't find some way to heat the houses. Of the large houses they were in only a few had real fireplaces, most ran on natural gas. Dora's was one of the few that had a fire place that actually burned wood and wasn't just for looks. The group had decided to build a long, low bunkhouse in the backyard of Dora's neighbor. They had most of the wood in piles around the neighborhood, as well as roofing materials, a few windows and four wood burning stoves. They planned on keeping the ceilings down to eight feet high and to double insulate the walls and attic to help keep things warm. At least that was the plan.
Some of the men had construction experience, one had actually been a general contractor, and he was in charge of the construction. Dora's yard would be filled with firewood for the winter. So far the reality of the construction was that Dora's yard was filled with firewood, not much work had actually been done on the new bunkhouse. Tim, the contractor, seemed to have less experience actually building things then he had led them to believe.
"No, no word on any attacks last night."
"Did Tim say anything this morning?"
"He found more firewood yesterday, about a cord of it."
"We got nothing to heat, let alone heat it with! Goddamn it, we need the fucking bunkhouse built!"
"Yeah, we all know that. You gonna fire him?"
"And do what with him? Send him out searching for firewood? And who would take over for him?"
Paige just looked at Dora silently. Dora stood up and turned on the tap, a thin trickle of water came out, she arched her eyebrow in surprise. "What is this?" The water had been sporadic at best the last few weeks.
"Surprise!" said Paige.
"They found the water tower and got the pump working?"
"They found the water tower and attached a generator to the pump. We need to go around and shut off the water to all the houses the tower uses."
"Wait, wait…I am not letting you off the hook on the Tim stuff, you have an idea and I want to hear it, first though, isn't that a lot of houses to cut off from the water tower?"
"Thousands."
"When the fuck will we have time to do that? And who?"
"Ed Bradly is taking some of the ten year olds around and doing it." The water issue had come up in the town meetings many times before and Tim had been going over the maps they had trying to find the water tower that served this section of the city. The problem was they needed to shut off all the house attached to the tower or in the winter the pipes would freeze, leak and then the tower would run out of water again. It was a low priority on the list, they had access to creek water, but for morale it made a huge difference, which is why Dora kept someone on the job. Dora suspected that there would be water mains that could shut off entire blocks of houses, but no one had any idea on how to find out where they were.
"Does he think he can get them all shut off before it gets cold?"
"No, but he thinks he can shut a lot of them down, if less pipes freeze it will be less of a drain on our resources. It might keep us in water for the winter at least. By spring maybe things will change."
Dora looked at Paige, "No, nothing will change. I can't believe there were not any attacks last night, not even by the twins?"
Paige shook her head, 'the twins' were girls that haunted the area, picking off anyone they could get. The zombies had evolved in the past month and a half; some of them moved quickly, used tools and even spoke. Head trauma still killed them, but they were faster than humans. The twins, nicknamed Dee and Dum by Dora had been a constant pain in the town's side. They had made their presence known after the horde had arrived in town from Denver about five weeks ago and had been seen several times since; they always seemed to be seen when there were no guns pointed at them too. They had an uncanny ability to disappear before a gun barrel could point their way.
"Nothing, all quiet on the lines last night."
Doraville was small, the core of the community lived up and down the street in the McMansions on either side. There were always gunners on the roofs watching out from the core of the community and the fences that had been built around it did a good job of keeping the zombies out. Building the fences had been the first thing the group had done when people started arriving. After the interview with Ned had gone out people had started flocking towards Dora, they arrived in time to help build what was now the outer fence and haul in generators and the first few loads of food from abandoned stores.
When the zombies hit town in force almost everyone was killed. There was a terrible slaughter and the outer fence was overwhelmed in the first few hours of the onslaught. The army had flow in helicopters and helped defend the enclave, but they stopped short of actually moving up troops. As the battle raged the Air National guard from Iowa had actually bombed the horde as well, it was something none of them wanted to live through again. The houses to the north and west of Dora's were bombed, the destruction started about three blocks away and an area for about five blocks beyond that was just gone. The wasteland was a favorite hangout spot for lone zombies of the more intelligent variety.
Usually Dora kept a person or two out there to watch for them and give warning to the others. Tim had grand ideas about building a concrete bunker out there too, but the man's knowledge of construction didn't seem to match his knowledge of having other people do the work.
"Okay so tell me your brilliant idea about firing Tim."
"You sure you want it now?" asked Paige while Dora quickly brushed her teeth.
Dora nodded, foamy toothpaste dripped from her lips into the sink.
"Alright, use Alex and fire Tim. No, that isn't right…ah, promote Tim to materials scavenger, first send him out with a small crew and a truck to see if he can find the pre-constructed roof trusses we need. Have Alex handle the day to day stuff in Tim's absence."
Spitting Dora looked up at Paige, "Alex? What experience does he have?"
"Practical experience actually working. Plus, he is not too stubborn to read a Goddamned book." The group had also raided a book store and taken a plethora of home improvement and construction books covering everything from plumbing to roofing. Tim had not cracked the cover of even one so far that Dora knew.
"Okay I think I can make it work. Promote him? That is a good one. I bet that goddamn bunker in the wasteland would get built faster if I promoted him to that."
Despite being the leader of the people, Dora had not endeared herself to anyone, she still tended to say what was on her mind and political speeches were not her style. This made for some rather fiery weekly town meetings, with everyone either in the street listening or using walkie-talkies to hear the theatrics. There were also daily meetings of the 'council members' a select group of people close to Dora, these meetings were shorter and more critical to the survival of the town. Tim had been trying to get a seat on the council for about two weeks, Dora had shot him down, telling the other members to just wait. "You know I never liked that asshole."
"Duh. I think every time his name comes up your face turns red, it gives you away. It's amazing to me, but you really are a good judge of character."
"Amazing to you? I don't know why I wanted you to chair the council. Maybe because you always vote the way I tell you to."
"We all always vote the way you tell us to."
"True enough, because I am always right."
"No…more like because it is easier and you are never too wrong."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence. What are we doing with the flu bearing kids we got in yesterday?"
"They are still downstairs. Mike is on guard over them." Through experience they had learned to keep watch over all new arrivals. They were not zombies, a blood test could prove that every single time, and Mary had the equipment to check when newcomers arrived. However, the kids were always skittish and sometimes it was not so much that they volunteered to come into Doraville as they were captured and brought in.
"Six weeks, you know?" asked Dora.
Paige nodded knowingly, it was a common discussion between them with only the number of weeks or days going up.
"These kids have been on their own for forty days and are little barbarians who would knife their doctor for a candy bar." It had happened, Mary was handing out granola bars to a group of kids and one wanted more and had stabbed her in the arm to get it. That was two weeks ago and the incident kept coming up for Dora.
"I know Dora, kids…they are flexible, which is probably why we get more kids now than adults. Kids adapt, the next generation is going to be very different from us."
"Preaching to the choir here. Say, that reminds me, no news of Father Cruz?" While on a scavenging mission Alex had come across Saint Assisi's Church, the man had not thought there was anything useful there, but he was Catholic and had gone inside to say a quick prayer to Saint Jude before he continued looking for the solar battery chargers he had been sent out to find. To his surprise Father Joseph of the Cross had come out of the church hall and greeted him.
The man lived alone and had professed to never being bothered by the undead plaguing the area, claiming God protected him. So far as Dora knew he was right. They had tried to get him to come to Doraville, but the old priest had refused, saying God's plans for him were at St. Assisi. Mary had gone to see him for a checkup, bringing along a few others who wanted to celebrate a mass and take communion. The priest had obliged, but refused to come with his new flock even after that.
"Cruz? He still alive? No I don't know, it's been a week. Sounds like just the thing for Tim to look into. I mean he will be out looking for trusses and the lumber yard is over in that direction. We'll have to have him check into it."
Dora looked at Paige again, and raised her hand to her chin, "Hm, you know the water main thing is bothering me too. All those blown up buildings, you know, those are going to drain that tank faster than anything. I think Tim should go to where ever we paid our water bills and see if he can come up with some plans or something."
"Not bad, not bad at all. How long do you think it will take him to realize he is on shit detail?"
"About a week, that is enough time for Alex to make some progress." Dora picked up one of three walkie-talkies and spoke into it, "Mary?"
A child's voice came on the line, "She is here, gimme a minute."
"This Katie?" Dora asked.
"Yep."
"Mary on the pot making poop again?"
The girls voice laughed back at her, "No!"
The eight year old was helping Mary with everything, the girl had come in with her mom and dad before the big horde from Denver arrived, her parents had not lived through the fighting. She had been with Mary, Peter and Alex ever since. "Here she is, it's Dora."
"Dora? What's up?" asked Mary.
"No medical emergency, sorry to get you worked up, I need to speak to Alex, could you send him over?"
For a moment Dora thought the other woman was going to lecture her, again, about only using the medical walkie-talkie for 'Medical Emergencies', but instead she just said, "I will send him right over, can he eat first?"
"He can eat here if he wants, we have eggs." Dora said, with a frown that caused Paige to laugh.
"Okay, he'll want coffee."
Dora set the walkie-talkie down and turned to Paige, "Chop-chop! Make the coffee girl!"
Paige flipped Dora off on her way out of the master bedroom.
The day flew by without incident and that afternoon the council members had another meeting in the clinic at Dora's house. There were seven of them altogether, including Dora. Mary, Paige and Dora made up the only women on the council; the men consisted of Alex, Leon, Steven and Freddie. Each person had their own skills, Mary was in charge of all things medical, she was the only person with any sort of training in Doraville, the group hadn't even scored a nurse or paramedic.
Alex was good with locksmithing and mechanical equipment, plus he was the newly crowned construction czar. Leon was a retired African American computer programmer who was sixty years old, he had taken pains to read up about electrical wiring and had been invaluable at keeping the local electric grid running off of the generators. Steven was an ex-military man officially 'on loan' from the National Guard, the fact that his wife lived in Doraville and would not leave was the real reason he was here.
Freddie was the last male on the board, he was Hispanic and a jack of all trades, he spoke Spanish, French and English all very well and had been making ends meet by hanging drywall when z-day came around. Finally there was Paige, her job was more to be Dora's keeper than anything else, although she displayed remarkable skills organizing and managing things too. Dora did not do much on the council, she brought up new issues, said her piece on what she thought the group should do and entertained any questions the other council members might have. She was also the public face of the group. When someone wanted to bitch, they sought out Dora, when speeches needed to be made, Dora did it. The other council members directed every other problem to her. Freddie was particularly good at deflecting attention Dora's way, so much so that he had the nick name of 'Teflon Freddie' when the council was in private.
"Okay I hope everyone had a good night and morning, any new business?" Dora asked to the group seated in her kitchen. They all had cups of coffee and were seated informally. Paige had a laptop to take notes with on next to her. The council members all looked at her and Dora said, "Well then, no new business? Then I vote to adjourn until tomorrow, same time, same…"
"Dora!" Paige interrupted.
"Fine. Any old business?"
"Tim." Alex said
"Tim." repeated Freddie and Leon at the same time.
"Yeah, Tim." said Mary.
"Et tu Mary? Tim would be crushed. What is he doing now?"
"Normally that would be worded, 'What is he NOT doing now?'" said Freddie, "But in this case he is speaking to the other adults about how you are not going to give him a seat on the council when he could do so much good."
"What the fuck?" Dora said turning to Paige, "I thought we sent him out to check on Father Cruz?"
"He wouldn't go, said he had too much on his plate to go out checking on stubborn old holdouts." said Alex.
Dora's face turned red, "And no one told me?" The others looked away from her, not meeting her eyes, except for Paige, "Paige?"
"We thought we should address it here. I told him twice to get moving. Even Steven reminded him he had to work. Tim just said he was too busy to go today. Even after Alex said he was taking over Tim's project in Nina's yard." Nina Roberts had moved into the house next to Dora's, where the large hall was being built.
"Huh? So he wants to play hardball huh? Well I say boot him out. Fuck him, he is dead weight anyway, he isn't building shit and what he has built looks like shit to me, am I right Alex?"
Alex nodded curtly, "It doesn't look good. I think he was more of a manager, not a builder. Hell Freddie and I could do a better job and we have already discussed it."
"Does he have a weapon we need to worry about?" asked Dora.
"Him?" asked Steven incredulously, "The guy is afraid of his own shadow. He has a gun, but he won't use it."
"Okay then I vote for booting him. Don't you look away from me! I know why you tolerate keeping me at the top of the heap, because I make the hard choices so you don't have to. Let me make this one and get this dead weight out of here, send him to Iowa, they will take him, they take any survivors."
"Dora, maybe we could give him the choice? He either does as he is told for the good of everyone or he leaves for Iowa?" suggested Paige.
"He won't do either." said Steve, "Iowa has the mandatory serve law, they are fighting for their lives, the horde broke over us, swept around us like an island and we are really behind enemy lines, even though they caravan over to us pretty much every week. But Iowa got hit hard in Council Bluffs too and rumor has it they want to push the zombies back to Lincoln. They got zeds coming down highway thirty five from the twin cities and to the east they got the highway eighty hordes from Chicago. They can only thank fucking God that the rivers on the east and west sides of the state are so large and the populations to the north and south were relatively small otherwise they wouldn't have a chance. So no, Tim won't go to Iowa, didn't you seem him getting the news with the others yesterday when the Guards dropped off those kids?"
Dora shook her head, while Mary said a soft prayer about forgiving Steven for using the Lord's name in vain. Steven nodded to her and said softly, "Sorry Mary."
"Apologize to God, Steve. I know you are caught up in the passion of the moment, but try and live by his rules." Steve nodded.
"Holy fuck." Dora said softly.
"What?" asked Leon.
"I have surrounded myself with religious whackos! Paige, why didn't you warn me I was the only atheist on the council?"
"Dora! You are NOT an atheist!" said Mary sharply, "Do not say such things! Don't even joke about them."
Dora shrugged her shoulders, "You are not all Catholic are you?" Everyone but Paige nodded. "So we are the last voices of reason here, Paige?"
"Well after what happened with Marge, I have been going to a few study groups with Mary, but nothing official."
"Only Father Cruz can do that, well, actually the…" began Mary.
"Don't care! Don't care! Forget I asked, can we get back to business?"
"Long story short Tim knows if he goes Iowa, he goes Army and they will put him on the front lines, he has not shown any skill worth having that would make them keep him off the front lines and I know the people over there would just push him to the front, they will figure that he will man up when the time comes." said Steve.
"So he dies, not our problem. My problem is he is useless and wants a job on the council. Do the people think we don't go out and do things anymore? Hell, Steve you were just out at the wasteland trench two days ago. Is the perception that sitting on the council means staying out of danger?"
They sat and thought about it for a moment, then Alex said, "I think only Tim believes that. I haven't heard any one else say it, Tim thinks if he can get a seat here, he can make a job that doesn't require him to face the zombies. He wants to be safe again, watch Monday night football, and maybe throw back a few beers."
"Then he is a dead man. That will never happen, it's over, it's all over. Is he a drinker?"
Leon answered, "No drinking, no real friends. Look, Dora the only people who listen to him are those who are scared themselves, he ignores the kids, so that leaves, what forty adults for him to persuade and seven of those adults are here, plus we are not even elected officials, we are a dictatorship. If you went out and shot the man in the head no one would do a damned thing."
"Hm." Dora scratched her head, thoughtfully, "I could…"
"No." Paige said, "You can't. We are here because we agree with you that there really isn't anywhere safer, you start shooting people in the head and they will start thinking it isn't safe." she raised her hand in a 'stop' gesture before Dora could respond, "I know you don't give a fuck, but who would take care of the kids? And I know you give a fuck about what happens to them, don't even deny it. We got four kids fourteen and under to every adult here, you want to make that ratio ten to one? I don't."
"Okay, so what do we do? He won't leave voluntarily, he won't do anything useful."
"We have to be creative." said Mary.
"If he could only build like he led us to believe, I mean even as a laborer he might be useful, but he thinks he knows things, and he doesn't, so he won't follow direction. Do we want to make a slave class? Put him in chains and bring out the whips to force him to do what we need?"
Leon sat up and grimaced at Dora, "Probably not a good idea."
"Oh, sorry, I was just throwing that out, maybe more like a chain gang thing than slavery?"
"What about a babysitter?" asked Paige.
"Does he get along with the kids?" asked Steven.
"Well not really, but if offered that instead of exile he might take it."
"And I don't want him influencing the children, they can smell fear. He would make them nervous." said Mary.
"Okay, this isn't going anywhere, no one wants him. How about this. We have the water tower now right?" asked Dora. Alex nodded. "Won't we need a guard out there?"
"Well not really…" began Alex who stopped when Dora stared daggers at him, "Maybe we could use someone to flip on the generator when we needed the pump to come on."
"So we could build him a fucking bunker out there under the tower, is there a shack or fence or something around it? When I was a kid they had our town water towers fenced in to keep kids from climbing on them."
"Yeah, a chain link fence. And a shed, but it was insulated and heated to keep the equipment from freezing, no air conditioning though."
"So we bunker his ass in, lock the fence up and give him a walkie-talkie so we can tell him when to flip the switch."
"Dora I was going to use a wireless relay to do that, so we wouldn't have to risk anyone being there all the time, it is about a mile outside of Doraville." said Leon.
"Not helping."
"No, but seriously we are going to make up a position so he doesn't have to do anything?"
"I wanted to exile him, boot his ass out, you are the ones who said he won't go. Then I offered to shoot him…" Dora said.
"All I am saying is it a drain on food, gas and other resources."
"I got that Leon. I will still shoot him."
"No, let's just try this, we can mention to him that maybe Leon can do a wireless thing in a few weeks and we won't need him there anymore. And I will go have a heart to heart talk with him when we drop him off. I won't hold anything back. See Dora? You're not the only one who can handle the shit details." said Steven.
"She'd have too much fun doing it anyway." Paige added.
Dora nodded, "Well water got mentioned, I think we should try and find the water mains and cut off the other neighborhoods."
"We are trying. Paige mentioned it to me this morning, Tim obviously didn't go today, but I've got the address of the water building from the phone book and I think I can get over there tomorrow with a few of the older kids. If we have to dig up and cut off a few water pipes I think we could do it, I know where to get the heavy equipment. Plus we still have the bulldozer." They had used the bulldozer to push the zombie bodies into the bombed out area to the north of Doraville.
"Food wise we are looking great, the army brought us enough stuff to last us for months yesterday. We won't like it much now, but it will keep us from starving." Mary said.
"So we get the hall done, get the water squared away and we are all set. Is that about right?" asked Dora.
"I think we need to get more for people to do during the winter." said Freddie, "Not now, but I've lived here for four years, winter could be long and boring, people are going to go stir-crazy. Do we have enough video games for all the kids to play?"
"Not a bad idea. Could we raid a toy store or Wal-Mart or something just for toys and games? Even the adults might want to play after two months inside. But later, say after the first snow? We gotta get that hall finished."
"That takes labor and between guarding twenty four hours a day, feeding the kids and scavenging the other things we need for winter we have no one really left to work. Every person counts. I say we give Alex no more than two days to find the water mains, after that he gets to work on the hall with Freddie to help tell the kids what to do." said Paige.
"I could use the help." Freddie admitted, "I can't supervise so many and the kids I have are fourteen years old. I am going to need more than one other adult with me on the project. We have everything for the outside walls and roof now, probably too much stuff for the roof. And I know Tim didn't do shit for the foundation, it's on pylons, even I read the book that said that isn't suitable for buildings."
"Well lucky us, there are no building codes any more. We have to make it work for this year. Next year we can build a new hall. So Alex goes for two days?" asked Dora. The council members all nodded yes. "And Tim is offered the job at the water tower or to go to Iowa?" again a series of nods. "Thanks, Steven for offering to take care of that. I am going to be there when you tell him, so he knows we mean it. Just for the record does everyone still feel we need to build the bunkhouse?"
The other council members nodded or answered 'Yes' one by one.
"Okay then we'll proceed with building it. Maybe some more adults will wander in and help out with it. Unless anyone has anything else…no?" Dora paused to let the others bring up other issues, no one did. "Then I pronounce the meeting adjourned."