Mechanical Failure (Zombie Short Story) - part II & III

~Part II & III~

I live in southern Nevada, in a small planned community called Whispering Springs. I never did find out who came up with such a misleading name for a town that’s planted in the middle of the desert. As much as I dislike the climate in the southwest, I was lucky to be here when the end happened. Whispering Springs is small, less than five thousand in population and it’s a good five miles from the neighboring town of Boulder City, which isn’t all that big, either. To get to Vegas from here, you have to either take the lake road, which is the long way, or you have to go through Railroad Pass, which is completely blocked with cars and trucks. I’m not complaining. That wall of vehicles is keeping a whole lot of dead people from coming my way.

Another good thing about southern Nevada is that most of the houses have cinder block walls around the back yards. In Whispering Springs, they all do. My back yard was completely enclosed except for a double gate that was big enough to drive a vehicle through. Unfortunately, the gate was pretty flimsy and I knew it wouldn’t stand up to much. I had already done some research on masonry before we bought the supplies at Lowes but I held off on building anything until the rumors were substantiated. Once that happened, I tore out the gate and replaced it with the ugliest block wall ever built. This was just a few days before the dead started showing up on my street, which was when my husband finally went to the shelter. I guess I was lucky that I got it done in time, but maybe lucky isn’t really the word I want. Sure, I’m alive, but I’m alone in a world full of the living dead and it’s pretty depressing.

~*~

Getting in and out of the house isn’t easy. When I need to do it, I go through the garage, but I never know just how big of a welcoming party will be outside. They always follow the truck when I leave, which is kind of handy. I used to keep the garage door closed when I was away from the house but the crowd outside managed to damage the door so it doesn’t close right anymore. For some reason, I can still open it with the remote but to close it I have to get out and pull the rope to lower the door manually. Sometimes it takes me two or three tries to finally get it to stay down. Each time I return home, I have to do a sweep first and draw the zombies away or I’d never be able to get the door closed.

I don’t go out at night, ever.

I’m thankful that things didn’t get bad here until mid-September. Lansing, Michigan was hit in early August, so we were fortunate. The first reports of outbreaks in Vegas were heard in early September and by then it was being taken very seriously. There was only one road in and out of Whispering Springs and roadblocks were set up on both ends of the town. Nobody was supposed to get back in without going through a twelve-hour quarantine. That might have done the trick except some idiots used their four-wheel-drive truck and came in through the desert one night, bringing the plague with them.

Still, even after that initial outbreak, our little town hung on longer than most other places did. There were new occurrences every few days after that first one and someone finally figured out that there had been a bunch of infected people in town all along, locked in their houses. Some of them eventually managed to get out by breaking windows. Others were accidentally released by well-meaning friends and relatives who usually ended up being bitten.

  ~to be continued~