Looking at the maps that I have
provided of the store, I realize that I glossed over one of the key defenses of
the store and that came in form of the registers. My apologies on that one.
From Day One, one of the largest
sections of the store that became completely obsolete was the check stands.
Those big and bulky conveyer belts and all the registers just essentially
became dead weight. But given their size and bulk, they became pretty effective
at blocking off the open space surrounding the grocery delivery dock. When the
number of zoms slipped down to a more manageable level and our snipers on the
roof armed with weapons featuring homemade silencers, we are able to work
outside a lot easier. So barricading up the docks became pretty sensible. To
allow for easy loading and unloading of product from vendors, the dock was open
on all three sides opposite the main wall but that leaves the dock pretty
easily exposed to zombie contact. It is essentially a big back porch made out
of concrete with an angled slab to get you front ground level up to the door.
So we started stacking up the registers on top of each other with the forklift.
These things are heavy. It is a bitch to move them. We figured it was a perfect
fit.
I was always a fan of building
barricades that did not use the doorway that we are barricading. What I mean by
that is that I want a tiered defense. If the door is the barricade that
separates us from the zombies, I want the zombies to have to break through
several barriers before they can even touch the door itself.
That was the idea with putting the
cars next to the entry doors in the beginning and then later with building the
bus perimeter. Now the front doors we feel are pretty secure and were
reinforced to keep the zoms from smashing through the glass. The rollup doors
are essentially just garage doors. It is possible that they could force their
way through with enough pressure. (As I have mentioned in the past, we
barricade these doors with things like the forklift and pallets of product.
They are not getting in.) But even so, why give them straight contact with the
door itself?
So we used a bike chain to position
the large, rolling ice cream carts at the top of the ramp. And we surrounded
the other sides with the registers to serve as barricades. Combining that with
the cameras we have set up outside the doors, we never have to worry about a
surprise waiting for us on the other side of the door before we open it. A
sortie team can get an “all clear” from the person monitoring the cameras in
the office before opening up the doors.
Yes, I know. This makes us very paranoid. But paranoid keeps us alive.
The other benefit is that this opens
up the Front End. (The Front End is the name used in the store for the checkout
stands.) I think everyone agrees that
the more open space we have for whatever it is we want to do the better things
are. Be it how Produce emptied out or how the Front End is now open and
exposed, we have a lot of options.
One school of thought is that there is
now nothing to hide behind. If our walls get breached, if zoms make it through
our front door, there is a straight shot to anyone that is exposed. You could
argue that we should set up a maze that the zoms have to shuffle through in
order to get to us. This way if there is a breach, we can get away and hide.
But personally, I don’t want to round
the corner early in the morning, with sleep crusties in my eyes, wanting to get
a bowl of grits and come across five zoms seething and huffing and puffing. I
want to see them at a distance that gives me a chance to run.
We don’t want to do all those cliché
movie things where there are dark corners and blind spots. We want clear lines
of fire. Plus, you need space for things like turkey bowling and pallet jack
races…
