I have some extra time so id liek to write more about the past. just to get it down before my memory fades.

Well onward to the barricade project. the first thing we had to do was get a front end loader and excavator running. that in and of itself was a major deal. there was equipment aplenty in jensens lot but all with dead batteries and flat tires. We finnaly found a good cantidate in the back of the shop. It was a monster. a 980 i belive. It was under a tarp and parked behind a dump truck with no motor. The battery had been unhooked when it was parked and still had a full charge. A couple five gallon cans of fresh diesel and it roared to life. the dump truck was easily pushed out of the way and i eased the behemoth out into the sunlight. Jay followed me back to teh house with the ranger as i familarized myself with the controls. The House next door was first on the agenda. I simply dropped the massive bucket on the roof and the whole works folded in on itself. I pushed the foundation in on top and drive over three or four times after i pushed some dirt on it. Ugly, but cleared. the other houses fell about the same. the onyl surprise in th whole deal was when i ripped the roof off the house across the alley. it had been owned by a doctor. When i opened it up there must have been at least 100 pot plants growing in the attic. Nice littel side line there, Doc. I wonered if he would have claimed it was "medicinal".

It took three days to clear the houses and outbuildings. We ended up getting a bulldozer running to clear away the last of the debris. when we first had it running i simply couldnt resist. I took that mother and drove right smack through the middle of city hall. Id had my share of run-ins with the city back before the outbreak and i needed a littel payback. It was fun if nothing else. And Jay laughed his ass off while i did it.

This entire time we were constantly being harrased by groups of three to five dead heads. they would show up a few times a day to disrupt our work while we mowed them down. they had fallen to the level of an annoyance unless they massed in large numbers.

We coundt get the car crusher running so we came up with a road packer that did just as nice a job. Soon we had a good system going. We would get the equipment started in the morning, secure the house and once we were in our machines we were virtually unstoppable. I started getting a kick out of chunching dead heads with the bucket of the front end loader. Most made a satisfying splat when the bucket hit the ground. i had long since gotten over shooting, flattening and otherwise disposing of people i had met, known and done buisness with. You treated them like rats or ants. a nusiance to be dealt with and forgotten about. Anyway jay would flatten a car with the packer and id pick it up and add it to the barricade wall. We built it five flattened cars high (about fifteen feet) and two layers deep. we also banked gravel and rock against the inside of the barricade to help reinforce it. It took all of April, May and June to build the wall and create a "gate" we could lift in and out with the payloader. We also laid in several fuel tankers from semi trucks we filled with fuel. we got a fuel delivery truck running and used it to shuttle fuel from the stations around town to our tankers.

All of July was spent putting in a garden and building storage sheds for supplies. our biggest problem for next winter would be heat. Propane stocks in town were low when the outbreak hit and we had exhausted most of them keeping the house warm. most house tanks had run dry before we got around to them and besides some 20lb cyclinders off of BBQ grills, we struck out. Jay found a exterior wood fired stove system in a house across town and we spent a week disassembling it and moving it to our house. We spent three more weeks cutting a massive mountain of firewood inside the barricade. jay found several chainsaws and boxesof spare parts at the rental shop which made life easier. i laid in several axes, saws and splitting mauls for when the fuel ran out. There also was an old wood stove in the basement when I bought the house. We moved it upstairs and re-ran the chimney pipe. It would save on propane and when that ran out would be the secondary source of heat. The outside furnace could be stoked with logs and burn for 10-12 hours without attention as long as we used the small furnace inside to keep it comforatble.

After the barricade was completed we built a catwalk around the top with prebuilt, covered, firing positions at the four cardinal directions. We stocked them with weapons and provisions. The ladders to the top of the berm were retractable and we could thoeretically survive for some time without leaving the wall. We worked seven days a week, probably 16-18 hours a day on this project. We were both tired and sore when it was complete.

August brought cold rain and increased dead head attacks. They seemed to know winter was coming and stepped up the number and intensity of their attempts to breach the barricade. The only event worth noting in this time was on Aug 15th.

The usuall morning dead head attack hadnt come yet this morning. I was on the barricade to the north and Jay was covering the south side. We had scrounged some FRS radios and used them for comms now.

“Big bunch coming my way.” Jay called. I started hoofing hard to his position when I spotted another group coming in from the east.

“I got more on the east side. Rock and roll wildman.”

Jay opened up with his AR and I made ot to the east firing point. Inside was my converted Ruger 10/42. A standard 10/22 converted with a MG-42 lookalike stock and a BMF trigger crank. It could lay down an impressive line of fire. It was .22 rimfire but hey, lead is lead. I walked a line of rounds across the lead dead heads and dropped about half of them. I changed mags and kept firing. Empty brass clinked around my feet and the empty mags clattered as they fell. I had 15 pre-loaded 30 round mags for the 10/42 in a rack easily at hand, and cartons of spare loose ammo were packed at the rear of the firing point. There must have been 300 or more dead heads in front of me when Jay yelled on the radio.

“I need a hand here!”

I let the 10/42 fall on its bipod and grabbed my AK. I sprinted the distance to Jay's position and found him with a badly jammed rifle. Hard bolt over-ride. The dead heads were swarming hard around the base of the barricade and starting to pile up.

I emptied a full mag into the mass and didnt leave an appreciable dent. I handed Jay my rifle and mag bag and said:

“Party Poppers.”

Jay nodded and started firing. The party poppers were and idea I got from a book I read once. I took plain five gallon buckets and put five pounds of black powder in the bottom. The I put in an old T-shirt and filled the rest of the bucket with granite chips. I buried them facing outward a 45 degree angle at the base of the barricade and strung the fuses through. Once again my planning ahead saved out butts. I lit the fuses for the six poppers closest to the swarm and hauled ass. I made a “circle the wagons” motion to Jay and he took cover.

When the poppers blew it made a satifyig hole in the swarm and gave Jay enough leeway to push them back. I lit the fuses on four more under the east side and waited till they blew. They had left a gaping hole in the middle of the swarm to the east and my 10/42 took care of most of the rest. All my pre-loaded mags were shot out and I was down to my pistol to pick off stragglers. The dead were heaped around the barricade three and four deep in places. Great rents had been torn into the street by the party poppers spray and pockmarks from bullets were everywhere. Jay was still firing my AK fast and hard on the south side, and I headed over to help him mop up.

There were still 50 or 60 dead heads around his position and he yelled for ammo as I got close. I ran past him and grabbed a sack of mags from the west firing point. I also picked up my browning 12 ga and two bandoleers of buckshot. I tossed him the mags and added the heavy thump of my 12 ga to the racket. Jay's AK was smoking hot and my browning was just getting warmed up when we heard the growl of more dead heads coming. I moved back to the west firing point and laid the barrel of the browning on the rail. I was firing and loading as fast as I could but the dead head mass just got bigger and bigger. Jay had abandoned picking off stragglers to the south and was firing into the main mass of dead heads in front of me.

“Get the tommy guns!” I yelled at him. When we cleaned out the police station we had found two ancient thompson SMGs. Heavy as hell but they packed one heck of a wallop and they were full auto to boot. I continued firing fast as Jay sprinted to the house. I was almost out of ammo for my 12ga when he returned. Each thompson had four, thirty round stick mags with it and there was one 50 shot drum mag.

Jay had handed me one of the tommy guns and we both leaned over the rail to fire. The recoil of the 45 ACP ammo was heavy and hard to keep precisely on target but the mass of dead heads made precise accuracy unimportant. We sprayed the mass with mag after mag until all thje stick mags were dry. I handed Jay our single drum mag.

“I'm lighting the party poppers. Keep em bunched up if you can.” Jay nodded and continued firing. I lit all the poppers on the west side and covered my ears. The blast rattled my teeth and the entire barricade shuddered with its force. I heard the yammer of the tommy gun and knew Jay was still in it. I grabbed more 45 ammo from a storage shed and climbed the ladder. Jay had set down the tommy gun and was firing his ruger pistol.

“Its empty.” He shouted. We were both hard of hearing after the popper blast. I dropped several boxes of 45 ammo at his feet and loaded my 12 ga.

“Ill cover while you reload.”

Jay nodded and holstered his pistol. There was thity or so dead heads left and I sprayed them with buckshot. The adrenalin was racing through my viens and precision aiming was completely forgotten. Jay was thumbing 45s into the stick mags as fast as he could but I was already running short on 12 ga ammo. Jesus we were burning through shells like crazy. He had four stick mags loaded when I used the last I had.

“Im going for more ammo,. Shit the more we shoot, the more show up!” Jay nodded his agrement. It seemed the dead heads were a never ending stream. I had had enough. I ran into the house an grabbed my CETME. It was cannon loud and I had almost 100 loaded magazines for it. If I burned through all that we were in deep shit.

I lugged the wooden crate full of mags up the ladder and set up. Jay was out of ammo in the tommy gun and was firing his pistol again.

“Watch your ears!” I yelled. The muzzle brake on that pig is loud as hell and I didnt want blow his ear drums out. I put on earmuffs and let the dead heads have it. My CETME slings brass around like crazy and rebounding 308 cases filled the firing point with flying empties. I didnt take time to aim and just bump-fired mag after mag into the mass. I heard Jay join the fight with my AR-180. We didnt have very many AR style mags but we had enough we could just maybe pull this off. I fired and fired and fired. My glasses were spattered with carbon and weapons oil and suddenly as I peered through them I coundt see anymore dead heads. Was it finnaly over?

“Jay! Perimiter run!” I waved him one way and I went the other. Jogging fast we rounded the barricade and spotted only a few stragglers. We picked them off and it was over. Expended brass and empty mags were everywhere. The west firing point had so much empty brass in it, it was hard to walk around without slipping. Dead heads were piled ten feet deep in places by my guess. This would be one hell of mess to clean up. We collapsed exhausted on the catwalk, surrounded by carnage. The smell of expended gunpowder hung in the air. Smoke rose in a thin line from the muzzle of my CETME and drifted in the autumn breeze.

It took us nearly a week to clean up after the battle. I couldnt think of it as anything else. It wasnt a skirmish, nor a shootout. Between the two of us we had expended about 4500 rounds of ammo, and by my estimate had wiped out something close to 1200 dead heads. The bulldozer made short work of them but it was greusome regardless. We spent days reloading all the mags we had shot through. We had plenty of ammo still but that fight had taken a good bite out of it. We also had used all the black powder we had for party poppers and had no more to replace them. We needed more firepower.

“time to think about breaking into the armory.” I said to Jay that night. He nodded. We had discussed this previously and dismissed it as too much work for an uncertain outcome. We needed full auto firepower. Preferably something belt fed. I knew M60s and 50 cals' from my army days. The weapons were there, the real question was ammo. Most guard units didnt have much if any ammo on hand but we were getting close to desperation. Semi auto civilain guns werent going to cut the mustard if we were fighting swarms of dead heads.

We got our gear together the next day and headed for the armory. The gym and admin offices showed the usual deterioration of a half a year plus of neglect. The vault door however was still locked tight. We had mapped out our plan ahead of time. We would attack from an outside corner and work our way in. the front end loader made short work of the exterior masonry and flashing. The steel wall of the vault was now exposed. I banged the edge repeatedly with the edge of the bucket until it peeled back. Jay attached a chain to the edge and opened the vault like a beer can. We had hit the jackpot. We exposed two pallets stacked three feet high with ammo cans. Jay cracked one open and revealed belted 7.62mm ammo for a M60. Another had 40mm grenades and 5.56mm ammo. I had no clue why they had all this ammo on hand until I found paperwork saying the unit was to be deployed to Iraq and they were to expend the ammo in re-familarazation training. We loaded the pallets on the truck and got in deeper. The weapons were stored in locking racks but my bolt cutter made short work of the locks and chains. We took all we could find- 10 full auto M4s, four M4-M203 combo guns and three beretta pistols we found on the racks. We busted open a couple wall lockers and found two M60 machine guns and several M231 firing port weapons. A duffel bag contained several spare barrels and a “hot mitt” for changing barrels. There was 50 cal ammo on the pallet but no MG in the arms room. We couldnt find it at all. We surmised it must have been taken somewhere else for some reason and never returned. We were loaded heavy when we rolled away. We handt found any more explosives, mines or anyhting. I was dissapointed and excited at the same time.

We mounted the M60s in the weakest palces on the wall where we had blown all the party poppers in the last battle. The M231s we carried with us. They ate ammo like crazy with ROF of 1200 RPM but I had found a couple beta C mags in a house across town and they fit the bill for close range defense. We feared another horde of dead heads would show quickly but none did. It was back to the small three to five groups. We had lots of 5.56mm ammo now so I primarily sniped them with a M4 or my AR-180. If i was in a sporting mood id drag out one of my .22s and plink at them with it. The most fun though was dropping 40mm grenades on top of them. They blew up like rotten rutabegas if you got a round right in close to em'. We only had a few hundred rounds of 40mm so we quit that quick though. We test fired all the weapons and only one gave us problems. One of the M4s jammed repeatedly no matter what fixes we tried. Jay surmised the reciever must have been mis-machined and we stripped it for parts.