“How did your chat with Anthony go?” Daniel asked more seriously.
“Ok I guess. Talk about a major league douche though,” I whispered.
That got quite a laugh out of my companions and a couple suspicious looks from Anthony’s table who was just getting up from their seats with their trays. I noticed a little boy run over to the table and grab Anthony’s tray from him and bring it up to the counter for him. I wondered how he had gotten away with bullying the kid in to being his little servant. Then again, the kid might look up to him and be acting this way in an attempt to pay tribute. That thought was even scarier than the former.
“Is it true that he throws traitors off the roof?” I asked more seriously.
Both Travis and Daniel’s faces dropped.
“He did once, in the beginning. Since then we’ve been able to convince him to just exile people,” Daniel said.
“The scarier thought is realizing that several people he doesn’t like have gone missing or been seriously wounded. I still can’t believe we haven’t met that fate thus far,” Travis continued. He sighed before continuing.
“Now that you’ve gotten the run down from Anthony’s side of things, we’d love to bring you up to speed from our angle. Got time to come hang out in the pool room? I figured we could fold laundry and share stories.” Travis suggested.
I looked at both of them and realized out of everyone I had met this morning they were definitely the types of people I wanted to be associated with. I nodded and River and I followed their lead.
Chapter 48
“This is absolutely ridiculous. You won’t even have been here a full twenty-four hours and Anthony is sending you out on a mission in the morning! You need training. And to refuel,” Travis was ranting to me on the walk back to the gymnasium.
We had spent the last hour folding laundry alongside several younger children, but talking in our little circle.
Daniel and Travis were both first year medical students at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine. They had only been in school for three months and hadn’t even finished their first semester of anatomy when the outbreak had happened. Anthony had been using them for patching up wounds and injuries, but they really had no idea what they were doing and I was happy to lend a helping hand.
On the subject of why they had ended up at the school- there had been a career fair at the school around the time of the outbreak. Daniel and Travis had volunteered to go on behave of the medical school. There had been over three-dozen careers represented. Anthony and his friend fire fighter Dave had been some of the others attending the fair.
There had been an outbreak that very day in the gymnasium. Turns out several of the local cheerleaders and football players had attended a big bonfire the weekend before. There had been kids from several of the surrounding high schools there as well. Some crazy homeless person had shown up and bitten several of the drunk students, but since they weren’t supposed to be at this party in the first place they didn’t tell anyone. And low and behold, a group of them died and turned in the locker room, stumbling out in to the gymnasium that was set up with booths for the career fair all at once.
I realized that must have been what Anthony meant by getting revenge on those that caused this earlier. Those zombie football players from earlier might have been infected at the same bonfire.
A lot of people had been injured and eventually killed that first day. But being a man of action Anthony had stepped up and taken the lead. Travis actually seemed grateful for his actions that first day. They both agreed that Anthony’s actions were a large part of why they were able to save and then fortify the school. But since then it seemed the man’s power obsession had gotten to his head, and now with each new survivor they brought in he seemed to be trying harder and harder to establish his superiority over the others.
Daniel suspected that they would be forced to vote on some sort of leadership role soon. They feared it would only be a matter of time before Anthony stepped out of line and hurt someone. Travis seemed to suspect that might have already happened when they told me the story of Bob, the older fire fighter that had been Dave’s partner. Travis and Daniel had become good friends with the man. Bob started regularly opposing Anthony’s suggestions and was the only one man enough to regularly speak up to him. Then they went out on a raid where Anthony and Dave asked Bob to join their group on the ground, and Bob never came home. There was a perfectly plausible story behind it. People get bitten every day. But it just seemed too convenient.
I suspected that Travis’ current objection to my going on a raid in the morning was that something similar might happen to me.
“It’ll be fine. I’ve got to prove myself somehow,” I explained. “I don’t want to seem vulnerable to this guy, and staying behind to cook or do laundry exclusively would make me just that.”
“We should just leave,” Daniel suggested.
“But then no one would stand up to Anthony. And we’d be leaving all these people behind to suffer under his reign. Believe me, I’ve thought about it long and hard. Maybe we should have left those first couple days like most of our friends from the career fair did. But now I feel an obligation to stay behind and help maintain some sort of neutrality. Plus, where would we go?” Travis objected.
“Chicago?” I suggested.
Daniel’s face sunk and Travis shook his head. They apparantely knew something I didn’t.
“Chicago is over run. There are some areas on the outskirts making it, mostly military operations from what we hear when we get those moments of working internet or radio transmissions. We came from Chicago and decided against trying to go back, seems too risky for a place that isn’t truly our home,” Travis explained.
Daniel looked back up, “I think we should head to water. The Great Lakes, the Mississippi, or maybe one of the oceans.”
“We’re staying here. Well, I am, you guys are welcome to conspire about leaving without me,” Travis said.
This argument was getting to me.
I yawned. I wasn’t trying to, but I definitely got the point across.
“Let’s hit the sack. Maybe we can get up early and prepare you for tomorrow,” Travis suggested.
“Sounds like the best idea I heard since someone told me to always stock bottled water in the event of a crisis,” I smirked. Not much of a joke, but I had randomly been thinking about my supplies.
Tucking in to bed, aka a sleeping bag on a mat with a small pillow, River pressed against my side on the inside of the sleeping bag. I closed my eyes and felt the burn. The sting and burn of eyes that had been fighting crying all day. I had forced myself not to think about Tracy, about Peter, about everyone I had lost as much as I could all day. I was able to keep myself from sobbing. But if I had kept the tears in that now ran down my face my head probably would have exploded. I found myself hoping no one was watching me pretend to sleep as my head drifted off in to a true slumber from the weight and exhaustion of the day.
Chapter 49
I hate to say it, but the following morning was just about as cathartic as you could get. I never thought of myself as a violent person. I still don’t. I had dedicated my life to a career saving helpless animals, and now with the apocalypse I wanted to help animals and people to the best of my ability. But let me tell you: there is no better release then that felt when smashing in a zombie’s skull.
It’s like popping bubble wrap, only ten thousand times better since the bubble wrap would gladly suffocate you with pain given the chance. Especially if you’ve been having a rough week like I had. You can bottle up all your hate and anger and frustration, and take it out on the zombies. You don’t need to feel guilty about using them as a scapegoat, cause they legitimately want to kill and eat you. Seriously. No guilt necessary.
The guys from the high school had it down to a science. We all suited up in relatively protective clothes, which meant winter clothing that had previously been covered in duct tape, and helmets. Then they used a belt o
n everyone to hook you in to one of the bars around the truck’s cabs. Choose whatever blunt object you like, and swing away Merrill, swing away.
While I probably could have been more help in the getaway vehicles, and I was a bit saddened to be separated from Travis and Daniel, I was happy to get that hypatic release in.
Anthony informed everyone that I would be in the truck that morning, which meant there were two runner cars, (including the one with Daniel and Travis), that would be raiding the area the zombies had just vacated. Vacated in order to track down us in the truck with the giant speakers and blasting music.
The best part was everyone got to pick a song they wanted as their soundtrack. Though it might not have been the best song in the world, I thought “How You Like Me Now” by The Heavy was the most appropriate song to time my epic, head-smashing baseball swings to.
The only hard part of the trip had been leaving River behind, but it would have been too dangerous for her in the truck. She paused, reluctantly staying behind with a group of children and Liza in the laundry room. But she must have heard us pulling in to the loading bay, because as I took my helmet off and headed towards the back of the truck she jumped in to the cab and on to my legs.
I hopped off and gave her the proper greeting she deserved while she stood at the back of the cab.
“You love that dog more than anyone, don’t you,” Anthony said from in front of me. I looked up to see him scowling at me from above. Actually, I take back what I said earlier, there were two hard parts about the trip: the worst was leaving River behind. The second worst was the constant staring I was getting from Anthony, and the fact that I couldn’t completely make out his facial expressions under his helmet. It had left me feeling even more violated when I would turn around from a good swing and swear he was ogling me from below the mask.
“She’ll always be my best friend,” I replied, continuing to scratch her behind the ears.
“Until a zombie gets her,” Anthony laughed. “Or until we run out of food and we decide she’s the next best option for the menu,” he sneered as he walked past me.
“We won’t be running out of food anytime soon,” said a voice from behind me.
I wasn’t surprised when I turned around and saw Travis there. He and Daniel had pulled in after our truck. I was glad to have his company back but currently did not like the way these two were posturing and staring each other down like I was some prize in the middle worth fighting over again.
I was about to say something when I was shocked to see Anthony back down and turn back to the cab to unload some more gear.
“I think we’re ready,” he said, trying to pull off his best pococurante attitude.
“Ready for what?” Travis asked. Daniel came up along side him.
He turned around and looked at all of us.
“Ready to reclaim the labs in the basement,” he smiled.
And though they tried to hide it, I could see both Daniel and Travis loose a little color in their face and pride from their sails.
Part 11: Loss
"Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving; we get stronger
and more resilient.” –Steve Maraboli
Chapter 50
There wasn’t much time for chitchat or pleasantries when they made it back in to town. The bar was full of people. But if you didn’t know it was a sports bar, you might have mistaken the place for a barracks.
The group had three plow trucks and had been using them to travel through town and round up everyone who wasn’t at the bar. They had gotten an urgent message via radio that while Minneapolis had not been hit as hard as they had by the storm, for some reason the city had dealt with a major outbreak and it wasn’t known if there were any survivors. What was known was that there were estimates of over 200,000 zombies leaving the city in all directions. The ones that they had encountered were probably the first of thousands that might end up traveling through their town. Luckily there were lots of directions and roads for the zombies to follow, and the snow was slowing them down.
Judy looked around her and what looked like over a hundred people stock piling and checking various weapons. Jason, Linda and Greg had joined the group in the back that was by the radio, making marks and pointing out various places on a large map they had hung up of the state.
“Are you Greg’s wife?” someone asked, startling Judy out of her trance. She turned to see the woman that had been in the pick up with the plow earlier.
“No,” she replied shaking her head. “He’s my brother.”
“Oh my, well he seems a decent man,” she replied, though her gaze seemed to be focused on Jason.
She turned back to Judy and extended a hand. “My name is Tara. And this is my mom Nancy,” she said as she nodded backwards to the older woman Judy had noticed driving the truck earlier. Now that Nancy was unbundled you could see her feminine features more clearly. As Judy shook both their hands she could also see the very clear family resemblance. She exchanged names with them.
“We own those cabins your group was staying in,” she said with a smile.
“Thank you so much for letting us stay there,” Judy said.
“It’s the least we could do. Sadly don’t know if we’ll ever be seeing much business from the tourism industry again, but the one nice thing about this new life is that it really does seem to bring people together as a community,” she waved her hand around the room gracefully as she said this, looking proud of what her community had done in the meantime.
Judy found herself thinking of the various communities that she had encountered on this trip and agreed. There was still a lot of potential for people to behave badly, but many of these communities showed that solidarity and cooperation could get you a lot farther than greed or solitude.
A loud whistle caught everyone’s attention towards the back and a burly man with a large beard stepped up to face everyone from the middle of the room.
“Ok folks. Thanks for rounding up all the troops in town. Most of us here are part of Sunset Lake, but a special thanks to those outsiders that are joining us in this battle as well,” the man said as he looked over towards Greg, Jason and Linda with a nod. Judy found herself wishing she had been with them during the previous hour, but they had been talking strategy and defense, which was a bit over her head.
A whisper in her ear caught her by surprise, but it was just Tara kindly trying to keep her in the loop.
“The man talking is my uncle Warren. He’s been our make shift leader from the beginning but doesn’t have tactical experience in the field like Jason or your brother.”
“Now we all know that over the last thirty-six hours more and more zombies have been streaming out of Minneapolis, probably heading every which way for food. We saw some from the beginning of the mass exodus in town just this morning. Since they don’t stop to rest or sleep, we’re probably going to see the brunt of the zombies some time overnight tonight and the following couple days. There are many other towns between us and them, so there might be significantly lessened in number by the time they arrive here. Hopefully after that there will only be the occasional straggler. But this means we have to come up with a plan to protect ourselves,” the man continued.
Judy noticed that this man was calling all of the infected zombies. Their group was still calling them infected, hoping that this was something that might be preventable or reversible at some point. Zombie just sounded too science fiction, too other-worldly to Judy. She hated the word, and in her mind continued to call them infected.
“We’d love to all stay together, but leaving us all here would potentially be a choke point for us and might lead to us being over run. Plus we don’t have enough places to shoot from in this building. So we’re going to be splitting up in to smaller groups.”
There was several groans and sighs throughout the crowd as well as whispering.
“Then why did you come bring us here? My wife’s almost at her due date and you made her pack up her things and come h
ere? We could have stayed at home!” shouted one man from the back of the crowd. There were two small children and a timid looking, very pregnant woman surrounding him.
“Russell, I hate to inconvenience you and Maria. But you’d have just as much trouble protecting that little house of yours as we would have protecting the bar. And I might also add that now your wife is in the same place as her doctor so if she does have the baby she’ll be in good hands,” Warren said while looking at Russell. He then turned back to the crowd.
“So we’ve devised a plan to strategically split up and station ourselves at certain check points. Areas where people with a good shot can take down the most zombies without being at risk. And we will have some groups in the plow trucks, but with the goal of attracting as many zombies as we can to places where we can trap them. Places where we can then find a way to destroy them or in the worst case scenario at least wall them off to protect ourselves from them until we or the government has a better way to deal with them,” he explained.
There was still some rustling in the crowd, but Warren had gotten everyone’s attention back and proceeded to explain their plan.
Chapter 51
Greg, Linda and Judy were all going to the town library with both the town librarian, a couple of her friends, as well as some men that worked in the surrounding towns. They were also the men that ran the local fireworks display every fourth of July so one of their jobs was to stop at their shop and pick up all the extra flammable equipment they owned.
The library was one of the buildings Warren had talked about where they would be luring zombies. Once they had trapped a decent amount they would close them in and set the place on fire.
Eves of the Outbreak Page 25