The Dark Knight (Apocalypse Weird 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

Everyone’s.
    Ash.
    All that hot day, as they’d labored under Frank’s direction
to hammer sheets of plywood into place across the windows of the individual
townhomes that formed the outer wall of the “Castle”, he’d thought about her. 
Nailing crossbeams into place along the studs to back the wood from the
battening it might take some day when the dead and crazy came calling, he’d
thought about how to get back into the group.  How to get back to what they’d
almost had in the pool that night.  He and Ash. 
    Hopefully that would never happen.  The dead showing up,
that is.  Hopefully the corpses had all followed the natural contours of the
land and wandered toward the coast.  A battering forest of fists at their
plywood-sealed windows and locked doors, and even the someday actual front gate
Frank promised them, should never happen.  Because if it did, where could they
run to next if the walls collapsed? 
    Holiday tried to think of some way to seal the gaps between
the townhome clusters that made up the outer wall.  They’d all tried to think
of something that could be done to secure the gaping holes in their perimeter. 
If all the zombies back at the Green Front parking lot concentrated at any one
point along the flimsy wire mesh fence, then it was over for all of them. 
There’d be nothing they could do but run.
    A run to nowhere as fast as they could for as long as they
could.  Which wasn’t forever.  Holiday remembered what it was like to be chased
by the dead through the night with no place to hide.  You could only run for so
long.  And you never knew what was ahead of you, except probably more of them. 
And the dead never seemed to tire of chasing.
    “Build a cinderblock wall,” Candace had offered.
    They’d discussed that.  But they’d need the wall to reach at
least two stories high.  The amount of cinderblocks they’d need, brick or
whatever they could get their hands on, was beyond what the Home Depot had in
stock.  The next building supply store was two cities away across dozens of
neighborhoods.  Neighborhoods most likely... infested with the dead. 
    Was that the right word?  Infested?
    Neighborhoods where each house could hide dozens of
once-humans turned to frenzied, almost unstoppable, killers.  Zombies.  That’s
what everyone was calling them.
    Infected.
    Each supply run farther and farther from what was known
might draw more, many more, zombies back to the Vineyards townhome complex. 
Back to where it was safe, for now.  Back to the one place that seemed safe in
the world and what was left of it.
    A herd of dead.
    Infected.
    Like animals.
    Even less than.
    Dante was the next to try.  He’d suggested they dig a moat.
    That plan was pretty good, initially.  Until they considered
the closeness of the slope that led down from the road above the Vineyards,
leading up to the intersection and its proximity to the “Eastern Wall” they
would start building next.  A good rain, which might happen if this was an El
Ni ń o year, no
one could remember if it was, and a hill that had been destabilized by a slit
trench would slide down and crash through their wall. 
    An El Ni ń o
year was a year of almost torrential monsoon-like rains and flooding.  Before
the world had ended two weeks ago, those El Ni ń o
years had almost seemed like the end of the world as city services and news
crews raced to handle sliding hills, overflowing rivers and swamped roadways.
    Frank thought it felt like it might actually be an El Ni ń o year.
    “Plus,” added Ritter.  “They’ll just pile up in the ditch
and start climbing on top of each other.”  He paused.  Then, “they almost made
it up to the second story that way back at Green Front.”
    But they hadn’t, Candace thought and didn’t say a word.
    “So even if we do build a wall, what’s to keep ‘em from
doing that?” asked Dante.
    “Us,” replied Frank.  “Once the walls are up, we’ll build
walkways so we can