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now.
    My eyes fell on my porch, and all of a sudden I had a flash of inspiration. My porch was made of two by sixes of various lengths. All the wood I needed was right there. I just had to pull it up and bring it in. I ran downstairs and grabbed my drill, pausing to put the extra battery in the charger. Thankfully, I had made the deck with screws, so I just needed to back out the screws and pull the boards up. I figured I had only an hour before Jake woke up, so I needed to move quickly.
    I brought my .22 outside with me and slung it across my back. I needed to move all the stuff off the deck first, and do it quietly, since I wasn’t ready to withstand a siege. I moved the chairs to the fence, giving myself firing positions if I needed them. The back of my property dropped off four feet. The table I moved to the fence door, and jammed it into the ground. The door opened outward, and I needed to be able to block it if got pulled open. I hoped it never came to that, but then the dead seemed to be walking, so here we are.
    As I went back to my porch to take off some boards, I was struck by how quiet it was. My house was in the landing pattern of the nearby airport, so there was usually a plane or three overhead. I listened to the wind and could faintly hear distant sounds: intermittent pops that I figured was gunfire, a groan or two, and the screeching of tires. I hoped all the noise would distract any infected from whatever noise I made.
    The first few boards came off easily with no serious sound. I removed about three feet of boards and brought them into the house. The hard part was going to be cutting them, but I had hand saws for that. As I placed the boards in the house, I noticed the curtains move on my neighbor’s house. As I straightened up, the curtain was pulled aside and I saw my neighbor’s daughter Erica in the window. She waved at me and I waved back, happy to see another person in this crazy world. All of a sudden she was jerked back and the curtain was shoved forward. I hoped she was okay. I didn’t hear any screams, and so I figured it was just her parents trying not to attract attention to their house. They were just as scared as I was.
    I went inside and heard some happy baby noises coming from upstairs. After I put the rifle back, I went up and found Jacob sitting up in his crib, playing with his blanket. He smiled a huge smile when he saw me, apparently no worse the wear for the experience we had over the afternoon. I picked him up and changed him, able for a brief second to forget the world and the crisis we seemed to be in. I took him downstairs to the basement, transferring his pack ‘n play. I went back upstairs and measured the windows, figuring on using the deck screws to fasten the boards to the window frames. I went back down and began cutting boards. For whatever reason, Jake thought this was fascinating, and smiled and laughed the whole time I was cutting boards.
    I took him back upstairs, and brought up the boards I had cut. I figured only to cover the front windows at this time, since they were the weakest point of entry, and there were only two of them. The good news was there was a hedge in front of the windows, and my house was raised off the ground by several inches, so direct access was difficult. It could be done, but not easily. I decided to cover up the windows but leave the top six inches open to let in light and give me a firing opening. If I needed to close the whole thing, I could just drop the drapes.
I was just attaching the last board when the phone rang. It was Ellie.
“John?”
“Hey, Babe!” I said, trying to sound cheerful, in spite of all that had happened today.
“How are you doing?” She sounded like here was something seriously wrong.
“I’m fine.” I said, moving over to where Jacob was.
“Have you been watching the news?” Ellie asked.
“Actually I’ve been a little busy.” I understated things, since I didn’t want her to worry.
    Ellie sounded