Free Cities of the Dead: Winters of Discontent by William Young Page A

paused and
watched him intently, its head unsteady on its neck, but its eyes
fixed on him in the vehicle. Dexter wondered why - how - they
didn ’ t
freeze solid, seeing as they were not dressed for winter, but
he ’ d
never bothered to consider thinking of examining one.
    He picked up the walkie-talkie off
the seat as he sat idling at the end of the cul-de-sac in which
they now lived, a gated community with a low concrete fence all
around it that had been abandoned over the course of the previous
summer. He couldn ’ t figure out why: the four-foot
high fence was enough to keep the zombies out because they
couldn ’ t climb over it, and sturdy enough they
couldn ’ t push through it. The backyards that abutted it were large
enough to obscure most human activity and sound from within the
perimeter. The only weak spot was the front gate, which was a
makeshift collection of fence materials pilfered from an 84 Lumber
and was secured by a thick steel chain and a key operated padlock
that only people on the inside had access to.
    He keyed the talk button. “ Hey, guys,
it ’ s
me at the front. Come let me in. ”
    He turned and scanned through the
windows, making sure there weren ’ t any undead around. If they came
before he was through the gate, he ’ d have to leave and wait it out
somewhere else. Sometimes, the zombies would stay for hours in
place, swaying, turning circles and stumbling around. It was almost
as if they knew you were going to come back.
    “ We see
you, ” Carly said a
moment later, after searching through binoculars to make sure he
was alone.
    Dexter watched through the front windshield as Carly
emerged from their house - third on the left. Smoke from wood fires
lifted into the air from four of the houses as the sun set behind
him over Lake Erie.
    “ I ’ m watching you now, Dad, ” said his son a moment later. “ Everything looks to be
okay. ”
    “ Just
keep watching, Ben. Mom ’ s outside and you can never know
what might happen. ”
    “ I
know, ” Ben said
with just a hitch of attitude. Dexter smiled and looked through the
windows, again.
    “ Motherfucker. ”
    Coming down the street in the tracks
his vehicle had laid through the snow were hundreds of undead. He
flashed the headlamps of the car and saw Carly start looking about
as she approached the gate. Inside, the road was shoveled, so she
was making better time of it than the zombies ever would. But,
still. Some of the undead could almost sort-of kind-of “ run. ” A moment later she saw the horde
approaching and ran to the gate, undoing the lock and opening the
fence. He drove in and stopped, watching over his shoulder as she
pushed the gate closed and locked the chain through the gates. She
ran up to the passenger side and slid into the seat.
    “ Wow, two months in
a row you ’ ve had a narrow escape, ” she said.
    He smiled. If only she knew it were
more often than that. He looked over his shoulder out the
window. “ These guys
are still ten or fifteen minutes of shuffling before they get here.
Let ’ s
go. ”
    A half-hour later, Carl Bergen was
banging on the front door. Dexter stepped onto the front porch and
looked where Carl was pointing: the front gate. Carl and his wife
were both in their mid-fifties and had been living in a “ fifty and
over ” community
when the plague had struck. Carl had been the assistant manager of
a branch of the state-owned liquor stores and his wife Gail a
housewife who had worked part-time in retail after their children
had left the roost. Carl wasn ’ t in the best physical shape and
his wife was even worse off, although they were both leaner than
they had been before winter had set in and began thinning them out.
Carl had been very vocal about wanting to leave the neighborhood
because he felt it was too exposed, and the others seemed to be
moving toward his opinion.
    “ There ’ s at least a hundred of them there pushing up against the
gate, Dex, we have to go down and start taking