by Oliver, Carl
As they approached the suburbs of Chicago, the wrecks became more common. There had been more cars on the road when the incident occurred, so there was more to swerve around, and they had to backtrack four different times due to the freeway being completely blocked. By the time they had reached the southern border of Chicago Heights, it was dusk.
Scott was relieved when, as a group, they decided to set up camp for the night. Amy spotted a four story office complex that looked promising, and turned out to be. They were able to barricade the doors in a similar way to the method they used back in Middleton. Scott had initially insisted that they find a hotel or mansion to stay in, but Chris talked him out of this by reminding him how many zombies would be inside the average 200 bed hotel, and the lack of information about where to find local mansions made this idea impractical, for now.
They made due with the office building, staying on the fourth floor and taking turns standing guard, just in case something or someone was following them.
***
The next morning, the group set out early. Scott was surprised how great he felt. No headache, fewer body pains, all this despite standing watch for two hours in the middle of the night. It took him a few minutes to realize that it was the first night since this had all began that they hadn’t stayed up drinking. He assumed everyone else felt the same.
They had to continue on foot from this point, as the wrecks that blocked the entire highway were now coming up every half mile or so. They could have taken the SUV’s off of the highways and onto the side streets, but these streets were littered with hundreds of zombies, making this impractical too.
They walked almost twenty miles, hampered by the regular wrecks that made them skirt the edges of the highway. By the time they had stopped, they had made it to Englewood. The travel was becoming more difficult, as more and more sections of the highway were completely blocked and there were even a few zombies that had survived their car crashes and had made it onto the highway. Scott felt like they were passing houses and blocks and cities full of zombies, but that most of them simply hadn’t figured out how to get outside yet. Or maybe they just hadn’t run out of food indoors yet, it was difficult to be sure of anything. After spending another night in another high rise building, on the third day, they reached the South Loop of downtown Chicago.
***
Chicago was a mess, with the streets packed with crashed vehicles and at least a hundred zombies milling about on every block. Chris had two fears when they were traveling to Chicago. His first fear was that there would be literally millions of zombies covering the streets. His second fear was that the city would have burned down to the ground due to someone who turned zombie while cooking a late dinner and set their apartment building on fire. It would turn out that both of these fears would be well founded. He had a third fear as well, but he wasn’t entirely sure what it was yet, more of a gut feeling than anything specific at this point in time.
“We’re not going to make it to the Tower.” Jessica said glumly, looking at a fifty thousand dollar watch that she had liberated from a high end jewelry shop before they had left that morning. Between the gold and diamonds, she was able to read that it was nearly five o’clock.
“That’s fine, I’m sure we can find somewhere to hold up.” Justin said, Chris noticed a fake note of optimism in Justin’s voice. It was well masked, but like a smile that doesn’t reach the eyes, it was fake.
They were now halfway through Chinatown, walking in a long loose line. Chris and Scott led, Tyler and Amy followed almost twenty yards behind, and another thirty yards behind were Justin and Jessica to bring up the rear.
Chris marveled at how different the city looked compared to Middleton. Chicago really looked like the apocalypse had come and gone. It looked as though they were walking into a ruined city, not the metropolis that had been a major center of art and commerce less than a week ago. A fire had ravaged almost a third of the neighborhood, and they could see smoke on the horizon of a far off fire, still blazing. Chris hoped that the fire had not reached the Willis Tower.
The charred remains of buildings towered around them, shadows of the beautiful marvel that had been Chicago. The streets were covered in a fine gray ash, which puffed into small clouds when anyone took a step.
“It’s okay!” Scott shouted from the front, showing the most energy he had all day. “I can see some unburnt buildings. We just have to go through about a mile of this, then things clear up.”
“I don’t mean to sound rude, but we could all really use a bath.” Amy mentioned nonchalantly to Tyler as they hiked along the bridge. Tyler tried to conceal a quick whiff to check for odors in his armpit before responding.
“Were you a bath person, or a shower person before all this happened?” Tyler asked, trying to spark a conversation. Amy muttered something under her breath instead of responding to the question. Tyler had noticed a bit of a trend with Amy. Whenever anyone asked her about herself, even something as simple and nonintrusive as whether she preferred baths or showers, she would mutter and go silent. The only things she seemed willing to discuss were those things that had happened since the world ended. Tyler had let it go long enough, and he thought it might be a good time to try to press his luck further.
“What was that, I couldn’t hear you?” His tone came out a little more aggressive than he had intended it to, but he couldn’t take it back now.
“Nothing...” Amy said, and began walking a little faster, increasing her pace to that awkward level reserved for when you find yourself accidently walking alongside a stranger on the sidewalk.
“No really, I just want to know what you said.”
“It doesn’t matter, just leave me alone.” Amy turned her awkward rushing walk into a jog, and ran to catch up with Chris and Scott.
“Jeeze,” Tyler muttered under his breath. He had slowed down so much that Justin and Jessica had caught up to him. He found out immediately that they had heard the entire conversation.
“Don’t worry about it bud, maybe she’s just menstruating?” The way Justin made the statement, it seemed more to be a question posed to Jessica. She looked understandably uncomfortable at discussing this.
“We aren’t quite that close of friends yet. Only just met her the day before I met you guys.”
“I honestly have no idea what girls talk about all day with each other if it’s not about menstruating.” Tyler said, jokingly.
“Mostly fast cars, big dicks, who has the bigger boobs. You know, girl stuff.” Jessica seemed to be getting better at picking up on Tyler’s sarcasm.
The group crossed the rest of Chinatown that way. Two groups of three. Tyler lost track of the topic of discussion between Jessica and Justin. He couldn’t stop himself from remembering Amy’s face when the zombie child was rushing at her. That uncontainable smile that crept across her lips. Tyler had no idea what she was thinking about, but he knew exactly what she was feeling in that moment. She was feeling the same thing that he had felt when he was boxing zombie Charlie Westin. There was something in that moment that she wanted, she wasn’t supposed to want it, but she was going to get. Something visceral and primal. Tyler couldn’t put his finger on what about shooting a charging zombie in the face could be so enjoyable to her, but he knew that there was no mistaking the smile that he saw. She felt what he had felt that same morning when he sunk his fist into Charlie Westin’s fat stupid zombie face.
As they reached the edge of Chinatown, they came into what felt like a graveyard. Every building was charred from the fire, and one out of every four was either crumbled, or in the process of crumbling into themselves. The cars that lined the streets stood in black pools of melted rubber that were once their tires. The bodies of the vehicles, once blue and red and yellow, were now all a consistent black or gray from sitting through the inferno that had raged through the neighborhood.
They soon had to weave from block to block, detouring around major car wrecks and walls where buildings had fallen into the st
reet. Tyler noticed his white tennis shoes quickly turned dark gray as they scraped up the ash and soot from the pavement.
Gonna need some new kicks, he thought to himself. He felt a little disappointed at how quickly they wore out, and then he remembered all the shoes that were left in the world, and he felt better.
The next half hour passed in relative silence, broken up by Justin calling out warnings of hazards in their path. Eventually the blocks they passed became less and less damaged, until the only damage was gray soot covering the windows, presumably the fallout from the blocks they had already walked past.
As they passed a corner market, Chris and Scott broke through the service door in the alley, and the group resupplied on food, batteries and alcohol. They walked another few blocks North, planning on finding a suitable office building around Roosevelt park. They found a high rise, broke in and moved to the fifteenth floor, where they broke into a small law office. They had to also break into a CPA’s office as well as a social service agency before they had enough couches for everyone to sleep on.
The rest of the night went similar to most that had happened since the end of the world, drinking, laughter and stories being shared. Along their journey to Chicago, Jessica had transposed their bucket list from the original yellow legal pad into a very handsome looking leather bound journal. She claimed that it was to help preserve it, but it also allowed her to add a few of her own edits. Three more items were added to the list that night. Amy became adamant that, for purely historical purposes, she would need to have sex in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House. This goal caught the attention of both Tyler and Chris, who both declared it to be a fantastic addition to the list, and suggested that since they were already so close, maybe they could just run down to DC after their time here in Chicago. Scott, who was now warming up to the idea that they had literally inherited the entire planet, with only a fraction of the previous population to share it with, added two items to the list.
First, he demanded that the four guys of the group absolutely had to race sports cars in the streets of San Francisco. Amy’s eyes lit up at this, and there was a brief discussion about the women racing too, which led to a brief but heated argument about whether men or women were better drivers. Eventually the argument settled, after Amy had smashed an entire bottle of Don Perignon through an office window. Scott’s second addition to the list was one that seemed a little more difficult to achieve. He wanted to walk the entire length of the Great Wall of China. The actual walking wasn’t perceived by any of them to be all that difficult. After all, nobody was there to stop them, and they could fairly easily pack enough supplies to carry them from town to town. Jessica also assured them that there was likely gift shops and rest stations along the way where tourists would buy knick-knacks and bottled water. The real challenge was the location.
They had discussed South American destinations a few times, and in their conversations had flirted with European destinations, but nobody had really committed to an overseas location yet. This of course led to an argument about traveling across the oceans. Scott had assured them that he had watched his father, an amatuer pilot, on dozens of occasions and (although it may have been the wine talking) was almost positive he could fly them from Alaska to Russia. This drew concern as the group discussed commandeering a cruise ship and crossing the distance by sea instead.
“The downside to going to China is that nothing is going to make sense. We don’t speak karate.” Jessica mumbled. The group had found that when drunk, mild mannered, politically correct Jessica became just a bit racist.
“We can still figure out the basics from signs though, and lots of other countries have signs in English too.” Scott said, not wanting his contribution to the list to be overlooked due to language barriers.
“If we run into anyone though, they’re not going to understand us. And they know karate.” Jessica reiterated, and then finished very solemnly. “It could be dangerous.”
Tyler, who was only two coffee cups of wine into the evening, pondered on this quietly while Amy tried to explain to a drunken Jessica that ‘karate’, is not a language, it is a martial art, and that not all people of Chinese descent were practiced in it.
“Although she may be misguided, I think our slightly intoxicated friend does have a point on this one.” Chris said, breaking Tyler from his pondering. “We know that whatever did happen to turn people into zombies happened last Thursday night. And we know from our experience thus far that the only people who survived were those who had alcohol in their system at the moment the change occurred.” Chris took a long drink from his beer before continuing. “I’m afraid we might be the exception to the rule of who is likely left in this world.”
Justin screwed up his face in confusion. “What do you mean? We’re the only ones left?”
“No no no no.” Chris shook his head with each no. “We’re relatively well adjusted, calm and rational people. For just a moment, imagine what kind of person someone would have to be in order to survive from last Thursday to today in this new world.” Chris held up one hand and began counting on it.
“Number one, they would have had to be drinking, most likely heavily, on a Thursday night. Statisically, almost half of adult Americans don’t even drink in the first place, much less on a Thursday night. So right off the bat, we lose all children, and let’s be extremely generous and say that a fifth of all adults were drinking last Thursday. Number two, they would also have to be away from people who weren’t drinking. As with what happened in Emily’s case, if you were in the same room as one of those zombies while you were asleep, there’s a strong likelihood you didn’t survive Friday morning.” Jessica’s eyes began to water at the mention of Emily’s name, but Chris continued. “Number three, they would have to either be so cautious, or have such a distrust of their fellow man, that when they saw their first zombie struggling to walk, or heard one of them moaning, they wouldn’t run up to help them.” Tyler remembered his initial response to Justin’s neighbor. He realized that if he hadn’t been completely hungover and feeling like garbage, he would have tried to help her, thinking that she was having some kind of medical emergency. Tyler’s thoughts were interrupted by Amy’s voice.
“So basically, you’re saying that all we’ve got left on this world is probably a bunch of drunks who may have been lonely before this all happened and clearly don’t trust other people. In fact, there’s a good chance they would have to be okay with homicide, as we’ve already killed a dozen or so zombies to survive.” Tyler’s mind began processing this number, remembering the four zombies that he knew they had killed, and wondered for a moment what Amy and Jessica had done on that first morning before they met.
“The cream of the crop.” Justin mumbled into his coffee cup of wine.
The next morning brought a beautiful sunrise with piercing hangovers. Tyler looked out over the city and saw that the few zombies they had seen yesterday seemed to have multiplied, he could see almost thirty lining the street in front of the office building. He imagined that over time, as food ran out or they simply ran out of things to do, that the zombies would eventually all end up outside. He was surprised that there weren’t more out wandering in the streets at this point in time.
Tyler made cold instant coffee for the group, which they had with crackers and cheese wiz for breakfast while they discussed the plan for the day.
Sometime during the night, Amy had decided that she didn’t want to go to the Willis Tower. She suggested that her and Jessica just go shopping instead. Scott and Justin initially protested to this, remembering Chris’s words from last night about who was likely left alive in this city besides themselves. Amy silenced the argument by pulling, seemingly out of thin air, two small handguns that nobody had ever seen before.
“I think we’ll be okay.”
***
The group packed up their supplies and left. They headed North on foot, parallel to the Grant and Millenial Parks. After a block of heading in the same di
rection, Amy got frustrated with Justin constantly saying how glad he was that they could all still stay together, that they would all be safe, so she grabbed Jessica’s arm and pulled her east at the next intersection.
“Oh sweety, you just have to see the shoes that I saw in this window blah blah blah.” Amy shouted sarcastically over her shoulder, emphasizing the “blah”’s.
A few blocks behind them, a single man watched the group split in two and whispered a silent prayer. “Dear father, I give you thanks for leading me to these young souls and giving me this mission. Now I pray to you, provide me guidance in this task you have set before me. Show me the path to victory.”
Father O’Connell was grateful when he came upon the party of young people as they drove up the interstate the day before. They weren’t difficult to follow, but the good father had observed almost immediately that he wouldn’t be able to set these souls free with a simple lie as he had done with the group in Father Nile’s apartment. They were different, they were special.
He could see that they were well armed, and seemed to move as a coordinated group. He could hear them argue on occasion, but even when they fought, they stuck together. How to save these six souls?
This was how he knew that this was the task for him. Father O’Connell had set many souls free in the last few days, but none that were like this. These people, they were different. They had a certain spirit to them. He could see it in how they walked, talked, and moved. Every other soul he had saved had been running scared. Treating every encounter with the empty vessels as a new emergency. These people moved without fear. It wasn’t just the weapons they carried. He saw them use the weapons on the husks. Cutting down God’s without respect to what it once was or what it had become. They had courage, and it was because of this that Father O’Connell knew this was his true mission. He had to set these spirits free.