Road to Grissom: Part three of the Aftermath series

by Duncan McArdle

  Where they’d been – unbeknownst to Eddy due to his lack of ability to see it – was, at this point, gone. A sea of bodies had flooded in and was now all that could be seen from every direction, each and every one of them now heading towards some other disturbance to the silent status quo. Luckily for Eddy and his passengers, they’d been close enough to a turn off to simply avoid the horde, but whoever or whatever was now drawing its attention had perhaps not been so lucky.

  “I still can’t believe we almost hit up that gas station again”, Eddy said after a few minutes of silently driving further out from the city, “We gotta’ start writing this shit down or something”.

  “Why bother, there’s thousands of spots out there, and we hit a ton of ‘em every damn day, we’d have a list as long as this street”, Rust reasoned.

  “Yeah maybe, but at least we wouldn’t be wasting time banging on the same damn doors twice”, Eddy replied, before coming to a realisation that left him wide-eyed.

  “Well you can just go ahead and suggest that to the boss”, Rust said, “See what he thinks to your-“.

  “We didn’t leave the doors locked”, Eddy interrupted.

  “Whaddya mean?”, Rust asked.

  “Last time we were at that gas station, I was the last one out, I know I was, and I left the place unlocked”, Eddy explained.

  “So someone’s been there since, so what?”, Rust replied, “People go in those places all the time”.

  “In the space of a couple days?”, Eddy questioned, “Not likely”.

  “So what are you suggesting?”, Rust asked, “We go back? See who’s there?”.

  “Nah we ain’t got the time”, Eddy said, “Boss wanted us back already, don’t wanna’ stay out here any longer”.

  By this point the town car had been travelling for a good while since its stop-off at the gas station. The distance you could cover over a particular unit of time was very different nowadays to what it had once been. It made almost no sense to estimate how long it would take to get somewhere, because the lack of traffic, stop lights and speed limits meant you could cover a mile a minute in the middle of a city, but the chance you might plough straight into a corpse or sideswipe a vehicle meant you usually didn’t. That said, the group had already managed to cover the majority of their intended journey.

  “We’ll be in range soon”, Rust said after a few more minutes of silence in the vehicle.

  “Lucky us”, Eddy said sarcastically, “I can’t wait for them to start yelling”.

  Rust had reached into the glove compartment to grab a bright yellow walkie-talkie, which he was now in the process of powering on and checking over. Their camp operated a strict policy of announcing their arrival, with a supplementing policy of shooting anything unannounced on sight to enforce it. But the walkies only worked from a certain distance, so it was important to keep trying until they did.

  “This is Z3B coming in from the east”, Rust said into the handheld device, after which he let go of the talk button to await a response.

  Eddy glanced briefly over, never one to enjoy the period between entering what could potentially be a shoot on sight radius, and getting permission to actually be there.

  “This is Z3B coming in from the east, please confirm”.

  Silence.

  “Z3B coming in from the east, confirm”, Rust said again, before pausing for some time, and then going once more “Z3B coming in from the East, please confirm”.

  “Affirmative Z3B, cleared for entry”, came a crackled voice at the other end, the quality improving with each metre the town car covered.

  Everyone in the vehicle breathed a sigh of relief. There’d so far only been one case of members being shot by the guards, the result of a walkie talkie’s batteries dying whilst out on a run, but that one case was enough to strike fear into any normal person when re-entering the area. Frankly, had their own walkie run out of battery, the best bet for survival might have been to try and make it on the outside until a replacement could be found. The shoot on sight policy was not one to be taken lightly.

  “That you Denzel?”, Rush asked back into the radio.

  “Quit wasting the battery”, Eddy interjected, only to be waved off by Rust who clearly found no basis for his concern.

  “Yeah Rust, what’s up?”, came Denzel’s still slightly crackly voice.

  “You heard from the boss man lately? He pissed?”, Rust asked, trying to find out what damage their tardiness had already done prior to arriving.

  “Oh he’s pissed alright”, Denzel replied.

  “Shit”, Rust said away from the radio, dipping his head slightly in tandem with the other passengers.

  “But not with you folks”, Denzel added.

  Suddenly Rust’s spirits shot back up, along with his heads position. “Oh?”, he said back into the radio.

  “Yeah”, Denzel began, “We lost someone over in DC, got caught on the inside. Driver only just made it back”.

  “D.C.?”, asked one of the three men from the back, “Washington?”.

  “Downtown Chicago, dumbass”, Eddy replied, “The big camp over by the water”.

  “Oh”, the rear man replied with a slightly defeated tone.

  With there being two major camps within the city of Chicago, it had been necessary to distinguish between this camp and the other, especially given how incredibly different the two were. The name DC had come about due to the simplicity of saying it both in person and over the radio, and catered well for the possibility that further Chicago based camps might at some point be found, thought it had been some time since the last one was discovered.

  “Who’d we send?”, Eddy asked, referring to their fallen comrade who’d given his life for what everyone knew to be a fairly risky infiltration mission.

  “Not sure”, Rust replied, “I didn’t even know we were going ahead with it, stupid damn idea if you ask me”.

  “How do you figure?”, Eddy questioned, “Bet he would have come back with some good intel”.

  “Sure, if he’d come back, but he didn’t”, Rust pointed out, “Ain’t no intel that’s worth losing another man over at this point”.

  “Might wanna’ keep that to yourself for now Rust”, Eddy said, “Cause we’re about home”.

  Just as the town car’s long structure swept gracefully around the final corner on the eastern approach to camp, the building ahead came abruptly into view. Standing at one-hundred-and-forty-foot tall and stretching for many times that amount in width, the United Center stadium dominated the landscape ahead, and all but eclipsed the much smaller surrounding buildings. The thing was a monster, wrapped on each side with huge car-parks and flanked by wide streets that had one major difference to all others; traffic.

  Unlike most areas in the city of Chicago, the stadium’s surrounding roads were filled with abandoned vehicles. On every street, on whichever side faced towards the stadium’s car-parks, car after car, truck after truck, bus after bus and just about anything and everything else was crammed in as much as possible, almost all of them now left with their various doors open and dirt coating every part. It was a very much unfamiliar sight.

  Although Chicago had fared particularly poorly in terms of survivors, the city’s wide streets and well managed traffic – special sequences had been set on the various traffic lights in order to aid in allowing vehicles to evacuate the city – had meant that the majority of vehicles were long gone before the worst of the infection had hit. That had led to mostly empty streets, especially in the downtown region, and the effects were even felt as far out as here at the stadium.

  What made this area different though, was that the stadium had been used as an evacuation point. This was known ahead of time and was well advertised as the infection worsened, meaning that the vast majority of those who opted to stay within the city limits, chose to come here. Once the car-parks were full and the curbs had been filled two-across, queues had begun to form running along the neighbouring streets, and of course once the
first of the undead arrived, people panicked. Doors of vehicles unable to move for traffic flung open and men, women, children and just about anything else that could move had begun running as fast and as far away as they could, adamant this wasn’t going to be their last day.

  The result, was several square blocks of roads where one side was absolutely, bumper to bumper full, and another that was completely empty.

  “You think we’ll ever clear some of these out?”, Eddy asked, staring at the rows of vehicles passing by on the other side of the Lincoln.

  “For what?”, Rust asked, “They work pretty darn well as a fence”, he laughed.

  “I don’t know, we could bring them inside, clean them up, get them working”, Eddy reasoned, “Maybe start using cars that have mirrors for these runs”, he added sarcastically.

  “We ain’t short on cars”, Rust pointed out, “And if you’re so bothered about your damn mirrors, I’m sure there’s more than a few vehicles you could get some spares from in there”, he added, nodding into the mass of empty traffic.

  It was a fair point. The Lincoln was such a common vehicle that they were found aplenty in all of the surrounding roads. The only problem was that getting a specific car out was near enough impossible, unless it was found on the very edge of a stretch of traffic, and moving enough vehicles out of the way in order to get to one in the midst of traffic was a huge waste of time and fuel. It was a task nobody wanted to do, especially as everybody was happy enough to simply select from the more readily accessible cars instead, for the time being.

  Soon enough the Lincoln arrived at the north-eastern end of the eastern car-park, still travelling on the opposite side of the street, and began to slow down. Just up ahead was a break in the traffic to the group’s left, marking the point of entry that had been carved out by those in charge of policing entry and exit to the premises. Slowly Eddy manoeuvred the town car around the bend and through the tight gap in traffic, driving straight into the car-park, where a similarly rough gap had been carved out amongst the subsequent vehicles, this time in the shape of a zero in order to allow people to get back out again too.

  Alongside the entrance - watching closely as the new arrivals passed by – were two guards, each stationed on opposite sides. Armed with automatic rifles, binoculars and walkie talkies, these two men represented the first line of defence at the north-eastern entrance, one of only two ways to get into the confines of the stadium. Both men’s finger itched uncomfortably on the triggers of their respective rifles, ready and waiting to draw and fire, but not presently needing to do so as they watched their announced fellow survivors’ entry into camp.

  “Home sweet home boys”, Rust called out from the passenger seat, as each of the other four occupants began scrambling around their immediate areas to pack up their things. “If anybody asks, we got in a good half hour ago”.

  Chapter 13: Crawl

  John’s eyes darted from one side of the road to the other each and every time the vehicle reached the next possible turning point, as frantic and careful as a schoolchild might be when first learning to safely cross the street. Danny and Devon did much the same, six individual eyes each trained on various different points surrounding the vehicle, making sure there wasn’t even the slightest inclination of movement in the next street before continuing on past it.

  In just the past few minutes, the group had not only managed to semi-successfully tail an unknown vehicle with an unknown number of occupants towards an unknown location, but they’d also come face to face with a horde, and narrowly managed to avoid it. Even if they were to ignore their trip into the abandoned gas station, and the edge-of-your-seat, guns drawn period before it, this day had already been an incredibly eventful one.

  After driving several blocks past the oncoming horde, Danny was fairly certain he had given a wide enough berth to avoid the undead masses, but what he wasn’t sure of, was whether or not he’d given one to the Lincoln town car they’d been following. The black vehicle had made the same left turn in order to avoid the biters, albeit a single street further over, and so Danny had to be sure he didn’t attempt to merge back onto the same street as them just as they themselves were making their way past, for fear of them locking eyes with each other. That was of course, unless they were prepared to fight.

  “Think I should turn in?”, Danny asked nervously, unsure as to whether he was more afraid of the potential gunfight his decision might create, or the reaction from John to his suggestion.

  “Sure”, John said plainly, to Danny’s surprise, “Just keep your eyes peeled, we don’t know where they are and I don’t wanna’ take any chances”.

  “You got it”, Danny replied, just as the sound of Devon adjusting his gun, no doubt getting ready for the possibility of a firefight, drifted over from the rear of the Ford.

  Slowly, Danny approached the next junction and hugged close to the curb. Leaning forwards in order to aid his ability to see down the adjacent road, the young man peered hopefully in both directions. Had he driven far enough to avoid the other car? Had he even covered enough ground to avoid the herd? If either answer was no, they had a real problem, and he knew which option he’d prefer.

  “Looks clear”, John announced, a single moment after Danny had come to the same realisation, though he lacked the confidence to announce it in quite the same way. “Good to go”.

  Danny breathed a sigh of relief and turned into the next street, now driving parallel to the horde from earlier, and potentially directly towards the Lincoln. Most importantly however, they were now headed in the direction of the hospital, albeit a few roads over.

  “You sure about going to this place?”, Danny asked, both hands gripped tight around the wheel and still moving at an incredibly slow but cautious pace.

  “Not particularly”, John replied, “But it seems like it’s probably our best bet”.

  John’s words did little to relieve the nerves of Danny, who shifted awkwardly in his seat.

  “You know the way there?”, John asked of Devon, who remained sat beside him in the rear of the car.

  “Absolutely”, Devon replied with his usual level of confidence, “We’re not actually too far, just a few blocks down and then a couple across, I’ll tell you when”.

  John nodded a silent confirmation to the man, before resuming his inspection duties.

  Two more blocks passed by this way. Slowing down at the corners, looking both ways, then speeding across the junctions in order to minimise time spent out in the open, followed by a descent back to a slow crawl when back on the road. Danny had the process down to a tee fairly quickly, and John and Devon were both perfectly happy to keep on top of their own tasks, now focusing on their respective sides.

  The buildings in the area were mostly either residential or small stores, and provided an interesting insight into how the different parts of the world had fared when everything went to hell. Mini-marts and corner stores for example had all met a similar end, looted, burnt out and trashed just as soon as chaos had first spread to the streets. Barber shops however, along with insurance stores and various other non-essential buildings were all in much the same condition as they had first been left, aside from the thick layer of dust that coated the area in general, and of course the odd bullet hole.

  “There goes the herd”, Devon announced after a short period of silence, having spotted the remnants of the group on his side of the car, several blocks over and back where they had originally been spotted.

  “So it does”, John confirmed upon looking over.

  The group appeared much thinner now, though John imagined this was because their bulk was predominantly located between city blocks and thus out of view from this distance. But that didn’t make them any less of a threat. The undead were unpredictable, unreliable, and when moving in numbers such as these, unstoppable. Nobody wanted to fight a horde, which was why they were currently making such a large effort to avoid it.

  “Do you think they’ll head this way?”, Dann
y asked, having just completed the quick sprint across the crossroad.

  “Not likely”, John replied, “When a herd like that sets off in one direction, it takes a lot to make ‘em switch”.

  “But, if they don’t switch, they’re heading back towards camp, right?”, Danny questioned.

  “I doubt very much that they’ll just stumble into it”, John pointed out, “But even if they do, they’ve got the walls, guns and manpower to deal with it”.

  “How big do you think a horde has to get before that isn’t the case?”, Devon jumped in, posing an important and potentially fairly concerning hypothetical.

  “Honestly I’m not too sure”, John said, “I’ve seen them gun down hundreds at once no problem, and any more than that and they’d just go quiet, hope they passed by”.

  “And if they didn’t pass by?”, Danny asked from up front.

  “Then we’d send someone out to make a whole lot of noise elsewhere, distract as many as we could”, John explained. “Least that’s what we did back in Milwaukee”.

  Milwaukee had been like a training exercise to John. A series of tasks and tests that had helped educate him in how to handle and run a camp, a stepping stone on the way to taking on responsibility for the much bigger gathering of people found in Downtown Chicago. Though John wasn’t the leader of Chicago, his expertise at dealing with the dead and his experience helping to run Milwaukee made him more than qualified to take over, should he ever be required to do so.

  “Do you miss it?”, Danny asked, “Milwaukee I mean”.

  John paused for a moment, thinking back to the period of time he spent in the city, surviving amongst a large group of mostly elderly or at least less-mobile inhabitants, running the place with the help of just a handful of others. He thought about the countless supply runs he’d been a part of, the various houses, stores and other buildings he’d ransacked in the hope of finding a boat to get to Chicago, the emotional turmoil he’d gone through upon arrival when he was reunited with his wife. Milwaukee had been an important part of John’s post-apocalyptic life, one way or another.