I stepped back, fearing a trick, as the man sobbed into his hands. “Take what you want, but please don’t hurt my family. Please.”
The voice, while raspy, was familiar. I holstered my SIG and squatted down in front of him. I didn’t worry about him trying anything since Charlie was there.
“Hey,” I said, looking hard at the man.
He looked up and I found myself looking into my mother’s eyes. Only they didn’t belong to my mother. They belonged to my brother. I had found him. By all that’s holy, I had found him.
“I found your note,” I said. “You were supposed to be looking for me at Eagle Cliff.” I took off my goggles and balaclava and at the moment of recognition, threw my arms around my brother. Charlie stepped back and I had a hard time keeping the tears from my eyes as I held my baby brother.
Mike drew back, wiping his eyes. “Thank God. You came. Oh, thank God,” he kept saying over and over.
We stood up and Mike motioned us to follow him. We went through the doors and into the gift shop. There, hiding in the corner, was Mike’s family. Nicole was there, holding a whimpering Annie, and Logan was bravely standing in front of his mother, tears down his cheeks, trying to protect her from the bad guys.
I knelt down in front of Logan and said, “Hi, little buddy. Your cousin Jake misses you.” It took a minute for him to recognize me, then he threw his little arms around my neck and hugged me tight. I held on to him as I stood and gave Nicole a hug as well.
I put down Logan and introduced Charlie to everyone. Logan was as impressed as a three year old could be and asked to touch Charlie’s gun.
I spoke with Mike and Nicole for a few moments and realized that they had holed up in the visitor center when the cougar first came stalking. After that, it was touch-and-go as they finished their supplies and worked their way through the stores kept in the café. Once those ran out, Mike had been making runs to the lodge, bringing back what he could from the restaurant. Those runs became more dangerous as zombies from the town across the river began to cross the bridge and realized food was nearby. They had actually run out of food three days ago and were on the brink of collapse. When they heard us, they thought we were zombies at first, but when I had opened the door, they thought we were looters. Mike was actually out of bullets, so he had been hoping to surprise whoever had come in. When that didn’t work, he had just reached the end of his string.
I took off my pack and handed out the food and water I had in there and Charlie did the same. The family gratefully accepted the stores, making sure their children ate first. We had more in the boat, so I wasn’t concerned. Besides, we were going back to Leport as soon as possible.
I spent the next several minutes talking about what had happened to me since the Upheaval and Charlie jumped in as necessary. When we had finished, my brother looked at me with new eyes. “When did you become such a dangerous person?” he asked.
“‘Bout a year ago, give or take a month,” I said. “Believe me, if I had a choice, I’d have kept things the way they were.”
After the family had assuaged the worst of their hunger, I started to head for the front door, nearest the parking lot, when my brother grabbed my arm.
“What are you doing?” he hissed, looking furtively out the window. “There’s at least six zombies out there!”
I shook my arm free. “I just found my brother after thinking he was dead for over a year. I’m taking you home and if you think six zombies will stop me, you have no idea what your brother has become.” I signaled to Charlie and he came over, standing on a chair and looking out of a high window overlooking the parking lot.
“There’s seven by the front door and five more out in the parking lot. Two just disappeared around the corner, so I’m guessing they’re checking out the back.” Charlie stepped down. “How do you want to play it?”
I thought for minute. “Let’s wait for the two to get to the back, deal with them quietly, then we’ll hit the front like we did with the trailers at Coal City.”
Charlie nodded. “You want to go first again?”
I shook my head. “You can this time.”
“What about the ones in the lot?”
“One on one, I’ll take the left side.”
“Deal.”
My brother just stared at me with an open mouth as I readied my gear. I topped off my carbine and loosened my pickaxe in its holder. Charlie checked his gear, then signaled he was ready. I repositioned my balaclava and goggles.
I motioned to Mike to come over and Charlie handed him his gun back. “It’s fully loaded now, so you can defend your family if it comes to it. If something happens to us, take the trail to Horseshoe Bend. The boat is beached there. Take it and get your family to Leport. Don’t stop at Joslin, and don’t hesitate. Clear?”
Mike just nodded and Nicole just stared at us with wide eyes.
“Ready?” I asked Charlie.
Charlie nodded.
Pushing open the door to the information center, I headed towards the back door. The two that had headed that way from the front were just ambling past the doors, not finding anything of interest to them. I stepped to the back door and nodding to Charlie, burst out onto the sidewalk. The two zombies turned as one and came at us.
I didn’t waste time and planted my pick into the skull of the first one, a heavy man with grey skin and deep gashes on his shoulders. Charlie crushed the skull of the other Z with a well-placed blade to the temple. We wiped off our weapons and split up with me taking the left side and Charlie taking the right. I unslung my carbine as I moved, making sure I stayed close to the walls to avoid having my shadow reveal where I was.
About twenty feet from the corner I stopped and shouldered my weapon. I walked out away from the wall and kept my eye on the corner. I moved until I could just see part of one of the zombies and stopped. When Charlie opened up, I wanted to be out of the way, but in position to support him if needed. Out in the parking lot, the other zombies saw me and started in my direction. They were about two hundred yards out and not yet a threat.
I waited for about five seconds, then heard Charlie’s rifle bark. He was very methodical and four shots rang out. I waited a second, then stepped forward and faced three zombies whose backs were to me. At the first shot, I dropped a teenage girl who had moved quickly to the corner. The other two, probably her parents, turned at the sound and headed for me. I shot the father first, then the mother, both of them falling beside their daughter.
The fusillade of shots stirred the Z’s in the parking lot to move faster and both Charlie and I took a moment to shoot the ones nearest to us. Mine seemed to be whiter than usual and as I ran to engage the remaining zombies I noticed that the reason he was white was because he was covered in maggots.
Charlie reached a zombie first and jumped high into the air to bring his tomahawk down on its head. I reached my second one and, ducking under its clawed hands, swept its feet out from under it, slamming it onto the pavement. Stepping up to it, I drove my pickaxe into the top of its head before it had a chance to recover.
The next two were going to present a little bit of a problem because they were close together. They were two women, dressed in tank tops and jeans, with lank, filthy hair hanging down their faces. Deep scratches covered their arms and one had a tear in her shoulder. The other had a hole bitten in her thigh, the opening torn and bloodied. Their hands and arms were blackened with dried blood and they moved in an almost coordinated fashion. They advanced with their arms outstretched, allowing very little room to maneuver. This was going to take some timing. I waited until they got close, then I swerved to the side, placing one behind the other. I shoved the head of the pickaxe into the face of the blonde one, knocking her into the brunette and tumbling them both to the ground. I moved around again and slammed the heavy blade end of my pick into the top of the blonde. She lay still as her companion crawled towards me, standing up on unsteady feet as she faced me. Her arms came up again and I kicked her back over her
friend again. I moved and slammed the pick down more forcefully than I had intended and caved in half her skull. Her reaching hands immediately fell to the side and she looked like she and her friend were now sleeping.
Charlie came over after he finished his zombie. “All done with your threesome?” he asked, wiping off the ‘hawk.
“Yeah. Wasn’t as fun as I thought it would be,” I said, scrubbing my pick on the grass.
I looked around and didn’t see any threats. I knew the cougar was still out there, but that was a danger I could live with if I had to.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get the family moving. I want to show you something before we go.”
We went back to the Visitor Center and gathered up Mike and his family. They watched with wide eyes as Charlie and I dragged the bodies to the parking lot and set them on fire. I used the opportunity to cleanse my pick and Charlie did the same with his weapon. As the fire was burning out, I took Charlie up to the lodge, where we scouted around for a bit. Not finding any enemies, living or otherwise, we stood on the expansive patio that ran the length of the building. The Illinois River Valley stretched before us and the water of the river lazily wandered by. In the middle of the river was an island, about a mile long, with trees and long grass.
“What’s on the back side of this place?” Charlie asked.
“Farms and another state park,” I said. “A little more rustic than this one, but very nice.”
“What are you thinking?” Charlie asked.
“I’m thinking this is where I want to be. It has everything. Land for crops, land for animals, perfectly defensible positions if needed, water all year long, lookout points for the river. I would move here in a second. There’s a horse farm nearby. Might have some horses left.”
Charlie thought for a second. “What about your brother?”
“He’s alive and will stay that way. Unless I miss my guess, he and his family will want to get to some semblance of civilization soon. They would be a welcome addition to the community.”
“What about Sarah.?”
I thought about that. “She’ll resist at first, but I think she’ll come around.”
Charlie gazed out over the water and the forest. “Want some company?” he asked.
I laughed. “You been feeling the same thing?”
Charlie looked at me. “The ‘I’m not meant to run a community’ feeling? Yeah, I’ve been feeling that. I was looking to head out earlier, but didn’t know where to go. Now I do.”
“Yeah, me too. This place feels right, better than any other.”
“Exactly.”
“Still have a lot to do back at Leport.”
“Yeah, but we’ll get here.”
We headed down the stairs to where Mike and his family were waiting. We had a lot to do, but we had another success under our belts. I was eager to get back to Starved Rock and settle in, but we had to go to our old home first before we made the trip to our new one.
For the first time in a long while, I felt an odd sense of peace. I hoped it would last.
31
We moved my brother and his family quickly back to Leport, stopping briefly at Ottowa and Seneca to speak with the survivors there. We established communication protocols and traded information about towns we had visited to the south. I figured once we cracked the nut of the huge distribution center to the north, we would be in a great position to share what we had with towns that needed it.
Joslin proved to be no trouble on the way back, although we did hear gunfire and saw many zombies still in the area. I was again curious as to the viability of restarting the power plant, but that would only occur after the danger had been taken care of.
At Leport, there were plenty of hugs to go around and I moved my brother and his family to a house just down the road from where Sarah and I lived. Logan was delighted to see Jake again and Jake thought Annie was just the greatest thing. We spent several nights just catching up on things, sharing stories and shrugging our shoulders at the way things turned out. The one sour note was we had no idea about our parents, but even I wasn’t crazy enough to try and head in that direction.
After a few weeks of readjusting and settling back in, I finally got around to talking to Trevor about his trip to State Center Alpha. Trevor had insisted that he wouldn’t talk to anyone until he had talked to me first and I put it off for a while. I knew he had found several towns that were on the brink of extinction and had managed to bring back over a hundred people. For that alone, he was a hero in anyone’s eyes, as well as the rest of the crew that accompanied him.
I sat down in Trevor’s living room and waited for him to organize his thoughts. I was in no hurry, although I was very curious as to what he found. Outside, summer was past its high point, and every once in a while, you felt a breeze that let you know fall was on its way. Plants weren’t as green as they used to be and overall there was a dustiness to the air.
Trevor leaned back in his chair and launched into his report. “We didn’t run into anything we couldn’t handle on our way to the center. We worked our way around some roadblocks, but didn’t hit anything serious until we came to the outskirts of Alpha. We approached pretty much the same way you did, keeping an eye on the cars and building, looking for movement. The gates were closed, however, and we could see the buildings were occupied. Thanks for the map, by the way, Alpha was built just like Bravo.”
I nodded.
Trevor continued. “We moved in and checked things out. The dorms were full of zombies, but they couldn’t get out. The main office building had labs like you said and some offices. It was in the offices that we found the information you suspected was there.”
I leaned forward. I had my suspicions about those centers, but kept them to myself, telling only Trevor about them when I sent him to the center. My biggest question was how the state had managed to build the centers without anyone knowing about it and how had they managed to build them so quickly after the outbreak of the virus? To me, that smacked of prior knowledge, which meant the virus could have been contained had we just been warned earlier.
“The center wasn’t for keeping people safe from the zombies. The centers was for the study of zombies. Everyone who came through those gates was not supposed to leave alive. They were supposed to become zombies and be experimented on.”
I kept my face passive, but inside I felt like I had been sucker punched. How the hell could the government do this to their own people? This knowledge created more questions than answers.
“Here’s the thing,” Trevor said. “The federal government never figured the virus to go as out of control as it did. The creation of the centers was to weed out a segment of the population deemed expendable, those people without any usable skills or any inclination to self-preservation. They would be the ones to run for a shelter because they lacked the wherewithal to manage on their own.
“The purpose was to understand the virus, then try to understand the zombie. What motivated it, why did it eat humans, what were its weaknesses?” Trevor sounded older, like the knowledge aged him.
“When the centers lost contact with their federal masters after the central government fell to the virus, the centers just shut down, and most of the staff left. The commander you found had a sense of guilt and shot himself for what he had participated in.” Trevor finished with a sigh. “But that’s not the worst of it.”
I doubted anything could have made me more disgusted than what I already heard, but I had a feeling Trevor was about to prove me wrong. “What was the worst?”
Trevor held up binder that he had been holding by the side of the chair. It was plain grey with red lettering that read “Operation Zero Friday”. “If the government had been able to contain the virus, the plan was to use the zombies to control the rest of the population into compliance. Remember the line the President’s Chief of Staff liked to use? ‘Never let a good crisis go to waste?’ They wanted to use this crisis to solidify absolute control over not only the U
nited States, but the rest of the world as well.”
I shook my head. “A power play. Billions dead for a power play. Somehow, I’m not surprised.”
Trevor stood up to drink some water. “The last of the reports talked about a regrouping of military forces, so it’s a safe bet they’re still out there. A side note talked about possibly a safe haven for those in Washington, but nothing specific.”
I stood up and offered my hand to Trevor. “Good work. You’re a hell of a fighter and a good friend. This community is grateful and so am I.”
Trevor smiled as he shook my hand. “Thanks. Coming from you that means a lot.”
“We’ll let the rest of the community know as soon as possible. Some of them have family that went to those centers and they deserve to know the truth.” I headed for the door. Part of me was disgusted by what our so-called elected leaders had tried to do and another part was glad they had failed.
I left Trevor’s house and walked right into a zombie. We collided together and I managed to catch myself on the door of the house and draw my gun as the Z fell backwards and onto its back. It scrambled up faster than I had ever seen a zombie move, then raised its hands over its head as it yelled, “Don’t shoot!”
I stared hard for a second, not believing I had just heard a zombie speak, then lowered my gun. It was Carl Witry, our acting coach and resident zombie impersonator. “Jesus, Carl! You’re gonna get shot walking around dressed like that!”
Carl wiped off his rags. “Tell me about it. You’re the fifth person to throw down on me since I came to get Trevor.”
“What’s up?” I asked, holstering my SIG.
“Nothing. Trevor is late for training and Nate sent me to come get him.” Carl was upright again and none the worse for wear.
“Alright, I’ll be at home if anyone needs me.”
“Righty-ho,” Carl said as he knocked on Trevor’s door. As I walked away, I heard, “Don’t shoot!” coming from Trevor’s house once again. I laughed and hoped Carl would survive his errand.
Taking It Back Page 23
