Fujimi High School

1252 April 16, 20xx

Day 1

Wolf and Kat now found themselves in the stairwell/lobby at the west end of the Admin building. There were a number of critters shuffling around in the hall, thankfully kept out of the lobby by the usual steel and glass fire doors. So far none of them had come and bounced off the crash bars thereby opening the doors, and so the first thing Wolf did was take some of the strips he'd cut from the couch and lash the door handles on his side. Unless a horde of them tried to push through, they should be OK.

He and Kat looked out the windows of the doors leading outside. Being this was at the end of the building, there were not many of the things wandering round. Apparently not many kids had run across the walkways into the Admin building and down this way trying to escape. As he surveyed the area outside, he noticed a slight ramp leading into the wall on his right. Turning to look at the wall of the lobby, He was surprised to see that they had both missed the steel door in the wall which appeared to lead into that area.

"What's it say, Kat?" He asked, pointing to the sign on the grey door.

"Ummm, Heavy Equipment Department. All the technical shop areas are in this building on the back side."

"Sweet!"

Wolf walked over to the door and gave it a try. It opened easily. Motioning for Kat to follow him quietly, he moved down a short hall with lockers on either side, and into a well lit 4 bay garage and class room/work shop area. Parked in the bays he found half a dozen pieces of heavy construction equipment. Around the walls, benches loaded with engines and pieces in various stages of disassembly.

Watching every step, he worked his way round the perimeter of the garage and checked every corner and hiding space for more of the dead. After a complete circuit, he came back to Kat, and then walked over to the small steel door in the entrance hallway and locked it. Then he walked back down the row of large doors, making sure each one was locked.

Returning to the back of the shop, he grinned at Kat, grabbed her in a bear hug and whispered in her ear.

"Lady Katherine, we are going to hit the road in style. Armored transport. Screw the critters, we'll run them over."

Kat looked at him dubiously. "Lady Katherine? I haven't heard that since you and I were a couple. Anyway, you can drive one of these monsters?"

"Chivalry never dies, my Lady. And as for these things, it's been a hell of a long time but it's like riding a bike right? It'll all come back to me. Assuming one of them hasn't been pulled apart too much." He told her with some confidence. For the moment we are in a secure place, have access to some neat stuff for weapons, and once we get one of these moving we can head straight down to the harbour. One thing for sure, these buggers can't get to us out on the water. And once we are there we can see about getting hold of someone in authority and see what they are doing about this friggin' disaster."

"So what do you want me to do? I don't know anything about these machines." She asked him.

Well, for a start look around for some solvents or paint thinners, anything that is flammable again. And some bottles if you can find them. I want to make up some Molotov cocktails. In the mean time I'm gonna start at one end of the row and check out each of these beasts to see if one of them is in ready to run shape. I suspect one may be, question is which one. Driving down narrow streets in a scrapper won't be fun at all. Thankfully the Japanese all take safety so seriously, they all have cabs, so that's not a worry. I'm hoping the front end loader is good to go. I'm checking it first." He waved as he headed over towards the big Komatsu front end loader at the end of the line. Big mother, tires as tall as he was, with a ladder leading up to the cab which was a good 8 feet up.

Kat took off the back pack and put it on one of the benches. She started to methodically check the shop from one end to the other, and discovered all sorts of flammables. These she brought together on one bench. Bottles? Nowhere to be found. Then she had a bright idea and started to check out the various garbage cans and a couple of recyclable bins off in a corner. She found about a dozen, all small but still useful. She collected them as well and went off in search of a funnel. Again, easy to find.

Wolf had in the mean time climbed up into the cab of the Komatsu. The keys were in it, and he turned the electrical system on. Good levels on the batteries, fuel and coolant. Oil pressure he wouldn't be able to test until they fired up the diesel. So far so good. He climbed back down, and started doing a circle check, working his way around the big machine, checking hydraulics, pistons, tires, linkages etc. Everything appeared to be intact. But as he came round the front, he found one of the big hydraulic cylinders was off, and the hoses were capped. The bucket was also half off, supported on stands.

He walked round to the other side and found the same. Ok, this was a problem. Without them he wouldn't be able to lift the bucket. File that one away for later. He continued the circle check, and paid particular attention to the diesel. All the fuel system was in place and tight, he checked the radiator levels, and the hydraulic fluid, both quantity and the filters. Again, it all looked good. After an hour of intense scrutiny, he pronounced the Komatsu ready to go but for the cylinders.

Next in line was another Komatsu, this one a pretty large articulated dump truck. Again he spend the better part of an hour checking it out. This one was missing the lift cylinders to the box. No big deal, he wasn't planning on using that anyway. The big problem was that two of the rear tires were off. They were leaning against a rack off to one side. The truck rear end was up on jacks and there was a small lift crane handy so putting them back on should be a simple enough job. The nice thing about this puppy was that it has two seats in it, which the loader was lacking. Kat would have a hard ride in that one.

He moved on, and checked out a bulldozer, a huge forklift and another smaller front end loader. The last one was a smaller straight truck. All in various states of disassembly and wear. Looking back at the two Komatsu's he figured that they were new donations to the school, probably a tax write off as the meters on either one showed less than a 1000 hours. They had to be demo models. No matter.

He walked back to the benches, and started looking round for shop manuals for the two. He also kept an eye open for the missing cylinders. Of course getting them back on the vehicles would be a cast iron bitch but he did have a basic knowledge of hydraulics and figured if he could get them mounted he could get them working.

While he was digging into the file cabinets for manuals his stomach rumbled. Glancing at his watch he saw it was already after 5pm. He wandered back to where Kat was looking for better weapons.

"Hey, how about a break? We've been on the go since this morning. I'm thinking we have to stay overnight anyway, so let's eat and then see about getting that truck running."

"I thought you wanted to take the loader?" She asked.

"That was my first thought as it would have made clearing any road blocks a piece o cake. But I just found the cylinders they took off and they are all in pieces. So that's the end of that. I might be able to remove the bucket and leave it, but it wouldn't make much sense. The other thing is, it doesn't have a seat for a passenger, so you'd be bouncing round loose. That truck has two seats. And as far as I can tell the only thing wrong with it is that they took off the lift cylinders for the box and two tires. The tilt box we don't need, and the tires are a matter of grunt work. That I think I can fix."

"Ok, let's eat and then get to it." With that she turned to the bench and opened up the back pack she'd prepped before their foray into zombie land. Various drinks and snacks appeared and they dug in. While they ate, they talked about their chances of surviving. Wolf was pretty sure that as long as they kept their shit together, and paid attention to their surroundings, they'd be OK. His confidence helped Kat build hers. They sat down and leaned against the wall, ate and chatted for about half an hour.

"Sun will be down at 18:14 today, so we aren't leaving until morning."

"How the hell do you do that? How would you know what time the sun comes up or goes down?" Kat asked him with a quizzical look in her eyes.

"Simple. When you sail, knowing this is useful, so every day I check the local sunrise and sunset. As for using military time and being accurate to the minute, that came from spending years dispatching aircraft for half a dozen airlines. It's a habit I never lost. So I think with the 24hr clock. Wait 'til you try that and work time zones into it." He grinned back at her.

"Now I'm gonna start working on the truck. Pulling the bucket off that loader is more work than it's worth so the truck is the one we will be using. I'm going to get started on putting the tires back on. I'll holler if I need your help but I think I can manage it. If you want, you can look round for anything that you think might be useful between here and the harbour."He said as he got up off the floor and headed over to one of the big shop hoists.

Kat had worked her way through the lockers in the hall with a bolt cutter, and had found some shop coats, and some boots. Her shoes weren't going to be much use, so she rummaged around and found a pair of boots that fit more or less. They weren't perfect but would do for now. She'd wrapped some shop cloths around her feet, similar to what Russian soldiers did with their boots. She'd not known that trick, it was one more of Wolf's odd bits of knowledge. In hind sight it didn't surprise her, he'd been like that for as long as she'd know him. She'd often wondered what would have happened if their career choices had had a bit more flex in them. She had to admit, there had never been anyone in her life quite like Wolf.

As long as she'd known him, he'd surprised her with odd gems of wisdom, (which always seemed to turn out to be rather useful at the time), strange hobbies like the SCA, (where she picked up the name Lady Katherine and learned to use a sword) and a voracious appetite for reading. He'd read just about anything, and had often styled himself as a "Jack of all trades" with a decent bit of knowledge about a seemingly endless variety of skills. She remembered when Wolf had sent her the first details on the boat he'd bought, and how sad she'd felt when it turned out to be a lemon. He'd paid a surveyor to check the boat out and that guy turned out to be a consummate bullshit artist, writing an amazing document which in hind sight was total horseshit. So Wolf had spent $35,000 on a boat that should have gone for $5,000.

But instead of giving up, he'd started a rebuild that ended up taking 10 years, and about $75,000 dollars. He'd started a blog as a way of documenting the overhaul, and she'd followed it through all the cursing, swearing, bleeding and all the setbacks as he destroyed the entire interior, scrapped the engine, shaft, prop, fuel system, water system, all the electronics and the steering system. His writing style had been pretty humorous at times, as were the few videos he'd put in there. He'd developed a solid fan club, other people who were attempting the same thing, somewhere else in the world.

But here he was, master of his own sailing ship, and here to visit her after some 20 years. Right on time for the apocalypse. As she worked her way from one end of the shop, opening drawers, and cabinets, she watched him as he worked the hoist over to the first of the huge tires. In half an hour he'd gotten the tire up off the floor and dragged it over to the axle hub on the Komatsu. Using a pry bar to shift the base of the hoist he checked the bolt holes against the studs. They were off by a few degrees, so he'd have to rig the tire again. He dropped it onto a pile of wood blocks, and shifted the chain. Again he tried. Again it was off but not nearly as much. He marked the tire with a crayon and went through the cycle again. It took him an hour and a half to get the tire in position so he could shove it onto the studs and start bolting it down. He took a break, and then got to work on the second tire. This one took less time as he'd worked out a system where he could better determine the hoisting point on the tire. Finally the last tire was mounted. He glanced at his watch, it was past 9pm.

Every time he walked around the front end of the Komatsu, he kept looking at the slanted underside and the way the bumper was almost a meter above the ground. Have gotten the beast ready to run, he started looking around, an idea bubbling in the back of his mind. He found a set of oxyacetylene torches, and a welding machine. Rods he found in the tool chest up against the wall.

He went back to the Komatsu and crawled under the front end, and laid there for a few minutes investigating the frame and other structures. Finally his idea crystallized and he went over to the other truck, and torched a chunk of plate from its box. Dragging it over to the Komatsu and lifting it into position with the hoist, he welded it to the front bumper and then cut a few more pieces from the other box and built up a truss to support the plate. The beast now had a decent push bumper. He'd been worried about trying to clear a path with that high bumper. Problem solved.

Kat in the mean time had found very little of use to them in a zombie apocalypse. A few road flares from the vehicles, some gas cans, the solvents and bottles, and little else. About the best she'd found were a couple of long levers for use with 25mm sockets. They would make a better club than the couch arms. Having checked out everything, she started to read the manual for the Komatsu truck

Wolf found some wire in the racks, and used it to dismount the door switch for the overhead door the Komatsu was behind and move it over to the truck. He mounted the switch on the handrail of the boarding platform, and moved on to other things. Heading back to where Kat was at the bench, he started making Molotov cocktails. Filling the bottles ¾ full with solvents, he capped the bottles and put them in a cardboard box along with a bunch of shop rags for wicks. The box was put into the cab storage locker. The flares followed. Looking around, the clock on the wall said it was after midnight now, and he figured that he'd done everything they could do. There was nothing more to do than try and get some sleep in this shop which had no beds or couches, and nothing resembling a mattress. This was gonna be hard on the body and he'd be paying for it in the morning. So would Kat.

Washing his hands off with greaseless hand cleaner and a rag, he looked at Kat and said "Well, I've done everything I can to make sure the beast runs in the morning. I don't dare try to start it until morning, nor do I want to start up the compressor so I can use the impact gun on the lug nuts. That would be way too much noise. What say we make our selves comfortable up in the box and try n get some sleep?"

"In the box? Why the box?"

"Well, because we can climb in with a ladder and then pull the ladder up behind us. It's a good 6 feet or more from ground to the lip of the box. I doubt anything will get in here tonight but why take any chances? Unfortunately it's going to be rather uncomfortable. I don't see anything like bedding in here." he replied.

"How about some cardboard sheet? There are some large packing boxes in the store room, and we can break them down flat and at least have some insulation from the cold steel. There are some shop coats, we can use them as blankets of sorts." She said.

"Ahh, now I know why I keep you around. Good thinking." He grinned at her. "If we get cold we can always snuggle up and share warmth. I wouldn't mind having you in my arms again. It's been a while."

With that they packed up all the gear and food they still had, and put that into the cab of the truck. Then they made preparations for a cold night, and knocked down half a dozen boxes, so they had an inch or so of cardboard to lie on, tossed that and all the coats they could find into the box. Kat disappeared for a few moments in the washroom, and then climbed up into the box. Wolf hit the washroom next, and then went to the main power box, and cut the lights one by one until only a small light in the corridor leading to the stairwell was still on. Walking back to the ladder, he climbed into the box and then turned and hauled it up carefully. Kat had in the mean time taken the cardboard and laid it into the box where the bevelled side met the flat bottom, and was sitting there with her back to the side. Wolf thought about it for a minute and then suggested that they lay down along the long axis of the box, where the main part of the floor slanted down to the front and the smaller front section slanted down towards the rear. It sort of reminded him of a hammock and he figured that might be nicer to sleep on than the other way. So she got up again and they shifted the stuff over. She sat back down and leaned back.

"Much better. Come on. Get comfy. It's going to be a long night." He picked up some of the spare cardboard and rolled it into a bundle, then placed it as a pillow and sat down beside Kat. He put his arm around her shoulders and she naturally curled in towards him. A couple of coats over top of them and they were as set as they could be. All things considered, they were still alive, and had a plan and a destination. They talked long into the night, not really getting much sleep but dozing now and then. They talked of the old times, the fun they'd had, the passion they'd shared for various things, and the two of them went a long way towards rekindling their relationship.