by Brown, TW
“Anybody got bolt cutters?” Trent asked semi-sarcastically.
Kevin ignored the man as he knelt and pulled a set of lock picks from a black case on his hip. With a few deft movements, the hasp clicked and the lock fell into his palm.
“Who are you…freakin’ MacGyver?” Trent asked in disbelief.
“Just a matter of knowing what to look for in the sea of supplies left here.” Kevin gave a sad look back up the hallway. “This place would have been a great location…if not for the location.”
With a shrug he pushed the door open just a crack and peered outside. He tried to minimize the gulping swallow that he had to take to clear his throat. Up to this point, he had simply tried to project confidence. After listening to everybody bickering out in the hallway, he had come to terms that he needed to at least act like a leader; that meant exuding poise. That was now a problem as he looked outside.
“Okay, bad news.” Kevin turned to the group. “We have to make a change of plans. If we try to ride or push the bikes through that crowd out there, we will never make it. All you have to do is trip one time and you are done for.”
Kevin went to each bike and pulled a few things from the trailer attached. He looked at the stuff still in the carriers and felt a tug of regret. He doubted that they would ever find such a gold mine of supplies as well stocked and organized ever again. He had already struggled in what to cull from the main supply. To cut that down to what now sat in a pathetically small pile on the floor was almost enough to make him want to cry.
“Everybody divide this stuff up, grab it and we need to go.” Kevin peeked out one more time and then faced the group. “I’m gonna be honest, we might not make it. They are thick out there and if one of them gets a good hold, you might not be able to get away before you get mobbed. If you fall, it is probably a death sentence.”
“So remind me why we are doing this?” Rose asked.
“Because if we stay here, they will get in, and once they do, we are done.”
“Why would they get in?” Heather asked. “This place has held out this long. Why would they suddenly get in now?”
“Simply the odds of probability. We can discuss this later, we really don’t have time now,” Kevin said and reached for the door.
“What if we don’t want to go?” Trent asked; he had already taken a few steps back from the group.
“Then good luck,” Kevin said flatly.
“I just—” Trent began, but Kevin pushed open the door and started down the five stairs that led up to the main entrance.
He was not sure that they would survive this, but he was suddenly struck with a memory from the Dawn of the Dead remake and grateful that these horrors could not run. Their chances were slim as it was, but add in sprinting zombies and they would have been dead a long time ago.
This was more like the original when the Tom Savini led motorcycle gang blew open the doors to the mall. Sure, there were a lot of the walking dead around, but they were slow and clumsy. As long as they were still a little spread out, it should be okay.
He could see the far side of the school yard and the street that ran parallel. Already there were zombies swarming the area. He could see them stumbling in and out of houses. Some would bump into each other and totter off in a new direction. It would almost be comical if set to music and played in slow motion.
A cold, dead hand swiped at his arm and reminded him that this was a very dangerous gamble that he was taking. He came up with a blade through the chin and shoved the corpse away. As the zombies closest to him became aware of his presence, they turned his direction and came with hands reaching for a purchase.
He risked a glance over his shoulder and saw Heather, Aleah, and Rose all following in his wake. He glanced up at the doorway and saw Trent give one last fearful look before slamming the door shut. If not for the baby cry that a nearby zombie let loose with, he would have been certain that he could have heard all the desks and shelves being shoved back into place.
Kevin did not wish the guy any ill will. He was making the best choice for himself as he saw it. And he might be right. The zombies may not get in, but he could see houses being assaulted just across the way as zombies seemed to be drawn to doors and windows. They were not being pulled by noise or anything else, they simply wanted to get inside. And it only took one or two to draw a hundred.
He knew this was just the leading edge of the horde. Once the main body got here, it would be a different story. He had seen zombies create a bit of a “tsunami” effect, flattening everything in their path. Being oblivious to pain or anything like that, they would crush each other faster than unruly Walmart shoppers on Black Friday who just got told there was a seventy inch HDTV on sale for fifty bucks.
Kevin pushed and shoved, his blade coming up for a jab to the temple or under the chin as he went. He made the mistake of pausing to look back and check on the others once and realized that could get him killed really fast. The secret was getting past the zombies. Once you did, they had to stop, try to remember how to change direction, and then do it.
He did slow his pace enough for the three girls to catch up. He refused to simply fight his way across and leave them to their fates.
“Almost there!” Kevin called as the foursome reached within about ten feet of the fence that ran along the length of the playground.
There was a huge section that was down which was allowing more of the zombies to pour in. If they did not reach that opening soon, there was a larger cluster of zombies that would seal them inside.
“Just run!” he screamed. “Push or shove…do what you have to, but we need to make it out that opening fast.”
Kevin veered in the direction of the opening and Aleah was right on his heels, but Rose and Heather were falling behind. Kevin shoved Aleah forward once they reached the torn down section of fence. “That open field at the end of the street…run for it!”
“What about you?” Aleah asked as she jabbed her smaller blade into the temple of the zombie that was reaching for her with only one hand; the other arm missing everything below the elbow.
“Just run!” Kevin turned and waded back towards Heather and Rose. He could not wait to see if she did as he told her.
Time and again, he had been struck by how different the zombie apocalypse was compared to all the books, comics, and movies. One of the frequent and overused clichés he had observed was people letting themselves get trapped in a building. As slow as the zombies were, you could easily avoid that sort of fate. Sure, shoving your way through a massive herd of them was not ideal, but they were zombies; slow, uncoordinated, and easy to outmaneuver.
“What are you doing!” Heather yelled as she pulled her blade free from the head of one zombie while kicking another away.
“Being an idiot!” Kevin replied as he caught the hand of one zombie and jerked it so that the monster stumbled past him and into a group of four more who immediately became tangled in an uncoordinated mass of limbs.
Kevin reached the pair and saw what had slowed them down. There was blood pooling around Heather’s left foot.
“Damn creeper nipped me,” she said with a guilty smile.
“Are all of you immune?” Rose asked as she used the hilt of her buck knife to bash a zombie in the forehead.
“Not the time for this discussion,” Kevin grunted as he dropped his shoulder into a female ghoul wearing a pair of pink sweats that proclaimed her behind as “JUICY” in big blue letters.
Heather limped past and through the big opening. Rose was on her heels after she stuck another nearby zombie. The three headed up the street, Kevin on one side of Heather, and Rose moving in to help from the other.
“I can walk,” the girl insisted weakly.
“Sure, just not fast enough!” Rose said with a choked laugh. “Hey…aren’t we heading toward the mob?”
“For a bit, but there are some dense woods at the end of that cross street up ahead if we take a left,” Kevin said; a zombie staggered within
an arm’s reach and he simply gave it a solid check to the middle of its chest with the heel of his palm.
As they reached the intersection, Kevin looked right and saw something that gave him a shiver. The zombies were packed in shoulder to shoulder just about four blocks away. Every so often, one would stumble and the mob would walk over it, grinding it into paste underfoot.
“Guys!” Aleah popped out of some thick brush. “This way, there is an overgrown trail, but it will be easier than chopping our way through some of this stuff.”
“We are not going that way,” Kevin said with a shake of his head. He pointed west. “There is some pretty dense woods that direction, hopefully we can lose this mob.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Aleah said as she jogged past and took the lead.
Zombies were pouring down every street they passed, some less densely packed, but the numbers were still staggering. Along the way, they had to push, shove, and slash. It was tiring, and Kevin was feeling more winded than he probably would have normally; couple that with supporting some of Heather’s weight and he did not know how much was left in his tank.
In his mind, he’d had an idea of running perpendicular to the leading edge of this mob and being able to eventually get past the main concentration and escape. He had absolutely not expected anything of this size.
Perhaps there were millions, he conceded.
It was a long five blocks to where the road terminated with a wide bike path that was already being supplanted by all the weeds that grew through the multitude of cracks. And on the other side of the bike path was a rusting Cyclone fence.
“Up and over, Heather goes first,” Kevin announced.
It was slow going, and every time he glanced over his shoulder, the part of that zombie herd that had broken off and come after them seemed to be moving much too fast and gaining ground. Rose went second, then Aleah. At last it was Kevin’s turn. As his feet touched on the other side, he saw that the impenetrable leading edge of the main body was now less than a block and a half away. That fence would fold like paper when that much force hit.
“Now, everybody, as fast as you can, into the woods,” Kevin ordered.
He was thankful for early spring in that the foliage was not too dense just yet. A few months from now they would be screwed. A few times, they had to get down and crawl on hands and knees. That was when it was the most difficult for Heather.
It seemed to go on forever, and worse still was when the zombies came through the fence behind them; they heard the metallic ‘TWANG’ as the fence tore apart under the assault of the massive wall of undead, but worse were the sounds of the smaller trees being snapped like twigs. Kevin continued to urge them, but he was seriously doubting his choice. The reality was that he simply had not believed the numbers that had been reported. He had seen his share of mobs, but this was unlike anything from before.
At last, they emerged from the woods. Before them was row after row of linked train cars. Kevin had never seen so many train tracks side by side. Worse still, zombies were everywhere, staggering about. The only good side was that they were having a rough time navigating the uneven ground.
“What’s that?” Rose pointed to a dome-roofed building across the rail yard.
“No idea, but that long train will act as a better barricade,” Kevin said as he veered slightly.
One long set of coupled cars ran for what seemed like hundreds of feet in both directions. They would simply have to get there, squeeze through a set of cars and then climb another fence. It wasn’t any sort of permanent solution, but it would give them at least a brief reprieve where they could all catch their breath. Also, it looked like an interstate was on the other side of whatever that big fenced off complex might be. Whatever it was, there were a lot of large construction-looking vehicles parked all over the place.
While more spread out, there were still a good number of zombies staggering around. Kevin felt like the center ring of a bull’s eye. The group was less than halfway across the several sets of train tracks when the zombies that had followed them from that neighborhood came pouring from the trees.
At last they reached the long line of train cars. As they had drawn closer, Kevin started to notice a smell. It was not the smell of the undead; this was an acrid, chemical odor. By the time they were climbing between a pair of coupled cars, his throat was burning and his eyes felt like they would erupt.
“I don’t feel so good,” Rose managed right before she lurched away a few steps and vomited.
That set off a chain of events as the remaining three members of the group also spewed the contents of their stomachs on the rocky ground. Aleah wiped the tears from her eyes which only seemed to make them burn worse.
“Faster!” Kevin urged around a mouthful of bile-laced saliva.
“What the hell is this?” Heather managed before turning her head and sicking up down the sleeve of her coat.
“The tanker cars,” Kevin wheezed. “Some sort of gas!”
They continued to stagger on, coughing and choking. Unfortunately, by the time the effects had started to manifest, they could not tell if it was better to keep going forward or risk doubling back where certain death awaited. Almost in a parody of their bodily functions, the woods appeared to be vomiting legions of the walking dead.
At last, the air almost seemed breathable. However, any bit of exposed skin burned and itched like it was being swarmed by fire ants. They finally reached the fence and made a mad scramble to get over it.
“Wow,” Kevin breathed.
“What is this place?” Aleah asked.
“Highway department,” Kevin said. “See, over there you have snow plows, dump trucks to pour sand or salt…I just never saw anything this massive.”
He slung his pack from his shoulder and grabbed two water skins. He removed his jacket and set it aside as he tilted his head back and poured water on his face, most of it directed to his eyes.
“Everybody do a quick rinse,” Kevin said once he was finished. “We don’t have long, but I have no idea what that crap was or what the lasting effects might be.”
While the others did as he had requested, Kevin pulled his sword from his shoulder harness and approached a trio of undead. Making short work of them, he decided that none of the others inside this huge open lot were close enough to be a threat.
“I don’t feel good,” Aleah said with a shudder. Her face was growing more and more pale by the moment.
Without warning, she fell to her knees, wailing in pain and started to heave up the last of the contents of her stomach. When that ended, she continued to dry heave for a bit. At last she fell to her side and just laid there with her eyes squeezed shut.
Kevin, Heather, and Rose stood protectively around her, each sharing looks of concern. Kevin tried to reach down and hold her shoulder; anything to just let her know that he was there for her, but she shrugged his hand a way.
“That sucked,” she finally gasped, sitting up and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Can you walk?” Kevin asked.
His eyes kept flicking back to the fence they had come over. He could no longer see under the long line of trains. The legs of the undead had acted as a curtain. A few had fallen or been shoved through the space between the cars, but not enough to overwhelm the fence.
Kevin offered his shoulder to Aleah who initially refused until she took a few steps and staggered like a drunk. Heather doubled up with Rose, and that is how the foursome made their way across the vast lot.
“CTA?” Rose asked, pointing to the huge letters on one of the buildings.
“Chicago Transit Authority would be my guess,” Kevin answered.
They reached the edge of the lot and came to the fence. An overpass was just beyond some tall grass. There was a highway and then more grass between them and a cluster of buildings.
“Those look like stadium lights,” Aleah said weakly as she leaned on Kevin for support.
“But wha
t are those?” Rose asked, pointing.
Kevin had to shield his eyes to see, but just beyond the overpass where the highway passed underneath, there were several objects that at first looked to be floating in the air. Ducking down for a better look, Kevin could see the ropes.
“Looks like bodies hanging,” Kevin sighed. He could only hope they were old.
After helping Aleah over, Kevin and the others started for the overpass. Kevin decided that they would get the best look around from that vantage point. Of course what he didn’t say is that he really had no idea what they were looking for. When Rose had asked if they were going to try and find the others, Kevin explained that he had given Catie specific spots for her to camp along the journey and that he would make for those, but that there was no sense trying to make their way back to where she had been separated from the group.
They made it through the grass and came to the ramp that led up the overpass. “You three go ahead,” Kevin said. “I want to go check out whatever is hanging underneath.”
He was actually a little surprised when there was no argument. He walked up to the closest figure and looked up at it. The zombie stared down at him; its tongue, a black and bloated chunk of meat about triple its normal size, filled the mouth of the monster to the point that Kevin doubted it could actually bite anybody.
Hanging around its neck was a sign with the word “WHORE” scrawled in huge black letters. Moving down the line, he saw much the same with the exception of the word on the placard which varied—LIAR, DECEIVER, (Kevin did not try to figure out what the difference may be) KILLER—but he noticed something remarkable. He actually did not pick up on it until the third body. It was a man wearing shorts…with a healed bite on one leg. He backtracked and went down the row, finally stopping at the seventh body; each one of the zombies hanging from the underside of the overpass had signs of a healed bite mark.
