Road to Grissom: Part three of the Aftermath series

by Duncan McArdle

  “What in the hell”, Danny found himself saying to nobody in particular, once more pulling his gaze away from the scope in front in order to quickly scan the area around him, but finding nothing. But the noise was most certainly still there, and combined with the ever-increasing volume of moans from below, was causing Danny a great deal of concern. “’Sit tight Danny’ they said, ‘you’ll be fine up there’ they said”, Danny mumbled under his breath in a clearly aggravated tone.

  Finally, as enough force was applied in just the right spot, the source of the noise became more apparent. To the very far left of Danny’s vision, he saw the slightest amount of movement, coming from over where he had first emerged onto this rooftop. The roof-access door was moving, if only slightly, as someone or something repeatedly barged into it, wedging it ajar for a second or so at a time. The dead were trying to get onto the roof, and it sounded like there were far more than just a couple of them.

  “God damn it”, Danny said to no one in particular.

  * * *

  In the north-east corner of the United Center stadium, on the highest floor on the side of the building that overlooked the car-park with views that continued on into the city, was a particularly executive looking office. Measuring around nine metres squared, the office was entered through a thick metal door, which remained closed at all times, and was intended to be kept that way by strict order.

  Inside the office was a sea of mahogany and oak. Cabinets, dressers, tables and even lamps were made of solid, expensive wood that made the room feel as if it were oozing with overflowing luxury. The lights were dimmable, the carpet so thick it seemed as if you could lose a shoe in it, and the huge floor to ceiling windows gave a better view than was available to almost anyone else in the area, if not for the slightly grey car-park visible in the more immediate vicinity.

  This office had clearly never been intended for the average employee of this stadium, and was never seen by any of the twenty-three thousand spectators that might once have crammed in to see a basketball game, concert or hockey match. This office was intended for the higher ups, the big bosses who had no desire to mingle with other people, and right now it was living up to that expectation more than ever, with a single lonesome figure sat comfortably in the several-thousand-dollar chair that took pride of place behind the huge desk in the centre of the room.

  Sitting there, surveying his empire through his huge, tinted from the outside windows, was a man known only as RP. Wearing full military fatigues and armed with a standard issue Beretta M9 attached to his side, RP looked as if he were ready for war. But then, for as long as anybody had known the man, he’d always been dressed in exactly the same way. Every day he emerged from his office in a freshly pressed, pristinely clean uniform, despite rarely leaving the stadium, and everyday everyone there knew better than to ask him why.

  As best as anybody could tell, RP had not long since turned fifty when the world had come to a halt, though his level of fitness hid that fact well. With his incredibly well defined jawline, his perfect six-foot height, and a large but not overly noticeable muscle definition that spread throughout his body, RP made for a formidable sight. As was almost predictable given the man’s persona, he had as of yet, never once been known to smile.

  In fact, his entire personality was much the same story as his look. Known to rarely give anyone a break, many reported witnessing him striking down members of his own group who disobeyed orders, or even those who simply failed to complete them to his high expectations. But the man was not unreasonable as such, he made fair requests of capable people, and expected results, he simply didn’t appreciate it when those people didn’t deliver.

  RP was known to have had a military background, but the specifics of it was something he’d kept to himself. That said, even if not for the military uniform and drill-instructor like barking of orders and methods of discipline, his history of serving would have been obvious from his plans alone. The man’s every move was calculated, his instructions meticulously planned out ahead of time to ensure nothing went wrong. His ideas were akin to espionage films and action movies, but with the difference that they almost always went off without a hitch. In fact, the success rate of his many plans were one of the driving forces behind the continued support shown to him by the men and women who served under him, especially during times when his anger got the best of him.

  But just a day prior, one of his bigger fits of rage had gripped the entire camp. News of a failed mission had filtered back through the ranks, until RP had eventually been told, by a lowly recruit that had obviously drawn the short straw. Said recruit had gone into the man’s office filled with fear, but was otherwise in perfectly good condition. He’d left however, in the arms of two other men, who’d had to drag him out an hour or so later, when they’d gone in to find him unconscious and covered in his own blood. RP, meanwhile, had simply returned to his chair and begun drawing out his next set of plans, ignoring the body in the middle of his floor.

  Accordingly, it had come as no surprise that upon finding out about the demise of two more soldiers, nobody had wanted the job of delivering the news. What changed things this time however, was that while the loss of not one, but two men, was of course a huge blow to a group struggling to grow, it did at least have a silver lining. Despite the tragic loss, some vital intelligence had been gained.

  Standing at the door with knuckles raised and ready to rap, but the hand that moved them unwilling to finish the final movement forward to the cold hard metal in front, Rust hesitated for more than a few seconds, his long grey hair dangling down along each side of his face. Tucking in his ragged flannel shirt, and making sure to pull as much of his scraggly hair back behind his head as he could, he made one final attempt to summon up the courage to do what needed to be done, and then finally knocked loudly.

  “Come in”, boomed a Georgian voice from inside the room.

  Slowly Rust depressed the handle in front, shoved the door gently ajar, and then cautiously stepped inside, allowing the door to swing shut with a loud bang behind him once he was a few steps in.

  “What is it?”, RP asked, “I’m busy”, he continued, not looking up from the large map that was laid out in front of him, a pen in his hand scribbling annotations in various different parts.

  “Got some bad news over the radio b-boss”, Rust began, stammering slightly despite his normally confident demeanour.

  “Yeah? Well spit it out, what is it?”, RP asked, still looking down at his map, but now no longer scribbling.

  “Eddy and that other fella he hung out with, they… they got taken down”, Rust explained.

  “By the dead?”, RP asked, his eyes now wandering around the room slightly, but not quite looking up to the figure on the other side of his desk.

  “No”, Rust replied, “By some survivors, at least two, best we can tell”.

  With that, the room somehow managed to go even stiller. RP’s eyes had stopped wandering, his hands had gone steady as a rock, and it seemed as if even the slight breeze that managed to seep into the room through various small cracks in the building’s structure had opted to cease temporarily. The room took on a deathly silence, that lingered for far longer than any normal person would have liked, until it was eventually interrupted by RP slamming his pen hard onto the desk, and then snapping his neck upwards to stare dead into the eyes of the man that had brought the bad news.

  “What happened?”, he asked, not quite yelling, but far from speaking calmly.

  “Well boss…”, Rust hesitated, “We’re not too sure, we think-“.

  “Fuck what you think god damn it! What do we KNOW!?”, RP demanded.

  Rust flinched slightly with the sudden volume change, before taking a moment to find composure and then continuing. “The fella Rust was out with, he must have got the radio out or something, and managed to jam the broadcast button on for a few seconds. We heard shots, then these two assholes talking with some other fella over another radio, then –“.
r />   “Where were they?”, RP interrupted.

  “Over by the apartment block, the sniper’s nest that Eddy was using”, Rust explained.

  “Then what the fuck are you doing here?”, RP asked.

  “Well boss, we just wondered if you had a plan for the situation, we didn’t want to just go charging out”, Rust reasoned.

  “No, don’t charge out”, RP confirmed, raising up a hand to gesture against the idea, “Do we have men out that way?”, he asked.

  “Couple clicks further south, but near enough”, Rust replied.

  “Good”, RP said, before looking down at the map in front, focusing now on the area surrounding the apartment block that had served as an incredibly useful lookout spot thus far, “Here’s the plan…”.

  Chapter 24: Fight or flight

  When a gathering of the dead numbers in the tens of thousands, it’s no surprise that progress tends to be slow. The average biter walks at barely more than a mile an hour, and whilst groups tend to move a little quicker – shoving each other forwards was an inevitability with such low levels of coordination and balance – they were still far from becoming competitive speed-walkers.

  In the last couple of days, the informally titled super-horde had grown even more. Sweeping through areas as a group now eight or nine roads wide in size meant that just about every single biter in the area was joining in, huge numbers pulled inside every time the army landed at the next town, or worse, the next city. The numbers had grown so large that the super-horde was now big enough to completely populate every inch of some of the smaller areas, and at present showed no signs of slowing down.

  During its most recent stop off in Oak View, along the coastline of Wisconsin, its numbers had been packed in so densely that they’d even begun to pick up vehicles, bringing them along for the ride out of sheer force. Many of the dead had been pinned so hard against the metal frames that they’d eventually been torn apart, but for every biter that was lost in such a way, the horde gained another ten, and often, temporarily, a vehicle.

  It was remarkable in more ways than one, but perhaps most remarkable was its sense of direction. More than two days prior, the deafening explosion of a downed helicopter had diverted the group away from its previous heading and set them on a new course. But despite having nobody to assist them, and nothing but the coastline to give them any idea when they’d strayed too far, the group had remained true to their new heading, and had done so for an impressive forty-eight hours of walking. Such incredible feats made it difficult to insist that the dead had lost all but their essential functions.

  * * *

  “You’re making the right decision”, Andrew called over to Sonja, who stood on the other side of the F150 to him, as the two worked together to guide a particularly large box of supplies into the rear bed of the truck. Andrew had looked up from the task to notice her clearly conflicted state, and felt the need to offer the words of reassurance. “I promise you’ll see that soon enough”.

  “I hope so Andrew”, Sonja replied, “But right now, I’m finding it hard to believe”.

  It was just after three in the morning in the sleepy city of Milwaukee, on a night of particularly poor visibility due to some fog that was coming in from the lake just a short distance away. The sky seemed blacker than usual, and lighting in the car-park was slim to none, which when combined with the early hour made for a trio of reasons why loading up a truck was not the ideal activity. But, given the camp’s recent decision to pack up and leave, there were somewhat exceptional circumstances.

  The biggest reason was that the three remaining residents of the car-park – Lester, Sonja and Andrew – had no idea when exactly they’d be going. Upon sending off the last of their civilian residents on the previous boat a few days prior, they’d informed the guards from Chicago to cancel their usual rota of sending a new vessel regularly, given there’d be nobody to bring back on it. In response, they’d been told to expect a check-up visit every few days, but weren’t given anything more specific.

  Accordingly, when the group had decided it was time to leave, they’d had to start working fast. Without knowing when a boat would come, it had become important to be ready as quickly as possible, just in case it appeared on the horizon the very next day. As such, Andrew and Sonja had spent the last few hours packing up everything of value into the rear bed of the F150, ready to transport it over to the docks and then unload into a boat, just as soon as one appeared.

  Lester meanwhile had opted to take watch over the camp. Presently stood on the rooftop, rifle in hand, he was doing what he could to scope out any potential threats in the heavy fog that was presently encircling the building. Visibility was down to a very poor twenty or so metres, but that twenty or so metres might just be the difference between spotting a threat before it became a problem, and wishing they had done so, from the middle of an overrun building.

  That said, the camp remained as safe as it had done to date. With the empty windows of the car-park boarded up, and the front entrance blocked by a movable semi-truck – which had itself been boarded up to prevent crawlers from getting underneath – the camp was near impossible for the occasional biter to find its way in, and it had been some time since the last human threat had presented itself.

  “What’s left to get?”, Sonja asked of Andrew, after pushing down the last box to make sure it wasn’t going to roll around in the back of the truck.

  “Only thing left is the rifles”, Andrew said, “They’re up top, I’ll go get them”.

  “No”, Sonja said, raising her hand, “Who knows if we’re gonna’ need them sometime between now and whenever the hell we get picked up, I don’t want to be rooting around in this thing looking for a gun if someone we don’t like comes knocking”, she said, patting the side of the truck.

  “Good call”, Andrew confirmed, nodding his head, “In that case, I think we’re pretty much done”.

  It was both a happy and sad realisation for both of them, albeit more so for Sonja. The camp, which had served its purpose for longer than she could remember, now looked like an abandoned, deserted home that someone had moved out of, hoping and praying some new owner might appear and breathe life back into the vacant property. But it was highly unlikely that anybody new would be coming around, at least not for some time anyway, and that was something Sonja hated to think about.

  Thankfully however she was interrupted from her mental reminiscing over the many happy – or at least safe – times she’d experienced since co-founding the car-park settlement, by the faint sound of banging, coming from the main entrance to the building. The noise was familiar, it was the sound of a biter clanging their flailing limbs against the side of the truck parked out front, presumably attracted to something inside and trying desperately to find its way in.

  “I got it”, came a voice from the nearby stairwell, Lester’s deep tone unmistakable between the three remaining residents, and for that matter unmistakable amongst most people. The man’s heavy frame meant for some particularly loud footsteps, which banged down at regular intervals as he descended down to the ground floor, before taking off at an enthusiastic pace past Andrew and Sonja over towards the entrance, muttering to himself. “I don’t know why some of these assholes just can’t walk on past”.

  Smiling at her counterpart as he thundered by, Sonja then turned her attention back to Andrew, opting to change her somewhat depressed tone and try her hardest to instead look forward to the future.

  “Bet you’re excited to see your family again?”, she asked.

  “More than you can imagine”, Andrew replied, pushing his glasses back up his nose as a large grin spread across his face, itself in turn pulling them back down slightly, “And you’ve gotta’ be excited to see your people?”.

  “Sure am”, Sonja confirmed, “I just hope the guards over there are ready for a strong woman to come in and mix things up, I ain’t taking no civilian job when I get over there”, she insisted.

  “I’m sure John will
have something waiting for you”, Andrew chuckled excitedly.

  Suddenly something changed. The now faint sound of footsteps Lester was giving off had gone quiet upon his arrival at his destination, but had now returned. This time though they were somehow even louder, banging away ferociously as the huge figure sprinted in their direction, seemingly having spent barely a few seconds outside.

  “WE NEED TO GO, NOW!”, he yelled loudly across the building.

  “Keep your voice down!”, Sonja yelled back in a slightly lower tone.

  “IT DOESN’T MATTER ANYMORE!”, Lester yelled again, before eventually arriving at the truck next to which the others were stood and quickly reaching into the back.

  “Lester”, Andrew started, “What’s-“.

  “A horde, a big horde, like nothing I’ve ever seen before, we need to go, now!”, he insisted, “Grab what you can carry”.

  “Why can’t we just wait it out in here like we normally do?”, Sonja asked, still not fully appreciating the gravity of the situation.

  Turning to face the woman, Lester tried desperately to convey just exactly how serious the situation was with his face alone, before eventually realising he was going to need to give an explanation. “The fog cleared long enough for me to see at least a mile down the road”, he said, just as the combined sound of moaning began to filter in from outside, “And even then, I didn’t see the last of ‘em”.

  Still not entirely convinced, but now much more worried than she had been, Sonja quickly ran over to the large gap in the wall that ran the full length of the building’s ground floor, and peeled back a strip of boarding that had been placed to cover it, just enough to get a view outside. Immediately her eyes widened. Looking right towards Chicago, almost every single visible object was moving. Thousands of the dead were in the street, thousands more interspersed between the various buildings on each side, and thousands more appeared to be walking along the dock. She could see a truck on its side being shoved along amongst the masses, and what seemed at times to be such huge concentrations of the dead that they were actually piled up vertically whilst moving. This was no average threat, no run of the mill grouping of the dead, posing somewhat of a concern but nothing they couldn’t wait out in the sanctuary of the car-park, this was the big one.