I hate being right all the time. With
the front doors reinforced with cars and safety all but guaranteed, I think the
crew was feeling confident. As it turns out, we got overconfident.
A second team was intent on gathering
up a U-Haul truck from down the road to more effectively loot necessary items
from places like Dollar General, the lumber yard down the road, etc. Using the
pickup truck was okay to start but we could have looted Southern Elms in one
fell swoop and with plenty of protection provided by the covered bed of the
truck.
It was there that we lost Audrey.
Audrey was renting a place in town very close to where the U-Haul rental
business is. She came to work at Reason’s because her boyfriend had made it
into management at Dollar General (kind of like what happened with Brad and
Kasondra.) Now, Lucas was off during Zero Hour. His fate was unknown. And I
guess the lure to find out what happened was too strong of a pull.
According to the members of her squad,
while they were looking for keys to the U-Haul, Audrey broke ranks. It was a
choice of her volition. By the time others had realized she was gone, she was
already walking into her home. And when the hard choice had to be made, Audrey
failed when it came to putting a bullet in Zombie Lucas’ brain. Kanen said he
tore her throat out. It was quick. Or at least quicker than we saw some people
go down during Zero hour.
Now, Sweeper Team Two did come back
with a valuable haul. Kanen and Dillon both do motocross style racing and their
“armor” that they wear when riding their motorcycles covers them from head to
toe in pretty darn resilient leather and plastic armor. They came back with
full sets of armor, two bikes and two ATV four wheelers. These vehicles are
loud but they are also fast and highly maneuverable. They will need to be
because any rider is pretty darn exposed. However, this is the plan and both
Kanen and Dillon have already volunteered for this pretty dangerous job.
We call them “Baiters.” Driving their
very loud motorcycles, these guys will clearly be faster and more maneuverable
than the zoms. The goal is to attract the shamble of zombies to them and get
them chasing after them. Fast enough to easily outpace them but not so fast
that they zip of zom radar. Have you ever seen how fast these crotch rockets
can zip from zero to sixty? Outpacing shambling zoms should not even be an
issue. Both Dillon and Kanen are young, brash, and cocky… which makes them
perfect baiters. One could even call them Master Baiters. [I could not resist.]
And I just hope they are not too cocky and get themselves killed. They go
through, get the zoms all stirred up and chasing them. While Langley is cleared
out, our teams can go out and scavenge. Once they are far enough outside of
town, the baiters can dart down back roads and hide once they outpace the
horde. They can come up via the back roads to the back of the store and then
back in to safety.
The plan seems solid. And do not get
me wrong. I am not meaning to gloss over the loss of Audrey. While she was one
of the newest persons hired to the store, after 70 days in confined quarters,
you get to know a person.
She had a wonderful smile. She missed
her parents. She had a little white mop of a dog that she loved to death. And
she did love her boyfriend. Who knows? Maybe they might have gotten married is
Zero Hour hadn’t turned the world upside down. But her love was strong enough
to go ALONE into an unexplored area. Maybe she shouldn’t have been part of a
sweeper team. Maybe that was why she wanted to be on reload duty after all. So
she could go out and look for Lucas… And maybe she broke ranks because she
thought people would not let her go search. Who knows? No one can be certain.
And now we will never know.
I will miss her. She made me laugh. She made me smile. She was a cute girl with a flair for the artistic. And I know Alex and her often spent a lot of times doodling together. But she was gone because she lost focus. She may have lost focus for only a few heartbeats. But in this world, a few heartbeats are all it can take…
I will miss her. She made me laugh. She made me smile. She was a cute girl with a flair for the artistic. And I know Alex and her often spent a lot of times doodling together. But she was gone because she lost focus. She may have lost focus for only a few heartbeats. But in this world, a few heartbeats are all it can take…
That is a lesson we all need to remember. It should be tattooed on our brains and inked with Audrey’s blood.
LOST MEMBER: Audrey Blair – 22, Langley, OK
