Free Zombie Dawn by J.A. Crowley Page B

the neighborhood the next day.
    Jake offered to go up onto the roof to complete installation of the antenna.  We took him up on it, even though it was dark.  We set up a ladder on the porch roof and Jake flew up it.  He ran the antenna up the chimney and tied it on with some clothesline.  He called down “Hey, we have a good view to the south from up here.  It looks like Capute’s farm is burning.”
    Cody yelled out “I’ve got something.”  I could hear him trying to transmit back to whoever he had heard.  I told Jake to come in, and ran over and told Cody not to speak to anyone.  “We need to be very careful about letting people know we’re here.  Don’t speak to anyone, just listen and let us know what’s going on.”
    “Okay, Jack. The microphone wasn’t even plugged in. No one heard us.  I’ll tell everyone no talking.”
    The transmission ended quickly, but clearly whoever was making it was under attack.

Chapter Eight:  Tuesday
    The next day poured rain and was chilly.  All of our new people in the garage were fine.  We now had quite a crew:  My family, including Mom, was six.  Five Schmidts.  Steve, Julie, and Jake Miller.  Mary, Tyler, and Cody Johnson.  We had Carol, Jamie, and Rick Cliff.  It was getting to be quite a crew, and clearly we would need more space.
    For the time being, we decided that my family would stay in the master bedroom.  Mom, Mary, Tyler and Cody would stay in Mike’s room.  Steve, Carol, and Jake would stay in Sean’s room.  Carol, Jamie, and Rick would stay in Bobbie’s room.  The Schmidts set up in the attic, which was pretty well furnished with mattresses and camping gear by then.  We figured that would work for a few days, and that it was better to stay together than to spread out.   It was already starting to stink, but we were already getting used to it.
    No one wanted to go out much that day.  Sean refilled all of the buckets from the rain barrels and the kiddie pool.  The toilets were working fine and the water was still on, but we knew it was only a matter of time until the juice shut off, the pumps shut down, and the tanks emptied.  We still had plenty of drinking water stored up.  Mike remembered that we needed a minimum of a gallon per day per person for drinking and cleaning.
    We started talking about eventually re-taking, and occupying, the entire neighborhood and maybe spreading out from there.  The Dillon and Snow houses were a mess, and we were not eager to expose ourselves to the virus that we knew was there.  The Schmidt and Cliff houses, and my Mom’s house, seemed fine.  We had not been to the Curren house, which was next to my parents’ house.  We definitely wanted to get there and to check out the well.
    The house next to mine belonged to Clive Barrows and Eddie Lancaster, a married gay couple from England, and their adopted son, Charlie.  Clive and Eddie were in their early 50s and Charlie was in his teens.  Clive and Eddie had moved to Massachusetts after the courts allowed gay marriage in 2004 and had been the first couple married by our town clerk.
    The whole gay marriage thing made me chuckle.  The religious folks were up in arms but to me it was simple—if I can’t discriminate against them, neither can the government.  Massachusetts is a liberal state—even our “conservatives” would be considered commies in Orange County and much of the south—and discrimination against gays and lesbians had been outlawed for many years.
    I’d been trained in law school to break things down into pieces, and then analyze the elements.  My thinking was as follows.  One—is a person a member of a protected class?   Yes, other than the obese and pedophiles (and, many of us would argue, white guys) almost everyone was protected.  Question two:  Does marriage confer any benefit on married couples?  The answer, setting aside a couple thousand divorce jokes, is yes—married people enjoy tax, estate, and property