by Andrew Lauck
There was no time to breathe, though, as the zombies were coming from all over for the aftermath of the explosion, and I was right in the center unless I ran like hell. So, I pushed myself up and did just that. I sheathed the Kabar at my hip next to the Sig as I moved, sprinting across open ground and jogging when I made it to an alley or backstreet. I finally slowed when I felt I had distanced myself enough from the K-Mart, but I didn’t let my guard down. If there was one thing I knew, it was that I was completely surrounded as long as I was in the city.
The moon haunted the sky by the time I made it to the waterfront, mixing with water reflection and lighting to cast an eerie green glow on the area. Zombies roamed the street running along the river, their faint moans creating a sound I would never forget. Some moaned while others moved silently in the night, letting me know that I could no longer rely on sound to alert me to their presence.
With that in mind, my eyes quickly searched my surroundings, and I knew I had to get off the streets. If things went bad, I might have been able to climb on top of a car or something, but I didn’t want to take that chance. For all I knew, we got it wrong and zombies could climb, too. I needed to get indoors.
There was a promising store at the end of the first block with a lone zombie standing in my way. Wanting to avoid getting too close, I looked around for something besides my Kabar to take it down. I spotted an overturned car nearby and pried the exhaust pipe loose, kicking at it until it came off. Rushing the zombie, I knocked it down with a solid swing to the head and followed the hit up with a string of rapid attacks that crushed its skull. Blood pooled and splashed as the pipe smashed into its face, which looked even more sickening with the pale green glow from the water. I left the pipe imbedded in the face, not wanting to spend another nauseous second around the scene, and walked into the store.
It was a pretty big store, but with only two doors and that single zombie it was ideal compared to the rest of the block, so I called it home for the time being. I made a stop in the food aisles, not wanting to expend my supplies if I could help it, and ate a dinner that consisted of peanut butter sandwiches, an apple Danish, and a few handfuls of cereal all washed down with a bottle of water. No matter how much I wanted to exploit the finer things of the zombie apocalypse, like being able to eat, drive, or break almost anything without any fear of money or consequence, I had to stay healthy and survive so that I could enjoy those things later.
Toward the back of the store was a small tent display, so I decided that would be the best place to camp for the night. Oh, the irony. Remember that little tent incident I mentioned at the beginning of this journal? I’ll give you three guesses as to what happened next.
There I was, laying on a sleeping bag, and drifting into REM sleep, when the sound of several cans hitting the floor woke me. Outside the tent, I saw several silhouettes walking, and one was way too close for comfort. Zombies apparently don’t care what’s in front of them, so this one walked into my tent and collapsed it on top of me. It must have felt my movement through the fabric, because it immediately started thrashing which brought two other zombies over to the party.
Barely managing to think and control the panic rising in my gut, I reached to my hip and pulled the Kabar out to slash the side of the tent open. Grabbing the backpack which I had strapped to the emergency bag for convenience, I rolled out of the fray and got to my feet just as another zombie noticed my exit. It lurched toward me, but a right hook sent it to the floor, and I made my escape out the back door. I know I could have stayed and probably taken the zombies on, but it would have been messy, and I didn’t want to take any more risk than necessary. Besides, I had already pushed my luck enough for the night.
I burst through the back door and headed for the end of the block, ignoring the surprised groans of the zombies nearby. With my heartbeat pounding in my ears, I sprinted across the next street over and kept going for what felt like an hour. Drenched in sweat, I decided staying on the ground was a bad idea and looked around until I found a ladder attached to the back of a building.
Once on the roof, I made sure the expanse was clear and slowly rolled onto my back. Fatigue began to set in just as the back of my head touched my backpack that I used as a pillow. You’d think a backpack full of ammo, food, and water would be uncomfortable, but after fighting exhaustion for hours it felt pretty damn good.
***
In the days that followed, survival became as much about mental combat as it was physical. Weeks had passed since Anthony’s death, and I learned to survive alone. I set up camp on rooftops, making my way to the bridge, and finally arriving in time to see that my alternate way out was covered with zombies. It took me a solid week of supply runs and planning, but I came up with a route across the bridge. Unfortunately, that was about the time one of the hand-radios went off and the bad news hit.
I kept my radio on the military band at all times since I knew the common element in bad Hollywood endings was the military sweeping in and killing everyone with fire or bombs—or sometimes both. In my case, a pilot was asking for confirmation on a strike package. I heard a jet just before it passed over the bridge and the radio squelched, “First pass over target area good. Turning around for final approach.” My bridge-crossing dilemma suddenly took a backseat to survival.
I got my pack together and half-climbed, half-jumped down the ladder to the ground below. There were zombies all over that turned and headed for me, but I knew I had to act fast before I got charbroiled as collateral damage. Breaking the window of a car is not as easy as it looked on television, but I smashed it in with the stock of the .22 rifle and hurriedly checked every car on the street. Modern cars have all the technology that makes them hard to steal, so I focused my search on older vehicles. I managed to hot-wire a car just as I heard, “Detonation in t-minus sixty seconds.”
It’s safe to say that my mind was screaming profanities as I sped straight down the street swerving between cars, and several times ramming my front bumper and the side of the car into things, but I was running out of time. The ten-second countdown began as I skidded onto a side street and punched the gas. That feeling of impending doom with a marvelous soundtrack of well-timed drums that always creates a sense of urgency in movies? It might as well have been blaring on the radio, because with every second that passed that feeling rose.
In my rearview mirror, I saw the sky flash white, and slammed the gas pedal to the floor. Thankfully, they didn’t use a nuclear bomb, but the shockwave of whatever they did drop was still enormous, and the back of my car lifted off the ground and was thrown sideways for a distance. I was knocked unconscious when the car slammed into the side of a building.
***
My vision was blurry, and my head swam when I woke up, but somehow the car hadn’t rolled onto its side, so that was a blessing. I could taste copper in my mouth, and I felt a trickle of blood down my forehead, which meant I probably had a concussion, but I was alive. I waited until there was only one pole in my vision to start the car again and drive. The gas gauge sat halfway to empty, but I didn’t want to look for gas in case the jet returned with a bigger package. Within the next hour, I was back on the outskirts of the city. Captain Murray was gone, his convoy nowhere to be seen, so I kept driving until the engine started to clink, and the tires rolled to a stop with the gauge hitting empty.
I sat in my car, watching the smoke and flames rise in my rearview mirror. Everything I knew was gone; ashes among the debris. My ex-wife, my son, and my best friend were all torn from my life; victims of an event I had joked about before. With nothing left, my hand shifted to the Sig on my hip, and I drew the sidearm. I leaned my head forward against the steering wheel, leveling the barrel against my temple with my finger slightly off the trigger.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I pictured Samantha, holding her memory close. I recalled her smile as we were on either side of our baby in bed, the feeling of holding her hand in mine. I thought of so many moments like that, clinging to each memory in
vivid focus and searing the details in my mind. I refused to let their memories be tainted by the things that had killed them. Then Anthony’s last words echoed in my mind. With his last breath, he wanted me to survive. I sat like that for a long time, letting the silence sink in like I was in a graveyard, but eventually I let the Sig fall away and holstered it. I would miss them all, but their memory was still with me, and I alone had to carry that weight. It wouldn’t be easy, but I guess I had to give it a shot. At least I still had my own sense of humor.
I let out a long exhale before opening the car door and getting out. For you, the reader, that’s where page one started.
***
I reached in my back pocket and pulled out my wallet, withdrawing the picture I had taken from Samantha’s house and handing it to Kat in the passenger seat. Kat had cried during the story, her eyes still glazed with tears, as she looked at the picture.
“You looked so happy here…” she whispered, leaning over and hugging me. “I’m so sorry, Eric.”
“Thank you.” I hugged her back and waited for her to stop sniffling before I pulled back. She handed me the picture, and I returned it to my wallet. I took a deep breath to ease the tightness in my chest. “Now you know my story, Kat. Hopefully, that helps to answer some questions. Just don’t go thinking I’m a softy, because I think I’ve proven I’m quite the badass.” Kat choked out a laugh and nodded.
“Yeah, you’re a real-life Rambo,” she replied dryly, but I smiled at the idea.
“Hey, I can live with that! So,” I turned the key in the ignition, “what do you say we go to Crown Point?”
Chapter 42
Crown Point, Indiana
We took the exit and followed the road signs leading into the city that loomed ahead. As we got closer, I noticed that Crown Point had that small-town feel and was reminded of where my parents had lived when I was growing up. It was a nice feeling, recalling being able to walk down to the store alone and leave the door unlocked, but the happy images were soon fractured by the horrid reality that awaited us. In Chicago, one thing that drove me was the hope that the outbreak had been contained by the bombing, but I saw now that was a fool’s dream. Blood smeared the streets and streaked along walls, with hand prints spotting several locations, loose papers flitted through the air, and vehicles were stopped in the streets, abandoned just like every other city probably looked by now. The scariest chill washed over me as I realized there was one thing missing.
“Where are all the bodies?” I whispered, looking to Kat like she knew the answer. She looked at me, and I could see she was as disturbed as I was, so we both began to scan the surrounding buildings frantically. I drove slowly, not wanting to drive into a wall while we searched for the townspeople. Every block was the same, and the further into the city we drove, the more my instincts screamed to get the hell out. The church was boarded up, the words “Hell Is Upon Us” smeared across the front doors. I wasn’t planning to argue the point since the world resembled something out of Dante’s vision at this point.
We passed a school, and I slowed the car to a crawl, finally coming to a stop in the middle of the street. Kat followed my stare to the playground where a slight breeze moved a swing back and forth. A soccer ball sat alone in the middle of a grassy field, a baseball cap sat on the corner post of the fence surrounding the area, and I noticed a tennis shoe that couldn’t have been more than size three.
“Wait here,” I said, slowly getting out and reaching back in to get my rifle before closing the door. Walking to the fence, I peered down the street both ways and sighted through my rifle to see if I could make anything out, hostile or not. Nothing. I jumped over the short fence and walked further in, keeping my ears tuned to the wind. I could almost hear the echoes of children’s laughter as I moved closer to the playground. Stepping onto the wood chips that filled the play area, I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sadness thinking of Phillip. I remembered taking him to a playground like this one years ago, watching him enjoy life and knowing he never actually got a chance to. With the spread of this infection, I wondered if anyone would get that chance again.
My trained eyes examined the ground as I walked, returning my focus back to the present until I found what I was looking for. Bending to one knee, I picked up the evidence and walked back to the car. When I got in, Kat gave me a quizzical look. I held out my hand to show her the torn piece of cloth I had found, blood lining one edge of the strip where teeth marks were clear.
“Oh, God…” she breathed, putting a hand to her mouth. I set the cloth down and placed the rifle between us, my instincts screaming a warning. I shifted the car into gear and continued to drive down the street, but a single question plagued my mind. If Crown Point was a ghost town, where had everyone gone to?
Chapter 43
As I pulled into an intersection that answer became unforgettably clear. A courthouse towered over one side of the street, smoke, blood, and explosive blasts staining the red bricks and making it look like the fighting grounds of a warzone. Bodies were stacked upon bodies along the perimeter, creating a hellish barricade of flesh at the foot of the stairs leading to the entrance while the smell of so many bodies was thick in the surrounding air. But while there must have been dozens of them, it still didn’t come close to the population of a small city like this.
Suddenly, zombies swarmed our car from all sides, coming from behind the courthouse and alleys between buildings. Corpses staggered, crawled, and clawed toward us to get at the meal inside. So many gory limbs and mouths caked with dry blood surrounded the car that I couldn’t begin to estimate their numbers. The car stalled, but started to drive forward before I noticed the gas gauge was practically nonexistent. The damn car was so aged it didn’t have a dummy alarm to let me know it was that low.
“Shit!” I yelled, hitting the dash with my palm and trying to urge the car forward by rocking my body back and forth in frustration. Unfortunately, so many bodies were slamming into the car that my efforts were for nothing.
“Eric, look!” Kat shouted over the sounds of zombies beating on our car, and I looked to where she was pointing. Four heavily-armed men came out of the courthouse, taking up position behind the bodies. Looking closer, and I could see vertical intervals between bodies in places that the men used as firing lanes. As soon as their barrels protruded from the slots, the men opened fire, and a cacophony of gunfire erupted in the square. I pulled Kat down between the seats and covered her with my torso as the windshield of the car burst and showered the interior with shattered glass.
Several seconds passed before the gunfire stopped, but I cautiously raised my head up and surveyed the aftermath. Most of the zombies lay dead around the car, but some had broken off to take on the new threat to no avail. The men made quick work of stragglers, their shots accurate and calm. A trail of dead zombies led to the base of the barricade where one of the men shouldered his M-4 and grinned, waving his arm toward us. I lowered my voice to address Kat, who was still pinned underneath me.
“Stay in the car. If anything goes wrong, take three suppressive shots and make a run for it. Don’t wait for me.” I got out and stepped over the bodies.
“How’s it going? Looks like you could use a place to camp for a while.” He pointed to the side of the courthouse. “Come around to the back door, and we’ll let you in. I don’t want to be out here too long.” The guy glanced around, a paranoid look in his eyes that was to be expected these days. I looked back to Kat still in the car and waved to let her know it was safe, letting my other hand rest on the Sig in case anyone decided to make this go another way.
Instead of doing anything aggressive, though, the men looked at her and went back inside the courthouse. I caught who I assumed was the leader smile as he went through the doors. We walked around to the back to find him holding the door open, a metal bar set against the inside wall.
“Welcome to Crown Point.” He said, closing the door and placing the bar back into place to lock it. “Name’s Schafer,
but you can call me David.” Schafer held out his hand, and I shook it.
“Eric. This is Katherine.”
“And isn’t she a sight for sore eyes.” He smiled again, his practiced eyes checking Kat for signs of a threat before returning his gaze to me. “So, Eric, what brings you two to our little piece of Hell?” He gestured inside, and we started to walk with him.
“Honestly? We’ve been on the move for a while now and just ended up here, I guess. I loved the welcoming committee, by the way. Really got that inviting sense, and the service was great.”
“We aim to please here. You’ll find only the best.” We all laughed and moved into the main hall. While the outside was all brick and stone pillars, the interior was the complete opposite with tiled floors, walls painted a milky white, a second floor with rails that circled the main room of the first floor like a coliseum, and a ceiling high overhead that gave me a moment of vertigo.
“I can see that.” Even the floor didn’t show any signs of the destruction outside. Hell, with the exception of a few scuff marks, the tiles were spotless. The lighting still worked, too, which was a first since I had left Chicago. Schafer eyed us closely as we took in the ambiance, probably gathering intel on us the same way I was watching him and his crew.
“We try to conserve power by only turning on a few lights at a time, but it does make it feel a little like what home used to be.” He stared up at the light for a second. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to the men.” We followed him down a hall and ascended a flight of stairs before coming onto the circle overlooking where we just stood. I looked over at Schafer and noted the bar sewn into the uniform he still wore.
