Aftermath (Book 1): Only The Head Will Take Them Down

by Duncan McArdle

  “Well they’re burning now aren’t they!?”, Gerry roared again, “So get back into your god damn position!”.

  “Y...Yes boss”, the man replied feverishly, as he began the long run back to the other side of the bridge.

  “You two”, Gerry continued, pointing at the two guards who had previously stood with him at the centre of the bridge, “Get in one of the trucks, chase him down and take him out, I’m sick of this!”, he instructed.

  “Whoah whoah whoah”, John interrupted, thinking completely of his desire to save his friend, and not at all of just how exactly he intended to reason them out of giving chase.

  “What!?”, Gerry barked.

  “Well it’s just…”, John stalled, unable to think of anything to say, and growing more and more concerned that he was beginning to look extremely suspicious.

  “Let us go after him”, Donald cut in, confused at his companion’s outburst, but happy to clean up his mess anyway if it meant getting away from the bridge. “Saves you fellas the bullets and the fuel, and we’re headed out that way anyhow, least we could do in return for these”, Donald continued, holding up his M4 and nodding to John’s M14.

  Gerry deliberated for a moment, weighing up which of the two options in front provided him with the biggest benefit. Eventually, he came to a decision.

  “Alright fine. But I’m counting on you two, get out there and hunt them down! If I ever see either of you again, I want to hear that you cut out that guy’s god damn throat!”, Gerry ordered.

  “Got it”, Donald responded, before starting up the ragged old Toyota once more.

  For the second time in two days, John drove off of that bridge without paying a cent. The irony of it all was that before the infection had spread, he’d probably have had to pay a toll to cross. Though he was guessing the price wouldn’t have been payable in ammunition, or with his life.

  Chapter 16: Putting it into High Gear

  “You know that was Andrew back there right?”, John asked a few moments after leaving the bridge.

  “Huh?”, Donald responded as he turned left to follow the tracks of the Ford along the river bank.

  “In the truck, that was Andrew”, John explained.

  “Are you kidding me? The guy with my god damn nav bag?”, Donald asked.

  “You and that damn nav bag, we’ll find you another compass, and we’re sure as hell not chasing Andrew in this thing,” John pointed out.

  “Argh!”, Donald breathed an aggrivated sigh of disappointment. “Just as well, he was hauling ass, probably long gone by now”.

  “Probably”, John agreed, smiling as he thought of Andrew, now on the easy part of the journey back to his family, “And anyway, we’ve got other places to be”.

  “Yeah yeah I know, I’m a man of my word”, Donald replied.

  John settled back into the most comfortable position he could find, and prepared himself for what he very well knew could be a long journey. It was the not knowing that made things much harder, every turn off in the distance could be the one they were about to take, but likewise, it could be just another unbelievably small section of the route ahead. John knew remarkably little about where they were headed, or even about the man that was taking him, but just as he opened his mouth to try and find out more, he was beaten to it.

  “Tell me about your time in the military”, Donald said.

  “Not a real big fan of talking about it”, John replied, keen to keep his cards close to the chest.

  “This journeys gonna’ be a whole lot longer and a whole lot less interesting if you act like that the whole way”, Donald said.

  “You tell me where we’re headed and I’ll tell you about my time in the service”, John bartered.

  Donald looked over at him, and then back to the road in front. “I tell you what”, he started, “I’ll tell you how long the drive is, deal?”.

  “Fine”, John said begrudgingly, wishing he had more of a bargaining chip than just an ability to make conversation, “But you first”.

  “Bout’ five hours as the crow flies”, Donald replied, “But we aint’ crows, and we aint’ going straight there”.

  John was torn, even five hours felt like a lifetime at this point, a time period that might involve god knows how many blocked roads, hordes, and maybe even bandits. At the same time however, five hours seemed like nothing compared to seeing his family again, hopefully alive, well, and all in one piece. In any case, John had absolutely no choice, he was in it for the long haul, so it made little difference how long it took, because he was going to ride it out till the end. All he could do was hope that Donald didn’t have too many supply stops planned along the way.

  “I was in the 10th regiment”, he began. “Deployed around the Middle-East most of the time, was a Marine Scout Sniper and a damn good one too, 80 confirmed and over 200 probable kills in 16 months of service. Got out in 2010 and been trying to make it back here, in this ‘civilised world’, ever since”.

  “You never think about going back, serving again, hell even teaching or something?”, Donald asked.

  John paused for a moment, wondering whether it was too early to ask for more information on their journey, before quickly guessing that it was, and so continuing on with his story instead.

  “Around the end of 2010, I get orders to hit these targets, group of suspected militia or something, pretty straight forward. But this time they give me a new spotter, and a new rifle too, this SR-25 monster hooked up to a whole mess of electronic shit, looks like a damn game or something. Anyway, we head up this hill, settle down, my spotter starts looking and as we find one, we mark them on the screen of this SR-25, whole time we’re being told what to do over radio. After we’ve marked ‘em all, they tell us to wait till they’re all out in the open, and then to start firing. So that’s exactly what I did, I waited, I fired, and I watched the first body drop, and saw it disappear from the screen, and then I turn to the second, and I fire again. This goes on till all five are down, no heat signatures on the screen, nobody left alive, mission complete. We both just lay there for a bit, watching for any fallout, making sure nobodies seen us, the usual procedures”.

  John hesitated, conscious he may have divulged too much, but somewhat enjoying regaling someone with stories of his past.

  “Go on”, Donald said.

  “After a couple minutes, I start packing up this rifle, turning off all the electronic crap, getting ready to head out, and then my spotter just starts making this noise, sounded kind of like crying but like he was trying to hold it back. So I lay back down and I take out my binoculars, and I look right where he’s looking, only now I see this kid, this little kid no more than four or five years old, and he’s just sat there on the floor, shoving this guy who I’d just shot, trying to get him to wake up”, John paused again, taking a moment to gather his thoughts.

  Donald sits silently, listening intently to the story.

  “To us the guy was a little light on the screen that I turned off, nothing more than that. But to this kid, he could have been his whole life, could have been his father, his brother, anything. I’m just laying there thinking this, but I know I have to put it out of my mind, so I do, and I start looking round for anybody else near to this kid. But then out of nowhere, I hear this shot, it’s close, so close I can feel the god damn heat from the gun on the side of my neck, and my ears start ringing like crazy. Thing is though, it’s no sniper shot, nobodies seen us, nothing like that. I drop my ‘nocs, roll around to see what it is, and there’s my spotter, laying there face down, a 9MM in hand and one big ass hole in his head. He was dead, right alongside me”.

  “He killed himself?”, Donald asked.

  “You bet”, John answered. “Right there and then, I knew I’d served enough time, knew I’d seen enough. I wanted out”.

  “So, you left because you couldn’t handle seeing some pussy kill themselves?”, Donald asked, chuckling slightly in a horrendously cynical manner that made John’s insides feel sick.<
br />
  “No”, John responded bluntly. “I left because laying there, staring at this young guy who’d just taken his own life right there on that hillside, I realised the sight of it didn’t bother me one bit, and that scared me more than anything”.

  * * *

  After driving for some time, most of which was done in an almost completely straight line along the I94, John couldn’t help but notice that Donald seemed to have a perfect knowledge of where the roads were and weren’t blocked. Regularly he chose to go off-road, well in advance of traffic jams John had yet to even lay eyes on, as if he’d been there just hours before. The more worrying fact though was that on every one of these mini-escapades, as the terrain became rougher and rougher, John felt more and more uneasy about the chance of the Toyota actually making it to wherever it was that they were heading.

  “How reliable is this thing?”, he eventually asked, after a particularly bumpy detour.

  “This?”, Donald asked, rapping his hand against the exposed metal of the driver-side door, the trim long since having been ripped clean off.

  “Yeah, the rust-bucket that keeps screaming every time we turn”, John confirmed.

  “This here’s a Hilux!”, Donald laughed, “The indestructible truck! These things been dropped off buildings and thrown into the sea, and kept driving to tell the tale!”, he explained. “Ain’t nothing going to stop one of these, nothing at all”.

  John wasn’t sure if Donald was saying this out of some odd past experience with the truck, or out of pure naivety, but at least he’d gotten an answer, and that was that the Toyota was ‘indestructible’.

  “Is it yours?”, he eventually asked, fearing the answer.

  “Is now”, Donald laughed. “Used to have one a couple years back, but traded it in for something a bit more modern. Course, when the shit hit the fan, the waste of space sedan I replaced it with didn’t have a chance in hell of covering the terrain that this thing does, so I swapped it out for the first free 4x4 I could find, and that just so happened to be this”, he explained. “I know it ain’t exactly fancy, but it does the job, and I ain’t had a single problem with it since I found it”, he said proudly.

  John simply nodded, just as unsure as ever as to whether or not his new guide was a completely normal guy, who knew exactly what he was doing, or whether he was in fact utterly insane.

  * * *

  After some time, John decided to start inspecting the weapons. Picking up his M14 first, he popped the magazine out, cleared the chamber, and fired a few empty shots. The satisfying click of the firing pin immediately signalled good internals, but was just about the only part of the weapon he could reliably test without live ammunition. That said, he was still extremely relieved to hear the sound nonetheless. Checking the magazine, he counted 20 slots per clip, 16 of which appeared to be filled, much to his relief. The weapon took reasonably common ammo – in fact both the M4 and M14 took NATO rounds, though sadly not of the same size – but John wasn’t sure whether they’d find much, save for in an armoury or shooting range perhaps. In any case, it was a nice weapon, and the scope would make it invaluable in despatching targets from a reasonable distance, though the noise of it would probably limit its use.

  John then picked up the M4, emptying it and firing off a few blank shots to make sure all was well, followed by the counting of a full thirty round magazine. The M4 felt much more modern than his M14, the carry handle alone making for much easier transport of the gun, and the automatic fire mode meaning that it could no doubt get them out of a tight close-quarters spot if needed, but John was still more than happy with his own rifle. Concluding his inspection, he smoothly flicked the M4’s safety on, and set both rifles back down in the passenger foot-well, just as Donald began to inquire about the results of his assessment.

  “They both seem okay?”, he asked.

  “Damn sight better than pistols”, John responded, “And more accurate than my Remington”, he said of the shotgun that sat in the truck’s rear.

  “Good, we’ll see if we can’t rustle up some ammo for them at some point, and remember-“.

  “Everything goes to you at the end, I know, don’t worry about it”, John answered, cutting in as soon as he knew what Donald was about to say.

  “Gonna’ make our first stop just up ahead, city called ‘Eau Claire’, about sixty-five thousand people there pre-infection, so should be a lively trip”, Donald said, a sickening smile spreading across his face.

  “What’s there?”, John asked.

  “All I know of is a hospital, but I’m sure we can find more than just that”, Donald said.

  Hospitals had become invaluable places, their large caches of equipment and medical supplies like gold-dust in this new world, where gunshot wounds were common and simple scrapes could turn into life threatening illnesses if left untreated. As such, most of them had long since been raided, or were under the guard of bandit gangs. But some remained vacant, what supplies they had left ripe for the taking, something the pair were very much hoping for.

  Before long, the usual ‘welcome to…’ signs passed by, signalling that they were nearing the town of Eau Claire, and so John began to ready himself. Looking between the M14 on the floor in front of him, and the Remington shotgun in the rear of the truck, for once John felt like he might be prepared for just about any situation. But as usual, he hoped desperately that he wouldn’t find himself needing to use either weapon.

  Chapter 17: “Here is Clear Water”

  The truck’s loud engine made any kind of stealthy approach more of a pipe dream, but that gave no reason to go in wheels screeching, so Donald drove into the city slowly, both his and John’s eyes darting from building to building as he did. Each was looking for signs of life, death, or anything of interest for that matter. Occasionally John caught sight of bodies, some lying dead on the floor, others stumbling across roads way off in the distance. They were definitely dead, and judging by their slow, ambling waltz, posed no threat to them now, but were certainly worth remembering for later, should they decide to go out exploring the town.

  The whole place seemed utterly derelict, it had the feel of a World War 2 city after a heavy night of bombing, or perhaps the morning after an incited riot eventually cooled down. The windows were smashed, doors kicked in and walls everywhere charred by fire. It was an uncomfortable sight, and felt unusually still, empty and lifeless, and yet somehow tense and ready to blow any second. Both men sat on the edge of their seats, ready to react at a moment’s notice to anything changing in their environment, while the truck itself calmly and collectedly pulled them further and further into the cities dark grasp.

  Eventually Donald slowed the Toyota to a halt just outside of a gas station not far from the city centre, its windows and doors seemingly intact, something that at this point was almost unheard of. John knew only too well that places with any value had usually long since been looted, and gas stations – which potentially supplied fuel, food and water – were one of the most attractive targets around. As such, he felt little chance of finding much inside, but stepped out of the truck just as Donald did, keen to obey his guide until he took John where he wanted to go. Picking up the M4 and M14 from the passenger side, he knew the M14’s range was unlikely to be of much use here, but he was also confident that the automatic mode of the M4 – which he passed over to Donald as they convened on the left hand side of the truck – would take care of any close range situations they might find themselves in, and so he brought it along anyway.

  “You check the pumps, I’ll check inside”, Donald instructed as he began walking over to the front entrance of the gas station stroke mini-mart.

  John nodded, moving briskly to the three double sided fuel pumps joined to the side of the building. Finding gas in such an obvious location, and one this close to a populated area, was unbelievably unlikely, and as John began squeezing the handles of each pump, he wasn’t surprised get nothing more than puffs of air. Whatever gas that was once here was no doub
t scavenged many months ago.

  At the front of the adjoining shop, Donald peered through the glass windows before slowly creeping into the store, the chiming of the visitor bell sounding out suddenly across the store as he entered. Donald raised his M4, pointing it to every corner of the room as he quickly switched it to automatic mode, ready and willing to take down any being alive or dead that had heard the noise, but he saw nothing. Lowering his weapon slightly – though not all the way – he flicked its selector switch back to semi-auto, and slowly began his initial sweep of the building, attempting as he went to ascertain if anything alive had remained inside.

  Moving through the store – his heart beat temporarily stopping as he leant into each new aisle – he quickly concluded that he was alone, and so instead began to inspect the shelves, seeking out what little remained in a shop that had clearly already been looted many times before. He found little there other than the odd food snack that had long since perished, and a few bottles of odd luminous drinks he was certain they were better off avoiding. It appeared that this particular stop had been a bust, and so he grabbed the few remaining packs of cigarettes from behind the counter, and made his way to the exit, kicking the empty tins and discarded packaging that littered the floor in frustration as he did.

  Pushing the doors open and moving back into the warm afternoon air, Donald saw the passenger side door of his truck slowly close over, his partner clearly ready to head out, and so quickened his pace towards the Toyota. Little more than a second later though, he saw the figure in the truck duck down, their seemingly bald head moving into position underneath the steering wheel, along with the rest of their upper body. Donald paused for a moment in confusion, but was brought back to reality by the abrupt sound of the Hilux’s engine kicking into life. Someone was actually stealing the truck.

  “JOHN!!!”, Donald yelled, raising his M4, “IN THE TRUCK!”.

  He knew – despite having yet to fire it – that the rifle was a fantastic weapon, but he also knew that from this distance he had little chance of hitting his target without doing serious damage to the truck itself. Unfortunately for everyone involved though, he had little choice, he would not let someone else take his property, especially when all of their supplies were packed away inside of it. Donald closed his left eye, lining up the shot, and placed his right finger over the trigger ready to fire.