Enduring Armageddon

by Parker, Brian

  I rubbed her still-cold skin with the towel that I’d wrapped around her and hugged her close. Finally, her shell shock wore off and she was able to cry. She sobbed into my shoulder for several minutes until the pain and disgust was out of her system. She finally pulled away and looked me in the eyes. “I’m ready to leave this place. It’s evil and we need to go,” she said as she set her jaw in determination.

  “Okay. We just need to get you dried off and dressed. Then we can go over the place one more time. I’m pretty sure that I got everything, but I want you to double-check and make sure that we’re not leaving anything that we’ll need and then we can go,” I said as I ran my fingers through her wet hair.

  “Sure, give me a few minutes to dry my hair.” She smiled at me and hugged me again. “I’m sorry about freaking out like that. It’s just that…never mind. I don’t want to think about it anymore. Let’s just get away from here.”

  We were ready to go in less than twenty minutes from the time we’d finished talking. Rebecca had on the previous tenant’s ski clothing, which was extremely warm, but it was bright blue. We remedied it by giving her a long grey overcoat. It would restrict her movement, but she’d stay warm and be able to blend into the ashy-colored snow easier. I wore my standard camouflaged hunting coveralls that I wore on missions and the zero-degree rated hiking boots that I’d also picked up during my trip to the camping supply store.

  Even though I’d asserted that we’d have no problems leaving, we chose to skirt the town’s main roads that had been cleared by work crews and made our way down a secondary street towards the gate. The walk was harder because the snow lay thick and wet, but others had forged a rough path sometime recently, so it wasn’t as hard as it could have been. Or as difficult as our journey outside the walls would be, I reminded myself.

  The gate had several people lined up to exit, most wearing backpacks like ours. As we edged our way closer, we heard several people talking about the murder. It seemed like we weren’t the only ones who were fed up with Virden and were willing to risk life outside of the town’s walls.

  The guards checked everyone closely, but they didn’t stop them from leaving. There was only one more family ahead of us when disaster struck. The family consisted of a man and a woman who held two children of indeterminate age closely to her. They had a large wagon loaded with food and what appeared to be toiletries. The guards began to give them a hard time about the food and decided to confiscate it since it belonged to the town.

  “Hey, that’s my food!” the man bellowed behind his surgical mask. “That food was in our pantry, not from the community supply. I’ve lived here for twenty years! You people come in here and think you can run things, this is bullshit! We’re leaving with our food.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. We have orders to keep people from taking too much of the town’s supply,” one of the gate guards said. I knew the guy a little bit from all the coming and going that the gathering squad does and he seems like a nice enough kind of guy. “Allan is gracious enough to allow you to take enough food and water to last your family for a week or so, but anything else is community property and should stay with the community.”

  “Fuck you! This is my property. I bought it. Your people didn’t bring it in here. I’m leaving with my property. All of it,” the man said. I thought I recognized him from the food lines, but I couldn’t be sure. He tried to push his way forward and was shoved backwards hard enough to cause him to lose his footing.

  He cried out as he fell and grasped at his wife’s coat to keep from falling. As he did so, he inadvertently pulled it off of her. We all gasped and jumped back as we realized that she had a sawed-off shotgun under the coat. She leveled it at the guard who’d pushed her husband and fired a blast directly into his stomach. At this close of a range he was knocked backwards four feet by the pressure. She pumped the handle and fired into the back of a second guard who’d turned to run.

  Rebecca and I dove behind the rear bumper of a car that was sitting near the wall. I heard the shotgun pump another round into the chamber but the woman didn’t fire the third round. A warm, gritty substance splashed across our clothing before we even realized what had happened. I blanched when I saw little flecks of bone and brain matter stuck to Becca’s coat and I pulled her down deeper into the snow behind the vehicle.

  The man began to scream obscenities towards everyone in town and a large-caliber handgun began to fire wildly in all directions. A round pinged off of the car before the firing stopped suddenly. I pressed myself as flat into the snow as possible and whispered to Rebecca, “Sniper. On the wall. Stay down.”

  We lay in the snow for several minutes before one of the guards tapped us on the shoulder and said we could get up. The scene that greeted us was of sheer madness. The man and woman had both been shot in the head, which would explain why they’d suddenly stopped firing. Blood was sprayed out from each of their bodies back towards the car where we’d been hiding which meant the sniper was somewhere in front of us. A large section of the snow was trampled down by men from the guard crews who’d dragged away the bodies of the two dead guards.

  The strangest part about the entire scene was the children. They stood silently looking around with wide eyes. Each of them was handcuffed to a chain leading to the woman. I began to piece it together that these children weren’t the offspring of this couple and the man really had intended to leave town with all of his property. Holy fuck, we’d regressed centuries in a little over four months.

  The guard who’d told us that everything was clear looked us over and asked if we were taking any of the community’s property when we left the town.

  “No, I see how that ends,” I said as I pointed towards the couple’s remains.

  “Hmpf,” he snorted. “Slavers. We’ve heard about them, but this was our first run-in with them. I’m sure we’ll find the parents of these two with their throats slit in some alley somewhere,” he said as he pointed at the children, whom I could now see were a boy and girl of about twelve.

  “Wait, this is happening a lot out there?” Rebecca asked as she pointed towards the gate.

  “Oh yeah, all the time, especially kids. They torture and murder the parents, then take the kids for themselves or to trade them,” the guard said as if it were common knowledge. “What, second-guessing your decision to leave? Once you go, Allan won’t see it in his heart to let you back in.”

  “I don’t know about that,” a familiar voice said from behind me. I turned in time to see Allan striding the last few feet from the main street to the gate area. “It depends on what a person can offer to Virden. These folks may be allowed back in one day, if they survive.”

  “Yes, sir. I was just trying to warn them that once they leave, it’s mostly permanent…sir,” the guard said.

  “No problem, what’s your name, son?”

  “Randy, sir.”

  “Don’t worry about it Randy. We’ll take everyone on a case-by-case basis. How many people have chosen to leave?” Allan asked.

  “I was in the warm-up tent, sir. Peter and Josef were on the gate detail,” Randy said as he gestured towards the dead gate guards over near the wall. “But I’m pretty sure we’ve had about sixty people leave so far.”

  “Alright, let these people here go,” Allan said. Then he raised his hand and asked, “Unless you no longer want to go? You’ve seen just a small bit of the violence outside of these walls…”

  “Holy shit, boss!” My stomach sank. Even though it was distorted by his mask, I recognized Justin’s voice. “It’s Chuck and his wife!”

  Allan did a physical double-take as reevaluated me. “Chuck Broussard, is that you?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” I replied as I tried to avoid looking him in the eyes.

  “Terrible business with what happened to that traitor, but it had to be done, Chuck. Are you planning on leaving us?”

  “Yes sir. We don’t agree with the way Virden is headed,” I said as I finally looked him in the eyes
.

  “You don’t agree?” He let out a hard laugh. “You don’t agree with an ordered society with rules and punishments for people who violate their responsibilities to that society? Chuck, outside of these precious walls there is chaos. You’ve seen it. You’ve bathed in the blood of our enemies and reveled in it…but has your woman? Has she seen the horrors outside these walls?”

  “What is this, the Middle Ages? I’m not his ‘woman’, I’m his wife. Where do you get off thinking that you can call me…” she was cut off by a lightning-quick backhand from Justin.

  “Don’t you ever speak to him that way!” he yelled.

  I lunged at the slimy bastard but was grabbed by someone from behind. “Whoa. Stop it. Everyone calm down!” Allan said as he held up his hands in a placating gesture. “I speak of a society that we can be proud of and this is how you act? Are we no better than the animals outside of these walls?”

  “Rebecca and I are. But as long as you surround yourself with people like him, then you might as well be one of the scavengers out there,” I growled.

  “Now, Chuck, that’s taking it a little far. Justin is a necessary part of our life here in the formerly great state of Illinois. He serves a purpose, just as you do.”

  “Did, Allan. We’re done. We’re leaving Virden.”

  “Leaving? Where do you think you’d go?”

  “West,” I lied. “To Kansas. We have family that owns a farm out there. We were on our way when we stumbled upon Virden. It’s time for us to continue on.”

  “Family man. I respect that, Chuck,” Allan replied. “I respect it, but I can’t help but feel that you’re abandoning Virden because of what happened today at the square. It had to be done.”

  “But you didn’t have to make every person take part in his murder!” I shouted.

  “It was a sentence, Chuck, not a murder. We’ll have to agree to disagree about that. But, I can’t let you leave.”

  I let my shoulders slump. I didn’t let myself admit it, but in the back of my mind, I’d known they wouldn’t let me leave. That’s why we’d snuck down the back roads instead of the main streets of the town. “We’re leaving, Allan. We don’t agree with how things are being run here. We’re not taking anything besides what’s in our backpacks and we’re walking out of here,” I said.

  “No you’re not. I need you, Chuck. Virden needs you. You are this community’s shining star and we need you.”

  “Allan, I’m sorry, but I don’t want to stay. I’ve seen how quickly the stars fall around here and we’d rather take our chances outside the gates than be subjected to what’s going on here.”

  Allan took a step towards me and thrust his finger a few inches from my facemask. “You listen here you insignificant fuck. You’re staying here and leading the mission against Springfield. I don’t give a shit what you do after that.” He gestured to Justin and said, “Take his wife. You think I’m a bad guy, Chuck? Well okay, be that way. She stays with me until after the mission.”

  I lunged at Justin as he grabbed my wife’s arm, but was caught from behind again. Allan used the moment to his advantage and sucker-punched me in the gut. The men holding me let me fall to the ground. I looked up in hatred at the bastard who’d shown his true colors and said, “If anything happens to her, I’ll make sure you end up dead.”

  Allan crouched down beside me. “Don’t worry, Chuck. She’ll be safe. I’ll keep my boys off of her. After the successful completion of the mission to destroy the scourge of Springfield, you can go. Virden will be assured of being the most powerful stronghold in the area and then no one will fuck with us.

  “I want the mission to attack Springfield to happen in two days,” he continued. “I want all their defenses smashed and the defenders either dead or scattered. But if you fail me, you will die. And your wife will pray that she was dead.”

  * * *

  After days of intense planning, the mission to raid Springfield finally reared its ugly head. They were our nearest competitor in the region and Allan decided that it was time to take them down and stabilize his base of power. I had a bad feeling about the mission. Jesse did too and he’d voiced his opinion about it to Allan. All that ended up happening was that Trisha was taken hostage too. The bright shining beacon of Virden was quickly turning into a stinking turd.

  Including the roughly doubled pre-apocalypse population, Virden had about nine or ten thousand people but Springfield was a legitimate city with more than two hundred thousand residents in the pre-war metro area. We’d taken on smaller towns and kicked a lot of ass, but this was going too far. Even with the strike force of almost three thousand people that we organized for the mission, the numbers were against us. My gathering squad was a little over four hundred people within that larger strike force. I knew the capabilities of my group, but I had no idea about the extra twenty-five hundred men and women that Allan added to my command for the mission.

  I was totally out of my element commanding that many people, especially as we prepared to go into what could potentially be a large battle. It turns out that there were other gathering squads in Virden that I didn’t know anything about. I knew about the construction material gatherers, but where the hell did the rest of these people come from? We also had construction and road clearing crews, gate guards, warehouse stock specialists and Allan’s private army of thugs that were included in the all-or-nothing bid to take total control of the region.

  We held meetings twice a day to plan the mission. Sam, the young girl who’d been our guide when we first arrived in Virden, was only a teenager but her intimate knowledge of her home town was invaluable while we planned our attack. It was roughly thirty-three miles to the city and we were going to take every semi and truck that we had to where Interstate-55 met up with I-72 and then disembark the trucks and walk the rest of the way in. Our objective was the Illinois State Capitol building where Sam said the local warlord had set up headquarters by the time that she left. Once we took the capitol we’d fan out and attack targets of opportunity within the city.

  The plan was madness, sheer and utter madness. There was no reason to attack the city, maybe there would be in the future when resources began to be depleted, but not now. They hadn’t shown any aggressiveness towards us and we had enough non-perishable food to last almost a year with rationing, but it was Allan’s demand to wipe out the other city. He constantly berated the organizers of the mission about surprise and audacity, which were two key traits to some of the most pivotal moments in our nation’s history: George Washington crossing the Delaware River on Christmas, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, even the bold nuclear strike out of nowhere that brought us to our current situation. All of them succeeded because they were unexpected and unconventional. Allan told us that the defenders of Springfield were confident that they were safe based on their population size alone.

  We glossed over what happened after our grand, daring and heroic raid was a success. We planned to load the trucks with as much food and supplies as we could carry and then commandeer some city buses to get about half of our force back. The remainder would have to get working vehicles from wherever they could find them and make their way back on their own. I didn’t like all the vehicle traffic on the roads, but we couldn’t do anything about it.

  I was able to see Rebecca for a few minutes on the morning of the attack. She’d been well taken care of after the initial move to Allan’s house. It was good to see her and I vowed to make it through this mission so we could get her out of that place and then get out of the madness of Illinois. Becca was solid as a rock and even in her semi-incarcerated state, she asked that I keep Sam safe instead of worrying about herself.

  Now, as we stuttered and slid our way through the snow-covered terrain my thoughts were focused on our mission and achieving both Allan’s objective of neutralizing Springfield and my own personal objective of surviving the fight that we were hurtling headlong towards. Jesse sat in the back seat along with Sam and
one guy from Allan’s bunch, probably put there to keep an eye on us. Somewhere in the column, Justin was riding along as well. I’d already decided that if the opportunity presented itself, I’d shoot him and rid the world of that bastard once and for all.

  We hit a particularly hard-packed bit of snow and the front of the truck jumped up several inches which threw us up into the ceiling and then slammed our asses hard back into the seats when we came down. The men groaned and laughed at the driver like we were headed to a camping trip in the old world, not towards a major battle for supremacy in the region. I would miss the camaraderie of the group that I’d come to trust with my life, but I couldn’t abide Allan or his way of enforcing his laws.

  We arrived at the outskirts of Springfield around noon. We hadn’t encountered anyone and it didn’t appear as if any vehicles had disturbed the snow where we came north along the interstate. Was Allan correct that they’d killed each other off up here in the big city? I stepped down from the cab of the truck into knee-deep snow and wondered how we were actually going to achieve our goal. I mean, on the surface, without any sane or rational thoughts applied, it seemed pretty easy: Enter the city, kill as many people as possible, take their shit and then go home. But how did we do it without being overwhelmed in the process?

  I called the team leaders to me for a quick brief before we spread out and went into the city. As I waited I tightened the four-inch wide strip of red cloth that was tied over my bicep. That marking was the only way to tell if the people you saw in the distance, through driving snow, were from Virden or not. Our instructions were to kill every person we encountered who didn’t have an armband, so it was best not to let the damn thing come untied.

  Each team leader commanded a group of about 125 people and once all twenty of them were present, I gave my final orders, which were really just a re-hashing of the plan we’d all helped prepare over the last couple of days. “Alright folks, this is it,” I said through the distortion caused by my mask. “From here on out, you’ll basically be on your own. We’re moving south to north and you know Allan’s orders are to kill or chase off everyone you see.