So far as John was aware, there had yet to be a major friendly fire incident in the Chicago camp. Though such situations were heard of regularly out in the wild – especially given how often human-on-human firefights broke out these days – enough measures had been put in place to keep things calm at the entrance, something he was incredible grateful for during a moment as tense as this one.
“Identify yourself!”, yelled a voice from the top of the wall.
“It’s John, John Parker!”, John yelled up, “Me and Devon headed out a couple days back on a run with Danny”.
“Then where is he?”, the voice yelled back, noting the lack of a third person in the vehicle.
John hesitated, not wanting to admit what had happened even to himself, never mind a stranger on the other side of his own home. But it was protocol, and that was something he knew he had to respect. “He’s dead”, John eventually replied, at which point he all but felt Devon’s own head droop slightly.
Another pause ensued, most likely as whoever was inside processed being told that one of their own hadn’t made it. Whether they knew the fallen man well or not at all, the sting of losing a fellow survivor was something no normal person could simply shake off. But before long the gap in contact was broken as the gates began to slowly slide open in front. It seemed that the combination of the fairly recognisable Ford and John’s own similarly recognisable look had done enough.
Happy to know things were still running smoothly – and that the base appeared on first inspection to be exactly as they had left them – John accelerated slightly to get inside, but kept his arms out in the open in case any junior recruit got a little too trigger happy.
“Good to be back”, he said quietly, to which Devon replied with a nod of confirmation.
Chapter 42: Debrief
Once inside the camp – and only after the gate had closed securely behind them – John felt as if he was finally able to relax, if only a little. Though he still feared for the potentially devastating force that might be bringing up the rear, he at least now felt as if he had the advantage. For the first time in what felt like a lifetime, he was the one inside the safety of his own walls, and he was the one on home turf.
Pulling the car into the underground garage located just a few metres inside of the camp, John parked the Ford alongside the other vehicular options he’d rejected back at the start of the mission, and just a few metres from the numerous school-buses that remained parked along the rear wall. Taking a moment to make sure he left nothing behind – including his newly acquired weapons – John eventually opened up the driver-side door and clambered out of the vehicle, before slamming it shut and turning back to give it one final look over.
The RS had been nothing short of perfect for their journey. From its humble beginnings trundling along the wide city streets at low speed without complaint, to its final moments hurtling back along the same streets at speeds it hadn’t seen in months, it hadn’t skipped a single beat. Looking over it, John could barely even see much in the way of wear – aside from a few new stone-chips and a fairly sizable patch of blood on the front of the vehicle – something he felt was fairly impressive given what it had experienced over the last few days.
Looking to the other options – the sizable F350 pickup truck and the sporty looking Dodge Charger – he felt he’d made the right choice. Whilst the Charger would have been great for the return leg, keeping quiet on the way out would have been all but impossible. As for the F350, its huge size would have been a godsend for taking out biters walking in the street, but given how much fuel it liked to drink, John didn’t imagine they would have made it back on the same tank.
Turning away from the car now and beginning the walk over to the entryway, John met up alongside Devon, and began walking with him towards the bright lights coming in from outside.
“Thank you for everything you did out there”, John said, knowing Devon had played a more than vital role in the mission, “There’s not another person I know that could have held up out there the way you did”.
“Same to you John”, Devon pointed out, himself equally happy to have been able to partner up with someone he considered to be on the same level as himself.
With that, both men involuntarily entered into a brief moment of silent contemplation, looking back over the previous few days as they walked without another word towards the entrance. That was of course, until they were interrupted by someone with a rare level of enthusiasm in their voice.
“Welcome back boys!”, came the familiar Texan tone of Geoff, the base’s leader and the same man who’d sent John out on the recon mission, his arms raised up to each side in greeting and two guards flanking him on either side. “The kid asleep in the car?”, Geoff asked.
Barely seconds after they’d arrived back at camp, it seemed John and Devon were already about to be faced with the difficult task of explaining why despite three having left, only two had returned. But rather than speak the words, John simply stopped dead in his tracks and stared back at Geoff, his face sporting an expression that did more than enough to explain the situation.
“Oh”, Geoff said, dropping his hands to his sides as his mood immediately changed.
* * *
It took around five minutes to complete the short walk over to Geoff’s office above the base’s main building, due in no small part to the sheer number of people who stopped the new arrivals to ask them about their time outside. It seemed a brief few days outside the walls of such a place were enough to give you an almost celebrity-like appeal to those still stuck inside, something John was far from comfortable with.
As much as he was used to people greeting him in the street, it was an entirely different experience having desperate questions fired at him from those who clearly hadn’t been out into the wild for some time. “How many are left out there?”, some asked, “Did you see my brother Terry”, others begged, “How about my great aunt Sheila?”. It was a non-stop tirade of questions from people who just wanted answers, normal men and women clinging on to the hope that some obscure relatives or friends they hadn’t seen in months were still alive, and John didn’t have the heart to tell them that more than likely, they weren’t.
At a certain point, he was pretty sure he caught sight of Julia – Danny’s former girlfriend who he, shortly before his eventual demise, had confessed to wishing to patch things up with – milling around behind the forming crowd, presumably coming over to talk with Danny. John wasn’t looking forward to telling the poor girl that the boy she no doubt still loved was gone, but thankfully, she disappeared just as quickly as she had appeared, meaning that for now at least, he didn’t have to
Soon enough, the group were back inside the WG – the name affectionately given to the group’s headquarters – and out of the reach of the inquisitive public. Looking around, John made a mental note of the somewhat dwindling supplies filling the shelves on the lower floor, and of the numerous signs stating what different foods they had run out of. Perhaps during their absence, supply runs had been marked too dangerous to go on due to the increased number of guards outside the base, or more worryingly, perhaps supplies were simply becoming more difficult to find. Whatever the reason, John was certain they’d find out soon enough.
But making their way over to the disused escalators leading up a floor, the duo put the people outside and the problems inside out of their minds, knowing there were more important discussions to have. Arriving at the top first, Geoff led John and Devon over to the large meeting table at the far side, before sitting down at the head of the huge wooden structure, and preparing to debrief two of his top soldiers.
“Look”, John said, opting to get started first, “I’m not so sure we have time for a full debrief here, for the last couple hours we-“.
“Andrew’s dead”, Geoff said bluntly, sensing it would be far easier than to try and talk the man around to letting him speak.
“What?”, John said, going immediately cold as he tried to process the
words.
“There was a horde, the kind of horde we’ve never seen before”, Geoff explained, “It rolled right through Milwaukee, there’s nothing left”.
John couldn’t speak. The thought of losing anyone was a difficult pill to swallow, but when it was someone as important to him as Andrew, someone who had helped him reunite with his own family and put his own at risk in order to do so, it was a whole different level. The man had been with him for longer than he could remember, had come back for him and saved him from the brink of death on more than one occasion, and had been the closest thing John had to a friend since the beginning. John’s throat went dry at the thought, his lips quivering slightly as he attempted to form words, but eventually he decided it was all he could manage just to sit there quietly and listen.
“I hate to tell you this, but Lester and Sonja are gone too, I’m real sorry”, Geoff said, having briefly held back the additional information so as not to overwhelm him at the very beginning. “We sent a boat out, but there’s nothing left, just a whole lot of bodies”, he explained, “From what I heard, it looked like they put up one hell of a fight”, he continued.
“From what I’ve heard about those people, that sounds about right”, Devon chimed in, placing his hand firmly onto John’s shoulder.
“Yeah”, John confirmed, “Sounds about right”.
* * *
Once he’d found composure, John managed to continue the debrief with a typical level of efficiency and professionalism. Geoff hadn’t seemed too concerned with news of the potential tail John and Devon had led to the base, but had assured them they’d acted in the right way. In addition, he’d sent out a message to bolster security around the wall, and had requested that someone head up the radio tower to keep an eye out for anyone or anything approaching.
Happy to see a proactive response, and also feeling somewhat validated for their decision to return to base, John had then gone on to divulge in great depth every memory he had of the stadium group’s operation. From their layout and command structure, to what was left of their resources when the pair had left, both John and Devon spent a significant amount of time going over the fine details of how the malicious organisation had been operating.
All in all, aside from the obvious failing when it came to Danny’s safe return, Geoff had been incredibly happy with the results of the expedition. They’d gone out in search of information and come back not only having obtained it, but having also dealt a serious blow to an opposing group, so there was little he could say other than words of congratulations. But despite the continued praise, John had struggled to take much of anything in due to recent news, and had soon excused himself from the meeting, something nobody begrudged him for doing.
Making his way once more along the streets of the camp, John no longer noticed groups of people begging for answers, and no longer concerned himself with whether or not an attack might be coming at any moment. John seemed to almost glide through the area, unaware of his surroundings and unknowing of what he was doing, until a single, tell-tale sound with more power than any other finally caught his ear, snapping him out of his newfound near-comatose state.
“Daddy!”, came an incredibly excited voice accompanied with an even more excited little girl, as John’s daughter Hayley came leaping towards him.
“Sweetheart!”, John replied, picking the girl up off of the floor and into a warm embrace that only a father and their daughter could ever understand, “It’s so good to see you”.
“John?”, came a voice from around the corner in an inquisitive tone, the sound of chopping having been replaced with that of both confusion and hope, “That you?”.
“Sure is”, John replied, just as he saw his wife Michelle come jogging out of the kitchen towards the living room, where John had emerged – still slightly blood-stained – moments earlier.
“Thank god”, Michelle said, dropping the tea towel in her hand to the floor and running over to join in with what was now a family-wide hug, “I was so worried about you”.
“Well now why would you go and do a thing like that?”, John asked, “Hell I was barely out of camp a few days”.
“A few days or a few months, doesn’t make me any less scared”, Michelle pointed out, “How’d it go?”.
John was torn. That one question, despite seeming so simple, had so many different ways to go about answering it. The reality was that the mission had been a resounding success. They’d not only gathered plentiful information about the rival group, but they’d also been in amongst their ranks, blown the hell out of their base, and scattered their forces throughout the city, and that wasn’t counting the guards they’d taken down while they were at it.
But of course, there was also the other side to things. Not only had they lost equipment, ammunition and supplies, but they’d lost one of their own, brutally gunned down by the now deceased leader of their rivals. Worse still, John had all but guided what was left of the group back to the Chicago base, and had done so with only one surviving colleague, who himself had returned with a gunshot wound to the leg.
But this had all been discussed to death in the thirty or so minutes prior that John had spent briefing Geoff about their trip outside of the walls. John had covered every aspect in excruciating detail, and so had no desire to go repeating it all again now, especially when he knew he’d be needed back on the wall in case anybody came looking for the camp. So, with that in mind, he opted for a much smaller summary.
“All good”, he said simply, smiling to his wife who returned with an expression that all but said the words “I don’t believe you, but I’ll just pretend I do”, an expression John was both used to and incredibly fond of.
“Did you meet any new people Daddy?”, Hayley chirped from John’s arms, prompting him to put her back down on the ground.
“I met a few”, John smiled.
“Any new friends for me?”, Hayley asked hopefully.
But before John could answer, his attention was instead drawn to something else. Over in the corner of the room, a window sat propped open, letting in cool midday air but also the various sounds of the bustling community outside. However what had caught John’s attention was not the noise of idle chit chat or of children playing in the street, but was instead the sound of an engine, and then another, and then so many engines that a uniform rumble was all John could make out.
“What is that?”, Michelle asked, looking at John and then running over to the window upon realising he wasn’t going to answer. “John!”, she yelled, looking outside, “What’s going on!?”.
But John didn’t need to answer. He didn’t even need to go to the window to confirm his suspicions, he already knew. In fact, within a few seconds, it was all but confirmed for him, by the voice of someone outside, several floors below.
“RESIDENTS GET BACK TO YOUR HOMES, GUARDS, GET TO THE FRONT WALL!”.
Chapter 43: The wall
Sprinting as fast as he could along the camp’s main street, John was amazed by the similarities between what was going on around him now, and what he’d seen on old films of the World War Two bombings of cities like London. Right before the bombs had dropped, sirens had sounded to notify residents of what was about to happen, and immediately chaos had descended as everyone scrambled to get to safety, hoping and praying that the whistling sound above wasn’t going to be the last thing they ever heard.
All around John, people were running. Some were running into buildings just a few feet away, before their heavy footsteps soon indicated that they were ascending the steps, returning to the safety of their homes. Others were trying to regroup with friends and relatives, making sure everyone found their way inside and that nobody was left behind. And finally, the rest were running towards the wall at the front of the camp, their weapons drawn and loaded, and their mindsets ready and willing to take on whatever force was waiting for them on the other side.
Though John hadn’t been there to experience it, he’d been told stories of similar situati
ons that had happened before. Usually due to some large grouping of the undead inadvertently finding themselves at the front door of the camp, the same calls had been made, and the same safety precautions had been taken. Guards had amassed on whatever wall had the largest number of the dead banging up against it, and before long a hail of gunfire had volleyed out into the masses as the camp attempted to defend its long-standing position from countless numbers of dead.
But this was the first time John had experienced anything quite this major – aside from the controlled culls the late Danny had played such an important part in – and as such was causing him a fair amount of concern. Was this group of thoroughly trained but far from professional soldiers capable of taking on a well-armed opponent? Would the mounted guns of the enemy make short work of the walls that the camp had built with only the dead in mind? Would there even be a camp left to speak of come nightfall? There was a lot to think about, but as John reached the nearest of the heavily congested ladders that led to the top of the wall, he was forced to put such thoughts out of his mind.
Ascending the steps slowly due to the sheer number of people in front of him, John’s feet pounded heavily on each and every wooden step in front. His rifle – which he’d swapped out for an M16 stored in his apartment – hung limply from his back, and his newly acquired Beretta M9 – which he’d opted to keep – was holstered securely to the side of his belt. He was more than ready for combat, but was desperately hoping it wouldn’t come to it.
Reaching the top of the wall, John attempted to squeeze his way past the dense grouping of guards who were all vying for a place at the front of the barricade, before eventually managing to shove his way through. Asserting his rank to those around him as they raised eyebrows at his late joining, John eventually emerged onto the edge of the wall, where he finally got a view out in front of the camp.
Road to Grissom: Part three of the Aftermath series Page 35
