Free Zombie Dawn by J.A. Crowley Page A

at my house.  I’d like you to join us for security and defense.  If you want to join us, though, I’m afraid we need to quarantine you in the garage, unarmed, for 24 hours until we know you’re not infected.”
    Stan immediately agreed.  “Until we know what’s going on, there’s strength in numbers.  Your house is least visible from the street and probably the best place to hole up.   Let’s get going.   It’s getting dark.  We can come back tomorrow and get our stuff.”
    “Mind if I grab your cars to add to the barricade at the end of the street?”
    “Good idea, go ahead.”
    Jake and I drove Stan’s Tundra pickup, Marj’s Accord, Christina’s Rav-4, and Stan Jr.’s F-250 down and added them to the barricade.  We decided to hang onto Wes’ Hummer, since it was a huge, powerful and safe vehicle.  I would never have bought one but it was a good car under the circumstances.  It had 4 wheel drive and could carry a bunch of people and supplies.
    Steve and Kate had done a great job on the barricade.  The cars were entirely covered by branches, but not enough to stop them if we needed to move them. The opening to our street was pretty much obscured, at least, we thought, from a zombie’s point of view.  Kate had wedged tall branches upright between the cars and at the ends so you couldn’t see any houses unless you really looked.  There were stone walls on both sides of the street; that would indicate to any survivors that a street was there but the zombies wouldn’t know.
    I made a note to weave a few strands of wire between the trees along Chestnut Street and on both sides of our street.  Both the Dillons and the Snows had allowed their side yards, running along Chestnut Street, to stay wild and they were densely wooded.  That, and a few strands of wire, might prevent wanderers from accidentally stumbling down our street.  I also decided, when I could, to plant a few trees right in our street where it intersected with Chestnut.  That would help with the disguise.
    We returned to the house and called it a day.  Mike had shot two zombies who had strayed into his line of fire.  One of them was Doug Capute, the son of a local farmer.  The Capute farm backed up to the woods that backed up to my house; he had apparently wandered through.  Maybe he had smelled us.  That made me think of all the stuff that we could use from the farm, and also about defending the street.
    The rest of the kids offered their report.  Bobbie, Tyler and Cody had been trying to get the Snow’s radio to work.  With some help from Mike and Mom, they’d run the antenna out a window, plugged the radio in, and set it up on a table with an office chair.  So far, they’d picked up only static but it was a start.  They’d been listening to the regular radios but got only music and canned programming; no new news.
    Sean continued to think about water, which was good.  He had found two brand new trash barrels that Kate had bought and put them under a couple of our gutter downspouts.  He had covered the openings with chicken wire and window screens.  He was pretty proud.   “Dad, this way, when it rains, these barrels will fill up with water.  We can use the water to flush the toilets or, if we had to, we could drink it.  Tomorrow, I’m going to put that old kiddie pool out under the front downspout and get any water that comes out.”  
    Sean also reminded me that Dan Curren had just put in a well for his irrigation system.  “If the water pipes stop working, maybe we can figure out how to get water out of Dan’s well.” 
    “Great work, Sean.  And great work by the radio team.  You guys are awesome.”
    At that night’s meeting, we were in good spirits.  We had found a bunch of survivors and hoped to find more.  We had continued securing the area, and had plenty of supplies for the time being.  We were working on water supply and communications.  Not bad so far.  We decided to continue work on