Free Zombie Fallout by Mark Tufo Page B

would allow.
    Jed looked like he was about to blow a gasket. That was the same look that got me going and thrown out of the town meeting a few months earlier.
    “Gerry, where exactly are you and the missus planning on going to vacation NOW?” Jed stated, placing the emphasis on ‘now.’
    “Well, we could have used it to escape to Florida,” Gerry said dejectedly.
    “Oh yeah,” Jed stated sarcastically. “They didn’t hand out ANY flu shots in the retirement capital of the world.”
    I had missed the news broadcasts that were still operational. They had decisive evidence that the flu vaccination was the culprit and not voodoo mysticism, as many of the more superstitious types (me) had reckoned. At this point though, what’s the difference. A zombie’s a zombie, I don’t care how it got to the point of wanting to eat my brains, I just wanted to make sure that didn’t happen. Gerry didn’t make any more interjections. He pouted as best he could with an oxygen tube coming out of his nose.
    “Okay, now that that matter is closed,” Jed said, as he looked straight at Gerry. “I’d like at least four people at the bus gate. I’m worried about the clearance. The zombies that showed up last night showed no inkling that they even noticed there was a way in under the bus. I’d say let’s flip the bus too.”
    Gerry loudly harrumphed.
    “But I want it mobile in case we need to get it out of the way quickly, plus we’re going to have cars coming and going all the time,” Jed added, with a stern glance in Gerry’s direction.
    One of the residents, an older lady with white hair that I always saw walking her Corgi asked, “why don’t we just seal it up and be done with it?”
    I thought she answered haughtily for one that lived so close to the fringes of lower class society. Maybe her rich husband took off with a young floozy and only left her with that ankle biting little pecker Welsh Corgi.
    “…Need to…” Jed had brought me back from my little inward detour. “Get supplies and food. And we might need it if we have to leave in a large group in a hurry,” he continued. “Now I know nobody is going to like this part. I want to assemble teams of five to scour all the unoccupied townhomes. This is going to be a lot of work but we need to figure out where we are at. So grab all the food, gas, weapons, ammo, batteries, whatever you think we can use. Bring it here to the other smaller conference room and we’ll go from there. Also look for a couple of larger stepladders. I want to use those as guard towers.”
    I stood up to ask a question. Jed didn’t look happy about it.
    “The floor recognizes Michael Talbot,” Jed said, wiping his hand over his brow.
    “Jed, fellow survivors,” I started. Some winced at that, maybe because they hadn’t thought of it that way or maybe they just didn’t want to. “I’ve got a couple of questions.”
    “We figured that Talbot, or you wouldn’t have gotten up,” Jed sarcastically stated. I was going to take back my offer to kiss him if he kept this up.
    “What’s our stance on interlopers?” Jed had thought of everything but this issue. “I mean,” I continued. “What are we going to do with…” I thought for a second, the word still didn’t sound right when it came out of my mouth. “… refugees?” (This wasn’t Grenada.)
    Jed thought for a second. He didn’t want to come to a snap decision. “I guess that’s unavoidable,” Jed stated to no one in particular. “On one hand it will ease up the load of responsibilities and burdens we will have to bear.”
    Miss White Hair with the canine ankle biter spoke out. “Responsibilities? Burdens? Guard duty? I want no part of that,” she said frostily.
    ‘Wrong answer,’ I thought.
    Without missing a beat, Jed said, “Mrs. Deneaux, when will you be leaving then?”
    Her face lost more color than her hair. Even her dog looked like he had been pistol-whipped. She didn’t respond in any fashion. I took