“We’re so close now,” Caroline urged.
“We’ve come so far, Michael. And you’re the one who has led us here,” Charla offered her support. “Now we’re here for you. We’ve made it. We just have to finish the journey. We’re on the last leg.”
“Huh,” Michael couldn’t help but laugh through the tears he was fighting to hold back. “I feel like I’m on my last leg,” he snorted.
The rest of the group couldn’t help but join him in the slight bit of humor he found in his miserable state. Even in such a condition, their patriarch was doing his best to find some light in a dark situation.
Patrick and Wendell helped Michael slowly to his feet, each holding an arm until they reached the top of the steps where Michael finally shook them free.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he smoothed his shirtsleeves where they’d been rumpled by the grips of the two men.
“You sure, Dad?” Patrick whispered.
His father just nodded silently, the pained look on his face indicating he was anything but.
The group stopped almost directly beneath the bent top of the arch over 600 feet above them.
Patrick said to Justin and Louise, “If we stay here, I’ll try to get you up to the top. I was up there once when I was six. Don’t remember too much about it, but I remember it being a pretty cool view.”
“How do you get up there?” Justin asked.
“They have elevators inside,” Patrick said.
“I think they’re called trams, as I recall,” his father corrected. “Elevators go straight up and down. Can’t do that inside an arch.”
“Whatever they’re called, I don’t think they’ll be working so we’ll probably have to use the stairs.”
“Going to be a lot of stairs,” Justin breathed in awe.
“Sure are,” Louise nodded, looking up to follow the curvature of the arch from base to top and back down again.
“More stairs than even the tower,” Justin said.
“You can bet on that,” Ms. Mary agreed. “I don’t think I’ll be making that trip with you.”
“Me either,” Caroline added.
“I’d like to see it,” Andrew Franko said.
“Me too,” his brother agreed.
“I’d go,” Marta nodded.
“I’d be up for that,” Charla said too.
“If we get settled here, first,” Wendell reminded her.
“What do they keep inside?” Louise asked.
“What? Inside the arch?” Patrick said. “Well, nothing really. At least I don’t think so.”
“Can you see out of it?” Louise pressed. “I don’t see any windows.”
“They’re way up at the top. You can’t see them from here,” Patrick explained. But at the very top, there is a sort of observation area with windows.”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t seem very safe,” Louise said timidly, shaking her head. “And that’s a loooong way up,” she craned her head back to look up again.
“It’s safe,” Patrick reassured her. “They built it to be safe. And it’s been here for a long time, right Dad? When was it built?”
“Sixties, I think,” Michael said. “I can’t remember for sure, but somewhere in the early to mid-sixties if my memory serves me.”
“So it has been here for well over half a century, and it looks just fine,” Patrick reassured the kids.
“We’d better get moving if we want to find out what the situation is here,” Michael reminded them of their priorities. “We’ll have time for this sort of stuff later if everything shakes out.”
“Dad’s right,” Patrick agreed. “Let’s roll.”
“But roll where?” Charla asked.
The group stood, scanning the rows of buildings facing them from downtown St. Louis.
“Looks like there’s some smoke rising over that way,” Wendell pointed through the buildings slightly to their left. “Could be where the settlement is.”
“Guess it’s our best bet. It at least gives us a starting point,” Michael said.
* * *
It took the Blenders a little over a quarter of an hour, slowed by Michael’s dwindling physical condition, to get from the parkland surrounding the arch into downtown St. Louis. They made their way past a large Catholic cathedral and across an overpass that spanned Interstate 44.
Around them, the streets were littered with debris. There were burned out vehicles, knocked over street barricades, toppled shopping carts, and trash, clothing, and assorted other garbage strewn about. There were also the occasional decomposed carcasses of what the group assumed were dead biters sprinkled among the trash. Most of these carcasses were skeletons by this point in their decay.
“Certainly doesn’t look like this area has been inhabited for some time,” Ms. Mary observed.
“And it doesn’t look like anyone has made an effort at cleaning it up since the Carchar outbreak,” Charla noted.
“Doesn’t bode well for our prospects of finding people living here,” Wendell added.
“Remember, the city is big, and this is only a small section of it,” Michael reminded them. “Let’s say the remaining populace only numbers a few thousand, or even just a few hundred people. They may not need more than a couple square blocks of city in which to reside.”
“If that,” Ms. Mary agreed.
“And we aren’t even to the spot where we saw the smoke yet,” Michael continued. “That, in all likelihood, is where the people would be if they are here.”
The group kept walking down Walnut Street until they passed a large parking lot to their left.
“Look!” Patrick pointed across the empty parking lot. “Isn’t that the baseball stadium?”
“It is,” his father nodded. “And it looks like it’s the source of the smoke we noticed earlier. Let’s cut through the parking lot and check it out.”
“Stadium like that would make a great place to hold out,” Wendell observed. “Like a giant Coliseum.”
“A big bowl,” Christine nodded. “Block off the entrances and you have a huge self-contained fortress.”
“With self contained farmland,” Ms. Mary added. “All that space that comprises the ball field could be put to use growing crops. Add some fertilizer, and with the right people to tend it, you could have a several acre farm from which to feed a sizeable populace.”
“Good point,” Ms. Mary. “I think you might have something there,” Michael agreed as they walked.
“What a great idea!” Charla said. “It’s like the tower, but better. You can spread out and have both indoor and outdoor spaces. There’s plenty of room for a lot of people. Heck, they’re probably living in those awesome VIP suites. Those always look so comfortable on television. I’ve never been in one, but I can imagine that they’re pretty nice. Plus, that would put you up high, out of reach of the biters, just like our tower, but nicer. These people might really have it made. If they’ve been here for…”
But Charla’s words trailed off as the group neared the south side of the parking lot, closing in on the stadium across the street.
“What the heck happened here?” Christine breathed aloud.
“My God,” Charla put her hand to her chest.
“Okay people,” Michael said as reassuringly as he could, “guns out. Kids behind adults,” he instructed firmly. “Be ready for anything.”
Biters were everywhere – dead biters. They were at the edge of the parking lot. They were sprinkled throughout the street running in front of the stadium.
The group crossed Clark Avenue and followed historic Route 66 until they came to the stadium’s third base entrance. Here, the dead biters were strewn thickly. It looked almost as if they’d been lined up and then gunned down. Some were laying one atop the other.
Just beyond the piles of bodies, the stadium’s steel entry gates were smashed open.
“Looks like vehicles were driven through the gates,” Wendell said, skirting the dead biters scattered around them.
“Hold on,” Patrick pulled a bandana from his back pocket and moved over to where Louise was staring around her, a horrified look on her face. He knelt beside her. “Just a second, honey,” he said to her as he unfolded the bandana, folded it lengthwise, and placed it over her eyes. Then he pulled it around behind her head and tied it. “You don’t need to see this,” he whispered to her. “It’ll give you bad dreams. Here,” he took her by the hand. “We’ll make it a game. You can’t look. I have to be your guide. Okay?”
“Okay,” Louise said softly.
Marta came over to where the two of them stood. “Good thinking. Thank you,” she smiled at Patrick.
“Sure thing,” Patrick smiled back. “World’s a hard place now, but some things need to remain intact…one of them being some semblance of our children’s innocence. It’s too late for Justin. He’s seen too much already. But Louise, well, she still has some shot of one day forgetting all this, or at least a lot of it…I hope.”
Michael smiled, watching his son. His boy’s thoughtfulness warmed his heart. “Come on, let’s check inside,” he said. “Keep a close eye out. We don’t want any survivors who might still be here thinking we’re biters.”
Michael led them in through the stadium gates. Wendell helped him traverse several of the vehicle-crashed gates since Patrick was busy guiding Louise.
The gaps in the gates’ steel bars made it difficult to climb over them. But after a minute of stumbling and wobbling, the group had picked their way through the dismantled entrances, careful to avoid the biter gore around them.
The group then worked their way through a maze of dead biters just inside the gates.
“This all looks like it happened recently,” Charla said.
“Very recently,” Wendell added.
“Like as in the past day,” Christine said as she sidestepped a biter who had apparently taken several bullets to the head. Blood – not yet completely dried – had formed a sizeable puddle around the impact zone that Christine had to hop over.
At this point, Patrick picked up Louise, carrying her over the ooze as it had become too difficult to guide her by hand. She rested her chin on Patrick’s shoulder, her arms around his neck, her legs gripping his abdomen like a baby monkey.
The Blenders carefully worked their way into the interior of the stadium, the number of dead biters diminishing as they went. But a troubling new indication of what had transpired at the stadium became evident as they walked. While the number of dead biters – evidenced by the tattered clothes they wore, their lack of personal hygiene, and of course, their front teeth – had fallen, they had been replaced by dead humans.
“This isn’t good,” Michael said quietly, shaking his head as they continued toward the stadium’s seating areas and field.
“No kidding,” Wendell snorted.
“These people weren’t killed by biters,” Ms. Mary looked at the death and destruction around her. “Look,” she pointed at one dead body, a middle-aged man, “he’s been shot. And look there,” she pointed toward the concrete wall behind where the man had fallen. The wall was pockmarked with impacts from bullets. “There has been a firefight here. And it wasn’t just the defenders of this stadium fighting off the biters. There were others…others with guns.”
Michael nodded. He looked bad. He was breathing heavily, sweating profusely, and was extremely pale. His hands were trembling. Ms. Mary wasn’t sure if the symptoms were from his infection, the scene around them, the increasingly apparent indications that something bad had gone down at what they had hoped would be their safe haven, or some combination thereof.
They continued walking, doing their best to make their approach to the interior of the stadium as stealthily as they could.
The dead bodies sprawled around them continued as they made their way through a sort of short tunnel that led into the stadium’s seating sections. A few moments later, they exited into the stands facing what was once the baseball field’s third base.
Before them was a scene of destruction. The field, which appeared to have once served as a sort of farm and open-air market, was decimated. The outfield was formed into furrowed rows. The infield had housed several structures that were now largely destroyed. There were the charred remnants of several wooden buildings. Tents that had been erected in the diamond were torn down, slashed to bits, or had been burned. Dead bodies were strewn around the field, interspersed amidst the destruction.
The Blenders stood, looking around, dumbfounded and uncertain as to their next move.
Finally, Michael said, “I need to sit down.” He staggered down several steps and slowly lowered himself into one of the folding seats, using the seatback in front of him to assist his descent. “Will the rest of you make a search of the place for anything of use? You can leave the kids with me.”
“Sure, Dad,” Patrick said, letting Louise slide from him.
“Let’s spread out and make a thorough search,” Patrick said. “Keep your eyes and ears open, but this place looks like a ghost town.”
He was right. It was eerily silent inside the massive stadium. Several large birds had alighted on corpses in the field, taking an occasional peck at the cold, still flesh on which they stood. The sun continued to shine and a light breeze wafted the smoldering embers of several of the destroyed infield structures.
Michael knew that it wouldn’t take much longer in this sort of weather for the decay to take hold and the rot to begin. With the number of bodies – both human and biter – the smell would be almost intolerable.
After a quarter hour of scavenging, the group reconvened where Michael and the kids sat waiting.
“Find anything of value?” he asked as the group formed up around him.
“No,” was the unanimous answer.
“Whoever did this,” Patrick gestured at the death and destruction around them, “picked the place clean. No food, no guns, no ammo. Even some of the clothing is gone from the bodies. They really did a number on this place.”
“You think this was it?” Charla asked.
“Was what?” Michael frowned.
“The safe haven,” Charla clarified. “The thing we heard about on the radio. Do you think that this,” she waved her arms at the stadium towering around them, “was it?”
Michael shrugged. “I’m assuming that it was, or at least a significant portion of it. I can’t say for sure, but I’m thinking that this was probably what we picked up on the radio.”
“Here, I did find this,” Patrick handed his dad a small battery-powered radio.
“Guess there’s one quick way to find out,” Michael turned the radio on and tuned it to the channel that had previously been sending out the repeated messages.
They were met only with static.
The group waited sullenly while Michael scrolled slowly through the rest of the frequencies.
The static remained.
He turned the radio off and looked around at the group. “Guess that answers our question.”
“Now what?” Marta said quietly.
Her question was met with silence. This had been their goal, their objective, their final destination, their last bastion. And now it was no longer.
“Why would someone do this?” Charla finally wondered aloud dejectedly.
“I don’t know,” Michael answered quietly.
“Who could have done this?” Charla angrily rephrased after a moment, smacking a palm into her open fist.
CHAPTER 17
“GROUSH!”
“WHAT?!” The man responded with harshness equaling the call of his name.
“Biters are ready. They got most of the truckloads of them parked over on Memorial Drive. There’s one stashed on Tucker Boulevard.”
Groush nodded. “No one saw us bring ‘em in?”
“Don’t think so.”
; “The quad ready?”
“Yup. Riders are set to go. Just waiting for your word and we’ll open the gates on the trucks and release the biters.”
“The quad riders know which side of the stadium to approach from?”
“First base side?”
“Yeah…keep the people inside off balance. We’ll send most of the biters in from that side. I’ll save that one truckload for the third base side. That’s where we’ll hit ‘em after the first base swarm arrives. The people in the ball field will be more focused on first base. We’ll get ‘em to split their defenses. Soon as they’ve killed most of the biters, and hopefully expended most of their ammo, we’ll hit ‘em hard from that first base side. I’ll send a couple trucks right in through those front gates. With those gates down, they’ll have trouble keeping us out, and once we’re inside the stadium, it should be easy pickings. We’ll have the element of surprise on our side.”
Groush and several of his men had taken up positions inside the top floor of a high-rise apartment building near the stadium’s southeast corner. They’d spent the previous afternoon, evening, and morning there, waiting, watching, and learning how the group that was holed up inside the stadium operated.
The people there seemed to have a nice setup. They had a sort of village built in the infield, with a sizeable farming operation in the outfield. While Groush didn’t know what modifications they’d made to the interior of the stadium, the people appeared to have a nice little thing going for themselves. And a ‘nice little thing’ in the current environment meant supplies – a lot of supplies. And that’s why Groush and his group were there.
“All right,” Groush nodded. “So we’re good to go?”
“We’re good to go.”
Groush checked his watch and moved away from the window from which they’d been watching for what felt like days.
“Go ahead and radio the quad riders. Tell ‘em to roll.”
* * *
Dave stood in the stadium’s leftfield stands watching the chaos unfold disgustedly. He thought back to a time when families had sat, just where he stood, eating hot dogs, enjoying ice cream, drinking beer, munching on peanuts and popcorn, and leisurely taking in a ballgame.
The Last Bastion [Book 5] Page 15