Chapter 7

The toy fire trucks siren was already starting to warble as the zombies tore the dummy apart looking for flesh.

Beth knew that she didn’t have a lot of time before the creatures turned their attention back to her. She wanted to give Kenny a head start to make sure that he got to the hatch.

In her head, Beth counted to ten and jumped to the ground. She must have made a similar jump hundreds of times when she was a kid, but now over the age of thirty, she might as well be jumping off a cliff. Still, the adrenaline was helping her through it, but she knew that she was going to be sore in the morning.

 “If you make it that far, “she thought.

Looking up, she could see Kenny had made it to hatch-A. She could see that there were people there to help him. “Thanks for sending back up, Ted, “she thought. Still, it looked like Kenny had fear in his eyes.

 “I wonder why he...”

She didn’t even get a chance to finish that thought when she felt the ghoulish hand of a zombie grab her. She turned as zombie face of Dylan tried to bite her. Instinctively she fell to her back, taking Dylan with her. She rolled through and kicked him off.

Luckily for her, not so much for Dylan, the other zombies had made sure that he was a lot lighter than he used to be. Dylan landed with a wet thump behind her. Immediately she was on her feet and took out on of the bottles from her pocket. She shattered it over Dylan’s head and jammed the now sharp neck of the bottle into his temple, killing him.

“Hot damn,” she thought, “that actually worked.”

Beth turned around to check her surroundings. The zombies were finished with the dummy and were now turning back towards her. She pulled out a piece of the road sign and hurled it at the zombie in the front like a throwing star.

The bent metal wobbled in the air and smacked harmlessly against the zombie’s head and fell to the ground.

“And that didn’t work,” she thought and decided to run for it. She could easily outrun the shambling undead, but if she got cornered, she was in deep trouble.

Beth ran for entry point C, just like Ted has laid out in his plans.

“If zombies are following us back to the hideout, we need to enter from multiple points. If a horde of them attack one point they might get in, but if we spread them out over multiple points, there’s no way they can overwhelm or defenses,” he said to her while they laid in a post-orgasm bliss on a cot.

Agile Tip: ROAM your risk early, else you will be roaming for help later down in your project.

“This is strange pillow talk,” she had said to him.

 Beth was zig-zagging her run to throw the zombies off balance.

 She was getting close to the entry point when she heard a sharp puff of air. She turned and saw a zombie fall dead to the ground. Beth looked back at the entry point, and there were a few others from the group, and one had a silenced rifle.

The other from the group, Alyssa, had a remote-controlled car with a live rat attached to the top of it. She threw it out the door, and it started to drive towards the zombies with another Dictaphone attached to the top with a woman’s recorded voice saying, “help me!”

Luckily for them, the zombies aren’t the smartest and followed the scent of the living rat and the sound of the Dictaphone. Beth scrambled inside, and they closed the door behind her. Alyssa drove the RC car into a pipe at the other end of the property. 

“That’ll keep their attention until the rat gets off or the Dictaphone stops. I’ll get the car later.” Alyssa said with a matter of fact tone.

“Thanks so much, guys. I thought I was a goner.” Beth said, trying to catch her breath.

She was pulling the burlap rags from her neck when Jake noticed that there was blood on her.

“Are you bit?” Jake asked, suddenly nervous. Alyssa also jumped back from her like she had the plague.

Beth held up her hands, “No. I cut my hands on some metal making some weapons. I didn’t get bit.”

Jake and Alyssa looked at each other nervously.

“I promise, guys,” Beth said.

“Sorry, Beth,” Alyssa said, “But you’re going to have to go into quarantine until we know for sure.”

Beth held up her hands in surrender. “All good, happy to go. I know that you’ve all worked so hard to make our little slice of heaven here. There are policies and procedures that you have made to keep chaos out there. I’m happy to follow them.”

Agile Tip: Team working agreements can be very helpful if properly implemented

“Cool,” Jake said and pointed down the hallway. “After you.”

Quarantine was a hell of a lot better than what she thought was going to happen to her.

Beth still couldn’t believe how everything worked out. She was going to have to kiss Ted when she saw him for all the planning he had done. Ted had managed to figure out all the different contingencies that they were going to need to follow to live in this new world.

Agile Tip: Think systematically when you plan, there should be a place for everything and everything should its place.

Not only did he make great plans, but he cultivated a team that used their diverse skillsets for the best outcomes of the team while still leaving wiggle room to adapt and change when the time called for it.

If being Agile was a cult, she was happy to be a member. Because not only did it mean they had a safe place to live while the world continued to turn to shit, but it meant that they might thrive.

As of right now, Beth wanted to get cleaned up, tend to her wounds and have a lie down. She may have used up all her adrenaline for the next month. But at least they were all safe…. for now.

ROAM your risk, else you will be roaming for help later down the line.

Team working agreements can be very helpful if properly implemented

Think systematically when you plan, there should be a place for everything and everything should its place.