Part 2: From Farm to Fortress
By Jordan Martin
“Any luck?” Harry shouted up to me. I kept still a moment, realizing I hadn’t let go of my breath since I opened that stupid application.
“Not sure, Harry,” I said, my words a mash of near nonsense.
“What’s that supposed to mean? You get your signal or not?” Harry asked.
“I think so. I tried to send something, but my phone died,” I called back down. Harry hesitated a moment before saying anything else.
“Anything else you want to try?” he encouraged. He sounded like my father for a moment. I ran through a few scenarios in my head, all of which revolved around charging my phone. Some even called for me to go back to my truck to try and repair the charging cable. With all the marching, people-hungry dead meandering about, I might as well go get Chloe myself at that point.
“No, Harry. That was my last option,” I admitted.
“Well, ok then. Get your ass down here and help me fix all this shit you busted up.” Harry said sternly. I sighed, not sure of what else I could do. I rolled to my side and crawled my way to the opening in the roof, and made my way down the ladder into the loft, then down to the cement floor. Dust plumed upward with every step.
“Alright son, we gotta fix up that front fence. You and your friends tore her up pretty good,” Harry said. Harry defied gravity, still standing over six feet tall and pushing his late seventies. He had a noticeable arch in his back, pale blue eyes, and a net of gray hair shooting out below his obnoxious straw hat. His blue denim overalls hung around his slouching frame, gripping the grey t-shirt on his torso.
“Did I really mess it up that bad?” I asked, suddenly aware of my stature. I was scraping at six foot flat. I topped out at about a hundred and sixty-five pounds, no more than I did graduating high school. Chloe kept my senior picture with our wedding picture in her wallet. She’d ask me where I found the fountain of youth.
I hoped she was okay.
“Well, you didn’t do so much fence reckin’ as you did bringing the party. Still, I can’t have an open spot,” Harry said matter-of-factly, “so let’s get ‘er done.” I feigned a chuckle, only to meet Harry’s stern eyes. He held out a pipe-shaped object with handles; I meagerly grabbed it and followed behind.
We walked out of the barn. The trees swayed calmly in the late spring breeze, providing a calm silhouette against the cascading sunrise sky. Harry’s house stood tall and white to the southeast of the barn, just off the same dirt road that led to my parents’ farm. The driveway snakes off the road and past the house, curving like a question mark around a well in the middle of the property until it got to the couple of barns and silos. A thick band of trees semi-circled the well-trimmed grass, and Harry claims a fence stands beyond the trees. The fence we were fixing, though, was the makeshift scrap connecting the two strands of actual fence straddling his driveway.
“So, you’re Roger’s boy, right?” Harry asked.
“Yeah, he claims me,” I replied, still attempting at humor. Fruitless.
“He was a good man—a true family man ,” Harry said. I’m sure that’s why my dad was so warm to me when I told him I wanted to write for a living. I bit my tongue, holding back echoes of him that still sat in my brain. Harry glanced back at me over the sledgehammer on his shoulder.
“Oh, yes, he was. He loved farming,” I stammered, unsure of how to reply. My dad only cared about the farm. That’s why he only had me; when he found out I wouldn’t be of much help, he and my mom stopped having kids. When I was ten, I told him I wanted to be a news reporter. He asked when I planned on doing real work.
“It was a shame buying his land off of him like that, but he didn’t have anyone lined up to take care of it,” Harry said. He sounded apologetic; I couldn’t avoid the growing guilt trip.
Thoughts of my parents crept into my brain—Harry kept talking and pointing, but I couldn’t focus. My mom died of natural causes a few years ago. I came back here for the funeral, hoping my dad and I could patch things up a bit. I had gotten two weeks off of work, but only stayed for the night after the funeral. We made eye contact once or twice, but neither of us spoke a word.
During my flight back to Chicago, my dad had a heart attack and died. I let Harry buy up the estate, hoping he’d make better use out of it than I would.
“…and back there is where we keep what’s left of my gas tanker,” Harry said, “so don’t smoke over there.”
“I don’t smoke,” I mumbled, barely making a noise above my breath.
“What’s that you said?” Harry said, turning back to me. He stopped in his tracks, so I did, too. I glanced around the property; we seemed to be in the middle of it. Behind us was the barn at the end of a long, curved driveway. He had a large, gaping grin revealing years of dental neglect, but his smile was no less genuine. I repeated myself a little louder.
“Oh, good,” Harry said. “It’s a filthy habit, ain’t it?”
“I suppose,” I thought out loud. I never really cared either way, I guess.
“Anyway, back over behind the trees is a fence I had to keep bigger critters like deer and such out of my trees—I haven’t had any of those things try and make it through there, as far as I know,” Harry said.
“As far as you know?” I asked, instantly regretting it. Thankfully, Harry laughed.
“Meant nothing confusing by that. Nothin’s comin through that fence while I’m still kickin, even if I’m a bit older than I look, boy. Speaking of, you mind clearing up my memory and reminding me of your name?”
“Jordan,” I said.
“That’s it.”
After that, I didn’t talk. I didn’t think. I just kept my feet treading one by one underneath me until we reached the mess of undead corpses.
“Well, start by grabbin’ em by the feet. You catch a live one, just yell. Drag em away from the house and into a pile over there—I keep em there for burnin’,” Harry said. He pointed me toward a large fire pit big enough to hold a small house. He and I reached down and grabbed individual sets of feet and started dragging.
One older woman fell apart as I tugged, her bones snapping and her skin tearing as I tugged her feet. If she were still standing, I could have punched a hole in her chest.
“Ok, let’s fix the fence,” Harry said, dropping the last body in the sizeable pile. Images of World War Two concentration camps from my old text books flooded my mind, only this wasn’t the work of one horrible man. Whatever was killing off humanity didn’t care what you believed in, what color skin you had, or what country you stood for.
“You start hammering those posts back in the ground. I think we can make use of most of this wire, yet,” Harry said, thinking out loud. He set his sledgehammer down with a hearty thud against the earth. Steel fence posts lay on the gravel driveway, pancaked by a few hundred pounds of marching dead drones. One by one, I wrenched the posts from whatever grip the earth retained. A few were bent badly enough that Harry tossed them in the scrap pile, but he seemed satisfied with the amount we had left. The cylinder with handles suddenly made sense—it drove the fence pikes into the ground.
Blisters formed within the first ten minutes, and my hands were rubbing raw within the next ten. I need to get away from my desk more.
“We have to do all of these?”
“Just those ones you and your buddies knocked down,” Harry replied. I gazed at the mess of posts left. I was only two deep and ready to give up. To be fair, I had been running across a few states full of closed roads to get here on only a few hours of sleep. Harry kept right on trucking.
“Harry, I have to ask—what the hell smells so awful?” I asked. The stench seemed to be growing, emanating from the house. I didn’t notice it at first over the reek of my own armpits, but now that I was breathing hard, I couldn’t get away from it.
“That’s the smell of resourcefulness. I flooded my septic tank,” Harry said through a grin. Hesitantly, I swiveled
back. Just as he insisted, his front yard was a disgusting marsh. I twisted back to my posts, suddenly invigorated. I’d rather not think of the gallons of shit behind me as a defense mechanism.
“Clever thinking,” I muttered through a grimace. I moved on to my third post, nearing the halfway mark. Harry started tying the wire across the front, drawing an X with a horizontal strand above and below.
“Well, the septic tank wasn’t doing anything else, so I put it to work,” Harry said. I desperately switched subjects.
“Keep up with your son much?” I asked. I used to play with the kid now and then, but I couldn’t remember his name.
“Which one? The one that moved to Boston shut me out long ago. My youngest moved to Alabama not long after you left for college.”
“Yeah, him. Anthony?” I said, praying I was right.
“Arthur,” Harry corrected me. I was close. “He met some girl and they took off. He came back here now and again, but never made much time for his mom and pop,” Harry said, sullenly. He stopped and stepped back, examining the fresh fencing. I glanced back—his expression was blank, distant, and definitely not fixated on the fence.
At this rate, I was ready to talk about the deluge of turds in the front yard again. I bit my tongue and kept at my work, hoping the subject would dissolve in the rhythm.
“So, Jordan, tell me a bit about yourself,” Harry asked, turning to meet my eyes. He sounded more curious than insistent. A warm smile spread from ear to ear.
“Well, I’m thirty-five, married, and no kids,” I replied.
“Hang on, hang on. You’re doing this all wrong,” Harry said. “Here,” he said, setting his twine of wire down, and motioning for me to give him the post hammer. I stepped back a bit, leaving it hang on the post. The weight of the hammer made it sink to a slant.
“You gotta make sure you have the post straight before you start driving her home,” Harry said between thunderous pounds. No wonder this man’s made it so far in the apocalypse. He finished in thirty seconds what had taken me twenty minutes on the other poles. “Hope you’re ready for a few callouses, paperboy.”
I had forgotten how entrenched people like Harry and my dad were in the farming life. It was all he knew, and protecting the farm was his number one priority. I can’t say I blame him—he’s clearly fared much better than… everywhere else.
Like wherever Chloe was.
“Here, give this a whirl,” Harry said. He held a post up vertically, absolutely perpendicular with the country skyline beyond it. I gripped the handles tight, lifted the cylinder into the air just above the post, and brought it crashing down as hard as I could. To my wonderful surprise, it sank into the dirt much easier.
“Hey, hey! Look at that!” I said through a smile.
“That’s the ticket, sonny!” Harry said. Under my days’ worth of filth, blood, and sweat, I was beaming. He patted me on the shoulder, letting out a small chuckle. He walked back over to his knot of wire and continued unfolding. We worked for the next few hours, pushing through the midday heat. My hands felt raw, but the sense of accomplishment relieved the pain.
“Well, we’ve been at it some time now. What do you say to having some lunch?” Harry asked. My heart and my stomach leapt upward at the thought of food. I turned and looked at our work—I’d let myself run on autopilot for the last hour or so, but we’d rebuilt the whole fence. My arms were dead rubber tubes at my sides, and I couldn’t seem to draw enough air to stop my panting, but I felt amazing. We walked toward the house; I was hobbling, but Harry was no worse for the wear.
I didn’t want to ask what we were having. Something told me Harry would have me slaughter my own cow if I did. My stomach continued to rumble and ping my brain, winning out over my forced silence.
“Hey, Harry,” I said, still gasping at the fresh air.
“Yeah?”
“I remember your wife made the best pancakes. Any chance she could whip up some of those?” I asked. Harry stopped suddenly, cocking his head so I could see his eyes over his shoulder. He didn’t make eye contact, but was certainly looking my direction.
“Martha’s dead,” Harry said. With my foot so far in my mouth, I’d have to hop the rest of the way to the house.
“I… I’m so sorry,” I stammered. I looked at the ground, stopping in my tracks. I felt a wave of panic sweep over me. Harry was noticeably bothered by the mention of his late wife, but he was still walking around and carrying on. I wondered if I’d be able to do the same. I wondered if Chloe would manage without me. I wondered if Chloe was even alive anymore.
I peeled my gaze from my feet to see Harry had already reached the door. I picked up my hobble to an awkward gallop. I had plenty of ground to gain between Harry and I.