a bit more of the past as i remember.

We spent the next week provisoning and scouting for other survivors. we found one. a middle aged woman who was seemingly catatonic. she died the day after we found her. Jay got a body bag from the hospital and put her in it. The ground was frozen so a grave was out of the question. He put her in the morgue freezer. Niehter of us thought anyone would mind.

the worst thing for the next couple months was the boredom and lack of information. we played board games, and did puzzles. cabin fever got the best of us on a few occasions and we got into some epic shouting fights. hurtful words were said but afterwards we smoothed it over. both of us were on edge. Then we found the generator.

It was under tarp behind the MDU building. It was a 20kW gas engine powered genie. We nearly killed ourselves getting in position behind the house and Jay nearly electrocuted himself hooking it up but we got it done. When we fired it up and the chirstmas light came on i thought i might just have heart attack. we fried frozen burgers from the meat packing plant on the stove like we were real humans. Boiled potatoes, hamburger helper, and the last microwave pizza in town fell before our hunger. We had survived for six weeks on dehydrated camp food and canned goods warmed over a creaky coleman stove neither one of us knew how to use real well. We ate like civilized men that night and slept like babies while the elctric furnace hummed away in the basement like nothing was wrong with the world.

Unfortuantly the sound of the generator drew another kind of danger. The other survivors who we didnt find. There was at least two because they hit both sides of the house at the same time. I fired a burst from my AK while i was still mostly asleep and by sheer luck killed one. I heard glass breaking in the north windows and Jay firing a pump shotgun. I heard a scream of pain and someone running off in the night. I emptied the AK through the already shattered window and hit nothing but air. they were gone, but the damage was done. the genny had taken two hits from a pickax and the radiator was punctured. Coolant spilled onto the ground and puddled on the frozen turf. Four broken windows to be boarded over and one flat tire on the ranger from stray bullet. All i could think of to say when morning lit the carnage was "Fuck."

We did our best to repair the genny but the radiator i was able to rig up wasnt big enough. nothing else in town fit right. I hunted and hunted for a truck radiator with the right outlets but nada. I ended up using a rad off a bobcat i found in the back of Central Diesels repair shop. the engine of the bobcat was torn down (probably never to be reassembled now) and the rad was setting off to one side. I got it mounted and the genny ran but would overheat after about two hours. it was long enough to cook meals and warm up the house for night. I took at least three hours to cool back off again but it was better than nothing. I thought about lots of plans for an external system but didnt have what parts i needed. We never did find the attackers but i did find a house i thought they might be living in and i torched it out of spite.

Another month passed and the cold was beginning to break. drips could be seen here and there along the eaves from time to time. it also meant the dead heads may be back. We had cleaned our weapons and spent plenty of time in front of the reloading bench building ammo. We couldnt be constantly fighting them off all sumer so we had come up with a plan to build a wall around the house. Well around the best part of the block actually. we had already stripped the houses closest to our clean of anyhting useable. we would commandeer a front end loader or excavator from Jensen Rock & Sand and cave them into the basements. A few passes with the tracks and we'd have fairly level ground. the car crusher was at the salvage yard when the outbreak occoured and we figured if we could get it going we could flatten cars to make a large barricade around the house. We could at least buy ourselves time if nothing else.

I also had plans to salvage as much fuel as possible and store it in some sort of tanker truck inside our barricade. We'd need plenty of diesel to buld the barricade to start with and a goodly supply to run the genny as well. I had finnally loacted a proper radiator for the genny and had it running good. Blind luck, that one. the radiator waqs upstairs in the ford garage. What chance would you give that id find a radiator for an international engine at a ford dealership? Besides that, we needed a garden, i was worried about scurvy. We had been taking vitamin pills from the drugstore, but nothing beats fresh veggies. I figured if we barricaded off half a block we should be OK. that would mean caving in 6 houses and several outbuildings, and maybe 600 cars crushed and placed. Alot of work in a time where you had to constantly look over your shoulder for the undead and lack of electricty made everything twice as hard.

As soon as the ground thawed we made the decision to cut the highway coming into town. It came down a steep slope on the other side of the river hill and cutting it there would stop anyone from just waltzing into town whenever they liked. I found thirty pounds of C4 in the city demolition shed and my engineer training from the army served me well. A cratering charge does just that. Makes a big ass crater. and thirty pounds of C4 going up in one bang leaves one HELL of a big ass crater. You could cross it with a tank or maybe snow cat in the winter but no four wheeled vehicle could traverse that ground. the hills around twon were so steep we were effectivly now a land locked castle of sorts. It made us feel just a bit more secure at night.

As far as we could tell there were no other survivors in town. We had searched and honked horns and yelled until we were hoarse with no respose. i even set off some leftover 4th of July fireworks to try and attract attention. All for naught. What we did have however was around 3000 more reanimated dead heads to deal with.