“Get in the truck John”, yelled Andrew, who quickly realised he’d need more than that, as John barely even looked him in the eye in response.
“We need to go!”, came a yell from the rear of the truck once again.
“John c’mon, the sooner you get in the sooner we can go!”, Andrew begged.
John looked up, his eyesight drawn suddenly to the slight outline of Andrew’s wife and child, just barely visible through the tinted rear windows, and the memories of his own flooding into his head. Suddenly he felt a renewed urge to survive, and even if it was only to last for a moment, it was at least enough to get him to start climbing into the truck.
“But this doesn’t change anything”, Andrew quickly added, his tone now much more bitter.
“Understood”, replied John, as the passenger door closed behind him, and the truck began to move off.
“Daddy who is that?”, said Hannah from over Andrew’s shoulder.
“It’s nobody sweetheart, he’ll be leaving soon, go back to your…”, Andrew stopped as he found himself unable to finish his sentence, not knowing what it was she had been doing all of this time. Quickly he looked into the rear-view mirror to see for himself. “Oh for God sake, Sarah, would you take that thing off of her? She’s got that damn government advice thing again”, he called out, before looking back in front, just as the truck’s heavy wheels found the road once more.
“Give me that!”, Andrew’s wife Sarah said as she grabbed the leaflet from her daughter, “You don’t need to know about this stuff yet, we keep you safe, remember?”, Sarah asked, to which Hannah simply nodded, knowing she’d done something wrong, but not fully understanding why.
“Those damn survival guides, they would have had an age rating back in the day, now they’re just lying around for anyone to take”, Andrew complained to nobody in particular.
“They gotta’ learn at some point”, replied John, his voice so limp he sounded almost drunk.
“I didn’t ask you”, Andrew replied sternly.
“Sorry”, John quietly replied, his head then sinking into the palms of his hands, as he leant forward against the dashboard.
In the rear of the truck, Hannah finally gave up on picking out details on their new travel companion, instead turning her attention back to the leaflet, hastily scrunched away under her Mother’s arm, the bottom section still visible.
“Typically the deceased can turn anywhere from five minutes to five hours after death, though this is very much a generalisation, and should not be used for any form of measurement. All dead should be prevented from turning by severing the brain stem, or by puncturing any major area of the brain. It is recommended that this be done by a professional, or by someone who has experience in the process. However, in the event of neither being nearby, it is always better to attempt it yourself than to allow the deceased to turn.
Remember, only you have the power to stop them from further spreading the virus, only you can help control the outbreak, and only the head will take them down.”
* * *
The truck drove on for a few miles, weaving in and out of the small inner city roads that made up Madison’s main area, before eventually reaching the outer highways once more, this time on the opposite side of the city. Before long though, Andrew turned off of the main road, diverting instead to a small side path that led up to a large house, the doors and windows covered with wooden planks.
“What is this place?”, John asked, the first full sentence he’d spoken since they had set off.
“No idea”, Andrew replied, “We came across it earlier, seems like as good a place as any. Figured it’s pretty safe with it being this close to a highway we can escape along, so thought we’d spend the night”, he explained as the truck ground to a halt outside the building. “We only headed into Madison for fuel, but your little firefight cut that one short now didn’t it…”, Andrew said, climbing out of the car as he did, and beginning the walk to the front door.
John remained silent, still feeling both defeated and utterly ruined.
“You going to help me check it or not?”, Andrew yelled back towards the truck where John still sat.
Reluctantly, John obliged, climbing out of the truck and following Andrew inside.
“The house is pretty simple, two large open plan areas downstairs, and three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, all stripped clean of everything but a few mattresses…and the odd pillow”, Andrew explained as John walked in. “Only access point is the front door, figure that makes it easier to defend”, he added.
“Easier to get trapped in too”, John replied.
“Yeah”, Andrew replied, ignoring once again John’s lacklustre attitude, “I suppose so”, he said, as he walked over to the door they had come in through, waving in his waiting family, before heading up the stairs, pistol drawn.
Quickly Andrew’s family filed in, each of them looking down and away from John, as if afraid of the consequences of making eye contact with the strange man.
“All good upstairs”, said Andrew as he arrived back at the foot of the staircase, “You guys can go get settled in if you want”, he said, gesturing to his wife and daughter.
Obliging, the pair made their way over to the other side of the room, their footsteps on the exposed wooden floor echoing throughout the empty downstairs, before they started the ascent to the upper rooms. Andrew’s eyes followed them every step of the way, only turning to face John when he was certain they were safely up the steps.
“That was Donald back there I take it, on the ground next to you?”, Andrew asked, unable to ignore John’s depressive state any longer.
John simply nodded.
“Good riddance I say, that guy was crazy”, Andrew said, his mind playing back his first encounter with the man, the moment he almost murdered both John and Andrew on the spot.
At this point, John looked up, his eyes staring dead into Andrew’s, a redness of the eye-sockets taking the place of what might once have been tears.
“He never told me”, John started, stopping to regroup, “He never told me where they are”, he said.
“What?”, Andrew replied.
“Where my family are! He never told me where they are! We were going there next and then he got shot”, John explained.
Andrew’s face went white, unable to think of a suitable response.
“A few hours away”, John said, his eyes once more facing down to the floor below him, “That’s how far he said we were, a few hours’ drive, and now I’ll never know”, he said.
Several seconds went by, neither man saying a thing, but Andrew’s face clearly calculating something, his eyes moving around frantically as if working out the answer to a question he hadn’t been asked.
“John”, he suddenly said, breaking the silence, “I think I know where they are!”.
Chapter 30: Lost and Found
“What!?”, John’s neck snapped round to glare over to Andrew, “What are you talking about!?”.
“Well, it’s a long shot but…”, Andrew hesitated, again mulling something over, “Hold on”, he said, and strode quickly over to one of the bags his family had brought in from the truck.
John’s eyes darted frantically around the room, his lips trying in vain to form one of the thousands of questions he wanted to ask, but instead finding only blubbers of words that even he couldn’t have understood. Choosing to say nothing, he simply watched Andrew’s every movement.
“Yeah, here it is”, Andrew said, as his arm pulled out from one of the many bags, a folded map clutched in his hand, “I found this in with all our things, bunch of other navigation stuff too”, he explained.
“The bag he left in the F150!”, John exclaimed.
“Yeah I guess so, it had this in”, Andrew said, passing the map gingerly to John, who hastily opened it up.
The map appeared to be of the surrounding states, showing all of Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Illinois and Indiana. Each of them was scribbled on in various parts
and accompanied by a series of tallies.
“What… What is all of this?”, John asked.
“Best I can tell it’s a list of places he moved between, campsites, settlements and such, and then he’s marked something about them next to each”, Andrew explained. “I think the tally is of how many times he’s visited, most of them are over in in Iowa, like he was making his way ov-“.
“What does this mean!?”, John demanded cutting in, clearly frustrated by the claims Andrew had originally made about knowing where his family was, compared with the map now sitting in front of him, which appeared to house little information that supported such an outlandish statement.
“The marks John, look at them!”, Andrew said, “Only one near here is in Milwaukee, and there aren’t any between where we met him and there, so I gotta’ figure that’s where he was headed, right?”.
“My God”, John replied, dropping to one knee, overwhelmed by the information he was trying desperately to process, “They’re in Milwaukee”, he said.
Suddenly John leapt to his feet, fuelled by a renewed burst of energy, his footsteps pounding loudly as he walked towards the door.
“John? Where are you going?”, Andrew asked.
“Milwaukee”, he replied, just prior to reaching the door.
“John you can’t go outside now”, Andrew pointed out.
“Why not?”, John asked, as he swung the door open, only to be greeted by a sea of black outside, the night sky stretching as far as the eye could see. The faintest glimmers of a setting sun dipped back down behind the mountains in the distance almost exactly as John spoke, “Oh”.
“First thing in the morning”, Andrew said, “I’m not coming with you, and I’m not helping you either, but I’ll take you to a car, I think I owe you that much”.
“What about your fuel?”, John asked, remembering that the only reason Andrew had even found John was that he had been out in search of fuel.
“That’s my job. We drop you off, then we go find some, doesn’t matter to you”, Andrew said sternly, “Now I’m gonna head upstairs, I’d rather you stay down here if it’s all the same to you”, Andrew said as he walked over to the bottom of the staircase.
“Fair enough”, John agreed.
Andrew began to ascend the staircase, looking back briefly to check John was staying put, before continuing upwards.
“Thank you Andrew”, John said, as Andrew’s feet disappeared out of sight up the staircase.
Andrew said nothing, nodding only to himself to acknowledge the words.
* * *
Visions of his family plagued John’s every thought that cold dark night, stealing away every chance of sleep, each time his eyes finally drifted closed. Eventually, some two hours into the evening, it became apparent that the anticipation, anxiety and excitement at what lay ahead was keeping him far too awake, and would no doubt continue to do so.
“Just a couple hours drive”, he kept repeating to himself, “Between me and them, that’s all it is, just a couple hours drive”, the words ran on and on like a broken record, interrupted only by thoughts of what might yet again thwart the final leg of the journey. Visions of attacking bandits and swarming hordes of the undead plagued John’s mind, alongside some of the more trivial possibilities, such as yet another tire blowing out, or the truck running out of fuel.
“Fuel”, he suddenly found himself saying out loud, as his head rose upwards to look at the truck, just visible outside the nearby window. It was so low on the stuff that Andrew had come into the city in search of more, but had been interrupted by the chaos John had just barely escaped from. The truck still needed fuel, which made for yet another potential task to take care of before John could leave for Milwaukee, whether the Ford ran out before he could find his own vehicle, or the vehicle he found was itself empty of the all-important liquid.
Suddenly, John leapt to his feet, adamant that nothing else would stand between him and his family, and knowing that he not only needed to fill the truck, but bring enough back to get whatever vehicle he switched to running as well. In any case, the more he found the better, as had always been the case, and so he quickly but quietly emptied out the majority of his backpack, swung it over his shoulder, grabbed his Remington from the floor, and headed for the door.
Outside, the air was devoid of even the slightest sound. The house was far enough inside the once bustling city to rid it of the majority of wildlife related noises, but with the metropolis as empty as it now was, all that remained was utter silence. Not a car engine or train horn in the distance could be heard, nor was there the slightest sign of movement as far as the eye could see, save of course for the occasional roamer out for a night-time stroll. At times like this, this new world seemed almost pleasant, so much more peaceful in its new state. But it only took one sighting, one gnawing set of teeth on the horizon, to remind John that peaceful was most certainly not the right word.
Peering through the driver side window of the F150 as he walked out of the driveway, John realised just how much fuel he’d need. The gauge just barely lifted off of the bottom, probably less than twenty or so miles left in its tank. So common had fuel been before the outbreak that John was sure he’d have no trouble finding it in a city like this one, but at the same time, he couldn’t help but picture the fires from the day before, and the obvious signs of intentional destruction to the gas stations. For whatever reason, the bandits clearly wanted to prevent others from getting what they had left, and that was the most troubling thought of all. Still though, John was sure there would be some stowed away in some of the many houses around, after all, the practise of keeping some spare in the trunk of a vehicle or the back of a garage had been reasonably common up until now, or so John hoped.
The first house along the street was in tatters, its once strong wooden frame charred from top to bottom with the remnant of fire, the smell of ash lingering in John’s nostril as he approached. Had this house ever had any fuel in it, it would almost certainly have perished in the fire, along with whoever was unfortunate enough to still be inside. Often houses like this one had been used as traps, numerous biters lured in and locked away while the building was set ablaze. Rash as it may have been, it was no doubt responsible for a reasonable amount of culling, and might just have stemmed the outbreak for the few hours needed to evacuate a few hundred more people. On the other hand, it may have just been bandits burning another of the many sites they had raided, a thought John quickly reminded himself of, before moving further down the road.
A little way along John came across another building, this time spared the fate of fire, but still looking significantly worse for wear, all of its windows either smashed, boarded up, or both. The front door had been kicked in, blockaded and god knows what else, but was now no more than a crumpled pile of wooden shards, clearly unable to repel its last invader. John gripped his shotgun, walking quickly but quietly up to what was once the main entrance, his body hugging in against the wall just next to the doorway. He spent a few moments like this, listening intently for any sound of movement inside, and waiting until his breathing had steadied, before he clicked on the torch of his shotgun, and moved cautiously through the open doorway.
The insides of the house were ruined, its walls knocked through and riddled with bullet holes, and every piece of furniture broken into pieces and scattered across the floor. Even every available piece of wall-space had been spray painted over with more swear words than John had ever heard of, and a green and black star logo he’d never before seen. It seemed as if this wretched place had been ruined long before the infection, something John knew to mean that the chances of anybody having stored something as useful as fuel here, was slim to none. But slim to none was fine, because it still meant there was a chance, and so he slowly crept through the main living area, his torch illuminating every dark and dreary corner of the downstairs, until he reached the kitchen.
The draws of the kitchen had not only been emptied, but broken off, again smashed
to pieces and thrown about the house. Suddenly the likelihood of there being even a sliver of something as necessary as usable gas, in a house that failed to supply even something as simple as sharpened cutlery, began to dawn on John, but not to be deterred, he headed back for the hallway, and began to ascend the stairs.
No sooner however had John reached the second or third step, than the low sounds of gasping for breath had echoed out from the upstairs, causing John to freeze on the spot, his torch still pointed towards the upper floor. John knew instantly that whatever was emitting the sound was very much dead. No living being would gasp so horrifically, and from the sounds of things, John imagined it had some kind of breathing related cause of death, though whether that was choking on food, or being shot through the neck like Donald, he didn’t know.
One positive that occurred to John at a moment like this, was the sudden increased likelihood of there being something up there worth finding. The presence of a biter simply meant that someone, at some point, had died up there, and that since then, not a single person had managed to get up there themselves, or they would presumably have had to kill the creature that resided there. It was just a theory, but it was enough motivation for John to risk yet another trip into the blind, and so he once again began to ascend the stairs, his torch flicking from side to side as he went, ready for whatever might come around the corner.
At the top of the steps, confronted with the choice of either left or right, John headed left, following the now louder sound of gasping, keen to remove the threat before he did anything else. As he walked, it became clear that this house had been the resting stop for numerous people. The names of past residents were scrawled across a wall alongside the upstairs hallway, almost like the credits at the end of a movie, acknowledging everyone that had been a part of whatever had happened here. John couldn’t help but read them each off, “Geoff, Jack, Ryan”, the names sounding out in his head like he’d known them his whole life, “Ray, Michael, Gavin”, all of them written in the same style, perhaps even by the same person, in what may have been an attempt to keep track of the members of their group that were still alive, John hypothesised. Finally though came another name, “Kerry”, each letter barely visible behind the red cross that had been drawn over it, written, John was sure, in blood. Suddenly it became apparent that there was indeed only one creature in the house, and John was willing to bet good money, that his name had been Kerry.
Aftermath (Book 1): Only The Head Will Take Them Down Page 23