"How much longer are we staying?" Sherry asked.
"Another day, we'll leave tomorrow," Phil said. "Me and Jim are going to go through our dad's stuff today to see if there's anything we want to take."
"Okay, and then where are we heading?"
"Chicago," Jim said. "We're going to look for our sister, see if she's still alive."
"Okay," she replied. "And then to Omaha?"
"Sure, it's on the way west," Phil said.
That afternoon Sherry went for a walk around the neighborhood. Phil advised her to stay close and to carry her crowbar with her, just in case. Jim and Phil stayed inside to sort through their father’s possessions.
"How do these look?" Phil asked.
Jim looked up from the box he had been sorting through and saw Phil was wearing an old pair of aviator glasses. He chuckled. "They look good on you. Where'd you find those?"
"In his nightstand."
"Cool."
The brothers dug some more. Phil searched his dad's closet while Jim looked under the bed.
"Score!" Phil shouted.
Jim turned and saw him holding a shotgun. "Whoa!" he exclaimed.
"Yeah! Now just to find the shells!"
Jim found a box of 12-gauge shells under the bed. He handed them to Phil.
"Now we can be just like the zombie killers in the movies!" he said laughing.
"Yeah," Jim laughed.
Phil chambered one of the shells. Suddenly a blood-curdling scream came from outside.
"Sherry!" Phil said urgently. He and Jim both ran out of the bedroom. Jim grabbed his axe as he ran out the front door. Vik was right behind them.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Jamie Daniels
Day 14
A chilly breeze blew down the street as Jamie Daniels walked toward the lakeshore. The morning sun hung about 45° above the cold blue water of Lake Michigan. He sighed and a small cloud of steam blew forth from his mouth.
"Winter is coming," he muttered as he shivered. He lit a cigarette and took a drag as clouds moved east over the water. He glanced south toward the ruined buildings of downtown Chicago. He had been to the Windy City once before; it was a bitter memory. He had come to purchase a package of heroin for a partner of his in Kentucky.
In retrospect, he wasn't sure if the drugs he had been high on were making him more anxious than usual or if it was just cold, but the dealer had called him 'Shakes.'
A few months later Jamie had been arrested after robbing a convenience store and then he had spent a long time in prison.
He shook his head. He had been a junkie off and on since he had been a teenager. So much wasted time, so much wasted money, so many burned bridges and ruined relationships.
He inhaled another puff of tobacco and chuckled bitterly. He had been clean for four months. The collapse of society had made it significantly more difficult to relapse. Still, he felt the draw of the sweet needle from time to time.
He shook his head again, remembering what his brother had told him the last time they had spoken.
"Once a junkie always a junkie," Shelby had said so bitterly.
"Yeah, you don't know nothing about recovery!" Jamie had screamed.
"And you don't know a thing about integrity!" Shelby had screamed back, tapping Jamie's chest with his finger. "Once a junkie always a junkie."
He chuckled again. Shelby's words had been the catalyst he had needed to finally get clean. Shelby would probably never know what kind of influence he had been.
A rustling in some nearby bushes snapped Jamie out of his thoughts. He turned and saw an infected man emerge. The ghoul staggered toward him. Its clothes were slashed and hung from decaying shoulders.
He stood there, watching the infected man stumble toward him. He waited until the zombie was perhaps four feet away. He reached out and grabbed its arm just below the shoulder. The rotting thing growled as it jerked forward and Jamie threw it into the lake.
He sighed and walked back to Todd's house.
"Remember when the Jeep got a flat tire in the Mojave Desert?" Randy asked at dinner. It was late, the kids were in bed.
Todd laughed. "Yeah.”
Randy nodded. "Yeah, I remember you tried jacking the Jeep up but the jack was broken! We had to walk three miles back to a gas station and wait for a tow truck."
"Yeah, we waited for what, like four hours?" Todd replied.
"Yeah! And it was so hot! And the gas station attendant was so rude!"
Todd laughed as he sipped some beer.
"Hey Todd! This beer is good! What's it called again?" Casey asked.
"Paradise Lager."
"It's smooth!" Adam said.
"Thanks guys."
"It is pretty good," Jamie said as he drank some.
"So Jamie, where are you from?" Todd asked.
"Des Plaines originally," he replied. "But I grew up in West Virginia. My mom married a guy named Dwayne when I was eight and we moved to a little town in West Virginia when I was ten, after Dwayne got a job as a shift supervisor at a coal mine."
"What part of West Virginia?" Todd asked.
"About an hour east of Charleston, up in the Appalachians."
"What a beautiful part of the country!" Todd exclaimed.
"Maybe, but between my stepdad beating me, my mom and my brother and molesting my sister, I wanted to escape as soon as I could."
"That's terrible!" Vicki exclaimed. "I'm so sorry that you had to go through that!"
He shrugged. "I moved out as soon as I could. I married my high school sweetheart and we moved to Ashland, Kentucky. About the only good thing that came out of that relationship was my daughter Madeleine," Jamie replied. "Tamara, my wife, was crazy. We were both heroin junkies. She and I divorced about seven years ago when she got clean and I haven't seen either her or my daughter in a long time."
"Wow Jamie, that sucks," Todd said.
Jamie looked down at his plate. Canned corn and spam lay mingling in one another's juices. He sighed. "I don't know. I made a lot of bad choices when I was younger, you know, sometimes we have to bear the fruit of what we've done."
"How long have you been clean?" Todd asked.
"Four months."
"Wow. That's good man!"
He nodded. "It's been tough, but here I am today, clean and sober."
"Indeed!" Todd raised his beer. "A toast! A toast to Jamie and his continued abstinence from heroin."
Everyone murmured agreement and took drinks from their beverages.
A few days passed. On the Fifteenth Jamie went scavenging with Todd, Randy and Adam. They walked north along the shore of Lake Michigan. It was cloudy and cold and a bitterly cold breeze blew in off the lake.
"So dad was thinking about buying a sailboat?" Randy asked as they passed several burned out cars.
Todd nodded. "Yeah. I think he had some grand notions of being able to sail anywhere in the world."
Randy laughed. "Yeah, he always wanted to show mom the Seven Seas!"
Adam patted Jamie's shoulder. "Hey, I'm sorry you had such a rough upbringing."
Jamie shrugged, uncomfortable at the hint of pity in Adam's voice. "Not your fault."
"Still."
Jamie frowned. "You're kind of awkward, you know that?"
"I'm sorry, I just, I guess I've never known anyone who…" he trailed off.
"Has spent time in prison? Has been divorced? Has been a junkie? Has robbed someone else?" Jamie asked, trying to finish his awkward sentence.
He looked down. "I'm sorry, I am awkward."
Jamie laughed and patted him on the back. "It's okay Adam. I've heard it all."
The awkward boy smiled. "Thanks."
"What do you think happened to Penny? Think she found her family?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. I hope so. She was pretty."
Jamie laughed. "She was indeed. Although she smelled like a zoo."
"What do you think?"
"I think she was sweet but sort of a bimbo.
I'd be very surprised if she even makes it to her family alive."
"What? She was a crazy survivalist!"
"She was also lacking in people skills."
"She made it this far!"
"Luck man, it was all luck."
"We'll have to agree to disagree."
"Hey, for her sake I hope you're right," Jamie said.
"Hey, I don't mean to break up the pow wow back there," Randy said suddenly, "but we have zombies approaching!"
Jamie looked up and saw a crowd of about fourteen zombies approaching slowly. They all possessed a hungry, dead look in their eyes. Most were disfigured and maimed.
He raised his hammer and ran at a zombie on the left flank. He hacked at its head with the claw end of his tool and it dropped. He moved on to the next zombie as the others worked. They quickly dispatched the crowd and continued on.
"We're getting close to Loyola University," Todd said. "We're going to look through their medical offices for antibiotics."
"Why?" Jamie asked.
"In case any of us gets sick. They could prove useful."
"Good point."
Jamie looked around. "There are fewer zombies than I expected."
Randy shrugged. "Yeah, it is a little strange."
"I noticed they seem to move in waves across the city," Todd said. "It's like they wander until they find a larger group to join up with and so on and so forth. I saw a crowd that probably had several thousand zombies in it a few days before you guys showed up just wandering around on Lower Wacker Drive in downtown. When I came back a few hours later, they were all gone."
"So we need to be careful," Randy said. "We could turn back and come face to face with a massive herd of zombies."
"I'd worry more about the thugs than the zombies," Adam said. "We can outrun zombies."
"True, they're not very fast," Jamie said.
"Yeah, but I would still avoid getting cornered. I'd be worried about getting boxed in pretty quickly," Randy said.
"Here we are," Todd said.
Jamie looked up and saw a tall Art Deco style building to the left next to a four-story concrete building. The road curved around the complex.
"Is that the university?" he asked.
"Yeah," Todd replied.
"Do you know where to go?" Adam asked.
"I've been here dozens of times over the years," Todd said. "I know exactly where to go."
Jamie looked to the left as they left the road and saw an abandoned transit bus turned sideways on the street. It was covered with missing person fliers.
They followed Todd down a trail that wrapped around the four-story building and followed the rocky shore of the Lake. They passed a blocky concrete chapel and approached a three-story structure with a red roof.
"Here," Todd said.
"Why don't I stay outside?" Jamie suggested.
"And keep watch?"
"Yeah. I need to smoke a cigarette."
"Sure, just holler if you need anything. We're going to the second floor. There's a medical lab up there."
"Sure thing Todd."
They entered the building as Jamie pulled a cigarette out of his jacket pocket. He pulled his lighter out, a cheap transparent orange Bic and lit the cigarette. He took a drag of it as the water bobbed up and down along the rocky shore. He looked out over the deep blue water and exhaled.
Jamie noticed some debris bobbing up and down on the waves about a hundred feet out. It looked like several wooden boards. He squinted his eyes to get a better look and realized he was staring at several dozen corpses floating in the lake. He grimaced and took another drag from the cigarette.
A few minutes later the others emerged from the building, each carrying a plastic bag.
"Did you find what you were looking for?" he asked.
"Yeah," Todd said. "This should restock our medicine cabinet nicely. Any trouble out here?"
Jamie shook his head. "No, it's been quiet."
"Good, let's get going."
On the Eighteenth, Jamie was awakened by the sound of the girls playing in the room next to the room that Adam, Randy, Casey and he were sleeping in. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. Casey was snoring. Adam and Randy were gone.
"What time is it?" Jamie mumbled. He looked at the alarm clock and saw that it was just before 10:00am. He stood up and walked downstairs. Randy and Adam were in the kitchen with Todd.
Todd smiled. "Good morning sunshine!"
"Hey," Jamie said. "Is there coffee?"
"Yeah, over there in the pot. It's cold brewed," he replied.
"That's fine," Jamie said as he walked over to the coffee pot. He grabbed a mug from the cabinet and poured a cup.
"Hey, I was going to take the guys to Wrigley Field," Todd said.
"Why?" Jamie asked. "Aren't there just corpses there?"
"Well, it was where the military attempted to evac everyone. It was a dismal failure," Todd replied.
"We wanted to see it," Randy said.
Jamie shook his head.
"Besides, there's probably some ammo there," Adam said.
"You make a good point Adam," Jamie conceded.
"Yeah. We're going to head over in a little bit, if you want to come?" Todd said.
"Sure, let me drink some coffee first."
They set out around 11:00am. It was unseasonably warm out as they walked south on Seminary Avenue. The trees in the park on the right side of the road had shed most of their leaves by now. Jamie turned his head and saw a trio of deer grazing in the center of the park.
"This is where I've caught two deer," Todd whispered in his ear.
Jamie nodded. "Plenty of land to graze on. Do the zombies go after them?"
Todd made a noise that sounded like a soft laugh. "Sometimes. It's kind of funny to watch. Usually the deer get away. Those zombies are so slow. I guess it's a consequence of being dead."
Jamie nodded.
"So you have a daughter huh?" Todd asked.
"Yeah."
He squeezed Jamie's shoulder. "I'm sure she's okay."
Jamie nodded.
"How old is she?"
"Sixteen."
"A teenager. Wow."
Jamie shrugged. "Yeah. I haven't seen her in years."
Todd put his hand on Jamie's shoulder again. "I'm sure she misses you."
Jamie nodded. He was growing tired of the others' sympathy. He was mainly annoyed by Adam and Todd, but even Randy seemed to give him piteous looks from time to time. Would he ever get beyond being someone's object of pity? He had seen the same look in Shelby's eyes, before he had stolen from him. He had seen the same look in Tamara's eyes the last time she had visited him in that roach-infested rat hole of a prison. He hated that look.
"Hey, look!" Adam called out.
The outer shell of Wrigley Field loomed ahead. Dozens of olive green military tents stood in the lots around the stadium. Body bags were stacked all over; some stacks stood four or five bags high. As the survivors approached the scene, Jamie saw that some corpses were dressed in fatigues, some in scrubs, and others in denim. A few were naked. Nevertheless all were swollen and blackened. The stench of decay was nearly overwhelming. Adam yelled as the black blanket on one nearby corpse turned out to be a swarm of millions of flies.
"I warned you all," Jamie said. "I didn't think this was a good idea."
The group turned down Waveland Avenue and walked toward a breach in the wall around the stadium. As the field came into view, so too did the mangled wreckage of several military helicopters. Hundreds of zombies stumbled about the outfield aimlessly.
"We should get back," Todd said quietly.
Jamie nodded. "Don't make any loud noises guys," he said quietly to the others. "Let's head back the way we came."
They quietly retraced their steps back to Seminary Avenue and walked back toward Todd's house.
"There were a lot of zombies in there," Adam said as they passed a burned out video game store.
Todd nodded quietly. "We might nee
d to get out of the city soon."
"We drove up from Bloomington in a fifteen-passenger van," Randy replied.
"Oh yeah? Where's this van now?" Todd asked.
"Stopped near a fallen bridge on the Stevenson Expressway over by Midway. We couldn't drive it the rest of the way because it was out of gas and the bridge was collapsed."
Todd nodded. "I suppose we could go try to recover it."
"Sounds good. What do you think? Me, you, Casey and Jamie?" Randy asked.
Jamie felt Todd sizing him up and weighing his value.
"You any good with that gun Jamie?" Todd asked.
Jamie nodded. "I fought off dozens of deranged soldiers in Bloomington with it, so I'd like to think I am."
"Good."
"Hey, if you guys are heading that way, I think me and Jill are going to head east to see if our family survived," Adam said.
Todd looked at him and Jamie could see the doubt in his eyes. "You're going to walk to Valpo?"
"If there isn't any other way, yes," Adam replied. "And then we are going to head to Cleveland."
Todd glanced back at Jamie. "No. We will find a car in the neighborhood we can hotwire for you. We'll look when we get back."
"Thanks Todd."
"Maybe I should go with them?" Randy said.
"No Randy, you don't have to do that. Stay with your brother," Adam protested. "Besides, if we don't find any," he paused. "If we don't find any family who survived, we are going to come back."
Randy nodded uncertainly. "Still, I'd feel better if I could go with you." He glanced at Todd.
"It will probably take a few days to get to Cleveland and back," Todd said. "Go with them Randy."
"You sure Todd?"
"Yes. Take my car."
"The Land Rover?" Randy asked.
"Yes." He turned toward Jamie. "It'll be me, you and Casey going to get the van. You okay with that?”
Jamie nodded. He hoped it would be a quick journey to retrieve the van. He also hoped Randy, Adam and Jillian would be okay.
But the next day it was sharply colder and rainy. So too was the day after and the day after that. Finally, a good day arrived for one trio to go west and the other trio to go east. They began loading up the Land Rover before dawn.
Later Jamie was packing some supplies in a backpack as Todd handed Randy a rifle. The gun appeared to be several decades old.
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