Zombie, Illinois

by Scott Kenemore

  “You can’t be serious, Ben,” Maria says, giggling and placing a hand on her belly. “That’s too much. Someone was being funny with you. I hate to tell you, but you’re the kind of guy people would play jokes on.”

  She then looks over to me and sees my frown. She sees that I can credit everything Ben is saying. Maybe more. (Definitely more. I’ve heard worse stories. Things my uncle told me back when I was a little boy. Things I shudder even to remember.) Maria’s face falls.

  “Normally, at least the shit down in the coal tunnels is dead,” Ben continues. “But tonight it’s getting up and walking around. Seriously Mack, why did you even suggest this?”

  I take a deep breath. (Name? Pastor Leopold Mack. Yes, ma’am. That’s right. I’m here for my procedure. Uh huh. That procedure.)”Because it’s the fastest, clearest way to Oak Park. Maybe the fastest way out of the city tonight, short of a helicopter. If we want to reach Maria’s dad before Marja Mogk’s people do, then it’s the best way. The tunnels go straight there.”

  “And are full of monsters!” Ben counters.

  Ben and I pause. We both look at Maria. We need a tiebreaker here. Probably, Maria should be the one to decide anyway, since it’s her father we are trying to reach.

  She looks up at her own eyebrows a moment—considering.

  “If we got in, how could we be sure we’d get out again?”

  I have won.

  “ Maria.you’re not seriously considering—” I cut Ben off.

  “The hatches open out. They’re designed so that people don’t get trapped inside. If you can find a way in, then it’s easy to get back out again.”

  “And how do we know where we’re going once we get inside?” Maria says, still calculating. “Do you have a map or something?”

  Ben has stopped with the verbal objections but flashes Maria an open-mouthed look to say she might as well be considering jumping off a cliff.

  “Not exactly,” I tell her. “I have a compass in the butt of my flashlight. As long as we keep heading northwest, we’ll be making progress. If we want to leave the tunnels at any point, there are hatches every quarter mile or so. I think.”

  “You... think?” Maria says cautiously.

  “Even if we just take the tunnels part of the way—just use them to get as far as Humboldt Park, say—we’ll still get a big lead on Marja Mogk’s people. It could make the difference between life and death for your dad.”

  “For my mother and sister who are with my dad,” Maria corrects me. “That’s why I’m doing this, remember?”

  I nod.

  Ben tries a final plea.

  “Maria . . . we’re no use to your family if we get trapped underground in a maze filled with zombies and monsters.” She waves him off.

  “It’s faster and it goes straight there?” Maria says, turning to me.

  I nod, confirming it.

  “Okay,” she says. “Then I’m in.”

  “We might not even be able to gain access,” I whisper to Ben as we amble north toward my uncle’s old factory. “The place might be locked or guarded. Or maybe even knocked down.”

  “You can stop trying to sugarcoat this,” Ben tells me, nearly growling. “This is going to suck and you know it.”

  He’s right. I do.

  Yet something tells me this is still the best way to reach the new mayor. Doing so successfully feels more and more important to me. Like maybe it’s what God wants...like it’s the reason why all of this has happened.

  We pull level with the abandoned police station and its equally abandoned parking lot.

  “We should stop and have a look inside,” Maria states. “They might have supplies.”

  I rub my chin and consider it.

  “She’s right,” Ben says. “Only Mack has a flashlight, and only Mack and I have guns. I’d like us all to have guns and flashlights if we’re going down into the fucking coal tunnels.”

  “Exactly,” Maria says.

  “Okay then” I allow. “Maybe we have time for a quick detour.”

  We adjust our trajectory yet again and head across the large empty parking lot toward the dark police station. There is essentially nowhere to take cover. The lot security lights above us are sputtering but still functional. If there are any cops left inside, they will surely see us coming. Only two cars remain in a network of parking spaces that usually holds 200. As I look closer, I discern that they both have flat tires.

  I contemplate calling out and announcing our presence. I know a number of south side officers, and it is likely that some of those assigned to this station will remember me. But then it occurs to me that this station might yet be occupied.but not by policemen. In light of this, I remain silent, and we slink up to the entrance as quietly as we can.

  The lights are on, and the front door is unlocked. Nothing appears to move within. The only sound is the fuzzy static of an unattended radio dispatch. Ben draws his gun. We push the door open and head inside.

  For some reason, I’m expecting the station’s interior to be a mess. Paperwork on the floor, computers smashed, bullet holes everywhere. But that’s not the case. The inside of the station is as orderly as ever. Desks are neat. Phones are still on their receivers. Computers are unsmashed and functional. It still has that police station smell, too—that strange combination of YMCA, Xerox machine, and the place where you sit and wait in the garage when they change your oil.

  But no cops.

  The evacuation must have been orderly. It’s as if they all simply vanished. Poof! Behind the reception desk, a coffee maker is cooking a pot of Maxwell House down to a crisp.

  “All right” I whisper. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. Ben, you’re going to start looking through the desks up here. I’m going to head to the back and see if they have anyplace they keep SWAT gear. Maria, you’re going to stay right here and keep an eye on the parking lot.”

  Maria raises an eyebrow.

  “Your job is the most important” I tell her. “We don’t want to get trapped inside. Anybody comes into the lot, you let us know.”

  Somewhat reluctantly, Maria takes a chair and points it t oward the glass door to the station. She sits down and begins playing with her cell phone. Ben walks to the nearest desk, opens a drawer, and starts rifling through.

  Satisfied, I head for the back of the station. I pass through a pair of swinging doors and take a linoleum staircase down one flight. I am not completely satisfied that the station is empty. I admit that part of me envisioned a cadre of cowardly CPD officers barricading themselves deep within to make a last stand. Upon further consideration, I realize the idea is ridiculous.

  These men and women went home to their families. Simple as that.

  The city still requires CPD officers to live within the city proper, but almost none of them are from this neighborhood. This part of the South Loop has immaculate, expensive condos (ever forcing themselves southward from the Loop proper) and moldering rat-trap buildings that share property lines with public housing. What it doesn’t have is middle-class homes for city workers. The officers who work in this station are either too rich or too poor for the extremes of housing offered in the neighborhood they patrol.

  I reach the lower level of the station and find a long concrete hallway. There is nobody about. Thick, functional wooden doors—like in an old high school—line the walls. Most of them are locked. The few that do open reveal administrative offices. Desks with staplers and cups of paperclips.

  Just as I’m about to give up, I start to hear the low voices at the end of the hallway. I draw the Glock I took off Shawn Michael and cautiously move in to investigate.

  Maria Ramirez

  I’m testing my phone—trying to send text messages—when Ben comes over and stands next to me. He’s pesty, like a dog that wants attention.

  “Are the phones working again?”

  “No,” I tell him. “I was trying to text, but I don’t think they’re going through. Did you find anything in those desks?” �
�No guns. But maybe these will be good.” He holds up several identical flashlights. They’re smaller than Mack’s Maglite but might do in a pinch. And this is a pinch if ever there was one.

  “That’s good,” I say. “If it’s true what you guys are saying about what’s down in the tunnels, we probably need guns, too.”

  “It’s true all right” Ben says with a shudder. “I don’t even want to think about it. Things are fucked-up enough on the streets of Chicago, and Mack wants us to go to the one place that’s sure to be even worse? I don’t get it.”

  “Is it true what he said about being able to go straight to Oak

  Park?” I ask.

  Ben looks around the room like there are ghosts hovering around to give him backup. If there are, I can’t see them. “Yeah,” I say. “That’s what I thought.”

  Giving up on my phone, I walk into the network of desks and look for a computer that isn’t password protected. Frustratingly, all of the ones belonging to individual officers are. But then I try the aging Dell with the well-worn keyboard behind the reception desk . . . bingo. I open a browser window.

  “Is the internet working on that computer?”

  “We’re about to find out,” I tell him as we both crowd around the screen.

  I try the websites for local newspapers first. They look broken, like someone was interrupted in the process of updating the pages. Everything is formatted in a weird, unprofessional way. We can make out a few headlines though. My favorites are “Multiple Cannibal Attacks in Loop!” “Amidst Widespread Rioting, a City on Lockdown” and “Mayor, Family Eaten Alive!!!”

  “Try the national news,” Ben says, reaching for the mouse.

  “Back off, man!” I tell him. “I’m driving.”

  “Well drive then,” he says petulantly.

  We pull up the website of a cable news station. The headline reads, “The Dead Rise in Illinois!!! Chaos in the Windy City!!!”

  “Hot damn,” says Ben, clapping his hands with glee. “It’s a local story! Local! And I’m at the heart of it! That Pulitzer is so fucking mine.if I can just not die.”

  “Hate to burst your bubble, but look at this,” I say, directing Ben’s attention to some of the smaller headlines further down the front page. These subheads report that people are starting to see walking corpses all over the country. In Mexico and Canada, too. The president has been called back from a summit in Japan and has scheduled a joint press conference with the CDC the moment he lands.

  “Oh,” says Ben, the excitement draining somewhat from his face.

  “Look on the bright side,” I tell him. “Even if it starts happening other places, it looks like we were first.”

  Ben tilts his head back and forth, considering this. A little bit of his smile returns.

  Suddenly, the door at the back of the station bursts open, and four large men walk into the room. Luckily, one of them is Mack. The other three are thugs in orange jumpsuits. Mack is wearing a riot helmet with a clear plastic visor and pointing his handgun at the men.

  “There you go,” Mack says to them, gesturing to the door. “Stick to the south side, but stay away from the Harold Washington Cultural Center. That place is poison. If somebody doesn’t seem right—or doesn’t seem alive—you just run the other way. The dead are mostly frozen, but they get faster when they have a chance to thaw.”

  The prisoners brush past us and head out the door. They are tough men with hard faces. Men from neighborhoods where a smile indicates weakness and where eye contact with the wrong stranger can get you jumped. They don’t seem particularly i nterested in Mack’s description of the zombie outbreak into which they are about to set foot. Their expressions say Leave me alone. I can handle this, whatever it is.

  The men exit the police station and head off in different directions.

  “Really?” I say to Mack.

  “They were going to starve down there,” Mack says. “The cops just left them?” Ben asks. “That’s a pretty shitty thing to do.”

  “I don’t think they planned to,” Mack replies. “Think about it. The zombies start to rise up, and most of the police are called out. The emergencies all around the city get worse and worse. Eventually, you have a skeleton crew holding down the entire station. Then the lines of communication go down completely. The remaining officers start saying ‘Forget it’ and go home to protect their own families. I’ll bet the last guy in here didn’t even know he was the last.”

  Ben frowns. He clearly still thinks it was shitty to leave the prisoners.

  “Ben found some flashlights,” I say brightly. “How did you

  fare?”

  “Badly,” says Mack. “Most everything is locked up. It was lucky that the doors to the cells were automated, or I wouldn’t have gotten them open either. I found this helmet though, and this.”

  From his pocket, Mack produces a heavy plastic nightstick.

  “Fuck...” I exhale. “No guns at all? Not even Tasers or tear gas?”

  Mack shakes his head.

  “And we need to get moving,” he says. “I don’t want to risk Mogk’s people running into us before we get into the tunnels.”

  “But I don’t even have a gun!” I protest.

  “Here,” Mack says. He hands me the truncheon and places his helmet on my head.

  “This feels like a bad Halloween costume,” I object.

  “Wait,” says Ben, throwing up his hands. “Just.wait.”

  He walks over and gives me his handgun.

  “You should have this. I hardly know how to shoot it, and you’re evidently an excellent shot. I don’t even know if the thing has any bullets left.”

  “Eight,” I say, checking. “Seven in the clip and one in the chamber.”

  I trade with Ben—giving him the stick and riot helmet. He holds the stick between his legs and awkwardly works the helmet onto his head. Then he raises the nightstick with both hands on the hilt, like it’s a sword.

  “You look good,” I tell him as we leave the abandoned police

  station. “Official.”

  “Thanks,” he says grumpily, as though it is little consolation.

  The giant warehouse where Mack’s uncle used to work looms into view just north of the station. The dark streets are perfectly empty. There is a sense of impending doom as we get closer. I believe we all share it. Ben makes one last attempt to change our minds.

  “I just think it sounds risky to go down into these tunnels,” he says from underneath his clear plastic visor. (He says it quietly, like he wants us to think he’s just talking to himself.) “I don’t know if it makes sense when you look at the big picture.”

  I look over to Mack, wondering if we should acknowledge Ben’s whining.

  “I think...” Mack begins casually, keeping his eyes on the warehouse, “that everything after this is a risk that doesn’t make sense. But going into the tunnels now is maybe the one thing that does.”

  We reach the edge of the abandoned warehouse property. There’s a chain link fence around it that has long since been compromised with wire cutters. We pick the nearest hole and duck through.

  “I don’t know what happens tomorrow,” Mack continues. “I don’t know what happens when the sun comes up. Zombies throughout the state.maybe throughout the whole country.”

  “The zombies are popping up all over,” I tell him. “We saw it on the internet at the police station.”

  “Tomorrow is a mystery,” Mack continues. “But tonight, we have the chance to do something right. Something that restores order and decency. Something that helps people.Tomorrow, we might not have that chance.”

  The warehouse is enormous and old. One exterior wall features the ghost of a print advertisement for a brand of chewing tobacco that hasn’t existed for sixty years. The walls are brick, but the ancient, slanted roof is made of wood—weather worn and mostly warped.

  “This place looks like a haunted house,” Ben says.

  He’s right, it totally does. Or at least the
kind of place that that a bunch of art students rent out around Halloween and charge $20 a pop to scare people with fake blood and plastic monsters.

  “It hasn’t been operational for a while,” Mack replies. “Closed down right after my uncle retired. Whoever owns it is just waiting to sell the land it sits on. It might be abandoned. I really don’t know.”

  Ben says nothing, but I notice a little fog building on the inside of his riot helmet.

  “Around back,” Mack says.

  We hoof it along the side of the warehouse and turn the corner. There we find loading docks for trucks and a wall of ancient, rusted garage doors. Everything is covered with graffiti, but it looks like graffiti from 1980. (Even taggers got bored with this place many years ago.) Mack stalks over to a metal door with “Authorized Personnel Only” stenciled over it.

  “We could try to kick it down” Mack says. “But I wonder...”

  He feels along the dirty ledge above the door.

  “I don’t damn believe it.”

  We watch as Mack’s hand comes away with a key. It’s filthy and sticky, covered in grease and years of dust.

  “They used to leave the key here in my uncle’s day. I wonder if the current owners even know it’s here.”

  Mack brushes the gunk and grease off of the key. Then he uses it to open the door.

  I look over at Ben. There is a pea-soup level of fog on his mask.

  “Maybe you should wear that thing with the visor up. For now, at least.”

  “Yeah,” he says, adjusting the helmet. “That might be a good idea.”

  We take out our flashlights and turn them on. Only two of the flashlights from the police station actually work. Ben and I each take one. They are good, but Mack’s giant Maglite is even better.

  Ben and I form up behind Mack, and we make our way into the building. Inside is a stench like burned grease or motor oil and old, undisturbed machinery.

  We enter a shipping bay, which is only a small part of the l arger warehouse. There are broken pallets and stacks of tires against the wall. Everything is covered with dust. Our footsteps echo. The warehouse door swings closed behind us.