by Brown, TW
Scanning the area, there was no way to approach that grove without crossing at least a quarter of a mile of open terrain that was nothing more than dirt and weeds that were sprouting through last year’s growth which had withered and turned brown.
“What are we waiting for?” Glenn said as he hopped down and started across the open field.
***
Chad had managed to rip off a piece of his shirt and fashion a makeshift pressure bandage by using his belt to keep the strip of folded over cloth in place. Next, he looked over his daughter. She was abnormally pale. If he was a bit light headed from his blood loss, then she was exponentially worse.
Once again he examined her injuries. She had done an amazing job of using some sort of glue and then staples to close her wounds. He still did not understand what had possessed her to flay herself in that manner to begin with.
As the day wore on, Chad began to feel frantic. Yes, they had at least a little food, but they had absolutely no water. The human body could endure for much greater periods lacking the former versus the latter. If his memory served, three days was about as far as they could hope to last. He figured that was likely much less considering their situation.
For perhaps the hundredth time in the past few hours he looked down at the gathered horde waiting at the base of their large rock sanctuary. He was not surprised to see the number had grown. And worse, a few more were just now stumbling through the brush to join their brethren.
Chad lay back down next to his daughter and stared up at the sky. A few fluffy clouds scudded past. If not for one very specific aspect of things, this could be considered a perfect day.
His mind drifted to the days he had spent dreaming of being able to spend some time with his daughter. He imagined walks at the park where they would discuss a boyfriend or perhaps (and preferably, of course) homework problems.
He recalled one dream in particular. In it his daughter sat down at a table with him and simply said the three words he longed to hear.
“I forgive you.”
He had been absent for a good portion of her life. In that time, she had grown up knowing that her father was in prison; whether she knew the reasons or not…or if she had any idea of the whole story…all of that was irrelevant. The reality was that he was not there when she came home with her first skinned knee. He had missed her first school program, and all the ones that followed. All the times she took ill and needed somebody there to bring her soup…he had been gone.
He had missed her entire life. And now, with the world in chaos, the unthinkable occurring, he was trying desperately to connect with her. He had failed—at least in his eyes—at every single turn. He had not been able to protect her mother, and so Ronni had been forced to watch the only stable part of her life torn apart before her very eyes.
His mind scoured everything that had happened since this nightmare had begun. All he saw was one mistake after another on his part. At every opportunity, it seemed that he simply put them in greater danger.
Well, he was not going to let her die. Not here. Not now. He had known when he set out to find her that he would give his life for hers without a second thought.
He scooted to the edge and stared down at the zombies. With his machete, he was still about a half a foot away from being able to reach them. An idea formed and he set to work.
A short time later, he had used some of his line to securely fasten his knives to one another. Next, he attached them to his machete which he would be able to grip with both hands. Before putting it to use, he made a few practice jabs at the rock. It held and seemed to be just fine.
He scooted to the edge and stabbed down at one of the upturned faces. There was a crunch and the point of the knife at the end plunged into the forehead. Pulling up sharply in order to hopefully keep the blade from catching, Chad could not restrain himself from letting out a little whoop.
One by one he stabbed down. After about twenty minutes, he looked up and felt his heart sink. It did not look as if he had made so much as a dent in their numbers. More were continuing to file in. Not only that, but he was creating a pile of corpses on the ground that those still mobile could easily stand on. His mind flashed on an image of the zombies rising like water in a sink until they eventually could reach out and snatch him and Ronni from the rock.
Flopping down, he did his best not to scream or curse. That would do neither of them any good. He tried to block out the sounds of the moans and baby cries below. He needed to clear his head if he was going to have any chance of coming up with a decent solution.
One by one, ideas came. And each time he dismissed them as either totally unrealistic, or simply too risky. He looked down at his daughter again and took a moment to try and appreciate that he was with her at this particular point in time. He tried to tell himself to be thankful that she had not perished back at that house before he had been able to rush in and save her.
That thought made him laugh bitterly. He had not saved her; he had simply postponed her death and perhaps given her a moment of false hope where she believed that her father would save the day. A new wave of self-pity came on strong.
***
“You sure about this?” Danny grunted as he tied off the piece of fishing line to the fence post.
“Nope,” Jody said as he gave the line a thrum with one finger. “But I saw something like it in a movie once and it worked great!”
Danny muttered something indecipherable as he shook his head and stepped back to give their work a quick look before falling back. This was probably the least deadly of the traps that they had set for the approaching invaders that they expected any minute now.
Jody wiped the sweat from his eyes as he eased the jack out from the derelict vehicle that had been abandoned beside the highway for who knows how many months. It was what was now under the car that he had been working so hard to set up properly.
One of the beauties of being surrounded by farms for as far as the eye could see was the abundance of fertilizer. The back of the car was filled with scrap metal and two boxes of ball bearings that Old Man Joe had mysteriously kept in his basement.
“How big of an explosion do you think you’re gonna make with that baby?” Danny asked as he and Jody retreated into the town proper.
“Well, I can’t be a hundred percent sure, but I think the blast radius will be a solid five hundred feet.” Jody paused and looked back to the west. “You sure you saw them loading up and getting ready to roll out?”
“I know a deployment when I see it.”
The two made their way back to the parking lot in front of what had once been the post office and was now the armory. George was already handing out weapons and ammo to the men gathered around.
“All set?” Jody called as the pair walked up.
“As much as we can be,” George admitted. “I still don’t know how you expect this to work.”
“Well…first off, I am not absolutely certain that Pitts intends to attack. He may be coming peacefully,” Jody said as he gave his Mossberg .30-06 a quick check. “The reality is that he might want nothing more than to check us out and make sure that we don’t mean him or his group any harm.”
Danny made a snorting cough sound and rolled his eyes. “That dude was a jerk. I was never happier to see somebody go AWOL in my life. He once gave me a whole month of extra duty for being a few minutes late for watch.”
“You were three hours late for a four hour watch,” Jody scoffed.
“He was still a jerk,” Danny muttered.
“Anyway…” Jody said with a sigh, “I still plan to at least try and meet him out on the highway. If he does not mean us any harm, then there’s no sense in getting him riled up. We really don’t know what the deal was with him and Remar.”
“Just be careful,” George said. “And I think you got bigger problems than just the possibility that we are about to be raided by a force with superior weapons and firepower.”
“I told you Selina would be pissed,�
� Danny snorted.
Jody had known that she would be more than a little upset at his decision. However, he believed in his heart that it was the best thing. If this went bad, he would at least feel better knowing that she and Kat would have a chance. At least that is what he told himself.
“Any other questions?” Jody said, not bothering to actually acknowledge the comments by either of the men. When nobody spoke up, he gave a nod. “And remember…do not fire unless they shoot first.”
“I never understood that policy,” Danny muttered. “If they fire first…chances are that you won’t be doing much of anything except bleeding.”
Once more, Jody ignored his friend. He turned and headed back out to the highway. He walked until he saw the little marker that he had placed. Standing in the middle of the road, he held the rifle across his chest in the crook of his arm. He tried to dredge up any moment with Sergeant Pitts that had not left him thinking that the man was an absolute ass. Nothing was coming to mind.
It was less than a half hour when he saw the first signs of a cloud on the horizon. Bringing up his binoculars, he could just make out the leading edge of what had to be well over a thousand people. He had not seen that many living, breathing folks in one place since the first days of their arrival in Bald Knob.
Now it was just a matter of waiting. He had made sure that the sign was large and easy to see. He did not want even the slightest possibility that it would be missed. They would come within range of it about a mile west of the bridge that crossed the creek that they had tapped with their canal project.
The sun continued its slow march across the sky as if it were trying to meet the approaching force. As Jody continued to scan these people, he felt his stomach drop. They had obviously found an actual military armory or two. They were armed to the teeth with what, even from this distance, he could tell were M4s. He thought he even saw a few M32 grenade launchers!
“We’re fucked,” he breathed, thankful that nobody else was seeing what he could see.
All Jody could do now was sit and wait. They were coming within range to where they should be able to read the sign he had posted. Now it was just a matter of seeing how Pitts would respond.
He actually felt a physical sense of relief when he saw a signal given and the entire column come to a halt. After a few moments, a lone individual began to walk his way. Slinging his rifle over his shoulder, Jody began the long walk to meet with Sergeant Pitts…hopefully. After all, the man could certainly send somebody else in his place, but if Jody knew anything about Pitts, it was that he had an ego as big as his home state of Texas.
8
Geek Spiral
They had been on the move for the entire day after the decision not to wait for darkness was reached. The three individuals were freed from their manacles and had opted to stay behind since they were in no shape to travel and expressed the hope that they would reunite with their friends.
Catie actually used the event as a teaching tool when she demonstrated how easy it was to pick the locks of handcuffs. However, she was upstaged when Rose stepped forward and picked a set even faster. This quickly turned into a friendly challenge. Both volunteered to be cuffed at the wrists and ankles—hands behind their backs—and then given the cue to begin their escape. Rose handed Catie both sets before Catie had managed to get free from the first set.
Everybody was enjoying the moment of good natured fun except for Kevin. He was a ball of emotions. Some he saw as purely selfish, others more legitimate as he considered what his fate would be if all that those three had shared turned out to be true.
Once everything was packed, they slipped out and headed east through Egger’s Wood and into an industrial district. They had been given both warnings and assurance that these so called Guardians would not be encountered that direction.
“I would not go near Indy Boulevard. If you do, you probably won’t get very far,” one of the trio warned. (They had given their names, but Kevin had not even tried to remember them.)
“Why not?” he asked.
“There are probably ten gangs in the area. Most make The Guardians look like angels…no pun intended,” was the reply. “They have long stretches of that road staked out. The first one, and the nastiest of the bunch, has the bridge over the Calumet…the first bridge that you will come to on the Chicago Skyway Toll Road maybe a mile or so north of here. If you can get up to East 106th street, there is another bridge there. The gang holding that area usually only patrols when they are running low. It is a crap shoot, but if you are so set on heading north, those are your only two options unless you go south and follow the Burnham Greenway. You can take that to 126th and follow it to Torrence.”
They had followed that last route, using the woods to stay out of sight. It had meant pushing the bikes instead of riding them, but once they stumbled out onto the bicycle trail known as the Greenway, they were able to pick up the pace and get moving.
They also found out why no gangs liked this area. The military had been thick here. There were still remnants of what looked like a large compound that had been used to “store” undead. Kevin had heard a rumor that there was an initial attempt to keep the zombies in containment facilities because of the misguided belief that they were simply taken ill. Since they showed no inclination to attack each other, it was hoped that by keeping them together, they could control the attacks and not hurt the poor “sick” individuals. If he remembered correctly, that idea got tossed quick when one of the containment facilities had a breach and a few thousand of the undead poured into a residential neighborhood.
They passed what had to have been one such attempt, only it seemed that the Army Corps of Engineers had made a very sturdy containment facility. Across from a huge trucking distribution hub for Ford sat what was once a vast open field. The fence was well over thirty feet tall and had towers every fifty feet or so. The smell was horrendous and they actually heard it well before they saw it. The noise was such that Kevin had signaled a halt and sent Catie forward to scout the way. He had expected her to return and report that a herd was passing through.
She had described the containment area and assured him that it looked to be holding up just fine. When they passed, Kevin marveled at how many of the undead had been crammed in to this location. In fact, it was probably that reason alone that kept them from breaking out. They were packed in so tight that none of them were scarcely able to move.
“How many you think are in there, Kevin?” Aleah had asked.
“A few hundred thousand at least.”
Kevin could hardly process what he was seeing. And the structure was a marvel of its own. The barricade was built so that it angled back at the undead not really allowing them to gain any sort of leverage. He would remember that if he ever managed to make it to South Dakota and establish his secure compound.
The only way to reach the bridge here that crossed the Calumet was to walk directly past that containment center. Even though it showed no sign of buckling, it was still unnerving. And it was only made worse as the living beings walked past. It caused an uproar of moans and cries that spread through the massive horde of undead and soon rivalled a stadium crowd on any given Sunday during the football season.
“You think that noise will bring one of the gangs?” Heather had asked nobody in particular.
“Everybody pedal faster!” Catie called after she glanced at Kevin and he had not said a word.
They had crossed a bridge that was littered with military vehicles that had been stripped of anything and everything. It looked like there had been a formidable blockade here that had just simply been abandoned. There were no bodies, and nothing looked like it had suffered anything more than the damage of neglect.
As they travelled, Catie began to keep an eye on Kevin. He had been acting peculiar ever since hearing the story of those three immune survivors. Try as she might, she could not puzzle together what in the world could have the man so shaken up. Yet, if he was all of a sudden hesitant and u
nresponsive, it was important that somebody take control.
That evening, they came to the start of another neighborhood. This one, however, had not fared as well. Directly across from a rail yard, it had suffered a massive fire most likely back when all of this began. Now, all that remained were blackened skeletal remains of the buildings for a good distance. That allowed them a better view of their surroundings, but it also left them somewhat vulnerable.
Eventually, a large brick building was spotted that seemed to be on the fringe of where the fire had burned out. The sign out front was barely readable, but the name could still be made out.
“R.H. Lawrence Junior…School for Mathematics and Science,” Rose read as she scratched her head and turned to Heather. “They have schools just for math and science?”
“Not on any planet I would want to be from,” Heather said with a laugh.
“That would be like Heaven for me,” the girl sighed. “Those were the only classes I liked. History was boring and full of dead people…and English? I speak it fine, I don’t need to know how to conjunctigate a verb or whatever it is you do to them.”
“But you liked math and science?” Deanna chimed in as she pulled up beside them.
“They made sense,” Rose said with a shrug. “Math is just a series of rules that, once you learn, never change.”
“And when did you follow rules?” Sean quipped. Deanna gave him a sharp elbow to the ribs, but Catie noticed that it was more playful than intending actual harm.
“I followed some.” Rose turned a defiant glare up at the boy and planted one hand firmly on her hip.
The group all slowly came to a stop, gathered in front of the two-story brick façade and began to talk among themselves. Catie nudged Heather and pointed out Kevin who had stopped as well, but apart from the group.
“What’s up with him?” Catie whispered as Aleah stopped beside her.
