Read Online What Zombies Fear (Book 2): The Maxists by Kirk Allmond - Free Book Online

they died of things like dysentery and bubonic plague, Victor.”
     
    “ Ok, so we need a sewer system.” I replied dryly.
     
    “ We also need security here. We need people to feel like they have a home. We need people to feel safe to walk outside and let the children be children. We need a big wall. It’ll give people something to do. It will be good to have a community goal.”
     
    “ What kind of wall?”
     
    “ Well, about three miles south, past the Thompson River, there is a quarry. I think we need a stone wall. And we need it big. I’m think it’s going to take 7000 acres to feed this many people and give us room to grow. I did some sketching, here’s what I know of the fields around and seven farms that we would incorporate.”
     
    She slid me a topological map of the area, with a red line drawn around a huge section of land. There were marks all over the map, highlighting fields and optimal growth areas, housing areas, food storage, roads, everything. She’d designed a small city, inside a fortified wall.
     
    Next she slid me a photograph of the Great Wall of China.
     
    “ Did you know the inside of the great wall is hollow? The guards on the walls can sleep inside the wall and then walk along the top of it like a highway.” It was also wide enough to put a horse cart on. We’re not defending against smart zombies with this. I knew that eventually we would kill all of the smart ones. This wall would be built to defend against the hundreds of millions of slow zombies within two hundred miles of here.
     
    Mom continued, “I’ve outlined what I think are the places we should start, using natural barriers to keep us as safe as possible during the construction. It will also serve as a way to keep our resources at hand. There’s a huge herd of buffalo just south of Charlottesville. If we can bring twenty of them here, we can restart that herd inside the wall. We can keep a mixed herd of five hundred on the Anderson farm. They have a thousand acres in two pastures. One of them I want to keep for bison and keep cows in the other.”
     
    “ Mom, this is amazing. I don’t even know how to get started on a project like this. I wish Renee was here.”
     
    My sister Renee never made it to the house. She and her husband had been on the way on the night I arrived, but we never heard from them again. We seldom talked about them. They had two small children, Max’s cousins. Before the end of the world Renee had been a project manager for a large construction company dealing with logistics and time lines on huge construction projects. This kind of thing was her specialty.
     
    “ I miss her too Victor.” Mom said, her eyes misting up a little bit.
     
    “ Ok, Mom. What do you think is the first step?”
     
    “ Immediately, we need to get this wall thing started. The property has no defense from the north east. I know you shut down the road there, but anything could come on foot or by four-wheel drive. While we’re building the wall, we need to get temporary living arranged, get some sanitation in place and get some sort of food stores tucked in for the winter. It’s going to be a long winter and its already September. The garden is almost done.”
     
    “ Do you think a greenhouse would help? We could head down to that nursery between here and Fredericksburg, disassemble one and bring it back.”
     
    “ It would still be spring before any yield. This winter is going to be canned vegetables.”
     
    “ Where do you think I can get enough canned vegetables? We’re going to need two tractor trailer loads of cans to get this group through the winter and into the spring growing season.”
     
    “ Our restaurant food supplier was out of Charlottesville. There’s a large Sysco warehouse there. I think we could get enough from them, but Charlottesville is a pretty big city. There are going to be lots of zombies there.”
     
    “ Killing zombies I can handle. We’re pretty good at that,” I