Aftermath (Book 2): Chicago Calling

by Duncan McArdle

  Thinking back, he knew he should have waited. Little had scared him more in life than the period between that huge thing lunging at him – John’s knife still embedded in its head after its second attempt – and the bullet from John’s gun finally finishing it off, its teeth open wide and mere milliseconds from taking a poison-inducing chunk out of Harvey’s face. The whole thing had only cost John a bullet, and Harvey some wellbeing and pride, but it had also meant that there were now barely one and a half guards on duty.

  When everything was said and done though, little could take away the immense feeling of relief and happiness they had felt upon emerging on the rooftop and seeing what lay in front. Everywhere the eye could see was green, overgrown but growing nonetheless. Briefly they’d dug deep into the ground to make sure it wasn’t just fake turf, but it was real, and by the looks of the trellises dotted around one edge, it had even been used to grow food before now.

  Cutting back to reality, and to the present day, Harvey began what felt like his thousandth sweep of the area in the space of the last hour. Little stirred as far as he could tell, save for the greying sky that seemed to have gotten worse and worse over the past few days. Looking up, Harvey was almost immediately confronted by a flash of lightning, followed by the crack of thunder a few seconds later. A group of nearby residents jumped and yelped slightly at the occurrence, but Harvey remained still, waiting for what he knew would follow.

  Sure enough, bit by bit, the heavens opened and rain began to pour all over. The grey sky truly had been hiding something, and it was now coming down thick and fast across the camp, pitter-pattering on every pot and pan, slapping against the concrete and soaking into every item of clothing it could find. Straight away residents began to make their way to the lower floor, but Harvey stayed where he was, knowing he had a much better position here than if he too went downstairs. Soon enough, he was the only remaining soul left on the rooftop.

  Back on the ground floor, Lester too was stood alone, though he had such experiences often enough without the adverse weather. The ramp into the car-park meant the building was pretty safe against flooding, or even just the nuisance of puddles, and the numerous concrete layers above meant he remained dry throughout his duty no matter what the conditions. For a long time he simply stood there, observing the rainfall in front of him, seeing puddles form and merge, watching the sky briefly light up with random bursts of energy, listening to the sound of rain slapping concrete, and thinking.

  Lester had been at the camp for some months now, and had rarely gone more than a day without being stood in the same position he was now in. Most people resented this job, most wanted to be out doing more interesting things, or at least on the rooftop, spotting targets from a distance. But for Lester, this was his home now, and he could think of fewer more important jobs than being the one force that stopped the bad from getting in, and even the good from getting out.

  Rarely had they had a situation where a resident had attempted to leave, but it had happened. The most notable case that sprung to mind was just after the first horde they’d fought off, when two families had opted to go it alone, thinking they would be safer heading to Chicago by land than waiting here for the place to be overrun. Lester had no real idea what had happened to the leavers, but judging by the stories he’d heard of Chicago – the most recent ones from John, Harvey and Sonja included – he was fairly certain it wouldn’t have ended well for them.

  He felt no resentment for their decision to leave, and nor did he feel guilty for allowing them to do so. No matter what position of authority or power he held over the campsite, he had no intention of deciding what people could and couldn’t do, so long as what they did didn’t negatively affect other residents. If people wanted to leave, they could. It was only when they wanted to come back that he’d have to make a decision.

  Interestingly, only two notable groups of people had ever tried to enter the camp after the initial influx of survivors, aside from a few individuals who’d arrived alone. The first had included Harvey, who at the time was trying to lead a group of people to Chicago – ex-resident Tommy included – but had run out of supplies. In hindsight, their poor rationing had probably saved their lives, as it had made sure they stopped here rather than attempt the deadly journey. But even for them, there had been a long vetting and segregation process, until everyone was confident that they were safe, and could be integrated into the rest of the camp.

  The other group had of course been John, Andrew, and Andrew’s family. Their vetting process had been cut dramatically short courtesy of John’s wife already being a resident, and due to their participation in the firefight with the undead that they had helped win. Little did more to influence a person’s ability to trust than to stand side by side and fight for the same cause, and that is exactly what they’d done.

  Listening to that same slapping noise of rain on concrete, Lester began thinking about their current situation, and how much more vulnerable they were with only two guards left at camp, one of whom was of course injured. Harvey was good at a distance, so he’d be far from useless if required, and Lester could handle a small horde of the undead by himself, but that didn’t mean such a situation would be easily managed. Eventually, Lester decided to try and put such thoughts out of his mind, and to instead stretch his legs, moving out of the entrance and into the rain.

  Looking to the left, he hopelessly searched for the Ford that had only recently left. Never did he expect for anybody to return this quickly, especially when they were headed for a destination further away than a few doors down, but that didn’t stop him hoping. In any case, he was disappointed but not surprised to see nothing stir in the greying distance, and so instead turned to the right.

  It was there however, that Lester saw what could only be described as a sea of movement, a horde of sizes he’d never experienced before wandering slowly down the street in their very direction. They numbered in the hundreds, maybe even close to a thousand, and all seemed to be following the noise of the storm above, moving north on its journey away from Chicago, right along the edge of Milwaukee.

  Lester turned and looked up, only to see Harvey furiously slapping the side of the wall, and suddenly he knew that it hadn’t been the rain he’d been hearing all along. He didn’t even need to wait for Harvey’s signal to tell him things were bad, he simply turned back to face the horde, itself approaching from just a few hundred metres away, and then moved back inside the car-park.

  “Shit”.

  Chapter 14: Execute

  Lester’s heart pounded hard as he moved back into the confines of the car-park. One of the undead he could handle with ease, even four or five well spread out were more than manageable. But numbering in their hundreds, and huddled up no less, with only two people to fight them? That was not a situation he was happy about finding himself in, and it was a fight he didn’t want to have.

  Like everything else, there was a plan in place, but at this point it was merely a bunker down and defend routine, and it only attempted to minimise loss of life, not alleviate it completely. Perhaps most importantly, the plan was based around both guards helping, and somehow he doubted that was going to happen with Harvey in his current barely-mobile state. That said, it was a plan nonetheless, and considering the success of such things up till now, Lester felt it was worth a try, so he immediately set about putting it in place.

  The building had two stairwells, one at each end of the complex, the nearest of which was just a few feet away. After the events that occurred on the day John and Andrew had arrived – where a small splinter group of the undead had managed to ascend through the unguarded stairwell while the rest attacked the other – a decision had been made to block it up, even if it meant removing a possible emergency exit. The stairwell was now overflowing with old furniture and various discarded items, all of which was held in place by an old pickup, barely able to run but perfectly usable as a blockade.

  Briefly checking it over before confirming all was well,
Lester began running to the far end of the floor. There he found a similar but slightly better conditioned pickup which was parked just to the side of the other empty doorway, and had been left there for just such a situation. Upon arriving, Lester jumped into the driver seat of the truck, checked it over to ensure a particularly sneaky member of the undead wasn’t hiding inside, and then twisted the key.

  But to Lester’s dismay, the engine did not spring into life. So long had it been since they’d last moved the truck that he wondered if its battery might have become flat, though he didn’t have time to diagnose the issue definitively. Immediately he jumped free of the vehicle – though not before he’d disengaged the handbrake – and made his way to its rear, where he set about his first piece of improvisation for the day.

  Pushing it with all his might, Lester squirmed and grunted with every step. A normal man would probably have struggled to move such a huge mass of metal at any kind of real pace, even on the reasonably flat ground on which it stood, but Lester was no normal man. So strong was he in fact that he had to pull the truck back at a certain point, thanks to the increasing speed he’d built up by pushing. Now in place, Lester climbed back into the truck through the driver’s door and soon emerged from the other side into the adjacent stairwell, before returning briefly to lock the doors, just in case.

  Next he set about moving the various cabinets and couches that were propped against the walls of the tiny concrete shaft. Everything was placed ready to be pushed down into the path of the stairs, and so that’s exactly what Lester did, albeit slowly in an attempt to minimise noise. Before long, the second stairwell was almost as difficult to get through as the first, and Lester found himself with only one concern; what to do if the scavenging group returned.

  But there wasn’t time for such issues, and so putting said thoughts out of his mind for the time being, and at least feeling slightly more secure about the current situation, Lester quickly made his way up to the penultimate floor, before emerging into the masses of huddled citizens. As calmly as he could manage, he began the arduous process of explaining the situation, and asked each of the inevitably scared individuals to remain as quiet as they could manage for the duration of the incident.

  Just a few weeks before then, a group of civilian helpers had been established, comprised of John and Andrew’s wives, as well as a couple of other well respected camp residents. Seeing Lester begin the familiar process, they sprang into action, and began assisting with spreading the word. Before long, Lester ran into Harvey at the other end of the floor, who had also started helping.

  “What’s the plan here?”, Lester quizzed the limping man, making sure they both knew what to do.

  “We wait, see what happens, take a stairwell each and try to hold them back”, Harvey instructed.

  “You sure you’re up to that task?”, Lester asked, staring the man up and down.

  “Well right now, I have to be”, Harvey declared.

  “Fair enough”, Lester replied, “And what about the others?”, he added, concern for their friends being trapped outside evident in his voice.

  “If they get here before the horde, do everything you can to get them inside, otherwise, they’ll have to wait it out, just like us”, Harvey explained.

  “Sounds good”, Lester replied, “I’ll take the south side”, he said, knowing it was more likely to be breached due to its proximity to the entrance.

  “No, you take the north, it’s not as well covered”, Harvey insisted. “Nobody’s getting through the south, so that seems like the best place for me”, he added, waving his bandaged arms in the air.

  “Okay”, Lester conceded, “Let’s do it”.

  * * *

  There was a surreal moment on the journey to the hardware store that nobody familiar with the sad new world could ever get used to. Right when the Ford began crossing over the East Locus Street bridge, all three occupants suddenly found themselves all but encased in an unfamiliar world of glorious green, a welcome change to the grey, black and red that had surrounded them moments earlier.

  The Milwaukee river ran below and over the many years prior had created thousands of trees, cutting straight through the otherwise dull metropolis that overshadowed it. If only the undead could have been prevented from trampling through it on a daily basis this abrupt section of forest would have made for a perfect inner-city farmland. Soon enough though, the car passed over the far side of the bridge and returned to normality, just as the rain began to fall from the skies above, clattering hard on the roof of the Ford.

  “Is that it?”, Sonja asked, raising her voice over the sound of the weather once the truck had rounded the corner at the end of the bridge, a sign in the distance alluding to the presence of their destination.

  “Looks like it”, John confirmed, himself now noticing the blue signage atop their targeted store.

  The sight briefly passed out of view as the Ford made its way along a connecting road, before turning once more onto the same street as their intended destination. All three eyes then found themselves inspecting the store, as well as its lumber distributing counterpart, just a few metres to the side.

  “So, what’s the priority?”, Andrew asked from the rear of the truck, prompting John to consider their options.

  The hardware store would inevitably be filled with useful items, some with purposes such as weaponry and armour, and others for fortifying the base. In fact, if they were really lucky, there may even be some seeds in the outdoor section, a precious item they could use to start growing vegetables back at the camp. But the lumber yard presented the most important and immediate necessity; wood, usable to build the connecting bridge.

  “Lumber first, then the hardware store”, John decided, “We’ve got time”, he added, not knowing how wrong he was in the eyes of those back at base.

  The lumberyard in front would have made for a common pit stop for those looking to fortify their homes, but it looked as if it still retained at least some of its stock, and most surprisingly of all, had a gate left ajar and not a single biter visible on the premises. John pulled the Ford up onto the curb between each store, before turning it round so it was ready to reverse onto the property in front.

  The lumberyard was of decent but not huge size. There was a roadside store at the front of it, with some less than useful display items visible through the windows, and then a warehouse at the back of the property, which was of course much more likely to house what they needed. Ignoring the likely useless sample store out front, John pointed out the warehouse and then disembarked from the truck, his driver seat quickly filled by Sonja, without either person speaking a word.

  “We’re bringing the truck?”, Andrew asked as he too left the vehicle and stood alongside John, who began to walk towards the warehouse, the two of them wincing slightly as heavy raindrops fell all around.

  “Works as a shield, and a quick getaway if needed”, John explained, between thrown glances into the many gaps between various items left in the yard, “And it’s easier to load if we find anything”, he added.

  “Looks pretty well stocked”, Sonja remarked from the driver seat of the slowly reversing Ford, herself looking through the rear view mirror and into the open warehouse.

  The building wasn’t huge, and in fact looked more like a local depot stocked up by a much bigger centralised location somewhere, but it did still show promise. Numerous shelves stretched a decent distance along the interior, and more importantly, all appeared to have at least a few items that had survived the late rush. Of most interest to the group however, were a series of wooden planks, stacked up in various areas.

  Cautiously the duo entered into the embrace of the solid, metal roofed structure, John’s pistol and Andrew’s shotgun drawn between them, taking no chances. The large, open entranceway made scanning the area an easy job, and almost instantly they were able to conclude that it appeared empty of biters, so with that worry off of his chest, John instead set about inspecting the haul.

 
; Decent quality wood was present on a good number of shelves, kept out of the weather and seemingly still in an unused condition, and even different sizes could be found on the higher shelves, reducing the need for loud sawing to constantly take place.

  “Oh yeah”, John announced happily, “We’ve got some good stuff here, we can definitely make something out of this”.

  With that confirmation, Andrew lowered the truck’s tailgate, signalled for Sonja to hold it in place, and went after John, ready to help carry. Andrew remained a kind of in-between member of the group, not enough of a driving force to actually command his peers, but useful enough to keep around on important missions like these. It was a position he was more than happy with, knowing that it kept him out of trouble but in the action all the same, and at times like this it meant he wouldn’t be the one held responsible if they brought back sub-standard wood, which then got used to make a potentially dangerous bridge.

  John eventually stopped at a particular unit, and began shimmying a plank off of the second shelf. Inspecting it briefly, he gave a nod of confirmation to Andrew, and the two then began loading the truck, plank by plank. Sonja meanwhile kept watch, sitting in the driver seat with the engine running, flicking the odd glance backwards each time anything was thrown into the rear bed, but otherwise concentrating her vision outwards, occasionally catching glimpses of lightning, and unable to hear much over the heavy sound of rain on the metallic roof above.

  Piece by piece the rear of the truck began to fill up, until eventually John was happy that they had enough to build a series of bridges, never mind just one. If nothing else, he was sure they could make some better barricades out of any leftover raw materials, which seemed as good a reason as any to bring them back with them. Last of all he did a quick sweep of the warehouse to make sure they’d left nothing of value behind, and then got back into the truck, this time as a front passenger.