shelves. The milk had soured and was chunky, but there were several cups of yogurt and a tub of cottage cheese. I tore into the yogurt and devoured every cup. In the bottom drawers were tortilla shells, cheese and meat. I made a few roll ups with the tortilla, that I quickly ate.
My hunger satisfied, I moved on from the kitchen to look for anything of value. What 'value’ turned out to be was several changes of clothing, blankets and pillows, another shovel, several flashlights with batteries, candles, matches and a lighter, a box of heavy duty trash bags, and two duffle bags full of baseball gear. I considered whether to keep the baseball gear, but elected to use the duffle bags to carry the rest of my loot.
I grabbed what food I could from the fridge, food that would keep without refrigeration and moved everything down to the crawl space. I brought all of my gear across from my old house and sealed the hole behind me with several feet of dirt.
I began exploring the neighborhood, tunneling from one house to the next. Even in the barest of homes, there was always something to eat, even if it was just a handful of crumbs in the bottom of a bread toaster. My selection of equipment slowly improved as I progressed from house to house. For example, I exchanged the various blankets that I had been dragging around for a sturdy sleeping bag and a small air mattress, and dumped my wife’s oversized vest for sturdier long sleeve shirts.
About a week into my explorations of the neighborhood I met the Biehl family. I had already breached the living area of a new home and was creeping up the stairs when I encountered them. As I crept up the stairs my eyes focused on a strange sight at the top of the stairs. A length of wood was revealed as I continued upwards, slowly growing from a small hemisphere into a long shaft. I was transfixed as it stretched to one foot in length, then two feet, and then three. At the base of the wooden object appeared a grizzled and very hairy head. I froze in shock and stared into the angry eyes of Eric Biehl.
He remained motionless, bat held high and ready at his shoulders. Very quietly he said, “Where in the hell did you come from and what in the hell are you doing in my house?” Silence followed his question and he remained perfectly motionless.
I lowered the pick to my side and crept another step forward. “I’m Daryl Ingram and I live at 3404 Reinhardt Street. Or I used to live there.” I crept forward another step.
The man remained motionless, but somehow seemed to project a level of threat. “I’m Eric Biehl and this is my house. How did you get in? Because if you let in the zombies I’ll tear your head off and use it for zombie bate.”
A voice from behind Eric whispered, “Put the bat down you jerk and bring him in here. If you start something you’ll be the one bringing the zombies.”
Eric lowered his bat and motioned towards a room behind him. Quietly he said, “Come on.” He turned and silently walked into the room.
I followed and found myself in a large bedroom at the back of the home. The room was crowded. There were three beds on which sat a middle aged woman, a boy of around ten and a girl in her early teens. There were several large dressers against the wall piled high with canned food, dried food, bottled water, books, magazines, batteries and other supplies. In the middle of the room was a large dining table with several chairs. The surface was scattered with playing cards, a portable radio, a half finished board game, more bottles of water and a small propane cook stove. An electric ceiling fan spun above. A door on the left led to a bathroom and another door on the right led to a large closet. The blinds were pulled, but angled to let in the light from a blue sky.
Eric closed the door behind me.
The woman spoke, “Have a seat at the table.”
I grabbed a chair from the table and pulled it out. I turned it to face the woman and sat down. Eric sat down on the bed next to the woman. He set the bat against the edge of the bed.
She spoke once I and Eric sat down, “I’m Geri Lynn. This is my husband Eric. The boy is Hank, or Henry depending on how he’s behaving, and the young lady is Lizzy. Welcome to the Biehl house. I do have one question before we go any further, are the outside doors closed or are we going to have zombies joining us?”
I answered, “No, I didn’t come through the front door. I came up through the crawl space.”
She looked surprised, “Really? How exactly did you do that?”
“I was trapped in my own crawlspace. I started digging to make more room while I waited for rescue and discovered soft sand under a thick layer of hardpan. I started digging tunnels, going from home to home to find food and supplies. I’ve come all the way from Reinhardt and William Street.”
Eric spoke up, “Barry lives on that street.”
“He doesn’t live there anymore. He used to be my next door neighbor, but he’s dead now. He shot himself in the head.”
“So who are you?” asked the lady, emphasizing the ‘who’ in her question.
“I’m Daryl Ingram of 3404 Reinhardt Street. My family left before the zombies arrived, so it’s just me. Like I said before, I’m tunneling from house to house, looking for food and supplies to stay alive.”
Eric spoke up again, “Hold up...are you telling me that you tunneled across the street? You’d have to do that if you were to get over to this block.”
“Yes I am. It was slow, the tunnel was as small as I could make it, and I ended up dumping dirt on inside the house I was tunneling from.”
Geri Lynn asked another question, “So what are planning on doing...in the long run? What happens once you’ve gone to every house and eaten all the food you can find? Are you going to tunnel out of our neighborhood to another sub-division and start over?”
I shrugged, raising my hands up slightly. I was not sure of my long term plans. “I’m hoping, beyond hope, that rescue comes and we start over. Maybe I’m trying to find a good place to make a run from, but so far stealing a car and attempting to flee through the zombies seems more dangerous than moving from home to home underground.”
I looked at them and asked the same question back, “What are you planning on doing.”
Geri Lynn answered, “We’re doing it. Rescue is going to come. We’ve marked the house to show we are alive inside and we’re waiting.”
Eric added, “We’ve got food, water, a safe shelter and a deck of cards to pass the time. What we don’t have... is enough to share with you.”
Eric’s sudden comment caught me off guard. “Excuse me,” I asked? “I haven’t asked to remain here. You know what I’m doing, why I’m here. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind coming with me? I could always use an extra pair of hands to dig and the five of us could move all of your supplies rapidly. If you stay here, you risk the zombies zeroing in on your hiding spot and busting in.”
Even as I offered to have them join me, I knew I had been summarily excused from their home and that they had no interest in leaving.
Geri Lynn spoke next, “Eric is right. You can’t stay and we can’t share anything with you. It’s probably best that you leave now.”
Eric stood back up, the bat back in his hands, and walked to the door. Opening it up, he said, “Let’s go.”
I stood up and walked through the open door. Eric followed me out and down the stairs as I walked back to the crawlspace entrance. As I stepped through the opening he said, “Don’t come back.” I climbed all the way in and dropped to my belly as he stood over and watched. As he was dropping the trapdoor into place, Eric said, “I’m going to drop a poisonous bug bomb down this hole tomorrow. I hope you’re not here when I do." A minute putting the trapdoor into place, I heard heavy scraping as Eric slid something very heavy over the entrance.
I began working on my next tunnel without delay. I decided not to test Eric’s threat and elected to dig through to the next home in the neighborhood. This rather than rest for the night under the Biehl home. By dawn of the following day I was in the home next door to the Biehl’s and had sealed off the connecting tunnel with several feet of dirt.
Later in the afternoon I caught a faint scent of bug spray in the air.
A week passed since my visit to the Biehl home. I was concerned for them. Each day that I breached a new home, I would look back towards the Biehl home through the new home’s windows. Every day that I looked, the number of zombies around their home grew. The zombies were quiet and they were trying to force their way in, but the Biehl’s home had become a focal point of zombie interest. Despite my worry, though, though, I kept moving.
I had becoming a pro-tunneler and was well outfitted for the job with an assortment of flashlights, lamps, shovels, picks, pry bars and buckets. I had a steady, efficient pace and had perfected tunnel size for maximum comfort while working, without being overly large.
I was sitting in the bottom of a tunnel beneath a new home. All I had to do was cut through the layer of plastic in to access the crawlspace. My tools glinted in the lamp light, their edges razor sharp after countless hours of scraping against the sand and hardpan. With a flick of my wrist I punched a hole through the plastic with the head of the pick. Before I had a chance to pull the pick back, a hand shot through the hole and knocked the pick out of my hand. There was a ragged tear from the knuckles of the hand to the forearm, gouged out from the point