Road to Grissom: Part three of the Aftermath series

by Duncan McArdle

  “Well”, Andrew began, “There’s nobody left here to protect, and nobody new has turned up in weeks, so are we just here for the crops?”, he questioned, referring to the numerous plants housed on the rooftop of the building neighbouring the car-park.

  “I guess so”, Sonja replied, “But there’s bound to be more people that turn up... and we need to be there for them when they do”.

  Sonja and Lester had started this place some time ago. Since almost the start of the end they’d seen it as their philanthropic gift to the world, a guarded safe haven that so many desperately needed, yet so few actually had. In Sonja’s eyes, her sole purpose on this earth was now to keep this place going, to save as many lives as she could. She was unlikely to want to leave at any point, and it was bound to be an incredibly difficult time if she ever did.

  Lester however was a little different. The huge, muscular giant was really more of a guard than a charity worker. Until now he’d been happy to stick around, looking after scores of civilians gave him a purpose, and in turn a reason to wake up in the morning. But it was unlikely he’d be quite so willing to continue his daily duties when the only thing left to defend was vegetables, so he was likely to be much less stubborn on the matter.

  “What if nobody else ever comes?”, Andrew asked, continuing on with the same line of questioning as they moved through the ground floor stairwell entrance and began ascending the steps, “What if we’re here for months, maybe even years, for no reason?”.

  “Andrew, if this is about your family, we can swap you out for a Chicago guard no problem, you can be with them”, Sonja explained.

  “Then who would run all the electrical equipment? Who would manage the crops? The traps?”, Andrew asked.

  Sonja said nothing, which in turn said far more than she’d needed to.

  “Besides, it’s not just about me, it’s about everyone”, Andrew pointed out, “We could all be over there, better fed, safer, happier. Why keep this place going for nothing?”.

  “And then what if someone turns up here, looking for shelter. Could you live with yourself sat over there, knowing someone might be laying right here, bleeding all over the asphalt, nobody to turn to?”, Sonja asked rather bluntly.

  “So we leave supplies, a note telling them to wait, maybe even some ammunition to defend themselves”, Andrew suggested, “We send a boat back every few days just in case”.

  “Every few days!?”, Sonja exclaimed, “They’d be dead by then! And besides, do you really think Chicago will be okay with sending a boat to pick up non-vetted strangers from here? Hell they’d probably be against using the fuel in the first place!”.

  “Why wouldn’t they? They let people sail in all the time, why wouldn’t they sail out to get them?”, Andrew questioned.

  “Do they though?”, Sonja asked rhetorically, “Have you ever seen anybody approach Chicago by water since John? And for that matter, if they were so happy with people sailing to them, why in the hell don’t they send the boats back out?”.

  “John already told us that, it’s so they don’t get overcrowded”, Andrew explained, referring back to a past communication, sent along with one of the first boats dispatched to pick up residents.

  “And you really believe that?”, Sonja asked.

  Andrew had known all along that when the time came, Sonja would be difficult. This place was her baby. She’d created it, nurtured it, watched it grow, and then watched it all shrink away into nothing, as Chicago absorbed every last resident that she herself had fought so hard to look after. But Andrew had banked on her seeing the bigger picture, the fact that Chicago made for the better choice, and that together they all had the potential to be stronger, to save more lives.

  “Sonja”, he began after taking a fresh, deep breath. “Chicago doesn’t need our crops, and now that we have no people left, they don’t need us here either. I want to be over there, with my family, with my friends, and you know Lester won’t want to stick around here doing nothing all day either. So please, let’s go together, let’s not drag this place out for months on end just because somebody might turn up”.

  “You don’t know shit about Lester”, Sonja insisted, “He’s been here this long, who says he’s gonna’ leave”.

  “I do”.

  The thick, booming voice came from the shadows to the pair’s rear. In the heat of their debate, they’d all but stopped ascending the staircase somewhere just shy of the building’s rooftop. The stairwell’s empty, concrete structure had made it the perfect magnifier for the duo’s every word, meaning Lester had heard just about everything. Now, the huge man with his size sixteen work boots and his torn and ragged clothing stood just a few feet behind, having ascended the stairs in-between in a surprisingly quiet manner, perhaps to enable him to continue eavesdropping as long as possible.

  “I’m sorry Sonja”, Lester said, “But he’s right. If we aren’t here for the people, and there’s no people here for the food, then what in the hell are we here for?”, he asked.

  Sonja didn’t reply, instead simply staring back at the bigger man – who despite still being a couple of steps below was on eye level with the others – as she attempted to process the first deviation from her own desires that she’d seen from a companion who’d been around for as long as she could remember. Eventually, it was all Sonja could do to simply turn away from both men and continue the walk to the top alone, her emotions welling up in a way that made her completely unable to speak.

  “Sonja”, Andrew began after her, only to be promptly stopped in his tracks by the huge, dark hand of the seemingly now off-duty guard.

  “Let her go man”, Lester said, “I’ve seen her like this enough times to know it ain’t worth it, you’ve already won”.

  Andrew couldn’t help but smile slightly at the words. It wasn’t the way he wanted it to happen, but if he’d gotten the result he’d hoped for, that alone was cause for celebration.

  * * *

  No single member of the camp spoke to any other for the remainder of that day. In fact, Sonja was barely seen by Andrew or Lester, and was presumed to be hiding in a tent or some obscure corner of the building somewhere, hopefully coming to terms with what she was being told had to happen, and much more likely, still trying to conjure up reasons for why in her opinion, it shouldn’t.

  All in all, this was not that abnormal a day for the car-park. Lester, although perfectly friendly and seemingly an all-round nice guy, had never been the most talkative of people. In his mind, he was there for one reason, and that wasn’t to socialise. Andrew meanwhile was a fairly quiet individual. Shy and usually unwilling to disagree with anybody, he would simply do what was asked of him, and rarely say much about anything unless giving some obscure insight into something only he knew about.

  In fact, Andrew had essentially become the central knowledge-base for the camp. Since his arrival he’d continued to contribute different ideas that might help defend or improve the building, and time and time again he’d come up right, something that then led others to assume he was effectively running the place. Of course, Sonja and Lester had been quick to correct this misconception, and this was no bad thing for Andrew, as he couldn’t think of anything worse than being responsible for other people’s survival. Instead, he was content with coming up with different ways to utilise whatever resources had been left behind, as well as spending a sizable chunk of his time each day maintaining those very same things.

  First on the list for that day was the all-important crops that kept the camp fed. Although canned food still made for the most common meal in what remained of the USA, this was hardly a sustainable practice, and so it had been decided that agriculture was the best chance for survival. With that in mind, a series of vegetable patches had been set up on the rooftop of the neighbouring residential building, and a bridge – which, once again, had been developed using Andrew’s insight – had been constructed to connect the two buildings. Making his way over the structure that morning, Andrew set about wat
ering the countless number of different vegetables growing in the soil, every ounce of which had been manually transported from nearby parks in the surrounding area. Although not the most exciting of jobs, taking care of the vegetables did come with one incredible side effect; the ability to pick food that the camp had grown all by itself.

  Every carrot, every lettuce and every single other piece of edible food that Andrew picked up was another healthy, nutritious alternative to an outdated can of refried beans, and represented an incredible achievement in urban agriculture. Little gave Andrew more pride than walking from a building he helped guard to a building he’d helped secure, using a bridge he’d helped construct, to pick vegetables he himself had grown, and that feeling continued right up until Andrew had picked the last piece of vegetation from the car-park’s own rooftop, where the project had recently expanded.

  Once done with his first task of the day, Andrew then made his way over to the southern staircase of the building. The stairs themselves were blocked off at the lowest point, in a bid to restrict the number of pathways that would have to be defended in the event of a siege by either the living or the dead, but by doing this, Andrew had realised they’d created the perfect place to store some of the more valuable of the camp’s commodities. If anybody were to attempt to infiltrate the camp, they were sure to lose interest in this particular stairwell once they saw the chaos of broken chairs and rusted car parts that blocked their path, and in doing so ignore the fairly large cache of weapons that sat just behind.

  Although by no means as big as it had once been – many of the weapons had been unnecessary for such a small camp, and so had been sent over to Chicago along with boats of civilians – the stockpile of pistols, rifles and ammunition was still more than enough to arm each of the three remaining guards more than a few times over, and give them the means to gun down more of the undead than most people had ever seen. That said, guns were only useful if they could fire, and so some months prior, John had set about teaching Andrew all about weapon maintenance.

  Disassembling, cleaning and reassembling guns was far from the kind of activity one might have expected when laying eyes on the nerdy, skinny, bespectacled man that was Andrew Phillips, but that far from stopped him. Andrew had devised a routine, where certain weapons were cleaned on certain days of the week, and the benefits had become fairly apparent early on. In a world where ammunition was regularly salvaged from the floor or from a dead person of unknown origin’s torn pockets, a well-functioning weapon was the only tool in the fight against misfires and jams, and since Andrew’s policy had begun, not a single one had been recorded.

  Andrew’s penultimate job for the day was to check on the many vehicles the camp had amassed. This included the usual ordinary checks such as ensuring oil was at the right level, tyres were inflated to the correct pressure – a process massively assisted by the finding of a cigarette-lighter powered pump, which Andrew much preferred to the old, manual system – and so on, to the less ordinary, such as checking for build ups of blood around the brake discs, or the presence of any loose fingers or toes in the engine bay. But once again, since this process had begun, reliability issues with the vehicles had seen a remarkable decline, and everyone felt better knowing that in the event an evacuation was required, the vehicles were in a good enough state to handle it.

  Finally came one of Andrew’s proudest of achievements. Wired all around the building were solar powered intruder lights, their sensors and solar panels facing the world outside, but their lights hammered into the concrete on the inside, and by now almost all swapped out for some much less intrusive, red LED bulbs. What this meant was that whenever movement was detected outside, the area immediately next to it would illuminate in a soft red tone, pointing to the source of the issue for everyone inside to see, with nothing to give away the presence of life to whatever was tripping the sensor. Andrew had been proud of the idea back when it was a single alarm with a glaringly bright light, so now, looking around – and testing – his multi-floor, dimmed red system, he couldn’t help but grin with each successful test.

  Unfortunately for Andrew’s pride however, his testing of this final set of his own achievements was cut short by the presence of a by now unfamiliar sight.

  “I’ll do it”, came Sonja’s voice to accompany her silhouette, itself appearing just as the sun began to set along the rear of the car-park, “I’ll come to Chicago”.

  With that, Andrew’s grin turned to a full-blown smile.

  Chapter 9: Backstory

  Lukas Albu had come to the United States of America at just three years old. His parents – each of them Romanian and heralding from long lines of Romanian ancestors – had seen it as a better option for their infant soon, using the USA’s superior education system as their main excuse when presenting their proposal to their closest relatives. The reality was simply that they wanted a change, but this seemed less likely to convince anybody.

  As had been expected, almost the entire family – save for one incredibly understanding uncle – had expressed outrage at the idea. Most would have resented the concept of leaving their village, let alone the country or even the continent, as was their way. But Lukas’ parents had each been prepared for such a reaction, and had already made all the necessary arrangements prior to telling them, this was just their way of saying goodbye.

  And so in 1974 on an incredibly cold February morning, the Albu family boarded the first of a series of flights that would eventually land them at John F Kennedy airport in New York, where they intended to start their new life as Romanian-Americans. The flights were long and uncomfortable, and used up almost all of what little money the family had managed to save, but that didn’t deter Lukas’ mother and father from beaming with joy for every second of the trip, knowing in their hearts that they were making the right choice.

  Lukas of course remembered little of this. Raised surrounded by American children in an American school and an American town, learning American history and speaking English even to his parents – who learned the language quickly once no longer in the company of anybody that spoke their native tongue – it was easy for Lukas to lose sight of his Romanian heritage. With no family to talk to and few positive stories from his parents of their homeland, he was all but resigned to being one-hundred-percent American, through and through.

  Lukas progressed well through the various school levels, before eventually dropping out of Columbia University when the law degree he’d always dreamed of attaining became just too much for him to handle. Compounded by the deteriorating health of his mother – who was in and out of hospital racking up expensive medical bills for much of his time in higher education – getting a job became a must, and so Lucas began what would turn out to be a lifetime of odd careers.

  From receptionist and at one-point legal assistant, to supermarket cashier and fast food server. If it paid, Lukas would take it, all in the name of helping the parents that provided him the chance of living the American dream. The man had little to no free time, and over the years burned many bridges due to a lack of social life, but so far as he saw it, his purpose was to earn, at least until he was old enough to enjoy his life without worrying about his bank balance.

  As such, Lukas never dated very much, and certainly never married. He had nobody to carry on the family line after his parents passed away, and nobody to pass his own earnings to when the time finally came. Despite this, Lukas remained happy as anything right up until his last living breath, and even on beyond that until, at a speed of around thirty miles-per-hour, his right knee collided with the front bumper of a Ford Focus RS and sent his face hurtling down at the bonnet, with a loud crack and the immediate sight of both blood and brain matter.

  “HOLY SHIT!”, yelled Devon from the passenger seat, without so much as a single hair of the mans groomed aesthetics jumping out of place, “Did you just see that!?”.

  John looked sarcastically back at the man, questioning without words how he possibly couldn’t have. />
  “Right”, Devon realised, “’Course you did”, he added with a nod.

  “Is he dead?”, came a more timid voice from the rear, an unbuckled Danny having only just managed to sit back in his seat, after sliding forwards when John performed the emergency stop.

  Suddenly John was beginning to wonder if he really had the ‘best of the best’ with him on this trip, as he’d been promised. “I think it’s safe to say he was dead already”, he pointed out.

  The Ford had been in the process of making its way around a relatively blind corner – John taking some luxuries with his turning circle due to the deserted roads – when the figure had all but leapt off of a nearby curb right in front of the vehicle. There was no way John could have avoided it, but that didn’t make him feel any less like he’d made a mistake. That said, as he looked down at the streaks of semi-viscous red liquid that were now plastered down the front of the hood’s right-hand metal plate, all he could really think about right now was that he owed a beer to whoever fitted the car with its armour back at base, as it had certainly done its job.

  “Do we get out and move it or…?”, Danny asked, still leaning forwards from his chair.

  Without responding, John put the car back into gear and slowly crept forward. The engine began to rev as the vehicle clearly found an obstacle, and so John increased the pressure on the accelerator, until the Ford began to climb slightly, a millimetre, then a centimetre, then an inch, moving forwards and upwards until the car slammed back down to the ground unexpectedly, the obstacle beneath having given in to the pressure, as Lukas Albu’s head was smashed into little more than skull fragments and liquid, another stain along a discoloured street of Chicago.

  “Eugh, that noise”, Danny remarked.

  Both John and Devon laughed, themselves much more hardened to both the beings themselves, and the various noises they made when taken out using any number of measures, including crushing them using a vehicle.