"Andy!" Royce yelled as he ran over to Andy. "You okay?"
"I think so," Andy said. He stepped forward and felt intense pain in his ankle. He tried to take another step and the pain worsened. "No, I'm not."
"You're hobbling like you broke something," Milo said. "Hey, you don't look so good."
Andy’s vision became blurry and it felt as though everything was spinning around.
"Andy? Andy? You okay?" he heard Royce ask, but his friend’s voice sounded distant.
"I think I am," he mumbled. Then everything went dark.
Chapter Thirty
Jamie Daniels
Day 25
Jamie awoke as he was being jerked to his feet. He tried to move his arms, to demand his freedom but he must have still been drugged. He heard Todd yell something as he blacked out again.
The next time he woke up he was being lifted into the back of a police van. He realized he was bound with zip ties. Had he been arrested again? He was confused. It was as though he was seeing everything through a haze.
The haze cleared when he heard Mahmoud's voice. He looked up and saw the treacherous snake standing next to a teenage girl. Mahmoud was arguing with a very large man. Suddenly the man grabbed Mahmoud's right hand and squeezed. Mahmoud screamed in agony as the bones in his hand were crushed. The man then raised his gun and shot the girl in the face. Mahmoud's anguished scream was the last thing Jamie heard before he blacked out. He thought he tasted bile as he lost consciousness.
"Wake up Jamie!" Todd was yelling.
Jamie opened his eyes and realized he was blind. He was laying on a cold tile floor. "What? What happened?" he asked. He had a pounding headache. "I'm blind."
"No you're not. We are in a completely dark room. That snake Mahmoud betrayed us. He traded us with some gang for his sister."
"They shot his sister."
"Yes they did. He was demanding money and ammo in exchange for us. He felt like he was being short-changed by only getting his sister back in exchange for three healthy hostages."
"He was being greedy."
"That thug agreed with you. Mahmoud argued his sister's life away."
"Where are we?"
"Midway Airport. I regained consciousness in the van.”
"Where's Casey?"
"Asleep somewhere over there."
"How long was I out?"
"They let me keep my watch at least, so I think we've been here for a day and a half."
"I was out that long?"
"Yeah."
"Wow. Whatever Mahmoud drugged us with must have been strong."
"That it was. But, I barely finished one glass of tainted wine before I passed out. How many did you have? Two?"
"Almost three."
Todd chuckled. "Ah, you just got way more of the drug than me or Casey did. Makes sense now that I think about it."
Jamie noticed the scent of urine. "I guess we don't have a toilet?"
"No. No we don't. There is a trashcan though. It's pretty big. It's over in the corner, about ten paces to your right."
"How do you know?"
Todd chuckled again. "I tripped over you a few times."
Jamie shook his head. "Has anyone come by to tell us why we're being held?"
"No. They threw us in here and seem to have just thrown away the key."
Jamie didn't like the sound of that. He had been detained many times before and had always received his civil rights. Of course, that was before society collapsed. He growled. "This is stupid."
"Yes, it is," Casey replied from the darkness. "I'm glad to hear you're awake Jamie. I thought you might be dying."
"Thanks Casey."
"What time is it Todd?" Casey asked.
Jamie turned and saw two glowing watch hands about ten feet away. He realized he was staring at Todd.
"Just after noon," Todd said.
Suddenly there was a clanking sound coming from one of the walls and then Jamie was blinded by intense white light. He threw his arms up to shield his eyes as Casey cried out.
"What the…what is this?" a man with a husky voice demanded. "Is this the way to treat our guests?" There was a loud gunshot that echoed in the small room. It made Jamie jump. "Carry this sad piece of trash away," Husky Man said. "I don't care what you do with him. Feed him to the zombies for all I care."
Jamie lowered his arm as his eyes adjusted to the light. He saw a tall, thin, older man with long gray hair that was pulled back in a ponytail. The man wore a green track jacket and tight jeans and had a cigar tucked behind his left ear.
"Forgive my men," he said apologetically. "They have become too accustomed to the sacks of rotting meat that prowl the streets. My name is Sergei Popov. I am one of the bosses in our little gang. Who are you three?"
"Just a trio of travelers," Todd said.
"That's what everyone says," Sergei replied. "Who are you really?"
"We live over on the lake shore," Casey said.
"Why are you in our neighborhood then? You're quite a few blocks from Lake Michigan," Sergei replied with a smirk.
"My brother and his friends came this way and we are looking for them," Todd replied.
"Ah, yes. Well, you know it's funny. I don't know if you saw what we did to Mahmoud, the slippery young man who sold you to us?"
"Your men broke his hand and shot his sister," Jamie replied warily.
"Yes. Well, he lied to us. He told us that he had three senior members of Stickney's leadership. Imagine my man's surprise when he reviewed Todd's driver’s license and saw an address that's over by Wrigley Field!"
"So let us go," Jamie said.
"It's not that simple I'm afraid," Sergei sat down at the interrogation table in the center of the room. "Stickney thinks we have three high value hostages. It just so happens they have some very important members of our gang held captive. They are willing to trade for you.”
"So you're just going to traffic us around?" Casey asked.
"Well, we will see. The Stickneyans might let you go."
Jamie saw that Sergei had a pistol holstered on his hip. Two men stood outside the room wielding automatic rifles. It seemed unlikely Jamie and his friends would be able to strong arm their way out.
“Why are you doing this?” Casey asked. “What are you and the Stickneyans fighting over? Haven’t you seen what it’s like out there? Civilization has collapsed! There’s zombies everywhere.”
“Yes, yes young man, I know this. We are fighting to define what the future will look like, to control it. You see, most of humanity seems to have succumbed to what the media briefly dubbed Owasa Disease, but not everyone did. Have you ever heard the phrase, ‘nature abhors a vacuum?’”
Todd nodded. “I have.”
“Good. So you know then, that in the absence of authority, for instance, people will coalesce around whatever figure of authority they can find. My goal here is to make sure the Stickneyans don’t become that authority; rather, that I do.”
“You’re just pursuing a kingdom of sand,” Casey said.
Sergei laughed. “Just a few weeks of apocalypse have made you rather jaded!”
"So what's the plan then?" Todd asked.
"Well, we're going to hold you three until Stickney agrees to a prisoner exchange. Until then, we are going to provide you with meals and we'll leave the lights on for you." Sergei smiled as he leaned back. "You boys like beef stroganoff?"
Jamie realized he was extremely hungry. He felt his stomach rumble. "That sounds delicious," he confessed.
"Great! We'll bring you some. Now don't think about doing anything squirrelly. You all heard me shoot a man because he left you in the dark. I won't think twice about crippling each of you and feeding you to my dogs. Now, excuse me," he said as he stood up. "Jayden, get them a new trashcan," he barked at one of the guards as he walked out.
Jamie looked at Todd and Casey as a clean trashcan was dragged into the room by a pimple-faced teenager. As the boy walked out, he closed the door. Jamie hear
d a lock turning.
He turned toward Todd.
"We have to figure out how to escape," Todd said quietly.
Jamie nodded. "We seem to be at a disadvantage. They have guns. We seem to have left our guns at Mahmoud's house."
Todd nodded. "We could try to escape when they take us to be exchanged."
Jamie nodded. "That could work."
"But how? How do we do it?" Todd asked.
"We need a diversion," Casey said. "You know, zombies are drawn to noise."
"These guys seem to have military power," Todd said.
"Maybe. But all it would take is enough zombies being drawn in and our captors will be overwhelmed," Casey pointed out.
"And how do we avoid being eaten and escape?" Todd asked.
Jamie shushed the other two with a motion as footsteps approached the door.
"Alright gentlemen, I have three plates of beef stroganoff!" Sergei said cheerfully as he entered the room. He laid a large platter with three plates on it down on the table. Jamie noticed steam rising from mounds of creamy noodles. He also stole a furtive glance out the door and saw a shuttered McDonald’s across the hall.
Sergei smiled. "Enjoy gentlemen." Then he turned and walked out, closing the door behind him.
Jamie noticed a carafe of water on the table with four Solo cups. He realized he was quite thirsty too. He walked over to the table and poured himself a glass. The water felt cool and refreshing as it went down his throat.
“So when will be the best time to escape?” Casey asked quietly as he took a bite of stroganoff.
“Not here,” Todd replied.
“No, we’re in the wolf’s den,” Casey said. “So when they take us to be exchanged?”
“Perhaps,” Jamie said. “Although they’ll probably be expecting us to attempt escape. Maybe we’ll get lucky and things will go sideways when they try to exchange us. Maybe the folks from Stickney will decide to start shooting at our captors when they realize we aren’t high value targets.”
“Perhaps,” mused Todd. “Perhaps they’ll shoot us too.”
“I’d rather not think about that,” Jamie said. Suddenly he heard nearby gunfire.
“What’s that?” Casey asked.
“Sounds like automatic weapons,” Jamie replied. He walked to the door and pressed his ear against it. He could hear distant yelling.
“What is it?” Todd asked. “What do you hear?”
“Sounds like some kind of fighting. I can’t tell much else. There’s yelling down the hall, it sounds like...”
The room shook.
“Sounds intense,” Casey said tentatively.
Jamie stepped back from the door. “I don’t know. Hopefully it doesn’t make things worse for us.”
“Maybe we’ll be liberated.”
Todd shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus told a parable. He said there was a man possessed by a demon. The demon was cast out and then traveled around and found seven more demons to come back with it. They all returned and possessed the man, so his final state was even worse than the original state.”
“So you think if Sergei’s gang is displaced we’ll be even worse off?”
Todd nodded. “Yes. Let’s hope the captor who gave us water and stroganoff doesn’t get killed.”
The gunfire echoed for a while longer while the three men sat in the room. Suddenly gunshots rang out just outside the door. Jamie turned the table in the room over and he, Todd and Casey ducked behind it.
Someone laughed manically from out in the hallway and there were more gunshots.
Jamie looked at Casey and noticed the young man had his eyes closed. His lips were moving silently.
After a while, the commotion in the hallway died down and gradually the gunfire faded into the distance. Then there was just silence outside the room.
“Who do you think won?” Jamie asked Todd.
He shrugged. “Hopefully the man who gave us stroganoff.”
There was a knock on the door. Jamie heard the lock turning and the door opened. He peered over the table and saw Sergei standing in the doorway.
“Hello gentlemen, I see you heard all the hullaballoo out in the hallway, huh?”
Todd stood up. “What happened?”
Sergei waved his hand dismissively. “Some gang from the south thought they’d try to steal our home from us. They were dealt with.”
“Who are you Sergei?” Jamie asked.
“I was a TSA agent, back before all this epidemic nonsense. Now I’m one of the bosses of our little army. Don’t worry gentlemen, I think we will have an envoy from Stickney this evening. We might be able to arrange an exchange.”
Jamie nodded.
“Now then, I don’t think we’ll have any more incursions this evening. Sleep well gentlemen.” Sergei nodded at them and walked out, closing the door as he left.
“Did you guys see the body behind Sergei on the floor?” Casey asked.
Jamie shook his head.
“There was a dude who must have been shot five times!”
Jamie shrugged. “There was some kind of a battle out there.”
Todd sighed. “We need to get out of here.”
Jamie nodded. “Yes we do.”
“No, I mean, when we get back to the house we need to get out of Chicago. That is, if we get back to the house.”
“You don’t think we’ll be safe at the house?” Casey asked.
“Do you?” Todd asked. “Look, you all told me about Bloomington. This sounds like that. And it sounds like there are at least three groups fighting over this little square of land. It won’t be long before the violence spreads east.”
“Where are we going to go?” Casey asked.
Todd shrugged. “We’ll have to think about it and talk about it with the others. But I think if we head north, you know, there are thousands of lakes in Ontario. Much of Ontario is remote. We could probably find an abandoned cabin on the shore of one and hide out up there.”
“That’s certainly an option,” Jamie said.
A distant explosion made the room shake.
“We have to get out of here first,” Todd said.
That night the three men all had a difficult time falling asleep, but eventually they did. The next morning, Jamie awoke before the others did. He noticed that the lights had been turned off sometime overnight.
As he laid there in the darkness, he thought back to the last time he had seen his brother. Shelby had been such a good man. While Jamie had used their terrible upbringing to justify diving into a life of crime, his little brother had turned out to be an honest, hardworking man.
Shelby had taken him in following his release from prison. Then, Jamie had gone to Joliet to live with their mother as she lay dying from cancer. Her death at the end of the previous January had been his excuse to lapse back into an addiction to heroin.
As Jamie laid there, he felt a darkly familiar desire come over him. It wasn’t like thirst or hunger and it was stronger than lust. He had craved the sweet release of heroin before, in life’s stressful moments. Now, however, he felt himself wanting it more and more. Life had been nothing but stressful for the last few weeks. Now all he wanted was a release.
He shook his head. Maybe Shelby had been right. Jamie had shown up on his doorstep in March. Shelby and his wife Lana had taken him in and driven him to job interviews all over the Louisville area. Jamie remembered how he would play Cowboys and Indians with his nephew Jared. The little boy idolized his uncle. Then Jamie had inadvertently found an account statement for an IRA. The three letters had been just another meaningless acronym to him, but the account balance hadn’t been.
“Eighty-Thousand dollars,” he mumbled to himself in the dark. He had traded his family for the money his mother had left her grandson Jared when she had died. He had called the Edward Jones adviser, had requested a disbursement, had successfully impersonated Shelby and had then walked three miles to get the check. He had then cashed it a
nd spent it so quickly. He had gotten so high that even now, he was surprised he hadn’t overdosed.
He remembered when Shelby realized what had happened. It was a testament to his brother’s character, Jamie felt, that he hadn’t killed Jamie. He hadn’t hit him. He hadn’t even pressed charges. He had simply told Jamie to leave and to never come back.
“Once a junkie, always a junkie,” Jamie whispered bitterly. He wondered if Shelby and Lana and Jared had survived. He thought about his daughter and his ex-wife. Had any of them survived?
Suddenly he heard tumblers in the door turning. He sat up as Sergei opened the door.
“Wake up gentlemen. We’re going to go for a drive,” their captor said cheerfully.
He led them through the terminal and the concourse across a sky bridge to a parking garage. A white cargo van was waiting for them. They all got in and the van took off.
“Has Midway always been so dumpy?” Jamie asked.
Sergei laughed. “For a long time, yes.”
Jamie noticed that the five other men in the van were all heavily armed.
“Where are we going?” Todd asked.
“Shut up,” one of the gangsters said.
Jamie looked out the back window of the van and saw Midway passing by on the left. Once they were past the airport, all he could see were the abandoned buildings they passed. After about fifteen minutes the van came to a stop on a bridge.
Sergei got out and a few seconds later he opened the back door of the van.
“Gentlemen, please step out of the van,” he instructed Jamie, Casey and Todd.
They climbed out as the gangsters exited behind them.
“What now?” Todd asked.
“We wait,” Sergei replied.
Jamie looked around and realized they were standing over a river. He looked north and saw trees all along the shore of the river. It was cloudy and cold outside.
They waited for what seemed like hours. Finally, a single car came rolling across the bridge from the north. It stopped 300 feet away. It appeared to be empty.
“Go check it out Casper,” Sergei told one of the soldiers.
Casper walked out to the car. When he reached it he peered in the windows. He turned and yelled back, “There’s nothing in it!”
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