Living with the Dead

For the first couple of days there was even more silence than before, no one making a sound for fear of being the one that might kill us all, most of us didn't have an appetite for anything, and I don't think anyone slept well at night...

Of the people that were there a few of us started gathering in the den upstairs and tried to come up with a list of things that we were going to need, things that before this we wouldn't have been able to afford... money wasn't such a problem anymore...

We had plenty of food, and a whole bunch of water, so it was pretty low on the list. We knew that the power from the city probably wouldn't last much longer and that we were going to have to do something about that... We also knew that what weapons we had, a total of fourteen guns and a huge selection of blunt objects and knives, were enough to protect us for now but that we would need more, at least one gun for every adult in the house, preferably two, and more ammo than we knew how to find in Levelland. We decided we were also going to need more lumber just to make sure we could take care of every possibility of entrance to our safe house.

Bobby and Steven Rico had both been working in the oil field when this happened, and between the both of them they knew where there would be a couple of huge gas tanks at different offices that we could possibly go and get enough gas to power what vehicles were outside for a fairly long time, so they were appointed the task of figuring out who they wanted to go with them to help do it. They also said that there were quite a few propane generators in the oil field and that if we could find a vehicle that could handle the load, that they could possibly bring one of those back and stick it in the back yard (which the stenches hadn't made it into, which is VERY good, if they had gotten my dog, I would have done everything I could have to kill every last damn one of them) and wire the building into it. It wouldn't be powerful enough to power everything all the time, but it would keep the food cold...

My dad, Paul, my brother Michael, and myself were going to go to the lumber yard down the street from our house and try to see if we could find a way to load as much wood into the back of the truck as possible and get it to the building, while everyone else was trying to figure out where we were going to get guns and ammo... Levelland doesn't boast any gun shops, and just a couple of pawn shops... not much hope there...

Bobby and Rico decided they would wait till we got the lumber before setting out to get gas and what-not, so I decided they should go with us... the more the merrier, right? So we set about trying to figure out how we were going to do these things without becoming lunch...

Outside the house, not in the back yard but right outside with the enemy, were a Ford F-150 belonging to my father, Bobby and Monica's Ford Ranger, and Rico's wife's, Kim, brand spanking new Nissan Exterrra, the only three vehicles that would carry the people and the lumber we needed... but we needed a distraction to get to them without getting eaten and that was the problem...

Luckily that was taken care of for us... lucky for us, not for the distraction itself...

While sitting on the roof looking around trying to figure it out, a car came tearing down the street, this guy had to be going at least 40 or 50 when he made the turn that brought him into our line of sight, and went screaming down the road past us... right into an SUV that had been parked in the middle of the street for a couple of days...

Immediately the Zombies in the are went following the car, and we could see what looked to ba a couple of people crawling out of the other side of the car...

"If we make our move now then we'll have a better chance to make it to the lumberyard and back without getting bitten."

That's all Bobby had to say. We grabbed what weapons we could and headed downstairs to get going, not knowing what we might face on the outside of our barricades...