14 Quarry Trap
My first automated mass zombie-disposal device was beyond simple. All it took was a metal pole, a few sacks of cement, a stack of charged car batteries, a loudspeaker, and a few bits of electronics for an antenna.
Finding the right site was the more difficult part. The easiest choice would have been a massive sinkhole we knew of, but someone (most of the Sojourners, actually) worried that throwing thousands of corpses into it might poison the water table. We settled on an old rock quarry instead. It was farther away from the Farm than the sinkhole but it was directly in the path of the migration, and if we didn't already know that then the thousands of crushed bodies at the bottom would have given it away. Zombies fell into it by the hundreds during every migration, but many of them weren't damaged enough by the fall to stay put. The carpet of human bones at the bottom cushioned their landings, and surviving zombies routinely found their way out.
As quarries go it wasn't very large: maybe two hundred yards long by fifty yards wide, and only forty feet or so deep. A pair of roads led out of the pit, and that's how the zombies were getting out, lured up by sunlight on bright days. With some teamwork and our new zombie-paralysis ray and a backhoe, we carved out ten-foot sections of each road into a steep slide. Any ungainly undead that tried to climb the out would slide back down to the bottom of the pit, making it a one-way adventure.
Our work at the top of the pit was simpler. We found a place right at the edge to augur a hole big enough to plant a fifteen-foot wooden pole and cement it in. At the top of the pole we mounted the lure: a loudspeaker that played rhythmic sounds a few times a minute to attract zombies, and a low-frequency/low-power antenna that switched on for a few minutes every hour. You can probably guess the intent clearly enough by now: the sound would draw many of them in, where they would gather at the base of the pole. Since zombies move in groups, quite a large number should gather there. The RF antenna mimicked the signals emitted by living humans, and when it switched on the zombies would surge forward in a mass. The ones in back would push the ones in front over the edge, and a mass entombment would be the result.
We did our work in the cold, and that was the biggest danger. We nearly lost Hector when the road succumbed under the first backhoe half-way through digging out the eastern ramp, and the whole machine went tumbling into the pit. Hector abandoned it barely in time. He laughed at the incident but the priest and I were angry. There were too few of us left to waste lives on stupid accidents.
When it was time for the Sojourners to migrate south against the seasonal mega-shamble, Rachel and I stayed behind with our team of Sandy, Hector, Alfred, and Jaida. I would have left Sandy out of it but she refused to leave me, and I did not fight her on that as hard as I might have. I liked having Sandy near: she wasn't a fighter but she was dependable with everything else, and she understood better than anyone what I was thinking when it came to zombies. We made our camp on a high hill two miles from our trap, with a good telescope. I wanted to be closer, but this time it was Rachel who overrode me. The spot I wanted, the loft of a barn practically next door to the quarry, had a better view but the farther position was safer. After the speech I had given Hector, I was in no position to argue.
Our observation hill had been inhabited at one time. The zombie-approachable slopes were barricaded with felled trees, and three sturdy lean-tos circled a stone-lined fire pit. Whomever had made the camp hadn't been back in years, and the three marked graves nearby gave a clue as to why nobody had returned. When the Sojourners went south we camped on the abandoned hilltop to wait for the migration. No studies to be done. No devices to build. No hordes to fight or evade. Our only goal was to wait.
Our team passed the days hiking slowly around the hilltop looking for the odd straggler and telling stories of the years that had come between us. We added to the barricades as we saw fit. We lived in the big lean-to, and built fires in the ring of stones. One day there was a light snowfall, one of those barely substantial snows that melts at first light. By noon that day we had our first sign of the migration.
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In early American history there are stories about bison thundering across the great plains in herds so large they covered it from one horizon to the other. Zombie mega-shambles are similar to that in scope. It starts as a thin line on the horizon, which thickens and creeps forward. By the time the stench reaches you the line has become a mile-thick dark band advancing with the sound of a million dried-out bodies rubbing and dragging along the ground. If you panic you might think you're looking at a billion dead people on the march, but a look through the telescope tells you a different story: the migration is a collection of smaller shambles, with the occasional straggler in between them. A living person can move through the migration provided he is quick, he picks his path well, starts from the downwind side, doesn't lose his head, and he is not unlucky. Such a feat is called "shooting the line". I've seen people do it in cars, on motorcycles, and on foot. It is always dangerous. If you have a good place to shelter then it is far safer to wait it out than make a run for it.
The migration flowed around obstacles like water, and broke around the south side of our hill. The pressure and momentum of so many was enough to push the leading edge partway up the hillside, until the barricades and steep slopes deflected them away to the east and west. A fair number got left behind by the mega-shamble, and alone or in small shuffles they wandered away in random directions, usually downhill.
Sandy and I took turns with the telescope and note-taking duties while the others patrolled the immediate area for any zombies that made it past our defenses. The quarry trap mostly worked as expected. The sounds from the loudspeaker attracted their attention and they gathered at the pole. When the EM field generator fired it had an immediate effect on the horde: every zombie within a thousand feet surged towards the lure, pushing nearly all of them over the edge and into the pit. Their excitement drew still more to gather at the edge, and the process repeated itself over and over again.
It hadn't occurred to me what they might do after falling in. Our victims all fell in from the same spot, which created a pyramid of corpses along that wall of the quarry, all grotesquely squirming. Those who fell into the trap were still subject to the lure, so those at the bottom were constantly trying to climb back up to the top of the pyramid. New victims fell in and tumbled down the sides of the pyramid, knocking others down as they fell, then the whole process started over again with everyone trying to climb back up. The pile of undead would reach the top of the quarry long before the whole thing filled up.
I made a note, in my emerging principles of zombie-annihilation machine design: make good use of available space.
When the pile of undead reached over half the height of the quarry wall I used my radio remote to turn off the lure, but it was too late. The commotion of those trapped inside attracted still more zombies in a self-sustaining cascade of noise and bodies. Even from our high perch we could hear them, keening and groaning. Like a giant bathtub drain, the quarry sucked in every zombie in a greater than two-mile radius. When it was over, all around the edge of the quarry stood a rim of zombies about five deep: too interested in the stimulation to leave, but not enough momentum from behind to force them in. The migration passed on by to the north, but with a four or five-mile wide gap in it.
We lived the next two days very carefully, patrolling our hill and sleeping in shifts. Our barricades were good, but outside of them were quite a few walkers stalking the woods. Rachel liked to use the zombie-deactivating ray, and I liked finishing them with my titanium mace, but soon Jaida and Alfred took over because I "couldn't bee risked".
The original plan called for burning the trapped walkers, but we hadn't counted on so many of them left standing around the quarry's rim. After a lot of debate we turned the lure back on and, as all the zombies shifted to that side of the quarry, approached it from the opposite side.
The scene inside was a vision from some old renaissance painting of Hell: writhing, grasping, gnashing bodies piled more than twenty feet deep. A hundred thousand bodies, a hundred thousand moaning voices, four hundred thousand limbs searching for purchase, writhing and crawling and churning on top of each other in a tireless, endless death orgy. When they sensed us, their blind eyes turned toward us, unseeing. The wind was enough to carry our scent, unwashed as we were, and the mass of bodies began to move in our direction. Slowly, agonizingly, a pyramid began to form beneath us, as the zombie masses tried to climb up to the light, where fresh flesh was on display.
We used a partially-filled 55 gallon drum of fuel oil and a hand pump to spray down as many as we could. Then we dropped in a lit flare and drove away while they burned. We could still see the smoke the next day, and the day after that.