The Decline

by Jessulat, Christopher

  Anders allowed himself to hope.

  Some slight movement caught Anders’ eye from the street stretching southwards. He turned his binoculars along the loop towards the roadway access of the barracks safe zone. Looking through the aperture he spotted two figures, a pair meekly shambling on the snow covered road, ambling about without purpose or direction. They were dead, and he knew it without having to study them. He reckoned they were a solid four hundred yards away.

  No point telling the sniper he was with – the same mute grunt from last shift.

  Anders doubted he could hit the targets at that distance anyway.

  ***

  The salvage team would start north and climb a hill until they made it to an office complex called the Mercantile centre. There they would slip around the structure and make their way down the parking access along the rear of the building. They’d continue a few hundred yards until they hit the first four way intersection, where they would hang a left for a couple blocks and then break right towards their destination. Once outside the hospital and able to assess the scene, they’d determine which building would serve as their outpost.

  It was a long and circuitous route, but would allow the team to avoid the denser residential housing prevalent along the more direct paths. It would also ensure they travelled through or alongside as much open space and parking lots as possible. Not to say it wasn’t without danger – this pass would take them treacherously close to Harbour Station, the city’s primary sports complex and large event destination. It was converted to an aid station in the early days of the outbreak, before the true catastrophe of the infection was fully understood. While they would be overlooking it, the team would never need to get down to street level alongside it. Well over a thousand people would have been treated there; hundreds of volunteers.

  And the overwhelming majority of them would have died.

  Those among them not fully consumed by the dead would have reanimated.

  This was an area where angels would fear to tread.

  So long as they moved quick and quiet and didn’t fire their weapons without absolute necessity, they should be able to slip by, sight unseen.

  Only one short stretch would have them uncomfortably exposed.

  ***

  Quinn tapped his middle finger against his temple, listening intently to the rhythmic static being played for him.

  The communications room was always closed and guarded; Quinn had to control the dissemination of any messages, or the complete lack thereof. He sat at a plain wooden desk with his resident improvised comms expert. Andrew, he thought his name was.

  Didn’t really matter. This kid wasn’t much of a soldier.

  Andrew was short and portly, hardly a physical specimen. He’d spent his days pre-outbreak playing computer games, and judging by his pallor and somewhat sickly demeanor, he devoted far too much time to them. He telecommuted to work daily and was asthmatic – probably hadn’t seen real exercise for months at a time. His hair was shaggy and unkempt, like the rest of his appearance, and his posture was overtly flaccid. But he had a head for electronics and was obviously an intellectual; Quinn valued that skillset, even if he was socially stunted.

  He couldn’t help but judge Andrew as being lazy and withdrawn.

  He was soft, doughy.

  Still, when the world fell apart, Andrew stepped up and volunteered his service, such as it was.

  By Quinn’s estimation, that counted for something.

  Andrew was stationed at the radio, broadcasting a scripted message and periodically trying to rig it any way he could to boost a signal either in or out. He had successfully altered a few of the two-way radios, but batteries were becoming scarce and Quinn needed to ration those as well.

  Andrew had been at this for days with no sign of progress, and those frustrations were plainly written on his face. With the break in weather, he had hoped the signal would have less interference; Quinn meant to make the most of it and correctly believed he would need to prod Andrew to keep him on task.

  ‘Keep trying,’ Quinn instructed, standing from his seat.

  ‘There’s no one out there,’ Andrew began, looking like a puppy that had been kicked too many times, ‘at least no one who can respond.’

  Quinn studied the boy. He wasn’t accustomed to people questioning his orders.

  Turning to leave, Quinn stopped only long enough to force eye contact and flatly state the obvious.

  ‘Keep trying.’

  ***

  The salvage team had just crested the first hill; they had advanced without incident on the first leg of the journey. No movement aside from their own.

  The unit crossed the intersection as one and hugged up against the Mercantile as they snaked their way to the back of the building. The snow had drifted up against the structure and made the fencing easy to climb over. It was fortunate as climbing in snow gear and heavy boots could prove a challenging task.

  One by one the team would hop the fence while the others scanned the surroundings.

  Isaac leaned his back against the building, waiting his turn. It dawned on Isaac that he had actually worked in this building at one point. He had an unceremonious office on the ground floor; the team literally walked under his former window to get to their current position.

  Now, he was standing in the cold with a team of masked strangers, holding a shotgun, outside his former workplace.

  Unsure of exactly why, Isaac found it hilarious. He stifled a laugh at his own expense, shook it off and rotated his shoulders forward to bring himself back to game focus.

  Slowly, deliberately the team moved up the slight bank to where the rear parking area would be.

  Cox would be in command of this mission. She carried the Canadian Armed Force’s standard issue Colt C7 with tactical rails, choosing today to mount a flashlight for illuminating the expected deep darkness of the hospital’s corridors. She motioned the team to sit tight while she slid up the rest of the embankment. Raising her rifle, she leaned into the aperture and scanned the streets ahead with careful intent. The team waited, breath filtering through their various masks as plumes of ragged vapour in the crisp morning air. Content their path was open, she turned back to her team and silently mouthed the order –

  ‘Let’s move.’

  Cox kept the porters in the middle of the pack; they were the purpose of this mission, without which the team would be stuffing whatever they could into their jacket’s shallow pockets. Those packs were a lifeline for everyone back in the compound, and Quinn had entrusted their success to her.

  The team had to reach the top of one last gentle incline before they would be able to level out, this little hill along the ridgeline culminating in the ultimate view of Harbour Station. Once they got past this stretch, they would have building cover to exploit from its line of sight. For now, they would be against the horizon with the morning sun in the sky behind them. They could potentially cast silhouettes against the overlooking ridge if they weren’t absolutely perfect in their positioning.

  It may have been unlikely, but she wasn’t going to risk it. There was no guidance on how keen the eyesight was for the infected. They could smell you and they would be drawn to sound, and Cox reasoned if corpses had any vestigial sight it would be capable of processing either motion or light; she didn’t want to chance disrupting the skyline.

  She had the team advance in pairs and in orderly fashion, evenly spaced and timed, running like clockwork. Wherever possible she kept everyone to the right side of the street, away from the ridge, and used the buildings to regroup in cover before scanning the path ahead. Cox brought up the rear only because she was using her scope to scout the road in front, and in the event shit erupted around them, she would cover their withdrawal.

  Isaac noticed one of the porters – a big, burly, bearded man – was already beaded in sweat, wringing his glo
ved hands around the grips of an aluminum baseball bat. Otherwise, everyone looked relaxed.

  Good sign.

  With the rest of the team in position, Cox sprinted up to catch them. The team had almost reached the crest of the incline and she could plainly see the roof of Harbour Station. It had partially collapsed under the weight of the ice and snow and showed the telltale signs of soot; she couldn’t see the street level. She knew from this position they had to make it three blocks ahead and then carve a path to the left.

  Cox peered around their cover at the corner of the building to get a glimpse of the road ahead.

  Fuck me.

  ***

  Andrew couldn’t stop thinking about how futile this pursuit was.

  He had been repeating the same script for days, pausing every few hours to tinker with the radio and consider how he could possibly boost the signal.

  He always came up empty, and each time he did he lost a little more interest.

  Andrew was often left alone in the communications room, sporadically visited by Quinn to check on progress. Occasionally the comms room was host to closed-door meetings, but Andrew was always ushered out for those, leaving him to stand awkwardly in the command centre. He didn’t know anyone’s name out there, and while no one made any effort to learn his, he was starting to recognize a few faces.

  He definitely recognized the blonde administrative assistant.

  Jesus, she was a hot little number.

  Andrew had never been blessed with social graces, but he shut down completely around her. Though he didn’t speak much to begin with, she stole the words from him, and along with it any sense of mental faculty.

  Andrew shook his head and tried to reorient himself to the task at hand. He reached for a screwdriver and once again turned the radio around to remove the protective casing.

  ***

  Quinn was being briefed by a civilian administrator about complaints being levied by a group of the survivors.

  William.

  A fifty-something litigation lawyer.

  Quinn had little respect for the legal trade in the world pre-outbreak; he had even less use for it now.

  William was tall and thin, with features that most closely resembled a fox. Covetous and angular, he seemed at once both scavenging and predatory.

  Without his monthly touchups at the stylist, his hair was steadily shedding its colour. The once slick and suave salt-and-pepper aspect fast eroded to the addled gray that more honestly reflected his years. Despite now being bereft of his accustomed wealth and status, William clung fervently to the idea of his elevated worth amongst the rank and file of the survivors.

  Still, this man was intelligent. He had legitimate finesse with words.

  Conniving, manipulative, he always sought to box Quinn in.

  It was infuriating.

  They were complaining of the tight rations and the heavy workload, difficult and cramped conditions in the living quarters.

  After a while it all just blended together for him.

  Not that Quinn was callous; he did care for the people in his charge. He didn’t take the command lightly and knew he would be faced with difficult decisions.

  He had weighed his options and set his course, believing them always to be for the greater good. He would do what was necessary, whether it was comfortable or not; this was nothing he didn’t expect. Obviously tighter rationing of the food and water, let alone “comfort” items would be unpopular, but the banality of this was starting to set Quinn on edge.

  He took a deep, calming breath. If a few moments of his time to indulge this administrator’s concerns would help comfort their constituents, he would find the time for it.

  ***

  Cox turned back from the corner and leaned flat against the wall for support.

  ‘We’ve got company.’

  She counted at minimum five of the reanimated bastards milling about the entrance to a structure on the opposite side of the street. It had been a correctional facility of some type, maybe storing prisoners for transfer. Didn’t matter; the building itself was right up against the ridgeline Cox needed to avoid casting shadows by.

  Cox cleared her throat.

  ‘We need to do this quiet and we need to get them on this side of the street. I don’t want to be anywhere near the top of that embankment on their side of the road,’ she paused to make sure her orders were understood. ‘Around this corner is a pair of raised concrete platforms, we’re going to move ahead – quick and quiet – and we’ll determine how to engage from there.’

  The dead didn’t notice their advance and continued to fumble about up the street. The team huddled in tight behind any cover they could get. The dead were little more than the road width away. From this distance, the signs of serious frostbite were evident – decrepit skin, blackened by the frigid cold.

  It was a marvel the things could still move.

  Cox signaled the group – this encounter would be settled in close quarters. ‘Six targets, porters go last.’

  Isaac unhooked the binding on his knife which he had tied to the side of his right leg.

  The bearded man with the bat closed his eyes, took a deep breath and issued a prolonged exhalation through his nose.

  Everyone ran through their own little routine to make ready.

  Cox whistled sharply, but was conscious of how far the sound could carry on a clear, mostly still day like today.

  The dead responded.

  ***

  Anders continued to survey the streets looking for signs of life; signs of anything, really.

  The grunt next to him slept soundlessly, wrapped around his C14 Timberwolf as if it anchored him to the earth itself.

  Far off in the distance over the Bay he could see a cloud bank forming, but it wasn’t gathering quickly and didn’t appear at all menacing.

  The pair of ghouls he had spotted earlier was still staggering about down the road and hadn’t moved any closer nor further away from the compound, though it appeared a few more had joined them. Anders would turn his eyes to them every so often, just to ensure the congregation wasn’t swelling to an unmanageable number while he was occupied surveying other parts of the town.

  After a few moments spent fruitlessly scanning some of the other streets, Anders needed a break from the sun’s reflecting glare. He turned from the wasteland to face the compound. He fumbled in his coat for a moment, sifting through his pockets for one of the little packets of sugar he had pilfered away from the mess.

  Anders always had a bit of a sweet tooth; even if this was just a paltry serving of refined sugar, it would brighten his mood. In the world before the outbreak he could eat a chocolate bar faster than most would be able to unwrap one.

  Through an amazing feat of self restraint, Anders patiently allowed the sugar to dissolve on his tongue without swallowing it.

  You need to take time for the little things.

  The things that make you feel human.

  Looking down at the compound, Anders’ gaze fell to the blue and green storage shed. It was always guarded. He knew provisions were finite, and Quinn controlled every aspect of the enclave’s rations. The scavenging teams hadn’t been able to mount a serious effort in over a week due to the weather, and every day supplies were being used at what must have been an alarming rate.

  Anders suddenly felt a little guilty for helping himself to the sugar packets.

  Still needing to rest his eyes against the snow covered streets, Anders raised the binoculars again to spy the soldiers guarding one of the entrances to the stores. Two soldiers, a male and female, stood taut and at alert.

  While he didn’t know either of them, he couldn’t help but think they looked agitated. Something in their posture, the way they held their weapons; fingers resting on the trigger guards despite being deep in the compound and far from
the fences. They were wound up, tight as a spring.

  Anders couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right, believing this went beyond his usual distaste for military rigidity.

  He could feel it in his bones.

  ***

  The dead advanced on them, and when they were about halfway to the group’s position, the team emerged.

  It was hardly elegant.

  The burly man, running on instinct and ignoring Cox’s order to hang back leapt forward and swung his bat wildly at the lead ghoul, annihilating what was once its skull; it crashed to the snow in a heap. On the uneven terrain, the big swing had thrown him off balance, and he stumbled – the next ghoul in line lunged for him, and it would have had him had one of the other survivors not come in with the butt end of their rifle. The blow didn’t take the creature down, but it did knock it back long enough for the rest of the team to enter the fray and the two survivors to find their footing and square to the oncoming threat. The combined weight of their blows finished it off.

  Isaac didn’t like the melee; it was unpredictable. He preferred deliberate and concerted action, and he hung back a bit to find his moment to properly engage. He tightened his grip on the shotgun and studied the carnage.

  Cox made short work of her target. She isolated a ghoul on the fringe of the group, slipped her blade neatly underneath its chin as it clumsily groped the air for her.

  The SKS gunners had both cleanly taken down targets with their bayonets before they ever got within reach. With such a clean dispatch, it was obvious to Isaac they were both well seasoned in the wastes.

  One of the remaining porters dove in headlong, rushing past Isaac while brandishing a tire iron. He brought it down hard and struck the monster’s clavicle, closer to where the neck meets the shoulders. The blow cracked the bone audibly but didn’t phase the reanimated corpse in the least. It shambled forward as the porter raised his weapon arm for a second strike, latching on to him at an awkward angle before wrestling him down to one knee. The arm wielding the tire iron frantically struggled to keep the snapping jaws from finding their intended mark.