Road to Grissom: Part three of the Aftermath series

by Duncan McArdle

  “What now?”, Danny asked, already establishing himself as the talkative one in the group.

  “You put your damn belt on”, John replied forcefully, himself unimpressed by the younger man’s lack of care.

  Danny sighed to himself and looked over to Devon, before realising that he too was buckled up, and was therefore more than a little unlikely to take his side. “Fine”, he conceded, before reaching over and grabbing his belt, and then snapping it into place. “So what now?”, he asked again.

  At present, the group found themselves at the corner of a crossroad, almost completely deserted apart from a few parked cars, and the odd wandering biter off down the street. In every direction was a number of low-rise apartment buildings, each as uninteresting to a post-apocalyptic search party as the last, and none of them bearing any of the hallmarks of a building that might be worth raiding. That said, the area itself had been chosen for other reasons.

  “Gas station should be a couple blocks up ahead”, Devon informed the group, pointing through the windscreen off down the street, “Edge of it should be visible with the binoculars from here, but if there’s anybody in there, they shouldn’t be able to see us”.

  “Can we get any closer?”, Danny asked.

  “Not a good idea”, John interjected before Devon could answer, “Not till we know what’s there”, he added, as he opened up the driver-side door.

  The journey leading up to this point had been relatively painless. The empty streets of a city made for perfect driving conditions once the debris and various other roadblocks were out of the way, and thanks to the most recent controlled culling, even biters weren’t too much of a problem, albeit still numbering high enough to block off some routes and force the group back. But as the car had made it further and further out, the undead population had thinned and thinned, until eventually they were almost as rare as the living people they had once been, though only almost.

  That said, it was common knowledge that while getting out of the city was dangerous, it was the process of getting back in that bordered on suicidal. When exiting the camp, any direction is the right direction, and any route will get you where you want to go; away. When trying to get back to a specific location however, things are much different. Only one destination was correct, it was more than likely that only one route would get you there, and any stopping was almost impossible to do, at least safely.

  Devon – a regular member of the teams that went out scouting for supplies – was familiar with the process. However, as they had yet to fully empty out the blocks surrounding the camp, scavengers didn’t need to travel far to obtain supplies, and so at present were still able to do so on foot. Although more susceptible to becoming overwhelmed when out on your own two legs, you were much more able to move freely and to head through smaller spaces, much less likely to get stranded or trapped, and thus, in some senses, in much less danger. In fact, the Ford was considered expendable; if it needed to be left behind in order to aid its passengers in getting back safely, that was far from a problem.

  “See anything?”, Danny asked impatiently from behind the Ford, himself not as comfortable as the others were when standing out in an open situation like this one.

  “Nothing living”, John replied, his eyes buried in a pair of binoculars he’d been sure to bring along.

  “How much dead?”, Danny asked.

  “Not enough to mean nobodies there”, John said, “But enough to mean the dead might just cause us a problem too”.

  “Perfect”, Danny replied, before heading back to the rear door of the vehicle.

  “Hold up”, John said, placing his hand on the door to stop Danny from opening it, “You’re driving”.

  “Sweet!”, Danny replied enthusiastically, all but leaping from the rear door of the car to the front, excited at the prospect of finally having something more interesting to do.

  “Go slow”, John ordered, “And I mean real slow. Keep to the curb and head towards the gas station, no sudden movements, no turns, understand?”.

  Danny nodded feverishly as he began to appreciate the importance of his role, before climbing into the driver’s seat, his hands shaking slightly, both out of fear and excitement.

  John meanwhile clambered into the rear-right of the vehicle, closing the door firmly behind him. As the car began to roll forward, the locks engaged, signalling that they had reached the speed the next stage required, and John lowered his window. Leaning outside, he then placed his hands on the rail running along the roof, and pulled himself up to sit on the open window frame with his head facing across the vehicle.

  “Keep it steady”, John reiterated, before reaching back inside to grab his rifle and pulling it out onto the roof. “You good Devon?”, he then asked.

  “All good over here”, Devon replied, himself having also lowered his window, poking out the barrel of his rifle and anchoring himself to the door, as steadily as he could manage.

  “Alright then”, John said, “Keep going till I tell you to stop”, John ordered.

  Slowly and steadily, the Focus crept forward, one metre at a time. The vehicle’s exhaust still hummed with a significant amount of noise, but other than that only the slow crunching of the rubber tires gave any evidence to the vehicle’s slow movement. Before long, with nothing of interest spotted, the car began to approach the end of the first block, signifying one point where things might begin to change.

  Although not somewhere John anticipated they would find anything of any concern, it was far from in his nature to simply cruise through without giving it a once over. With both men armed and ready, each head scanned the street on their side – with John twisting slightly to look at the area on his right – and gave an affirmative response that all was well, upon laying eyes on the empty roads in each direction. Not long afterwards, the group began their final approach to the second block, and in turn to their destination; the gas station.

  The condition of the building was fairly standard. The walls appeared stained with the smog of war and a winter of no maintenance, whilst the windows were all but opaque with dust, and the pumps themselves were littered with posters that informed customers they were out of fuel in just about each and every way imaginable. Unlike some gas stations, no cars littered the forecourt, but that didn’t mean it was completely devoid of debris.

  “I count at least seven out front”, Devon called out softly.

  “Yeah I’m seeing about the same”, John confirmed, his own rifle strafing from side to side between fleeting glimpses of the road behind.

  “Another couple round back”, Devon added.

  “And another in the street to the left”, John continued.

  “No movement inside best I can tell”, Devon said, “But I can’t tell much of anything in there”.

  “Agreed”, John replied, continuing to watch along the top of his rifle, waiting for any sign of anything he might need to use it on, right up until the gas station had completely passed by. “Danny, put us on the other side of the street, then reverse it back till we’re a few metres short”, he instructed.

  Quickly obeying orders, Danny swung the truck away from the right-hand curb and over to the left of the road, before throwing it into reverse and creeping back towards the gas station at a similarly slow pace. Before long, they were just a few metres short of the building, with some undead heads already turning their way, so Danny put the car into neutral, threw on the handbrake, and turned off the engine.

  “Let’s clear this place out and see what’s inside”, John said as he pulled himself a little higher up, allowing him to climb straight out of the window without re-entering the car.

  “Sweet!”, Danny replied, enthusiastically jumping from the driver’s seat.

  “With knives, kid”, John further explained.

  “You’re kidding?”, Danny asked, the excitement draining quickly at the realisation there was to be no grand firefight.

  “’Fraid not”, John replied, “Way out here, no backup for mi
les, no walls to keep us safe from a horde… or worse”, John continued, looking around as he said the words, “We don’t want any more noise than there has to be”.

  Danny simply sighed dramatically, clearly disappointed.

  “Hey, you did good back there, kept the speed perfectly”, John said, trying to bolster his spirit.

  “Yeah”, Danny replied, “That’s cruise control for ya’”.

  Suddenly Devon, who had been silent for the previous few moments, couldn’t hold back a chuckle. “Kids today”, he laughed.

  “Let’s just get this done”, John said, shaking his head and turning to face the direction of the gas station, rifle drawn and ready. “’Cruise control’”, he repeated, smirking.

  Chapter 10: Practise makes perfect

  Three heavily armed men, weapons pointed forwards, walking as a group with military style spacing between them and their barrels sweeping strategically from left to right, would make for a fairly intimidating sight to any normal human being. But as was so often the case with conflict nowadays, it was not normal human beings that this group had armed up against. Instead, it was the undead that stood before them, advancing slowly towards the sound of the recently moving vehicle.

  Six biters had so far begun their advance, each of them evidently having good enough hearing, sight, smell or all of the above in order to have detected them already. Meanwhile, one nearer the front door of the gas station had yet to notice the intruders, a second remained in the street alongside the property, and at least two more that had been sighted earlier had yet to surface from behind the building.

  Unlike in pre-Chicago times dealing with situations such as these, John had one major advantage, and one less particularly annoying headache to deal with. Every member of the camp that was able to carry arms was trained, and trained well at that. Even Danny, despite being a year shy of the legal age required to buy a handgun in the state of Illinois, was more than capable of using the M16 he currently had drawn out in front, the Glock tucked into a holster on his right side, and the blade attached to his left. He’d gone through target practise, cleaning and weapon maintenance classes, knife safety training, even trips out into the wild to familiarise himself with the enemy, albeit always with adult supervision. It was a program the Chicago camp was particularly proud of, and one that meant they knew almost half of their population was ready to take up arms at a moment’s notice, and defend their beloved home with skills much higher than that of the average civilian.

  In addition to knowing how to use the weapons, one other important piece of knowledge was when to use them. Anyone that had made it more than a day or two out in the wild knew better than to go anywhere guns blazing, alerting anyone and anything for miles around as to your rough location, and stirring up even more attention from the undead. There was a time and place for rifles, a slightly more common time and place for handguns, and then there was the majority of the time, where neither was particularly necessary.

  “Knives out Danny”, John ordered as he led the advance, “Devon you’re on guard”.

  “Got it”, Devon confirmed, holding his position and keeping his own M16 held steady, whilst the other two switched to their blades.

  John’s order had been very specifically formulated. He knew both Devon and Danny were more than equipped to take down a few slow-moving biters. He also knew that either man would make for a perfectly good rifleman, covering them from the rear from any unknown foe that might suddenly avail itself. But John was more than aware that Devon and Danny were leagues apart in terms of skill, and because of that, had been faced with a decision of having the better man on the front lines alongside him, or looking out for their safety at the back. John had chosen the latter.

  “You good?”, he asked of Danny, who was around two or three metres to his left.

  “Perfect”, Danny replied, in what was for the most part a convincing tone, aside from a slight stutter.

  “Keep your stance wide, don’t go forwards without me, and don’t ever lower your hands”, John advised, repeating the lessons he had taught so many others, both during his time in Chicago and before, “If you need to pull back just say the words and we’ll move, don’t go anywhere alone”.

  Danny didn’t have time to respond. The first of the biters – a fairly petite female who looked as if she’d been dead for a significant period of time – was already within striking distance. Knowing the routine, Danny watched the woman in front closely, measuring her pace so as to ensure he knew where she’d be during these final moments, and giving one final glance to both sides to ensure nothing unexpected was likely to arrive before he was done. But he saw nothing, and so was good to go.

  The first step was to grab the attacker by the throat. This in itself was not particularly difficult, but given the danger associated with putting anything near a biter’s mouth – much less something as easy to bite into as a hand or finger – it was never something anybody had much confidence with. After managing to successfully navigate the flailing arms and dribbling mouth of the woman in front and grabbing her fleshy neck with his left hand, Danny knew that he now needed to act quickly. Already the woman had managed to find his outstretched arm, and her greasy fingers soon began to wrap themselves around the succulent human flesh in front. Quickly Danny raised his gleaming knife high into the air, pointed the blade downwards, and brought it crashing back towards the woman’s head, entering into what remained of her mushy skull somewhere just behind the forehead.

  The speed to which the undead reacted to a fatal blow was somewhat shocking. Seemingly prior to the momentum of the knife even coming to a stop, the woman’s once vice-like grip on Danny’s arm relented, and her entire body began descending to the ground below. With so little muscle left on her body to hold her up, her now dead weight sent her crashing down with surprising speed, her hollow bones clattering hard against the pavement.

  Danny didn’t have time to admire his kill, he had to compose himself. With minimal force he removed the blade from the collapsed body, took a deep breath, looked to his right – where John too had just finished taking out the first of his own attackers – to make sure they were both ready, and then began moving forwards once more. Blood and bile dripped from the blade that he now held up once more, but this was far from important, it would still cut through the undead just as easily.

  Of the remaining four attackers immediately in front, three were on John’s side – something Danny doubted was a coincidence – and one was on his, but each were spaced far enough apart that none of this was likely to be an issue. Approaching the second wave, Danny once more checked his surroundings, ensured his hands were held at the right level, and then finally advanced forwards yet again.

  The slime-coated crunch of his blade crashing through another skull followed shortly afterwards. The second beast had been much less decomposed than the first, which had led to the brain’s hard casing retaining much of its once solid structure. Such a crack might have made a less experienced man of Danny’s age gag, or worse crouch right down to the floor and vomit, but he was desensitised to it all now, for better or for worse. In any case, to his right, he was about to see a true master at work.

  John Parker was many things. He was an ex-military man, a father, a husband, and a by now fully recovered alcoholic, but most importantly, he was an expert in bringing down the undead. Using much of the same process that Danny himself had just displayed, John speedily throttled and brought down the first body in front – herself a much larger woman so wide the two weren’t entirely sure how she’d made it this far without being torn apart – before spinning around the falling body, removing his blade as he did, and quickly plunging it into the next advancing attacker. John then looked to his final target and prepared his plan, before realising it would put him too far out in front, and so falling back into line to resume the slow approach. John’s incredible professionalism shone through from the first second to the last.

  Devon meanwhile remained at the rear. H
e was entirely confident in at least one of his co-survivors’ abilities to take down the dead, and was significantly less confident that the area around them was safe, so his attention was divided up accordingly. Through the iron-sights of his M16, Devon scanned feverishly, knowing as any good soldier did that there was always something he hadn’t yet spotted, and adamant that he was going to find it before it found them. So far however the gas station, the road to its left, the pumps in front and the area around the group had remained still – aside of course from the undead in front – but that didn’t mean he was about to stop looking.

  Back in front, the pair had finally advanced to the point where the last remaining biter to have noted their presence was within striking distance. Sensing an opportunity to aid in the advancement of his younger counterpart, John gave the signal for Danny to move around to the left of the being, whilst he himself moved to the right, waving and whispering to the biter in order to draw its attention.

  Now approaching its rear, Danny moved enthusiastically forwards. Rare was it that anybody ever got the opportunity to be so close to the undead, but with it being so very intrigued by the gestures, noises and smell of the other man, the biter was blissfully unaware of the attacker to its rear, and so afforded Danny the perfect situation. Wasting no time, he swung his arm out wide, before bringing the blade back inwards, slicing through the temple of what would now become his next victim, and sending him quickly down the ground, with the slightest sway to the side caused by the momentum of the strike.

  Finally the last remaining biter on the property could be taken care of, itself still stood over by the front door of the gas station, leaning face-first against the wall seemingly unaware that its surroundings had changed so dramatically. It wasn’t uncommon for the undead to lack a particular sense, usually due to the massive amounts of deterioration their deceased corpses went through, but this particular individual seemed to be a particularly bad case.