by M. E. Betts
"Sadists on the way," Shari responded. "I don't know how many, but more than the few we saw last time."
They rounded the corner, heading east, and Maximus appeared from an entrance further down, motioning to follow him.
"The rest of the group is meeting us on Lakeshore Drive," he said as the four of them headed east. They made their way to Lakeshore Drive, hugging the outside of the northern barricades. The undead outside of the complex were beginning to converge on the highway, heading northward toward the approaching sadists.
The four of them caught up with the rest of the group. In all, they comprised about half of the security team, or roughly forty individuals.
"Dacee," Maximus said into his walkie-talkie, "how does it look? You got a count for me?"
"Probably around 30," Dacee's voice crackled back. "And as for their entourage of undead, too many to count."
"Where are they now?" Maximus asked.
"Just coming up to Soldier Field," Dacee said. "You should be seeing them any second."
The rumble of the sadists drew closer, and a moment later Shari could see their motorcycles gleaming in the midday sun.
"Let's go," Maximus said to his ground troops. "Follow my lead. Don't shoot unless they shoot first. Our snipers are moving into position, and they've got out backs. We have those fuckers vastly outnumbered."
"Where are we going?" muttered Renee as they followed Maximus northward down Lakeshore Drive.
"I would assume he's trying to stop them from getting right up next to the convention center," Shari said. "No need to let them get up close and personal, let alone they undead they'll be dragging with them."
"You think they'll shoot?" Renee wondered aloud, her voice trembling. Shari glanced over at her, noting for the first time how young she was. Shari had never seen her without her riot helmet, but as she gazed from up close through the clear face shield, the young woman's youth and vulnerability were plainly visible.
"I doubt it," Shari said. "It would be incredibly stupid on their part. We're in riot gear, with shields, and they appear to be in leather, at best--some of them in jeans. We outnumber them, and they've got to know we've got snipers, on top of everything else."
They came face to face with the sadists outside of Soldier Field.
"We're looking for Merlin," the lead sadist said. "Scruffy-looking, drugged out of his gourd. We saw him swim across the marina awhile back."
"Yeah," Maximus said. "We told him to fuck off, or we'd shoot him in the face."
The sadist frowned, the thick skin of his forehead drawing together above the bridge of his nose. "Why would you do that?"
Maximus shrugged. "I don't need that kind of trouble around my people."
"Where's the duffelbag?" the sadist asked.
"Whatever he came here with," Maximus said, "he took with him when he left."
"You could make it easy on yourselves," the sadist said, "and just give us the duffelbag."
Bullshit, Shari thought, biting her tongue as the glared at him through the face shield of her riot helmet.
"I'm afraid that won't be possible," Maximus said, his posture and his stance unflinching.
The sadist's gaze scanned the facade and roofs of McCormick Place. Behind the motorcyclists, a sizable crowd of undead milled ever closer. A few had already reached the rear sadists, who easily took them down with nightsticks and machetes. The sadists looked anxiously toward their leader, knowing that the much larger wave approaching would not be dealth with so easily.
"It looks like you're about to have bigger problems than a missing duffelbag," Maximus told the sadists, nodding toward the advancing horde.
"Listen, you little pissant," the sadist sneered, steering his idling motorcycle north, "I want that bag back, and the little junkie thief who stole it. You think your snipers and your ground troops saved you, but let me tell you something--when I come back, you're going to wish you had dealth with this today."
He started northward, presumably intending to beat the undead to the intersection of Lakeshore Drive and Roosevelt Road. Heading west down Roosevelt was their only option to get out with their motorcycles, as it was the first available road leading west. The highway was blocked to the south at McCormick Place, the east was bordered by the lake, and the undead were filling the road beginning just north of Roosevelt.
As the lead sadist passed a church to his left, a stream of undead came pouring out of its entrance. Shari saw, much to her horror, that they all appeared to be very newly turned, just beginning to decay. In some far-off part of her mind, she mused that they were likely quite alive when she had first arrived at McCormick Place less than three weeks prior.
In the conscious center of her mind, however, she responded to the situation at hand, automatically and reflexively. She reached around and brandished her ever handy titanium drywall hammer slung on her back. She prepared to confront the undead, who were swarming their primary targets, the sadists, since they were closer and louder.
A gunshot went off, fired by sadist toward an undead man who had at least a hundred pounds on her. The zombie pinned the sadist to the ground, gnashing at her face. One of the unseen snipers at the convention center, clearly one with an itchy trigger finger, responded by shooting a 5.56 round from their AR-15 into the head of the nearest sadist. The spent bullet exited the far side of the sadist's skull, pulling with it a plume of bloody fluid and brain matter. All at once, a fire fight erupted between the two sides while the sadists also battled the undead.
About twenty yards away, a sadist crept up behind Renee as she aimed her Glock at a nearby sadist. Shari reached behind her, trading her hammer for her bow. She nocked an arrow as the sadist prepared to charge at Renee with a two-and-a-half foot-long metal battering ram. Shari let the arrow fly toward the sadist, but she was too late. The sadist swung back, then propelled the end of the battering ram into Renee's lower back, missing Shari's arrow in the process. Renee dropped her gun, crumpling to the ground. Shari didn't stop right then to wonder if the young woman was dead, or merely crippled and in shock. She nocked another arrow and let it sail through the air toward the sadist who had killed her co-worker, not missing the second time. The arrow found its mark deep within the sadist's brain.
She ducked behind an overturned bus to discreetly survey the extent of damage to both parties. She noted that the sadists, who had been outnumbered around two to one by undead, had been reduced to around a dozen. Most of them had either succumbed to gunfire or the undead, although Shari saw at least two retreating on foot across the railroad tracks and through the yards to the west, leaving their motorcycles behind. She raised her bow, thinking to stop them, but within the next moment they had slipped away from her field of vision.
She realized that many of her fellow guards had begun to retreat toward the convention center. Some of them continued to pick off the few remaining sadists,who were losing their battle with the undead. Shari jogged over to Renee, crouching down carefully to check for signs of life. The young woman's striking light-green eyes were wide open in what Shari was certain to be a death grimace. She placed her riot shield between herself and Renee's lifeless face and lifted a limp hand, feeling for a pulse. After a moment, she felt the young woman tugging back. Shari looked down at Renee's face through the clear shield, which she held firmly in place with her knee and much of her body weight. she was heartbroken to see that the young woman was, without a doubt, undead, gnashing in vain at the shield. Shari reached back, grasping her drywall hammer before standing up to lift the shield away.
As what remained of Renee scrambled to its feet, Shari swung the hammer hard from the right side, cracking and shattering the left side of the skull around the rather clean entry wound made by the head of the hammer. She yanked it free of the bone into which it was embedded, exposing more of the inside of Renee's head than Shari had ever cared to see.
She slung the corpse over her shoulder, assured that it was no longer capable of biting, and headed south toward
McCormick Place. She wondered how many more had been lost on her side, though in the mix of slain sadists and zombies it wasn't yet possible to get a body count.
She followed her fellow survivors past the planetarium, where residents of the convention center sent lifeboats across from the other side of the marina. Shari, still hauling Renee's lifeless body, settled into one of the lifeboats.
"I brought her back," Shari said as Maximus and another male guard lifted the corpse from the rowboat onto the shore. "I didn't know what the policyi was for bodies, if you guys bury them or what not, but I didn't want to leave her there."
"That's one accounted for out of nine missing," Maximus muttered, nodding back toward Soldier Field. "Eight more out there, laying dead in the street."
"Are you going to just leave them there?" Dacee asked.
"We'll send a team out later to bring back as many as they can," Maximus said, "but not now. It's too dangerous."
"Why didn't you just give them the drugs?" Dacee prodded, a hint of confrontation in her voice and her stance.
Maximus grabbed a hold of Dacee, embracing her tightly but not violently, then ducked behind a six-foot-tall monument where only Shari could see them, although he wasn't aware of her presence.
"Listen," he hissed, his fingers loose but menacing around her throat, "you've known me for a long time, right? Long enough to know that I really hate having my judgment second-guessed. You think you know better than me, hmm? Are you really that naive, to think they'd have left us alone after we gave the drugs back?"
"He's right," Shari said, "the sadists are never to be catered to, ever--for any reason. You give them an inch, they'll kill you. That being said--he really needs to take his fucking hands off of your throat."
Maximus glared back at Shari for a moment, ultimately deciding to back off, at least for the moment. The three of them headed toward the east building, catching up with the rest of the group. Maximus continued to glare at Shari while she stared back at him with a face full of disdain.
After dinner that evening, Shari and Daphne sat at the bar with Maximus, Dacee, most of the security team, and Dr. Liu, the only physician at the convention center. He had performed quick physicals on the group their first morning at the convention center. The atmosphere was oddly jovial, with everyone trying to avoid thinking of the fact that some of their own had been lost that day.
"We need a plan," Maximus said, pulling at the label of his bottle of beer absent-mindedly. "We can't have this happen again."
"Merlin will be a useful ally," Dr. Liu said between sips of dark lager, "if he can detox enough to be lucid." He set his bottle on the counter in front of him with his left hand, causing Shari to look again, as she had several times that evening, at the absent right arm. She wondered what had happened to the limb, if he had lost it in the old world, or post-apocalypse.
"I talked to him today," Maximus said, wincing slightly as he swallowed a shot of whiskey. "He seems pretty certain that they'd want a lot more people before they actually come in and try to storm the place. When they took Navy Pier, they only had a small percentage of the people we have." He shook his head. "But who knows if he was in his right mind at all when he was with the sadists? We don't really know that he knows shit."
"How's he doing with the withdrawal?" Shari asked Dr. Liu.
"Not as bad," the doctor replied. "Starting to taper off. Christ, I don't think I've ever met anyone who was so resistant to sobriety."
"Dude's like a cockroach," Dacee said. "I don't know how he's still alive."
"You know what he told me today?" one of the guards, Emmanuel, asked the group. "He said, 'I'll do anything if you get me some pills. I'll suck your dick, let you piss on me, anything.' No joke."
"So did you take him up on it?" another of the guards teased.
"No," Emmanuel retorted, "I told him, 'Wait 'til Leo's shift, he likes stuff like that. A little salad-tossing, and he might hook you up.'"
"So about the sadists," Shari said, directing her gaze at Maximus as the rest of the group continued to laugh and joke amongst themselves, "what's the plan?"
Maximus shrugged. "Fortify as much as we can before they show up."
"You guys have anyone who specializes in explosives?" Shari asked.
"So-so," Maximus said. "I wouldn't say specialize, per se."
"Talk to Phoebe in telecommunications," Shari suggested. "She's the one I picked up in Champaign. She's annoying as shit, but useful enough to make up for it. She knows all types of communications and hacking stuff. You can try Hugo in mechanics, too."
"Might have to do that," Maximus said. "We could use all the expertise available to us."
"I'm gonna call it a night," Shari said. "Maybe get an early start tomorrow. Lord knows there are things to be done."
She stepped down from her barstool, turning to address the group on her way out. "Night, folks," she said, starting toward the skywalk that led to the hotel. Maximus followed her out, catching up to her about fifty feet from he rest of the group.
"I'm no fucking extra," he growled,stepping in close and staring down at her, "I'm the leading man. I'm only gonna ask you this one time--don't make an enemy of me."
Shari stared back up at him. "Alright," she said, adding just before she turned to walk away, "don't be a bully to these people, and we won't have to be enemies."
It was roughly a month later, and the sadists still had yet to return to McCormick Place to settle their score. The inhabitants of the convention center had taken a number of initiatives to maximize their chances of winning a large-scale battle with the sadists. They halted the work being done to secure the west building, choosing to focus instead on securing the areas where it connected to other parts of the complex. They increased the frequency of scavenging raids in the hopes of gathering more weapons and ammunition. They also made gun training mandatory for all adult civilians who were physically and mentally capable of operating a firearm. Scavengers kept an eye out for fuel life extenders, as the gas left over after the apocalypse was waning in potency to the point where it was generally ineffective without additives.
It was three days before Halloween, and the people of McCormick Place had pulled out all the stops dressing the public areas in the holiday spirit. Decorations both scavenged and homemade hung from ceilings, posts and walls. In a largely unused doorway, three pubescent girls had woven a spider web from fishing line. The web covered the entire upper half of the doorway. In the middle, they were tying a large, fairly realistic replica of an alien arachnid from one of the sci-fi displays.
The plan for Halloween was to begin with an afternoon and early evening of activities and trick-or-treating for the kids. After the children retired for the evening, the adults would indulge in a night of debauchery and skimpy costumes, similar to the way Halloween had been celebrated in the pre-zombie world.
Shari made her way through the crowded dining area in the Commons. She was still in the middle of her shift, weighed down by her riot gear as she navigated through the hordes of diners on their lunch breaks. She joined the back of the line, waiting to see what was on the menu for the day. She felt a nudge in her ribs, and she turned around to see Phoebe standing behind her.
"Shouldn't you be working?"
"I'm due for a break," Shari said. "I've been at it for six hours now--you know, since this thing called the morning."
"Sucker," Phoebe said. "I just rolled out of bed to have breakfast and start my day, and it's noon."
"Lunch," Shari said.
"Says you," Phoebe said. "So what have you been up to lately? Getting ready for this get-together we're supposed to be having with the sadists?"
Shari nodded. "Working non-stop," she said. "Me, and everyone in security."
"I know how it feels," Phoebe said. "Believe it or not, I've been putting in a lot of time myself, between the communications stuff I've been working on and the explosives Maximus needs."
They reached the front of the line, where Shari quickly a
ssembled a chicken sandwich on a styrofoam plate.
"Catch you later," she said to Phoebe, turning to head back to her post with her lunch.
"Are you coming to the Halloween party?" Phoebe called after her.
"I don't know," Shari said, looking over her shoulder at Phoebe.
"You should!" Phoebe said just before Shari rounded the corner. "Have some fun for once!"
Back at her post on the concourse, overlooking the surrounding buildings to the west, Shari found Dr. Liu waiting for her.
"I wanted to speak with you," he said. "It's about the sadists we had the run-in with last month. It turns out that the ones who got away are living across the street."
Shari's eyes flared open, scanning the surrounding buildings. "Where?"
"In the storage garage," Dr. Liu said. "It's not what you think, though. They've defected. The guards working the western perimeter earlier today saw them waving a white flag, holding up signs saying they've never killed anybody and that they want to fight on our side. They also said they're running out of water over there."
"A-ha!" Shari said. "So do we believe them?"
"I think I do," Dr. Liu said. "But Maximus won't. That's why I want you with me when I talk to him. We have to give these people the benefit of the doubt, because it's not just grown-ups at stake here. Apparently, they have a few children in there with them, as well."
Shari was stunned. "What? I didn't think sadists had families."
"I would imagine all types of people get caught up in that type of business," Dr. Liu said, "and likely wind up regretting it. Apparently the ones across the street did."
That afternoon, a small group left the convention center and headed for a storage facility across the street. Shari and Dr. Liu had convinced Maximus to allow an excursion to, at the very least, speak to the two families who had defected from the sadists.
"This better yield something useful," Maximus muttered as they crossed Martin Luther King Drive, "or else it's a waste of our time, especially mine."
"I'm assuming that helping someone in need doesn't qualify as useful in your book," Dr. Liu said.
