“Multiple snipers on you, do not attempt to move”.
Danny’s heart immediately sank, a lump forming in his throat.
“Look to your right”, it continued.
Danny turned to his right, looking a little further down the street at the next apartment block along, itself a floor or so smaller than his. Sure enough, on top of the air conditioning unit – which brought them roughly up to his current level – were two men, one laying down on the floor holding what looked like a sniper rifle, and another stood up straight, piloting the controls for the drone.
“Leave all your guns on the floor, then walk to the door and open it. DON’T DO ANYTHING STUPID”.
Danny couldn’t believe it. Until recently he’d felt like he was the one with the upper hand, the person with the best view of what was going on, but it turned out he was just another sap being watched over by somebody else, somebody who probably knew a lot better than he did how to use a sniper rifle. Suddenly he thought of the walkie talkie in his hand, and wondered if he might be able to warn the others, but that definitely seemed like it came under the category of stupid. Instead, he reached for his pistol at an incredibly slow pace, unclipping it from his belt, and then lowered both his radio and pistol down to the floor.
What the sniper on the other rooftop couldn’t see though – or at least that’s what Danny hoped – was that the main reason for Danny’s slow speed was not so much to reduce the risk of him being shot, but more to increase the amount of times he could hit the button on his radio. He didn’t dare try and say anything, but he was certain that he could at least get the attention of the others, even if he couldn’t explain why. Eventually, upon releasing the button for the final time and standing back up straight with neither a gun, nor a radio on his person, he had no choice but to head over to the door.
Almost ever since he’d reached the rooftop, he’d heard the sound of the dead whaling against the other side of that cold, metal door. The idea of them breaking through had haunted his every moment, but the idea of opening it by choice had never crossed his mind. Feeling utterly pathetic for how easily he’d fallen into someone else’s trap, he reluctantly reached the door, unhooked the rope and chain contraption he’d tied around it, and prepared himself for whatever was about to come surging through.
But before pulling the door in front ajar, he couldn’t help but notice the small pool of blood that had seeped through from the other side. The dead accidentally taking one another out was not unheard of, especially when they were concentrated on an area as small as a doorway at the top of a flight of stairs, but Danny was certain there had been more than a few waiting to get him, and he found it very unlikely they’d all taken care of each other.
Pulling open the door and then quickly stepping back in anticipation of what was about to come charging through, Danny prepared himself for the worst. But what he found himself facing was not a member of the undead, or several for that matter. Instead, stood on top of a small pile of bodies that had evidently been put down in the previous few minutes, was an unfamiliar face, drenched in blood and holding a sawn-off-shotgun in one hand, with a bloodied axe in the other, his long grey hair hanging down by the sides of his face.
“Seems you’ve been spying on us”, said Rust.
Though Danny didn’t know the name yet, he did suddenly come to the realisation of something else; the two men he’d seen on top of the store near the stadium weren’t John and Devon. Instead, he was now pretty sure, they were about to ambush them.
Chapter 26: Sprinting distance
John and Devon had made significant progress over the last hour, moving quickly despite the difficulty of their crouched positions, hugging close to the sides of the numerous parked vehicles that stretched up past the stadium. It was an uncomfortable and unforgiving posture to try and hold, and was definitely not the best for either man’s joints, but true to their personas, neither had yet complained.
At present, they were just a hundred or so metres from the nearest guard-station. They’d long since been able to make out the outlines of people stationed in the makeshift tower, and upon doing so had slowed their pace even more. Despite the cover the vehicles on their right-hand-side were providing them, they had no desire to get into a ranged firefight with a group of people much larger than themselves on their own front doorstep.
In addition, their current position meant they would shortly be within range to get a good look at the rear-guard tower, marking a point where they would then have seen the vast majority of the stadium, if only briefly. Although they weren’t expecting many surprises, being able to return to camp with knowledge of how the entire stadium was laid out was important, and finding that information out from up close was even better.
“How much longer till we can get a good eye on this thing”, Devon whispered forwards over John’s shoulder, the younger man evidently getting a little tired of their current pace.
“Not long”, John replied, “We go much further and they’ll see us coming”.
“Yeah, and what happens if they do?”, Devon asked.
“Let’s just hope they don’t”, John replied, dismissing the inquiry as if it were irrelevant.
But it was very much relevant. They’d already taken out two of the stadium’s guards earlier in the day, and with little hesitation for that matter. Downtown Chicago might not be a camp of violent people, but this had most certainly been a violent day. Devon only wanted to know whether he should expect more bloodshed before the day was out, something he felt he more than deserved to know.
“I’m serious John”, he tried again, “How many of these guys are we planning on putting down”.
With that, John stopped, realising this was a conversation they may be better having whilst not on the move. Slowly, taking care not to knock into anything that might cause a significant amount of noise, he twisted his body back around, and then sat down on the ground, with his left shoulder now pressed against the nearest car door, and his gaze turned to Devon.
“I’m not against bloodshed, I just need to know what to expect”, Devon reasoned.
“Well so far as I’m concerned, I’m not looking for a fight”, John explained.
“And if one comes looking for us?”, Devon asked.
“Then you know as well as I do that we’ve got too much waiting for us back at camp to just lay down and die out here”, John replied.
It was a fair response. Since his arrival at Chicago, John hadn’t met a single person with any real desire for combat. Long gone were the days of roaming out in the wilderness, coming across bandits whose sole intention was to murder and steal. John now lived in a secure, quiet community, where the deadliest risks were the self-inflicted culling sessions of the dead that roamed around on the other side of the walls. But all of this didn’t mean they weren’t willing to kill the living, it just meant doing so needed to be necessary. There needed to be a real threat to a member of the community, or indeed the community at large, and when the stadium camp had sent someone into the confines of Downtown Chicago, they had presented that risk loud and clear.
“What if this place is just like ours”, Devon pondered, reaching into his backpack and taking out a bottle of water, before opening it and taking a sip, “What if most of the people in there are just innocent civilians”.
“Do you really think the kind of camp that has guards like the ones we’ve seen makes a point of looking after people that are no use to them?”, John asked, “Something tells me these are the kinds of guys that don’t keep anything around that they can’t use”.
“Probably”, Devon agreed, “But what if they’re just putting on a show, hell John what if this isn’t even the same group of people that came to our place?”.
“Look”, John said, stopping Devon’s train of thought, “I’m not planning on taking a shot unless I have to, we’re here on recon, that’s all”.
“Might want to remind Danny of that”, Devon pointed out, “That kid’s so nervous with th
at rifle he could let a shot off by accident at any moment”.
“Oh please”, John said, chuckling slightly, “That boy isn’t gonna’ take a shot, he’s terrified of the damn thing”.
“Then why’d you leave him up there?”, Devon asked.
“Because if shit hits the fan, I need someone down here with me that’s willing to do what we had to do with those other two guys back there”, John explained, nodding back down the street to where they had earlier gunned down two members of the stadium group, “And Danny sure as shit wouldn’t have been up for that”.
Danny was an interesting character to John. The boy was confident and cocky when back at base, and even more so when allowed outside of the walls on one of his bait missions. He was so cocky in fact that he’d begged to come along on the mission, and had been the first to volunteer to climb the radio tower, yet in both cases had turned to a nervous wreck the second things started to get a little dicey. It was clear to John that Danny wanted the opportunity to grow, and to better his ability to survive this new world, but it was also clear that just maybe, he might not be all that cut out for it.
At that very moment, a faint noise filtered into earshot, sending both men into a frenzy of spinning on the spot, trying to seek out the source.
“What is that”, John asked of nobody in particular, dropping down under the car next to them to look for clues, and then checking up along the street to make sure nothing was headed towards them.
“I think it’s the radio”, Devon eventually said, pointing down to John’s side after himself also having spent a good period of time frantically searching for the source.
With that, it became obvious that it was indeed the radio. Unclipping it from his belt, John held the device closer to his ear, and before long had figured out what that familiar sound was. “Someone’s hitting the transmit button over and over”, John explained, as the repeated sound of clicking continued to come out of the device, a quick buzz accompanying each one.
“Is it Danny?”, Devon asked, looking back to the apartment block, despite being well out of range of the building.
“Haven’t heard anybody else on this frequency”, John pointed out, just as the clicking stopped.
“Well what the hell was all that about?”, Devon asked now that silence had returned.
“Sounded like he was trying to send a message”, John theorised, before another click sounded out, this time in the back of his own mind. “Shit”, he said quietly, throwing his hand around the receiver of his rifle, which was at present pointed down at the ground.
“EASY NOW!”, came a loud voice from above, a figure now stood on top of the single storey store-front instead, “Let’s keep those weapons lowered shall we!”, it continued.
Devon froze, his only movement coming in the form of his own re-gripping of his rifle. “What do we do?”, he asked of John.
“Nothing”, John replied hastily.
“Nothing?”, Devon questioned, “It’s one guy on both of us!”.
“I seriously, seriously doubt there’s only one of them”, John replied at a normal volume, seeing no point in remaining quiet, and shaking his head at the shame of walking right into an ambush.
“You’d be right on that front”, came a new voice, this time emerging from inside the store in front, strolling out with a full-stock shotgun half-way raised, ready for combat but not quite ready to fire. “See when you get this close to our camp, it’s only because we let you”, the voice explained, “And the only reason we let you, is because we wanted to make sure we had you in exactly the right spot”.
“John, this is still two on two, and we have Danny”, Devon whispered.
John simply turned to look at Devon, and shook his head.
Devon was a winner. He’d been the best in every class he’d taken in college, been the king of football at every team he’d played for, risen through the ranks quicker than anyone he’d so far met in the military, and had even had the highest patient satisfaction rate in his entire hospital’s surgical department. He wasn’t used to losing, he wasn’t even used to coming second or third, he was a man who would accept nothing less than perfection, and that made what was happening right now all the more difficult to handle.
“On your feet!”, yelled the voice from up top, their facial features obscured by the small amount of sun that was making its way through the clouded skies to their rear, “NOW!”.
With that, both men slowly rose up from the ground, a movement that was made all the more difficult due to the sheer amount of time they’d spent crouch-walking, and one that was all the more relieving for the same reason.
“Weapons on the ground, knives too!”, continued the voice after a brief pause of confusion as the ambushing men watched John and Devon rise at an awkwardly slow pace, each of them stretching out various muscles and cracking bones as they did.
Slowly they complied, Devon opting to unhook his entire belt and place it onto the ground alongside his M16, while John preferred to manually remove his various weapons, including his beloved Ruger SR22 and hunting knife, two items he’d had by his side since the very beginning.
Staring down at the small pistol, and by contrast the huge knife, he couldn’t help but silently reminisce for a moment. That knife, despite its presently shiny and sharpened state, had single-handedly brought down more of the dead than John could count, and had gotten him out of more than its fair share of tricky situations. Once upon a time he’d even used it for opening cans and cutting open various pieces of packaged food, but given its more recent usage, he’d long since abandoned that practice for hygiene reasons.
His pistol meanwhile was an even more difficult item to simply lay down on the ground. The tiny Ruger had killed both the dead and the living, helping to keep not only John alive, but his family and those around him as well. The SR22 had never been intended for the kind of usage John had put it through, but that hadn’t stopped it from delivering nonetheless. It had been a complete and utter asset to him throughout the apocalypse, and it was one thing he had no intention of losing.
Finally, he placed down his M16. The long assault rifle was surprisingly the easiest of his items to part with. Despite being by far the most sophisticated, the deadliest, and the most impressive of the trio, it simply didn’t have the kind of relationship with John as the other two items had. Having been given it from hundreds of similar rifles scavenged by the Chicago camp, it lacked the kind of personality he normally liked from his weapons; it was just one in a million, it wasn’t his.
In any case, parting with all three weapons was a truly uncomfortable moment for the man. In all his time since the world had come to an end, he couldn’t honestly think of another moment where he’d been unarmed, at least not for more than a few seconds. With the way the world was now, being without a gun was practically suicidal, with no shortage of both people and beings around that would happily take advantage upon running into a defenceless individual without the means to fight back.
“Good, now take a couple steps forward, away from the weapons”, boomed the voice from above once more, as the figure to the left began to close in on the pair. “Let’s keep this civil”, it continued, “We’re under orders not to kill you, but you better believe we’re willing to if you make us”.
“You hear that?”, Devon attempted to say quietly to John, barely moving his lips with the words, “If they aren’t able to kill us, why don’t-“.
“BANG”.
John flinched, startled by the sudden sound and instinctively bracing himself to leap to the nearest cover, but stopping before the motion begun upon remembering their current orders. It was all he could do not to reach back and grab his gun, or at least to go sprinting off into the distance. Clearly this was not a situation he was at all comfortable being in, and the nothing said that more than his contorted facial expressions.
Looking around, John first checked himself for damage, and then looked up to the figure on top of the roof. Stood there, rifle lowered
in their left hand and now a pistol drawn in its place in their right, they cut a menacing shape, silhouetted on top by the sun behind. Slowly smoke billowed from the tip of whatever ancient looking pistol they were holding, itself pointed back down below, over to John’s left hand side.
Turning to face Devon, John realised where the bullet had landed. Now crouched down on the floor, with a small but very much growing pool of blood clearly visible beneath him, Devon clutched his left leg, more specifically taking hold of the left-hand side of his thigh, where the bullet had roared past, just barely grazing the skin but causing enough pain and damage to render him unable to stand all the same.
“What the fuck was that for!?”, John yelled, losing his cool at the sight of his friend now torn down, his hand gushing with blood from the superficial but still damaging wound.
With that, the figure on the rooftop turned his gaze to John, moved forwards to the edge of the rooftop, lowered himself down as far as he could, and then jumped onto the ground below. Walking up to John, he cocked back the handle of whatever wild-west looking pistol he was currently brandishing, and then pressed it hard against John’s forehead.
“Watch your god-damn mouth”, the man said, just as everything went black.
Chapter 27: Navigation
Eyesight will always remain one of the most important senses gifted to the human race. It allows us to see what’s around us, affords us the ability to visually inspect items of magnificent colour and shape, and in the new world, it was a person’s best chance of surviving the dead. But one’s ability to see clearly can be severely diminished for a number of reasons. The most obvious might be a lack of light, whilst the most common might simply be poor vision. But in John’s case, sitting in the back of a truck with his hands cable-tied behind his back, the reason was that a hood had been placed over his head.
Road to Grissom: Part three of the Aftermath series Page 22