This is a work of fiction, any character or event portrayed is created solely from the imagination of the author, and is not based on any individual or incident past, present or future. Any resemblance to any real-life entity is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © Duncan McArdle 2017. All rights reserved.
Unauthorised copying of this work via any medium is strictly prohibited.
A foreword
This book is devoted to my father Stephen, for always believing in me both in and out of my writing endeavours, for being a constant, strong inspiration to me in everything I do, and for being a fantastic example to me and my siblings every single day of our lives. He was the first person to read every one of my books, the first to ask when the next one would be available, and the first to congratulate me every time I finished. If it weren’t for him, I doubt very much that Aftermath would be what it is today, and I’m absolutely certain that it would contain many more spelling mistakes.
Contents
Chapter 1: Knotted
Chapter 2: JP
Chapter 3: The living room
Chapter 4: With a view
Chapter 5: Chaos theory
Chapter 6: Choices
Chapter 7: Best laid plans
Chapter 8: Maintenance
Chapter 9: Backstory
Chapter 10: Practise makes perfect
Chapter 11: For comfort
Chapter 12: Tail
Chapter 12: Approaching greatness
Chapter 13: Crawl
Chapter 14: Dust
Chapter 15: Confidence
Chapter 16: Shifts
Chapter 17: Stacking up
Chapter 18: Changing direction
Chapter 19: Family ties
Chapter 20: Ascent
Chapter 21: Vantage point
Chapter 22: First contact
Chapter 23: Planning for luxury
Chapter 24: Fight or flight
Chapter 25: Love, loss and regret
Chapter 26: Sprinting distance
Chapter 27: Navigation
Chapter 28: Attention to detail
Chapter 29: The grand tour
Chapter 30: Cards on the table
Chapter 31: Return to sender
Chapter 32: Divide and conquer
Chapter 32: Worst laid plans
Chapter 33: Occam’s razor
Chapter 34: Something to remember me by
Chapter 35: Run
Chapter 36: Bullet damage
Chapter 37: Bedding in
Chapter 38: Target approaching
Chapter 39: The long tall grass
Chapter 40: An old friend
Chapter 41: Looking both ways
Chapter 42: Debrief
Chapter 43: The wall
Chapter 44: Grissom
Dear Reader
Chapter 1: Knotted
A single drop of blood makes its way slowly down the mountain-clad landscape of a disfigured face, ducking and weaving between the various scars, holes and scratches that typically accumulate when a being spends months out in the wild. Once past the bulk of its obstacles, that one lonely drop finds comfort in the embrace of another, and then another, until the various sources of that shiny dark red substance have merged into a larger flow of viscous liquid, which soon enough reaches the edge of the chin-line, and leaps hopefully downwards towards the ground, soon thereafter finding its final resting place, as an unnoticeable splattering on a cracked and broken sidewalk.
The blood’s former owner notices none of this. Instead she continues at her pre-established, painful pace of around a single mile per hour, shuffling her two feet past one another in the closest thing to a walk she can muster. Her eyes are rolled back most of the way into her skull, giving her a limited view of what’s in front, and only one of her ears remains attached to the head, reducing any chance of her hearing much of anything. Her nose however, that all important, life-sensing nose, remains alive and well, sniffing hopefully at the slightest change in airborne scent, praying for signs of an impending meal.
In a simpler time, this poor woman’s current location might have made for a nicer setting. Flanked on both sides by grass that hadn’t seen signs of maintenance in as long as it could remember, this small open space had once been a tremendous show of wealth, placed outside of two towering luxury apartment blocks in the downtown district of Chicago. It had played the role of differentiator, something to make prospective tenants stop and think “maybe this place is different to all the others”, and in a strange way, continued to do so even now. Each and every inch of pavement was broken into pieces, nature having surged through in an attempt to reclaim its land, and the green of the overgrown wilderness all around contrasted starkly with the concrete metropolis found in every direction. This was no longer a vibrant, bustling garden that attracted those living in the numerous surrounding blocks, this was now just another part of an infested city that had been left to rot.
The deceased female inhabitant of this area was not however alone. Her still-slightly-functional brain was able to detect at least three other moving figures in the vicinity, though all of them bore the tell-tale signs of the dead, meaning they were of little interest. Accordingly, she continued onwards towards the main road ahead, itself once one of the main streets running through the city’s entirety, ending only when it reached the water. Of course, she had little desire to visit the coast. Instead she found herself following the distant sound of a voice, an almost definitively human sign, but something so faint she’d yet to become too excited by the prospect. After all, her fellow dead were still capable of making sound – albeit usually a very consistent and familiar low tone of groaning – so it was always possible she’d simply found another wandering friend. Slowly, her painful pace brought her closer and closer to the street ahead, and the noise began to rise.
“Step right up folks!”, came the voice, sounding much clearer now as it too was seemingly converging on the area of street just up ahead. “Best meat in town right here, you want it, we’ve got it”, it continued, “Fresh off the bone! We’ve got l-l-liver… we’ve got kidneys… we’ve got thighs, shoulders, hearts, brains, just about anything… anything you could possibly desire!”, it exclaimed both excitedly and yet with a thick rim of nervousness. “You there, you keep back a little more now, don’t want anybody jumping to the front of the queue, all got to head on over at the same pace”.
With that final word, the source of the commotion came into the dwindling vision of the unnamed, deceased female. It was a white male, looking to be of slim build with little muscle to speak of, and no older than around twenty years old, walking backwards along the street with regular swivels of the neck to check what lay behind. He seemed confident, cocky and cowardly all at once, seemingly doing something he was more than capable of doing, but still feared having to do all the same, a strange but common combination for the living of the present day.
“One-hundred-seventy-five pounds of fresh meat right here!”, he called out again, before looking to his right and spotting the group of slow movers in the adjacent urban area. “You folks, come on and join the group, I know you like the look of what you see!”, he exclaimed, pausing briefly in an attempt to better group together his following, before continuing off once more, fearing they may otherwise get too close. “Plenty of room round back if you’re a little slower, we don’t discriminate here!”.
With that, the woman and her friend had heard, smelt and seen enough. Each and every one of them quickened their pace just as much as they could manage – a feat much easier for the recently deceased, and almost impossible for th
e long-term dead – towards the main street, intent on joining in on the action. All in all, it seemed around thirty or forty were already in the queue, stumbling along reaching out for the delicious smell that guided them, listening to every word in the hope they might soon be able to chew off the very lips exerting them.
The speaker however, had no intention of allowing such a thing to happen. He was methodically checking the distance between himself and the closest biter, ensuring it fell well within the bounds of being far enough away to be out of lunging range, and yet close enough not to lose interest. Thankfully though, with a mini-herd such as this one growing as organically as it was, it would soon begin to attract more individuals irrespective of his own presence, something he was hoping would happen sooner rather than later, in order to afford him the opportunity for a head-start.
This forming of undead groups was a strange behaviour. Despite having no interest in each other – either on a personal or nutritional level – given the opportunity, the dead would almost always choose to follow a group of their fellow corpses once it had grown big enough to make a serious commotion. On the face of it, this made no sense; the smell of the group only worsened as more congregated, and so became even less alike the fleshy, life-indicating scent they all sought. The noise however did at least indicate that something was happening, and that something might just be better than nothing, or at least that’s what those still alive theorised about the phenomenon.
“One of these days Danny-boy”, the living individual continued to himself, spinning full circle on the spot to make absolutely sure no surprises awaited in the coming metres of dust-covered street. “One of these days they’re going to say ‘Danny, today we’ve decided to give you a job that isn’t glorified bait!’”, he exclaimed loudly, his heavy boots stepping over an earlier spotted mound of what he was fairly certain were decaying bones. “One of these mother-fucking days”.
From Danny’s best estimate, his following was now approaching the fifty mark. This was a fairly unreliable guess, given that the group was made up solely of very similar coloured and dirt-covered decrepit bodies that bore few similarities to the living, thus making them difficult to count. But nevertheless, the fifty mark – should it be at all accurate – signalled to him a number of things.
The first was that the horde was now capable of moving by itself. It no longer needed him to corral it and ensure nobody stepped out of line, as it had instead become interesting enough both to maintain the interest of those already engulfed in its tangled mess of limbs, and also to attract even more of the undead into its grips. Danny no longer needed to shout, he only needed to ensure he headed in the right direction. At this point, they would most certainly follow.
The second thing that the horde was now demonstrating was that when you group together something as unpredictable as the undead, things can quickly get out of hand. With more and more members joining the newly formed gathering each time the group wandered past a darkened corner or an adjoining alleyway, the horde was growing at a rate that would soon become problematic, not because of its size as such, but because the now much more varied state of its inhabitants meant there were bound to be at least a couple of much quicker biters. Runners, as they were often called, were a problem for the living in any situation, but when in close proximity and yet still hidden amongst their fellow dead in a horde such as this one, they represented a very serious danger.
The final realisation Danny made however, was that he had almost reached his intended destination.
With a final look over the shoulder, an area unlike all others began to come into view. Down a slight dip in the road, flanked on either side by rows of derelict but specifically positioned vehicles, was an area that unlike all of its surroundings, was completely clear. No bodies littered the pavements, and no rusting metal lay strewn across any of its lanes. There wasn’t a single piece of garbage ready and waiting to trip up an unsuspecting member of the living or dead alike. The place was almost… clean.
One thing however did separate this area – which for all intents and purposes was little more than a typical inner-city intersection – from all the others. Unlike its countless counterparts that could be found at every block in every direction throughout the downtown area, this particular intersection did not have four open sides, and was instead blocked off at its rear end, the very same end Danny was currently walking tentatively towards, his moaning and groaning gathering of the dead close in tow.
For on that far side of the crossing was a wall, measuring around twelve-foot-tall and assembled using sheets of corrugated metal and various other materials, its ragged yet sturdy assembly evidencing the fact that it was definitely not a pre-apocalypse structure. Its top was lined with barbed wire, and the wall itself was littered with roughly symmetrical gaps, covered up by slats that appeared to be removable. Finally, all of this was rounded off by a single door, placed slap bang in the middle of the wall, and seemingly made out of a mix of wood, steel and stone, hastily thrown together but nevertheless impressively strong, so far as the eye could tell.
Cautiously, Danny prepared himself for the familiar process of what had to happen next. First on the list was a final check over his flock, whereby he attempted to ensure none of his followers were acting in a way that might prevent a smooth transition. Satisfied, he then turned to begin the sprint towards the wall, a short but nevertheless dangerous distance of around thirty metres, something that while perfectly reasonable under normal circumstances, was anything but reasonable here.
Almost predictably, this marked the point where things began to go wrong.
Danny’s hastily tied heavy duty boots had served him well on this trip, just as they had on many others. But the downfall of these boots was a particularly tricky series of hooks towards the upper section of the right boot, which, Dan had observed, had a tendency to come loose, and in doing so release the laces to the ground below. Of course, a single shoe no longer being as tight as possible is of little concern in a situation such as this one, and would only go so far as to cause mild discomfort in all but the most extreme of circumstances, but unfortunately for Danny, or Daniel as his Mother had always preferred to refer to him, this was indeed an extreme circumstance.
As the right-hand laces fell away from the shoe, and Danny’s left foot swung forwards to propel him on towards the safe-haven that was the wall ahead, the hooks of his left boot just so happened to catch on those errand pieces of twisted string, and take tight hold. Suddenly held back by its new attachment, Danny’s left foot failed to move forwards at the pace his brain had anticipated, causing his feet to plant firmly on the spot, while his body continued to move forwards with great momentum, sending the thankfully fairly nimble man flying face first towards the ground.
Getting his hands out early, Danny cushioned the majority of the fall, and even managed to perform an almost elegant roll out of his current predicament that ended with him sitting upright on the floor, albeit with shoes still attached.
“It couldn’t be a bite”, Danny said to himself in dismay, grasping downwards towards his laces and beginning to quickly untie the mess, “It couldn’t be a gun-shot or stab wound or anything like that”, he said, finishing the procedure before looking to the freshly grazed palms of his hands. “It had to be tripping over my own god-damn laces that brought me down, didn’t it”, he said angrily.
Brushing himself off, Danny got back to his feet and turned once more to inspect the group. Then, things began to happen very quickly.
Before Danny had even had a chance to glance from one side of the group to the other, a single body lunged forward. It had done so with incredible pace, indicating that it had presumably joined fairly recently, and thus not been entirely sure what it was doing there, happy to meander along at the same rate as its brethren. But upon hearing the soft, well-spoken tones of Danny’s voice it had awoken from its stupor, quickly activating what remained of its once impressive pace.
Within less than a second of
Danny realising what was happening, the creature was on top of him, pushing his shoulders backwards and pinning him to the ground with its own body weight, biting forwards violently with only the outstretched arms of its next meal keeping it from getting close enough for that first, succulent bite. Its jaw gnashed ferociously like a wild animal, and saliva dripped down onto both Danny’s own face, and the floor below.
Danny was in real trouble. Given enough time, he might be able to wrestle off the bigger foe, or at least rummage around for a rock or shard of glass that he might fashion into some kind of weapon. Better yet, he might eventually manage find the time to locate the knife he was certain was attached to his hip, currently buried beneath the beast atop him. But Danny had no such time. The horde was closing in fast and before long, the situation was going to get a whole lot worse.
It was at this moment, that Danny surrendered to the faith he held inside himself, released his grip on the beast in front, and instead covered his own ears.
To many, this would have seemed like a strange act. Danny’s last line of defence came in the form of his own outstretched arms, preventing the attacker from getting within biting distance. By releasing his opponent, he gave himself perhaps one measly single second before almost certain death. But just as he had expected, it was even less time than that before a single shot rang loudly out from the direction of the nearby wall.
The bullet found its mark dead centre on top of the biter’s only partially rotten skull. Digging deep as it twisted its way through layer after layer of skin, bone and flesh, the shot only finally slowed to a stop part-way down the spinal cord, having run out of energy mere millimetres before it would have otherwise made a speedy exit from the being’s body, no doubt spraying out what little fluids remained inside upon its exit.
At this late stage of the apocalypse, reports of the undead taking multiple headshots to be brought down remained rare, but were becoming less so. Thankfully however, with a target this fresh, and a shot this accurate, there was no danger of this being one of those times. The body became instantaneously limp, falling down upon Danny and winding him slightly as it did, before mercifully rolling off to one side, allowing him to catch his breath.
Road to Grissom: Part three of the Aftermath series Page 1
