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KATE
I climb to the third floor of Fern where Johnny and Gary have set up their observation room. I like to check in on the boys once a day. We’ve had the alpha for a little over two weeks now. While we haven’t had any breakthroughs, they’ve done a remarkable job at breaking down and recording individual sounds made by the alpha.
Our people have cobbled together enough two-by-fours and pieces of plywood that we now have a ramp system for Gary in both Creekside and Juniper. As far as I know, Johnny has only tipped over the wheelchair once. I would have excused Gary from this assignment altogether if he hadn’t been so excited by it. Between cooking for all of us and observing the alpha, Gary has managed to be as busy as the rest of us.
Gary and Johnny’s voices drift down the stairwell to me. It’s clear they’re having a spirited debate about something.
“I’m telling you, there’s something else going on that we can’t replicate with our human vocal cords,” Johhny is saying.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Gary argues. “They have the same vocal cords that we have. We should be able to make any sound they make.”
“They’re not the same. They’re undead, remember?”
“I know, man, but biologically their vocal cords are the same.”
“Maybe they changed. I mean, the rest of their bodies changed. Now they’re blind, mindless cannibals. Have you ever heard of infrasound?”
I enter the room. “Infra what?” I ask.
Both young men turn their attention to me. “Hey, Kate,” they say in unison.
The room looks like a cheap flea market stand. Notebooks, pens, books, VHS tape recorders, and cassette players are all over the floor and furniture. I don’t know how they get from one side to the other without tripping on something.
Without a steady source of electricity, we’ve had to fall back on more primitive recording methods. Luckily the town of Arcata, with its population of outliers and anti-establishment folks, has a fair amount of pre-Internet tech. A string of homes just on the other side of the freeway produced no less than two hand-held recorders, five tape players, and two shoe boxes worth of cassette tapes.
“Gary and I were just talking about infrasound,” Johnny says. “Those are sounds below the human range of hearing. Elephants make them. They use it to communicate over long-range distances. Maybe the alphas are doing something like that.”
“You have the weirdest shit catalogued in your brain.” Gary looks torn between annoyance and admiration.
“It’s the job of a writer to be interested in weird shit.”
I approach the hole we’ve cut into the floor of this room. We’ve covered the two-foot square opening with a section of chain-link fence to make sure no one falls through on accident.
In the room below, the alpha paces back and forth. It grunts and clicks. The two regular zombies we’ve captured follow the alpha. Back and forth, back and forth they go across the room. The oozing wounds on their bodies have seeped onto the carpet, leaving a reddish-brown smear to mark their trail. The smell is akin to ripened road kill on steroids.
“Tell me why you guys are talking about infrasound,” I say.
“Watch this.” Johnny leans over the hole and makes a complex string of clicks and keens with his mouth. It sounds so like the language of the alpha zom that I shiver. But despite the resemblance of sound, the zombies below don’t react.
“Same happens when I do it. Watch.” Gary repeats the same complex string of sound. Again, nothing happens.
“Now, watch this.” Johnny picks up one of the tape recorders. It looks like a boom box from the nineties. We had to scavenge in five houses to find enough batteries to power it, but Johnny insisted on having it due to its size.
He positions the boom box next to the hole, turns up the volume, and hits play.
The exact same series of clicks and keens roll out of the big black speakers.
The reactions below are instantaneous.
The two regular zombies rush to the farthest corner of the room. When they hit the walls, they scratch at the dry wall. They grunt and moan, bumping against the wall as though trying to walk through to the other side.
The alpha, on the other hand, does no such thing. The old woman alpha advances on the opening above, lips peeled back in snarl. It hisses and grunts, the sounds coming out of its mouth in rapid fire.
“We think she’s defending her property,” Gary says. “She thinks another alpha is trying to take her pack out from under her.”
“Notice how neither Gary nor I could replicate this same reaction when we mimicked the sounds,” Johnny says.
“Man, I’m telling you, that’s not it,” Gary argues. “Did you know that in Mandarin, the same word has multiple meanings depending on voice inflection? We must be missing something. We’re not making the sounds the right way.”
“No, man.” Johnny shakes his head. “We’re replicating exactly what we hear. There’s something else at play. I’m telling you, it could be infrasound. We need some sort of machine to help us detect undetectable sounds.” He taps the end of his pen against his temple, grimacing. “Think we can find something like that in one of labs on campus?”
Gary snorts. “Even if we could, none of us would know how to use it.”
“You guys are missing the most important discovery.” I frown at them quizzically. “Did either of you realize this series of sounds drove the regular zombies away?” I point to the two creatures that continue to scratch and dig at the far wall of their prison. “Do you realize what we might be able to do with this?”
They look at me as if I’ve just hit them both over the head with a frying pan.
“Woah.” Johnny goggles at me. “Dude, Kate, I’m sorry for being an idiot.”
“We missed the forest through the trees. We’re fucking idiots, man.” Gary elbows Johnny in the ribs.
“You’re the idiot,” Johnny shoots back with an easy smile. “You’re the one who keeps going on and on about Mandarin inflections.”
“I’m telling you—”
“Guys, shut up for a second.” My mind snaps into overdrive as an idea rushes in. “We need to test this out. We need a megaphone to see if we can use the recording to repel zombies from Creekside.” The idea makes my insides tingle. This could be the very thing we need to protect our home from alphas.
“Megaphones. Yeah, good idea.” Johnny nods. “We should get the ones at the track.”
Gary makes a face. “Dude, those are, like, fifty feet up in the air. How do you propose getting them down?”