Road to Grissom: Part three of the Aftermath series

by Duncan McArdle

  Between the two sofas – each of which appeared to fold out into beds – and the large amount of floor space for laying down sleeping bags, it was easy to see why the living room was such a good spot to camp for the night. Even better, the room was linked via large open plan areas on multiple sides in order to aid moving between rooms, and was within easy reach of both the basement and the front door. In fact, judging by the presence of a few empty cans discarded in the corner of the room, John imagined this was the same room their guide had spent her own night there.

  “You two want to give the place a once over?”, Jennifer asked quietly, to which John nodded without question.

  “I’ll check down here”, Devon said, in doing so assigning the upstairs to John, a task better suited for a man without a bullet hole in their leg.

  “Got it”, John whispered back, making his way over to the nearest open-door – which was pointed to by Jennifer as the correct way to go – and disappearing into its darkened depths.

  John didn’t like making his way around a building in the dark, especially when he was unfamiliar with its layout and hadn’t already been here to clear it out. But given recent events, he was more than happy to trust that Jennifer was being honest about the safety of the place, and given that he’d yet to spot a hole in any of the boarding, or any other easy way for the dead to sneak inside, he was at least somewhat confident that there weren’t going to be any surprises up ahead.

  Accordingly, John completed his sweep of the upstairs rooms – two bedrooms, a bathroom and a study – in barely more than a few minutes, and before long was back downstairs and re-joining the group in the living room.

  “Anything?”, he asked of Devon upon re-entering the room

  “All clear”, Devin replied, “Even a couple bottles of water left in the kitchen”, he said happily, throwing one of the two valuable commodities over to John, who without a second’s hesitation cracked open the lid and took a large swig.

  “So you two like the place?”, Jennifer laughed, watching John gulp water like a man who’d been lost in the desert for months. “No current owner, low, low price, all furnishings included”.

  “Well”, John said after finishing his swig, “Other than the area, it seems nice”, he joked.

  “Yeah, definitely lacking the safety a wall of armed guards provides though”, Devon interrupted, a level of emphasis evident on his face that told John he was trying to get a point across.

  “Right”, John confirmed, knowing exactly what his intentions were, “And I happen to know a place just like that that’s taking people in”.

  Looking between the two men, Jennifer exchanged a confused glance with each of them, before eventually realising what they were doing, and shaking her head. She was a loner through and through, she had been since the start and had every intention of remaining that way till the end. Even with everything they’d now been through together, Jennifer trusted these two men no more than any others.

  “Sorry boys”, she said eventually, “But I’m gonna’ go ahead and stay out here in the wasteland”, she continued, smiling as she spoke the words, “Starting to think it’s where I belong”.

  Chapter 38: Target approaching

  Knowing exactly what time first light came was fairly difficult nowadays. Though plenty of watches still ran, and those that didn’t worked once they had new batteries installed, few people had any real need to keep track of time, so even fewer bothered to actually do so. Accordingly, common times of the day were often replaced with more generic terms such as sun up and sun down, and it was at exactly sun up that John first stirred the very next morning.

  He had not however stirred because of the sun that was just now beginning to creep into the room through the various cracks in the boarding that had been hastily thrown over the exterior windows. But rather because of another noise he’d heard, one that was most certainly very different to the low rattle of gunfire that had continued throughout the night from back over on the far side of the stadium.

  Instead, it was the sound of a truck’s low, rumbling engine that brought him abruptly out of a dream he’d been utterly engrossed in, leading him to need a few moments in order to get his bearings. Of course, such a task wasn’t helped by the fact he was awaking in an unfamiliar setting on an unfamiliar sofa, but soon enough he was able to shake himself back into some form of consciousness, and rise up onto his feet.

  Looking around, John quickly met eyes with Devon – who had spent the latter half of the night on watch at the other end of the room – but saw from the man’s similarly puzzled expression that he too had no idea what was going on. Accordingly, John turned his attention to the nearest window, and walked briskly over to the largest of its many gaps, lowering himself down so as to be on eye level with the largest crack in the boarding.

  Looking out, John’s view was of the street immediately outside the house, the same street which they had walked along to reach this spot, and the same one they needed to continue along in order to get back to the Ford. Looking left, he saw nothing but an empty road stretching as far as the eye could see, but it was what he saw when he looked right that really caught his attention, and what finally explained the noise responsible for waking him.

  Cruising slowly along the street outside was a sight that sent chills running up and down John’s body, and something that begged a series of important questions. Travelling at barely five or six miles per hour, the all black Jeep 4x4 that RP and his men had been driving the night before crept cautiously along the road, its occupants inspecting the buildings running on each side intently, clearly following orders to find something, or perhaps someone.

  Thankfully for John, the very much deceased RP and his two elite guards had not been resurrected in some freak display of dark magic. Instead however, they had been replaced by three much more conventional looking individuals who were now inside of the Jeep, as well as one additional figure standing up out of the opened-up rooftop and scanning the area via the iron-sights of his assault rifle.

  John didn’t recognise any of the people inside of the vehicle, nor the cockier individual standing up in its rear, and he was certain none of them were wearing the more specialist all-black body armour the better guards had been wearing. Both of these facts were very well received; recognising nobody meant none of them were Rust – the man John imagined was a logical choice to take over from RP – and them not having been afforded the best available equipment meant none were particularly specialist.

  What John was much less happy to see however, was the sight of the 4x4 slowing from its already crawl-like pace to a dead stop, barely a few feet past the house he was currently holed up in, and almost exactly on the corner of the property itself. John’s eyes widened slightly as he watched the three seated occupants disembark from the truck, whilst the fourth and final man remained upright, his rifle continuing to scan the area around both him and his group.

  Had they somehow found out where John and Devon were hiding? Had they been dispatched to get revenge for the chaos they’d caused at their former captor’s home, and for killing off the leader of that same organisation? John had to assume they were here for them. After all, there was little other reason to be roaming around so close to the stadium, especially when the empty car-parks surrounding it meant that staying close to their HQ was the safest option. If they were out here, and they were searching for something – as they appeared to be – John could only think of one reason why.

  “They’re looking for us”, he whispered across to Devon, who had also taken up residence looking through another gap in a window a little further along the living room. “Arm up, but stay quiet, I don’t wanna’ give them a reason to come in here if they don’t already have one, but if they do, don’t hesitate”, John instructed with a stern expression, met with a nod of confirmation by the other man, who promptly checked over his HK416 to ensure he was ready for combat.

  Prior to looking back outside, John gave a quick inspection to the now
much better lit living room of their current residence, and attempted to seek out anything that might be useful for a potential battle. There were sofas that could be used for cover, table tops that might just about stop a lesser powered round, and numerous boxes that may by some freak miracle contain weapons or ammunition. But Jennifer had already been here once before, so chances were she’d already picked it clean of such essentials, though that did give John an additional thought.

  “Jennifer”, he involuntarily said out loud, albeit still quietly enough so that only he heard it. The girl was nowhere to be seen, her things gone and her bed devoid of any evidence she’d ever even been here. In her almost trademark style, she’d quite simply disappeared, something John had entirely expected her to do, but was still concerned about given there was now the potential that they were being hunted.

  Unable to think of much more than his own survival however, John instead turned back to the boarded-up window in front and pressed his better left eye against the crack in front. The men had now spread out, two of them heading over to properties on the other side of the street, and one of them – very unfortunately for John and Devon – now heading straight for the front door that sat just a few metres away.

  Immediately John got up from his spot, signalling for Devon to remain silent as he tip-toed away from his window towards the front door. Floorboards creaked loudly under every step, but John continued on, knowing how much better a position he would be in if he was able to reach the front door before the other man. Soon enough, he arrived at the lucrative spot, and breathed a huge sigh of relief upon realising it had a peep hole, which he promptly pressed up against.

  Watching outside through the somewhat distorted circular piece of glass, John began sizing up what may soon become a potential opponent. The man approaching was a fairly wide, but not terribly muscular looking individual in his mid to late thirties, with long brown hair trailing down his back and a t-shirt on that was far too tight for his sizable belly. It was immediately obvious that this particular man was unlikely to pose much of a threat, but that was before John saw what was happening on the far side of the street.

  Almost simultaneously, the two other guards who had gone wandering over to nearby houses arrived at their much closer-to-the-street targets, and without hesitation, kicked hard against their respective doors. Barely a second after arriving, both men had disappeared into darkened corridors, and John suddenly realised that his default plan of simply remaining quiet and hoping they’d be left alone was no longer going to cut it.

  With a small amount of time still remaining before the larger guard reached his position, John reached down and slowly twisted the handle of the door, unlocking it from its frame and holding it in place. Standing there, John signalled for Devon to be ready with his assault rifle, steadied his grip on the much smaller Beretta M9, and then pressed his eye back against the peep-hole.

  Sure enough, within a few seconds the man assumed the same position as his colleagues. Taking a few steps back from the door, he then rushed forwards and raised up his right foot, before throwing it towards the wooden area of the door just to the side of the handle. Anticipating the usual level of resistance, the man appeared to put every ounce of effort, and every pound of his weight into the manoeuvre, something John had very much counted on.

  Waiting until the last possible moment, John gripped the handle of the door tight, and then finally yanked it open. With the only thing to stop his immense momentum now removed from his path, the man’s outstretched foot threw him off balance, and sent him careering through the doorway with incredible speed and little to no coordination, until he’d made it several feet into the house.

  Seizing what he felt was the perfect opportunity, Devon – who was stood just to the side of the man’s new position – held his rifle firmly in both hands, observing the man’s momentum in order to line his next move up as best he could. Barely half a second after John had opened the door, Devon swung the all-metal stock of his rifle forwards, colliding with the larger man’s head not only with the power Devon’s large muscles were able to generate, but also the force brought in from the man’s uncontrolled momentum. The resulting thwack would have been enough to bring down a rhino, much less a man who didn’t look particularly experienced with taking hits to begin with, so it was no surprise to see him slump down to the ground without a sound.

  Back at the entrance, John had pulled the door fully ajar, and now set about kicking the wooden centre of the barricade as hard as he could. Despite appearances, there was method to the man’s madness, and it came courtesy of his desire to reduce the chance of anybody having noticed that their colleague had gone missing. Their team would of course have been familiar with the entry procedure, and so would have expected to hear the banging sound of someone’s foot making contact with a door, so that’s exactly what John gave them.

  Turning now to confirm Devon had taken care of things, John made his way over to the much more interesting part of the hallway, opting to leave the front door ajar in order to increase the authenticity of the now unconscious guard’s efforts to breach the house. John hadn’t imagined that the kind of people to indiscriminately kick down doors would have the manners to close them back up again while they pillaged their insides.

  The unconscious guard had come in surprisingly well armoured for someone who didn’t appear to have much experience with a gun. Entrusted only with a semi-automatic M4 – rather than the HK416 some of the other guards had been issued with – the man was wearing thick Kevlar body armour, as well as knee and elbow pads, and even had a helmet perched on the top of his head, though it had done little to dampen the punishment Devon had issued to the man.

  Grabbing the M4 off of his body, as well as the sling it was attached to, John set about searching for anything else that might be of value. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t find any signs of additional weapons, nor did he find a single bottle of water or any food items. Either this man was relying on some cache of supplies stored in the back of the 4x4 he’d rode up in, or he was so utterly dispensable to the stadium group that a gun and a few bullets was all they’d felt the need to give him.

  Assuming the former to be true, John wondered if it might be worth trying to take the truck from the one guard still inside of it. Currently in need of a means to return to camp, and without a guarantee that the mode of transport they’d used to get this far – the blacked out, modified Ford Focus parked a little further up the street – was still around, the Jeep seemed like the perfect option. But John wanted to avoid an open confrontation with the one remaining guard still inside of it, and he knew only too well that chances were the other two guards would come running out the second they realised something was going on.

  To further complicate things, John didn’t know whether this group of men was the one and only scouting mission in the area, or just one of hundreds of vehicles now scouring the area, most likely in search of the two men that presently held one of their own hostage. But both fortunately and unfortunately for John, the decision on what to do next was soon taken for him, as he stood up from rummaging around the body of the man below, and looked back towards the front door, just in time to see an unfamiliar figure walking through the open entrance.

  Throwing his newly acquired M4 straight into firing position with its stock tucked hard into his shoulder, John pressed his elbow in against his side and took aim at the approaching woman’s hooded head – knowing that going for the kill shot might do more to intimidate her – held his index finger firmly against the trigger, and massaged the switch that controlled the firing mode with his thumb to ensure the safety wasn’t engaged.

  “Shhh!”, John mouthed towards the woman, who was only now noticing the presence of not one, but three men inside the building, one of whom – the only one she recognised – laying flat on the ground.

  But it was no use. The inevitable gut instinct of a person is often more than any number of precautionary measures can account for, so it came as little su
rprise to John when the woman opened her mouth, and began pulling her own rifle up in preparation to fire.

  “OVER HER-“, she began to yell, just as John’s one and only shot ripped straight through the centre of her throat, and sent her stumbling back through the doorway.

  Chapter 39: The long tall grass

  The only thing John took less pleasure in than killing a fellow human in a world where humans were quickly becoming an endangered species, was doing so under questionable moral circumstances. Stood there, his trigger finger itching and a bead of adrenaline-fueled sweat trickling down the side of his head, John had been less than willing to take a chance with one of the final few obstacles standing between him and home. He’d seen the woman begin to raise her weapon, and that had been more than enough to warrant putting her down.

  His only wish – other than that this entire encounter might have been avoided completely – was that he might have been able to take the shot before she’d managed to begin her final scream. Instead, he was fairly certain her two remaining colleagues were now about to launch a full-scale attack on the house that the first of their counterparts had disappeared inside of, and the second of which was now lying on the ground outside of, blood gushing from the open wound on her neck.

  Confirmation of this took little time to appear, and came in the form of almost immediate gunfire. It was all John could do to duck down to the ground – closely followed by Devon – as bullets began soaring towards the house, sending shards of woodwork flying and throwing long-settled dust up into the air, obscuring John’s view out of the front door almost immediately after he’d seen the first of the muzzle flashes.