“What do you think they’re going to do with us?” Jesse, the youngest Riverport resident among the group, and a former gas station attendant, finally broke the silence.
“Who knows?” Roger said. “Nothing good, I’m sure.”
He didn’t want to say more. They had to do their best to stay positive. They had no idea whether other townspeople had survived. They didn’t think so, but maybe, somehow, others had escaped. If they had, there might be a chance at rescue or at least a negotiated deal for their safe release. It was their only glimmer of hope.
“Maybe they’ll just take all our supplies and go,” Julie offered hopefully.
“Then what?” Russell, a middle-aged man who had owned a plumbing company before the outbreak, said from where he sat leaned against the wall. “We’ll still be locked in a jail cell. You planning on tunneling out of here or know something I don’t?”
“I don’t know about tunneling, but we might be able to break through the wall or dislodge a couple bars or something,” Roger offered.
“We don’t even have any tools,” Russell argued. “Without tools, what are we supposed to use? Our fingernails?”
“I don’t know,” Roger shrugged. “Maybe we could come up with…”
“Quiet in there!” the guard bellowed from down the hall, ending Roger’s response.
“Doesn’t matter anyway,” Russell said softly, dejectedly. “You’re assuming they’re going to let us live.”
An hour later, the first rays of daylight filtered through the bars of the cell’s miniscule window at the top of one wall.
Drew, the injured man lying on the cell floor, had died a half hour earlier. Julie had sat with him, holding his hand – the only comfort she could provide – as he died.
There had been very little sleep among the seven remaining survivors. A few had dozed lightly, but between the uncertainty of their future and the extreme cold, any sleep that came was fitful to say the least.
The sound of boots on the concrete floor outside their cell, followed by loud voices, suddenly roused the group.
“Wake up, you sonuvabitch!” they heard a gruff voice growl near where the guard sat.
A burly bearded man, framed by two other armed men, smaller in stature but still menacing in appearance, stopped before the cell door.
“Name’s Groush…not that I suppose you all give a shit,” the big man glared at them. “I guess you all know the situation,” he spoke to those inside the cell. “I win, you lose. Pretty much the gist of it if you were having any illusions. Looks like you’re the only survivors of our little skirmish.”
He scanned the forlorn group inside the cell.
“Pretty pathetic looking bunch if you ask me,” he continued eyeing them.
“What happened to him?” he nodded to Drew’s body, still in the center of the cell’s floor, and surrounded by a pool of congealed blood.
“He died,” Julie explained tersely. “He was wounded in the firefight with your group. I tried to convince your guard out there to let us get some medical supplies to help him, but he wouldn’t.”
“Humph,” Groush snorted. “Too bad,” he said unsympathetically.
“It is,” Julie responded matter-of-factly.
“Well, I might seem like a rough sort of character, but I’ll tell you, I tend to have a soft spot in my heart for those who are down and out. And you all seem to be fitting the goddamn bill like a glove right about now, so I’ll tell you what. I’m gonna let you all go.”
Those inside the cell suddenly perked up, surprised at the sudden turn of events.
The two men on either side of him gave Groush quick, almost surprised glances, but they remained silent.
“Yep, you heard me right. As long as you agree to one thing.”
“What?” Roger asked, suddenly on guard again.
“If we take you all out and dump you a couple miles from town, you aren’t gonna come crawling back like stray dogs, are you?”
“No sir,” Roger shook his head, answering for the group, least someone else say something that might doom them to a longer stint in the cell or worse. “You’ll never see us again.”
Groush eyed him. “If I do, you know what’s gonna happen to you, right?”
“You won’t,” Roger shook his head, assuring their captor as confidently as he could. “I can promise you that.”
“Right,” Groush nodded after a few seconds. “Well then, I got a truck outside waiting. It’ll take you out five miles. There are packs with two days worth of food, water, and some extra clothing. That’s it. No personal possessions, no weapons, nothing like that. See? I’m not all that bad a guy. But I’m not chancing you all coming back here and trying to pull some revenge-style shit either. Got it?”
“Got it,” Roger nodded.
“Good,” Groush pulled a set of keys from his belt and unlocked the cell door. He stepped back, pulling the door open with him, gesturing with a hand for the group to make their way down the hall ahead of him and his men.
Roger tentatively led the survivors, several of whom needed assistance walking due to their injuries, down the hall and past the glaring guard.
Roger paused at another locked door at the entrance to the jail’s holding cells until Groush caught up too them. At this door, it took a single nod through its glass pane from Groush for the guard outside to unlock and open it.
The guard outside took up the lead at this point. He guided the motley looking group outside into the chilly, yet bright and sunny dawn. The sky was blue and cloudless. The air was crisp. Breaths came in huffed clouds of vaporous mist.
Parked across the street ahead of them awaited a two-and-a-half-ton army truck, just as Groush had said.
The guard led the group slowly up to the rear of the truck, Groush and his two minions not far behind.
“If everyone will line up behind the truck, I’ll hand out your packs,” the lead guard said without enthusiasm, gesturing to a pile of backpacks laid out on the ground beside the truck.
The group silently did as instructed, lining up in a row behind the truck. The guard moved over to where the packs sat and picked one up in each hand.
“See,” Groush chortled as he sauntered up before the group. “I’m a man of my word. I kept mine, now I expect you to keep yours.”
“We will,” Roger assured him.
Questions were flooding Roger’s mind. Where would they go? Where would they find food? How would they stay warm?
His head was spinning as he mentally ran through the area surrounding Riverport, searching for safe havens where they could hold out for a day or two in order to tend to the injured and come up with some sort of plan. For the moment however, he decided it best to push the thoughts aside and focus on more immediate matters.
First, they had to get wherever they were going to be dropped off. And even a short trip in the back of the army truck could be a cold and uncomfortable one. And once they got where they were going, there was no guarantee there would be shelter to provide immediate warmth. Therefore, sorting, distributing, and donning the extra clothing that Groush had said he’d make available would come as priority number one. Inventorying, and then rationing the supplies in their packs would come next, but again, that was putting the cart before the horse.
Roger pushed these additional thoughts aside to focus on the here and now. All he wanted to do was get away from Groush and his thugs who stood leering at them.
The guard began handing out the packs. “Don’t open them now. Just put them on. You can go through them once you’re in the truck,” the guard instructed.
The packs were heavy. As Roger put his on, that fact made him feel slightly better. More weight meant more supplies, and more supplies meant more time to get their feet under them once they were dropped off.
Once all the packs were distributed, and the survivors had put them on, the guard stepped over to the rear of the truck. There, he shoved a short stepladder up against the truck’s open back and stepped
away.
“Okay,” Groush nodded at the armed men on either side of him. “I think now is good.”
At first, Roger thought the two guards were going to assist them into the back of the army truck before accompanying them on their ride out of town. That was, until he saw the men raise their automatic rifles and aim them at the group.
It was in that instant that Roger realized they’d lined up before a firing squad. There’d be no ride out of town, no more questions about where they’d be dropped off, no more questions about how they’d proceed once there.
This was it.
Roger’s body jolted with the impact of several rounds. He didn’t even hear the sounds of the men starting to fire until he hit the ground. The explosion of the weapons was the last thing he’d ever hear.
Once the two guards stopped firing, Groush walked up to the group of seven prisoners, their bodies now sprawled on the street’s pavement behind the army truck. He pulled a handgun from a shoulder holster beneath his leather coat and walked along, firing a shot into the head of each prisoner, just to be sure.
Once finished, Groush walked back over to stand beside his men who were reloading their weapons.
“Why’d you do that, boss?” the newest of the two-man firing squad asked.
“What?” Groush frowned, not particularly liking having his methods questioned.
“Why do you let them think they’re going to be set free before you kill them?”
“Can’t take the goddamn whining.”
The guard looked at him, confused.
Groush huffed. “You ever watch those shows about the Holocaust…you know, Germans killing Jews during World War Two?”
“Not really,” the guard said. “But I know about the Jews. Gassed ‘em…then, in the fuckin’ oven with ‘em.”
“Pretty much,” Groush admitted. “Anyway, you know how they gassed them?”
“Yeah. Did it when they were in the showers, right?”
“Right,” Groush nodded. “Told them they were going to get a chance to clean up. Kept them fucking calm. Can you imagine if they told them they were all going in there to be gassed? Fucking chaos, am I right?”
“Guess so,” the guard admitted.
Groush feigned a woman’s voice, “Oh please, sir, my baby. Please save my baby!” Then he said in a manly voice, “Take me, but not my wife!” He shook his head dismissively. “All that sort of bullshit. People running, screaming, pleading, crying. I’m not gonna deal with that sort of shit either. Can you imagine if I had told these people I was marching them out here to shoot them? They’d start with their fucking crying. Some of them would probably shit themselves or try to run away or whatever. It’d be a goddamn mess. A lot easier this way. Keeps them in line and all the bitching and mess to a minimum. Don’t have to listen to all that fucking whining. I get so sick of hearing that shit. Christ,” he shook his head.
But why give them the packs? You shot up all those supplies,” the guard frowned.
“You fuckin’ stupid or what?” Groush growled, growing impatient with the guard. “We didn’t shoot up shit. There weren’t any fucking supplies in those packs. They were loaded with bricks wrapped in clothing. Heavy packs keep the prisoners from running if somehow we miss one during the execution. Had one get away from us after one of our earlier raids. Ran off and caused all sorts of problems for us down the road. Stole supplies, killed one of my guys. Even got hold of one of our supply trucks and took off in it.”
“Oh, I get it,” the guard nodded with a smile. “Bricks…right.”
“Now, you keep fucking questioning me like this, and you’re gonna find yourself in the next execution line,” he stared at the guard.
“Oh…right,” the guard sobered quickly.
CHAPTER 2
“My god! The stench is almost unbearable. What’s it going to be like here in a couple weeks?!” Christine Franko waved her hand in front of her face and closed the fourth-floor tower window before which she stood.
“I can’t imagine it could be much worse,” Julia Justak shook her head.
It was early March, but none of those inside the tower knew the exact day or date. They’d lost track. Their group – the “Blenders” they called themselves, a pairing of “block” and “enders”, referencing the same block in Brookfield, Illinois on which they’d all lived prior to the Carchar Syndrome outbreak – had been holding up inside the historic Hofmann Tower for over two months. The century-old edifice that looked like a giant square-shaped, eight-story rook from a chess set – was situated directly beside the Des Plaines River in Lyons, a western suburb of Chicago.
In its early days, the tower served as a local tourist attraction for those looking to play and picnic beside the river. More recently, it had housed the area historical society until it had departed. After that, it had sat unused, eventually falling into a state of disrepair.
The tower hadn’t been the Blenders’ planned destination when they’d left their homes after the Carchar Syndrome outbreak. They’d planned to retreat to a more desolate location in the western part of Illinois. They’d hoped to hold out there both from the Carchar Syndrome carriers – also known as “biters” due to their insatiable craving for human flesh – and roving bands of desperate, and at times, violent survivors. But their inability to safely flee the city had forced them to shelter inside the bastion-like tower for the winter.
The warm-weather spell had struck suddenly and without warning. And while the Blenders had decided to vacate Hofmann Tower in an effort to reach a potential safe haven in St. Louis, they hadn’t expected the timeframe for their departure to be bumped up so quickly.
Based on the area’s prior arrivals for spring, Michael – the 66-year-old ad hoc leader of the Blenders, whose snow-white hair and goatee made him look a little like the singer, Michael McDonald – was betting on the first mild day not arriving until well into April. Instead, it hit during the first week of March. And with it came biters – tons of them. They roved the landscape in and around Lyons at will. There appeared to be no coordinated response from the government, the armed forces, or any sort of organized local militia or vigilante groups as the Blenders had hoped. The one positive was that as long as the Blenders kept quiet in their tower bastion, the biters seemed content to ignore them.
But biters weren’t the only issue the survivors inside the tower were combating. Due to their duration of stay within the tower, a combination of dead biters and raw sewage littered the perimeter of the tower’s exterior grounds. This contaminated area was thawing quickly in the warmer weather, and the smells that came with it were fast becoming unbearable.
“I thought we’d have more time,” Michael said from his position near another closed window. “It looks like our schedule for departing will have to be moved up. We need to get our remaining supplies packed soon.”
“Well, at least we have our timeframe set. We were uncertain about that before,” Christine Franko said.
“Yeah, but I was thinking we’d have more like two or three weeks, not just one,” Michael shook his head.
“So now we have our timeframe and location to shoot for. But then what?” Christine asked. “How are we going to travel? The vehicles are all dead after sitting outside in the cold for two months. Plus, we’ve siphoned most of the fuel from them to run the generators.”
Michael nodded. “I’ve been thinking about this for a while.”
“Not much else to think about in here,” Julia Justak conceded with an eye roll and a grimace.
“Where have you never seen biters?” Michael said.
“Who the hell knows? They’re everywhere!” Christine gestured toward the window and the wandering hoards of biters below.
“No…they’re not,” Michael shook his head. “Think about it. Have you ever seen them sailing boats down the river or swimming? We’ve been here for months. Hell, I’ve never even seen them wading in the water. It’s almost as though they’re afraid of it.”
�
�That’s true,” Julia nodded, considering. “I’ve seen a couple across the river, drinking at the shoreline, but I’ve never seen any of them actually in the water.”
“Wait, are you thinking of using the river as our escape route?” Christine said almost disbelievingly.
“Well, I was kind of pondering the idea,” Michael shrugged.
“That’s freaking brilliant!” Christine burst out, wide-eyed with a smile. “The only problem is that we don’t have any boats.”
“I’ve been thinking about that too,” Michael nodded.
“Josh! You’ve got to hear this,” Julia called to her husband as he exited the stairway onto the tower’s fourth floor.
“What’s up?” the thirty-something, whose beard now made him look more like a forty-something asked curiously as he sauntered over to where the others stood near the windows. “How’s the smell out there?” he asked as an afterthought.
“Horrible,” his wife shook her head. “Absolutely horrible. Anyway,” she moved on, “Michael has a great idea. Tell him,” she prodded Michael with enthusiasm that made Michael feel suddenly more confident in an idea that he hadn’t been all that hot on until now.
“Well,” Michael said somewhat abashedly, “in all honesty, the idea came partly from Josh.”
“Really?” Josh said, looking surprised.
“It was something you said a long time ago about being ‘up shit creek without a paddle’. It got me to thinking about our location here on the river and how it’s the one place you never really see biters.”
“Yeah,” Josh agreed. “It’s not like you see them out taking a swim or a bath or anything. But if you’re thinking about using the river to get the hell outta Dodge, we don’t have any boats.”
“That’s what Christine was saying just before you got here,” Michael explained. “But I’ve been thinking about that too. I figure that if we scavenge the area, we could probably come up with something. Maybe not large boats, but we might find kayaks, canoes, those sorts of things.”
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