Farmers vs zombies

Emmas POV: game plan

"Scissors"

"Scissors"

"Scalpel"

"Scalpel"

At the mention of the word 'list', my siblings started playing doctor. It's times like this when you can't help but love your family. There was no chance in hell of our family ever being ordinary but like the saying goes "normal is boring".

" That's enough kids, act your age not your shoe size" I said half joking, half serious.

 "Okay your attention please children, like I was saying we need to fortify fences, set alarms to all entrances, place traps, stock up on food and check the gun collection.Beck, you set the traps wherever needed, dad and Blake, you reinforce the fences, Claire, deal with the supplies, Annie, you set the alarms at all the gates and Martha, you do the guns. I am on guard duty, now lets go."

Our short meeting concluded with everybody leaving to complete their jobs. I stood at the kitchen table contently for a while completely forgetting about my job until Claire called me into the pantry. 

"This food will not last us long, we are a family of seven. maybe a better idea for you while you are keeping watch is to first, write a guard roster and then try to figure out a safe plan to get more food"

"Okay, i will get onto those now"

I grab a rifle, paper and a pen then start my climb up the old wooden ladder onto the roof. The area around us is flat with few places to hide. it serves as an advantage to live in a house elevated 2 metres on columns and have such bare, flat earth. i look around carefully for a few minutes to ensure there is no threat then spend a few minutes making a roster and continue this routine. next up: where to get food?

                                               ***

(later everyone returns to the office)

"Okay. Claire has informed us that we only have 2 weeks left of food and scavenging will only get more dangerous. i know we have access to a few fresh items, courtesy of the farm but it will soon diminish if we are living off a small fruit orchard, a vegetable patch and sheep. we need produce from the surrounding farms. since we are not sure if our neighbors are alive, i suggest we go see if they are alive. if they are we will establish a community with trade links, if not then we ensure our safety by dealing with the threat and taking on their farm produce too. would anyone care to add their thoughts?"

Everybody agreed it was a good idea so now we were onto refining the plan. We have 15 farms to cover, most are smaller than ours, we have no quarrels with any so will expect not to be shot if we announce ourselves first. At each farm, we will take dad, Blake and myself in the Ute. we will announce our arrival by 2 short beeps of the horn. Neighbors will either recognise the vehicle as ours or they will come out and try to eat us which we will be ready for. We will then ensure their safety, band together as an alliance and offer to trade goods. once all the farms have been checked then with everyone's help we will barricade ourselves in as a farm village and live happily ever after. The end.

Putting our plan to practice had a different outcome. Claire took my place because she wanted someone who was a good aim to stay and watch over everyone. It started the next day and they arrived home safely mid afternoon unharmed.

"So how many neighbors do we still have?"

"Out of the 15 we visited, we have 4 living neighbor farms, two other farms held the dead, we dealt with them and the rest had nobody home so we left a note."

"So what are they trading?"

"We have the Burns families cattle, the Smiths wheat farm, the Robertsons' honey, jams and wines and we have Cornerstone residence church, school and doctor clinic complete with Mr and Mrs Paisley."

"And what did you bring back from our peace offerings of fruit and veg?"

"We got milk, bread, jam and honey. Cornerstone didn't have anything we need at the moment but we gave them some anyway. they will make good laborers and when we are well enough established for school then the young ones will attend."

"what we really need is a coffee bean farm. too bad our climate is wrong for that."

"it is a start. We will survive this Emma and we will find more living people to inhabit those farms. We will start looking soon because the later we leave it, the more work will be needed done to maintain the farms and the more hostile people we will meet. i think we should first look at close friends houses to see if they are alive, we can trust them as neighbors and teach them how to farm."

For a world going so wrong, everything seemed to be going right. maybe it was our advantage of location or our alliances or our almost limitless resources, or maybe it was because this was the rain before the storm.