Aftermath (Book 2): Chicago Calling

by Duncan McArdle

  Lowering the scope away from eye line, the high powered rifle’s user – a handsome man standing some six-feet tall with perfectly maintained light-brown hair – calmly conducted a brief hand gesture off the side of the building, before leaning back away from the edge. The sniper, known as Harvey to the settlement’s inhabitants, stopped short of moving off however, as he awaited notification that his gesture had been seen by its intended recipient. Within a few moments, the sound of a 3.7 litre petrol engine kicking into life told him all he needed to know, and so he continued on with his rooftop patrol.

  Back on the ground floor of the building, the freshly started Ford F150 pickup truck crept slowly towards the exit of the car park, its lights dimmed and the engine giving off little more than a low hum as they attempted to mask their exit as much as possible.

  “You boys ready?”, asked the driver, an attractive, slim, slightly roughened thirty-something woman known as Sonja.

  “I think so”, replied Andrew’s timid voice, his eyes scrunched up slightly as he attempted a quick clean of his glasses before setting off.

  A silence fell over the truck for the next few seconds as the pair waited for the final member of the group to chime in, but nothing was heard.

  “John?”, asked Sonja from the front, turning her head to look back to the figure in the rear of the cabin.

  Sitting in the back right corner of the F150, John Parker lowered the water bottle he’d been sipping from away from his mouth, and hitched up his sweater’s hood over the top of his head, before shooting a glance at both Sonja and Andrew in quick succession.

  “Yeah”, he said firmly, “let’s go”.

  Finally the Ford was afforded the possibility to raise its voice, and in doing so threw the mechanical marvel from the safe confines of the car-park into the darkened, unknown world outside. A waving off from the entrance guard currently on duty – a man known as Lester who was a giant amongst the group at almost seven feet tall – was the last piece of civilisation they would see for some hours, something that bore down heavily on every member of this rag-tag search party. Despite this however, evidence of any worrying was few and far between, a somewhat unsurprising fact for a trio that had been out so many times before.

  “So, where are we up to again? Beverley Road? Shorewood Boulevard?”, Sonja asked as she turned left out of the building and began heading along the coastal road in a northern direction.

  “We cleared out Shorewood a couple days back, think we’re up to Capitol Drive, 190”, Andrew replied semi-confidently.

  “Oh… a main road? You two didn’t tell me it was gonna be one of those days”, Sonja replied with a smile.

  “Well if you’d prefer”, John jumped in, eyeing up an opportunity to change the course of events more to his liking, “We could always-“.

  “No John”, both Sonja and Andrew cut in, in almost perfect unison.

  John slumped back into his seat, defeated, though he soon took solace in the fact he was at least able to enjoy the sights from outside his window, the breadth of Lake Michigan stretching out as far as the eye could see, reflecting what little light the early sunshine was providing.

  On a normal day, John might have been content with the situation, a nice view on one side, good company on the other, and a comfortable vehicle that’d seen them through enough hard times for him to have plenty of confidence in. But as the Ford continued its journey north, all John could think about was how much further away he was headed from the location of the one thing he wanted more than anything in the world, his daughter.

  “We’ll get there John, that’s what these journeys are about”, Andrew said in an attempt to break the awkward silence that’d fallen.

  “By driving in the opposite direction?”, John asked sarcastically.

  “You know we can’t head closer, that’s the one thing we know not to do. Headed away from Chicago is safer, it’s the smart bet, and eventually it’ll get us what we need to get us there”, Andrew replied.

  “We could be there right now if we really wanted to”, John insisted.

  “That a fact?”, Sonja asked, “Well why don’t we just check that”, she continued, reaching over to the radio and flicking it into life mid-sentence.

  “…broadcast, the infection has spread rapidly, get what resources you can and then barricade yourself and your families in your homes. Do not under any circumstances venture outside or you WILL be bitten and you WILL turn. The infected do not sympathise, there is no reasoning with them. You will be bitten, you will turn, and you will die. If you are near to Chicago, if you have weapons and access to a boat, approach the Chicago harbour holding your weapons aloft and we will receive you. Please bring what you can. Do NOT try to approach via land, thousands have tried and none have made it. Only attempt to take out an infected if yo-“

  “God I’m so sick of this part, blah blah blah blah blah”, Sonja interrupted, before eventually allowing the broadcast to continue.

  “…to the head should take them down, provided it pierces brain tissue. This message will be repeated constantly. The current date is…”, those same words rang out for what seemed like the millionth time, before switching to the portion that was updated each and every day, the one part that left hope in John’s heart.

  “Wednesday the fifteenth of October, twenty fourteen”.

  A brief pause followed this last statement, before the loop eventually started anew. “This is an emergency broadcast, the infection-”, the noise quickly disappeared as Sonja shut off the radio.

  “It hasn’t changed John, which means we still can’t go there by land, and we still need a boat, so we still need to keep looking, okay?”, she asked, more softly this time.

  “Yeah”, John replied, shifting his gaze back to the passing lakeside, “I know”.

  * * *

  The journey to their destination was a short one, stretching no more than five or so miles. Pre-apocalypse, it would have taken all of ten or fifteen minutes, but now the usual trials and tribulations blocked what was otherwise a simple path. These varied from the numerous vehicles that were laid out along the road – some overturned and burnt to a crisp, others parked sideways in some vain attempt to barricade the streets – to bodies that had to be driven around to avoid blocking any of the truck’s intakes, and piles of broken glass that might stop them dead with something as trivial as a flat tire. Sure enough, with just over a mile of their route completed, they hit their first problem.

  “And here we are again”, said Sonja as she slowed the truck to a halt.

  “Least we’ve got the brush this time”, John replied, thumbing the safety of his pistol off as he prepared to disembark.

  “Can’t we just drive around again?”, Andrew asked timidly, inspecting the t-boned car crash that lay in front of them, its wreckage sprawled out across the entire right-hand side of the road and the left clogged up with abandoned traffic.

  “Come on Andrew, every time we come this way we add another five minutes by driving up there and round”, Sonja explained, pointing to one of the many inroads that led around the site of the problem at hand. “We spend ten minutes cleaning it today, and within a few days we’ve earned that back in savings, it’ll be worth it”, she explained, before sensing more reassurances might be needed, “I promise”.

  “Alright”, Andrew agreed begrudgingly, before himself stepping out of the car.

  The two-car crash had generated an incredible amount of broken glass, spread out across each of the two lanes on the right hand side of the road, most of which was blocked by what remained of the ruined vehicles. Back when the creatures that now roamed the land first started popping up, the sight of them was enough to drive the public wild, and had led to who knows how many of these types of wrecks. Crashes like these could leak flammable liquids and spark huge fires, both of which could be disastrous to their safe passage. But first thing was first, the glass had to be sorted.

  Quickly John got to work with the broom, a utensil he’d
found on one of their previous runs, and an item almost everyone back at camp had been adamant would be a useless thing to keep around. Andrew could almost see the smugness on John’s face as he quickly dispatched the majority of the shimmering shards that littered the road in front with a few well-handled sweeps.

  “You know something John, I think you’d make a good housewife”, Sonja joked from the driver’s seat of the truck, a position she was holding in case the group needed a quick getaway.

  John laughed off the remark without a response, keen to continue his work but unable to ignore the joke.

  “Andrew, you I’m not so sure about”, Sonja continued.

  Suddenly it dawned on Andrew that he was indeed being little help, and so he quickly moved over to the crash-site to inspect the wreckage, hoping to find that the vehicles were in a good enough condition to move.

  The bigger of the two – some kind of relatively new sedan – remained on all four wheels, just about, and so would make for a pretty easily solved problem. The smaller hatchback however, was almost completely crumpled, two of its four rims near bent in half under the pressure of the accident. Worst of all, the two shells had indented pretty heavily into each other, meaning that everything had to be moved together, or else nothing would move at all. Quickly Andrew surmised that there was no point wasting time trying to push them apart, and so set to work attaching the towing hook from the F150 to the shell of the sedan, and then gave the truck a pat on the hood to signal that things were ready.

  Carefully but forcefully, Sonja began to reverse, taking care not to yank the target all at once and in doing so no doubt damage the Ford. The revving of the engine, coupled with the squeak of metal and further crumpling of each vehicle, began generating quite a substantial amount of noise, but the group was well prepared, and ready to make a hasty getaway at a moment’s notice, if necessary.

  John meanwhile had stopped sweeping just long enough to inspect the towing – having himself created a large pile of the glittering mess already - and gave a thumbs up to Sonja to indicate that progress was being made. Seeing this, the truck’s driver further depressed the accelerator, and began to shift the wreckage at a decent speed, much to everyone’s delight.

  Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, Andrew caught sight of movement a little further down the road, as well as in the cabin of one of the cars blocking the other side of the street. Neither was an issue that needed addressing now – and hopefully never would be – but he took note of both, and made sure to keep at least one eye trained firmly on them. Bullets were fairly rare, and were only going to get rarer now that mass production of them had stopped across the world, so he was very much of the opinion that this wasn’t a time to be chasing down and killing every last biter spotted, unless they absolutely had to.

  Back at the helm of the truck, Sonja breathed a sigh of relief as the wreckage was finally pulled back far enough to open up one of the northbound lanes, something that meant they could now pass through – if only in single file – on future journeys. Seeing this, John set to work shifting the final shards of broken glass into a second pile on the side of the road, and then began the walk back over to the idling truck.

  “John”, Andrew said calmly as the two men were reunited next to the Ford, “There’s one further up the road, at least one-“, Andrew tailed off as he saw another figure ambling around inside one of the cars on the other side of the street, “or two actually, in the cars over there. Neither’s a threat, but thought you’d want to know”.

  John spun round to inspect the targets, and almost instinctively withdrew the serrated hunting knife attached to his side.

  “C’mon John they’re just sitting there”, Andrew reasoned.

  “You know how I feel about leaving them”, John shouted back as he approached the line of parked cars.

  Andrew opened his mouth to argue his point, but was interrupted from doing so.

  “He’s right you know”, Sonja said from above, leaning out of the driver side window next to Andrew, “They might be weak now, but if we leave ‘em, and they get out, it’ll be us that pays the price when they come wandering down the road to the south”, she explained.

  “Yeah”, Andrew said, unconvinced but unwilling to put up much of a fight, now walking round to the front of the truck to unhook the tow, “I know”.

  Back at the line of cars on the far side of the street, John arrived on site, knife in hand, ready to carry out his task. Looking into the first of the vehicles, he spotted movement straight away, as a barely human in shape figure lunged at the passenger side window, its body apparently still containing a relatively high amount of energy. John imagined it might have been laying here dormant for some time, enabling it to store most of its energy long term, but even he couldn’t pretend to really understand how these things worked well enough to make that kind of observation. Instead, he simply placed the metal bottomed blade’s handle against the window, and prepared himself for the usual process.

  Andrew watched on as John used the handle to smash the vehicle’s side window, before quickly switching the blade back around, and plunging it into the lurching creature’s skull point-first. Immediately the life drained from the being, its once energetic hands simply dropping towards the floor, releasing every last piece of intent it had towards actually doing something with its barely present existence. Both Andrew and Sonja relaxed slightly, before preparing for the second encounter.

  Keen not to waste time, John quickly moved past the next, seemingly empty station wagon, to arrive at the third vehicle, a much older sedan from the eighties or nineties as far as he could tell. This time the female driver was almost motionless, her jaw’s repeated clamping up and down the only indication that she was still a threat. John smoothly jumped up onto the bonnet – a manoeuvre that was greatly assisted by the vehicle’s lowered state courtesy of a flat tire – and walked over to the far side, before dropping down alongside the driver window.

  Suddenly an arm rocketed out from inside the car – through a window John had assumed to be closed, but was in fact very much open – and grabbed him by the arm.

  “SHIT!”, John yelped in what was a pretty standard reaction to being grabbed by one of the undead, its sharp claws mere millimetres away from penetrating the skin and spreading an infection so vicious that it could turn you to the other side in days, hours, or even minutes in some cases.

  “JOHN!”, came Andrew’s panic laden voice, as he began sprinting as fast as he could over to the scene.

  Before he had time to arrive though, John withdrew once more the blade attached to his waist, and plunged it five inches deep into the skull of his attacker, the crumpling sound of bone coupled with the squelching tone of brain being sliced through enough to tell John all he needed to know. Almost instantly, the tight grip on John’s left forearm decompressed, and he was released from its deathly grasp.

  “Are you alright?”, Andrew asked upon arriving, silently fearing the worst.

  John inspected his arm before answering, quickly confirming that the marks now left there were just the remnants of whatever dirt had been coating his would-be-murderer’s hands, and cautiously wiping them away.

  “Guess so”, he eventually replied, to which both himself and Andrew both breathed a sigh of relief.

  “If you two ladies are done making friends, we’ve got a nice new stretch of road to head out along”, called Sonja from back in the truck, evidently more interested in admiring the newly opened stretch of tarmac in front.

  “Coming boss”, John said sarcastically.

  Chapter 3: Riches to ruins

  The morning sun was in full swing of its daily ascent when the Ford calmly entered into the eastern end of Capitol Drive, providing a near perfect level of visibility along the road in front. With the sea to the rear and a long line of houses ahead, this moment marked the start of another long and slow journey, but was at least one of the more interesting moments of the trip. In any case, Capitol Drive appeared to be o
ne of the most affluent areas they’d so far inspected, with almost every house evidencing some kind of wealth, either by its construction, the cars on the drive, or the number of garages that were attached. This of course, was much to John’s liking.

  “Jesus”, John exclaimed as he realised the size of the road, as well as the size of its resident’s respective properties, “If we’re gonna find a boat anywhere, I guess it’d be here”, he theorised.

  “Don’t be so sure”, Sonja replied, “Most people round here took straight to the water as soon as things hit the fan, and we’re still pretty close to the city, so most of these houses have probably already been checked over by someone”, she pointed out.

  Noting a look of disappointment on his friend’s face, Andrew quickly jumped in.

  “Good a chance as any though right? Might as well be here that we find one, I guess”, he blurted out, barely believing his own words.

  “Sure”, Sonja replied, sensing the tone, “Might as well be”.

  To John, a boat had become the Holy Grail, the one thing that separated him from his daughter, and thus the one item he so desperately needed to find more than anything. To Sonja, a boat meant another opportunity to evacuate more vulnerable people to Chicago, to give both them and those left at the base a better chance of survival. Andrew on the other hand was simply along for the ride, keen to help out in any way possible, but also adamant that he wouldn’t put himself in harm’s way. The biggest thing Andrew wanted was to get back to his family in one piece.