The theory was complex, but a good one nonetheless. Although difficult, it was entirely possible to lead a large horde in such a way – it had been exactly what John and Andrew had been doing their whole time in Milwaukee – and if someone was able to lead enough of them into a closed off building such as this one, they would almost certainly save themselves some serious ammo, as well as the trauma and effort of killing so many of the undead.
“Well”, Andrew said after a few moments of quiet contemplation over what the sights in front of them meant, “That’s it then I guess”.
John slowly opened his door, climbing out to the ground below, his stern posture and stance more powerful than yelling the words “I will not give up”, but the ruined museum in front of him all but shoving that back in his face.
“John”, Andrew said again, “I think that’s it”.
“I know”, John replied, withdrawing the scrap of paper on which he’d written the eight possible destinations, and taking one final look up at what he had been sure was their best bet. After a few final moments, he looked back down at the tattered paper, and scratched off the final entry, before saying those painful words once more, “I know”.
For Andrew, that very moment felt eerier than any other. It was like the world had taken on a new level of silence, a new example of just what emptiness really was. Strangely, all of it was coming from just looking at the face of his companion, as John span around looking at everything and anything nearby, desperate for the slightest reason not to give up. Andrew couldn’t blame him of course, what he was asking him to do was to stop a search for his own flesh and blood, a noble quest that any man would consider, but only the best of men would undertake. Andrew hated that he was asking him to do such a thing, but he knew, beyond any reasonable doubt, that if John stayed here alone, in a truck with just a few hours of fuel left, that he would die here.
Before long, John had done a full circle, and then another, and then another. By the time he eventually stopped, he’d looked at just about every building of interest nearby, and not a single one had fit the bill for a campsite, a stronghold, or even a place of interest to any of the few survivors that might remain in the city. He came to a standstill once more just a few metres from the truck, his body defiantly facing away from the museum, as if shutting out the biggest failure of the list.
The sun was just beginning to crack through the thick clouds above, casting the odd ray of light down across the bay behind him. But John had no interest in what seemed like the first light of the day, his eyes instead drawn into the rear seats of the nearby Ford, where Andrew’s wife and daughter sat patiently. He longed for his own family more than ever as he caught sight of Sarah and Hannah, before quickly looking up and away from the pair, knowing that the sight of them would only make the pain worse.
Instead he found himself looking at the museum’s car-park. Its great concrete mass was a stark contrast to the elegant, sophisticated design of the museum that connected to it, and the dark, dreary shadows of its two covered floors appeared much less welcoming than the overpass with which it adjoined. John knew that the next step of their journey now hinged on them obtaining a boat, readying themselves, and then setting off for Chicago, and so if nothing else, he was sure it would make for a good preparation area.
As he inspected the roof of the structure, his lips reluctantly opening up, ready to verbally formulate the next stage of the plan, a slight glimmer of light suddenly caught his eye, before quickly disappearing. In a normal situation, a glimmer of light like this one was perfectly normal, whether it be a moving vehicle’s paintwork reflecting the afternoon sun, or the light of a swinging bulb ricocheting off of a nearby window. But no longer were moving vehicles common place enough to explain the brief glare, and nor was there more than a few sources of bulb-powering electricity remaining, none of which John had witnessed since arriving in Milwaukee.
Most important of all however, was that the glimmer had appeared despite no movement on John’s part, and disappeared so quickly that it must have been coming from an object that promptly ducked back out of sight. In short, whatever had been on top of the car-park, reflecting that tiny piece of light right into John’s eyes, was very much moving, and from the speed in which it hid itself, it was more than likely, very much alive.
Chapter 36: Contact
“There’s someone over there”, John announced, standing completely still and staring over to the multi-storey car park.
“What?”, Andrew asked, walking over to John.
“On top of the car-park, I saw someone”, he reiterated.
“Where?”, Andrew asked as he attempted to see for himself.
“They were up top, right in the middle I swear”, John insisted.
“John”, Andrew started softly as he turned to face him, “Are you sure? Are you sure you weren’t just… seeing thi-”.
“I know what I saw”, John interrupted, as he started to walk away from the museum and towards the concrete complex opposite.
“Where are you going?”, Andrew asked.
“To see what’s going on”, John insisted, passing alongside the truck as he spoke.
“John!”, Andrew said after him, “Even if it was someone, it could be a bandit for all we know!”.
“If they wanted to shoot me they would have done it when they were sat up there scoping us out”, John replied, not breaking his stride even for a moment.
Andrew huffed disappointedly, before walking back over to the truck.
The car park was only a short walk across from the museum, a small flight of steps linking the two buildings, and a series of now dormant water features covering the grassy spaces on either side. Andrew was forced to drive the long way round to the road bordering the car-park, and so arrived outside it just as John did, his stride still defiantly unbroken. The car-park was much bigger up close, its huge structure rising high above both men, as well as the F150. The entrance to the ground floor sat just metres in front of them, a well-disguised but reasonably solid looking barricade set up, enough to keep back a small group of biters, but small enough not to stick out to passing survivors.
“John, we need to go”, Andrew said as he climbed out of the truck, turning off the engine as he did.
“You can go, I need to check this place out”, John replied, not even turning to face his companion.
“We had a deal John, eight places, they were all duds, it’s time to go”, Andrew insisted.
“This is still the eighth place”, John said defiantly as he snapped around to look Andrew in the eye, “You know that”, he said, before turning his attention back to the entrance.
The car-park was just barely lit, little visible inside save for the odd outline of the few vehicles not used to escape the city at the first sign of trouble, or perhaps those that belonged to the building’s current occupants.
“Hello?”, John called out into the darkness, the shotgun gripped in his right hand, but its barrel lowered, so as not to intimidate whoever may be settling inside.
After several seconds of waiting, Andrew eventually broke the silence.
“John, there’s nobody there”, he said.
“God damn it Andrew”, John growled, turning once more to face him, his back turned to the darkness behind, “Either leave or show some balls would you, we don’t know what’s in here. It might be nothing, or it might be the god damn army for all we know!”, he insisted.
Andrew simply stared back, his eyes wide, his face somewhat pale, his lips unable to utter a response, apparently shell-shocked from John’s abruptly aggressive response. But therein lied a problem, Andrew was used to John’s occasional outbursts, certainly used to them enough not to have quite such an exaggerated reaction. As such, John found himself standing there, wondering for a moment what had changed, before eventually realising that his companion’s reacting was not to anything John had said. Slowly, John turned to look once more into the darkened car park.
This time however, he was
met by two faces, each of them evenly spaced out to cover the entrance to the building, both with long knives pinned to their belts, and each with a look on their face that overflowed with evidence of just how unwelcome their new visitors were.
“Leave here, now”, said the first figure, a huge, nearly seven foot giant, his dark skin just barely visible in front of the darkness behind, but the glimmer of a rifle on his back enough to show how prepared he was for a fight.
John spoke first. “We’re looking for two-“.
“NOW”, came another voice, this time spoken by the other figure, a female not dissimilar in height to Andrew, bearing that same unwelcoming stare. The woman however, stood weapon in hand, the long curved wood of a bow held out in front of her, with an arrow perched – though not drawn – on its string.
“Now just calm down for a second, we’re not bandits”, John started, “We’re looking for some people we lost”.
“They’re not here”, said the woman, “Now please, leave”.
“Look”, John started again, “We didn’t come in here guns blazing, just like you didn’t either, clearly neither one of us is that different. So please, just tell me if my family-“.
“Nobody but the four people in front of you are here”, interrupted the man again, his deep tone penetrating the darkness all around the group, as his neck craned back to look upwards, where leaning over the first floor walls, were two further figures, each with rifle in hand, but neither taking direct aim at either John or Andrew.
Several seconds passed like this, the tension at boiling point, and yet not a single weapon being raised, and nor were any movements made.
“You leave here, or we put a bullet in your tire and you walk”, said the man.
“Please”, John begged, “All I want is to know if-“.
John was interrupted yet again by the sound of running footsteps, suddenly audible from the darkness, and quickly approaching the position of the stand-off.
“Who is it, I’ll take ‘em guys!”, came an excitable voice, as a much younger body reached the edge of the light. His spotty, no older than sixteen year old looking face was visible for all but a second, before he reeled backwards from the small amount of sunlight abruptly hitting his eyes.
“Jesus!”, he shrieked, before re-attempting a slow move back out into the light, one hand raised above his head to shield himself from any direct brightness, and the other holding an M16 pointed right at John.
Immediately John firmed his grip on the shotgun, his left hand wrapping into a fist tighter than he’d ever made, just waiting for someone to make a move.
“Tommy!”, yelled the first man in a deep, fury filled tone, “What did we tell you, gun down, always gun down”, he ordered.
“There’s only two of ‘em man, I can take ‘em by myself!”, Tommy insisted.
“We don’t wanna ‘take em’”, the woman interrupted angrily, “Now put your god damn gun down”, she insisted, herself also having taken a much more serious tone with the newcomer.
Suddenly an argument broke out, each of them yelling, back and forth, their voices climbing atop each other in a mess of inaudible gibberish. For a brief time both John and Andrew, as well as Andrew’s family – who continued to duck down in the rear of the truck – were left simply standing there, confused, waiting for the argument to stop. Eventually however, the silence was broken, by the voice of one of the lookouts atop the first floor, yelling a word which appeared to carry much more meaning to the group than any other.
“Auder!!”, they yelled.
During the commotion, a considerable amount of noise had been generated, enough apparently to attract the attention of a nearby biter, lurking in a dark corner on the exterior of the building. Over the previous minutes, it had very slowly, very carefully made its way to the source of the noise, without a single set of eyes noticing it, until now. Luckily for all involved, it was the least deadly of them all, so flimsily rocking from side to side John was certain it would end its own life in a matter of moments.
“Oh this one I got!”, came a voice from behind John, from who he knew at this point to be Tommy.
“NO!”, yelled the unnamed man, woman, and Andrew, all of them in unison, as all three watched the boy raise his weapon, and almost instantaneously press down hard on the trigger.
The M16 reeled off three shots in quick succession, its fire rate apparently set to burst, a setting that at least prevented the pressing of the trigger from wasting any more precious ammunition. Each of them sailed clean past the target, none of them even remotely close, either to the biter or anybody else nearby.
“Idiot!”, said the woman, who grabbed the gun from the boy before he could fire it again, and immediately tossed it to her larger companion. “In what world do we ever waste ammo like that?”, she yelled at him, in a tone that was both loud and filled with anger, and yet simultaneously as quiet as she could muster. Quickly, she used her now free hand to pull back the arrow already held against the bow, before taking a moment to line up the shot, and then unleashing the sharpened length of metal tipped wood right at the biter. The shot quickly found its target and brought it to an almost instant collapse. “Could have killed one of these people”, she added, before looking back to the newcomers, John’s face unsettled but stern, Andrew’s much more terrified.
“Now I’m real sorry about him, but you really have to go”, she started. “Some of them will have heard that, and they…”, she stopped herself short, her mouth opening in horror and struggling for words as her eyes sailed clean past John and Andrew.
Immediately both of them snapped their necks round, looking to the truck, certain that they would see a bullet shattered window, a flat tire, or worse, blood. But they saw none of those, and were instead left scanning every inch of the truck, wondering what it was that was so troubling. Eventually though, as a glimmer of falling glass caught John’s eye in the distance, and he looked up and beyond the truck, he realised what was so worrying to the woman.
Back on the other side of the road, a stream of movement had started to form, as a series of biters began to amble out from a gaping hole in one of the front windows that had up till now been keeping them inside, shattered so recently by one of three bullets sent sailing across the street. One by one they began to pour out onto the pavement, some managing to maintain balance, others falling flat, before slowly getting themselves back onto their feet. Each though, was very much aware of where the noise, light and bullet had come from, and each had eyes set straight for the car-park.
“Oh you’ve got to be kidding me boy”, said the man, his arms falling to his side in both utter disappointment and shock at what had happened.
“We have to get inside, they might not see us”, said the woman, who began to run quickly to the entrance she had come from.
“It’s too late”, John said, “They’ve seen us, look at them”, he added, nodding to the building stream of bodies just a hundred or so metres away, growing in numbers dramatically as more of the undead began to realise an escape route had formed, “Headed right over here”, he said.
“Well, we can move then!”, she yelled to her companions, “Get everyone… get everyone in something, I don’t know, tell them to-“.
“It’s too late”, concurred the man, stopping her in her tracks. “We need to stay put, too many people to move, not enough time to move them”, he insisted, “We have the high ground, we stay and fight”.
“We need to go John”, came Andrew’s previously unspoken voice from behind John.
“We’ll help you”, said John to the unnamed pair, ignoring his companion.
“John, we need to go, now!”, Andrew insisted.
“You don’t owe us anything”, said the man to John, unaccepting of his offer.
“Are there more people inside? People who can’t fight?”, John asked.
The man hesitated, before eventually nodding in response.
“Then I owe it to them”, John said, turning to Andrew.
“You can’t be serious?”, Andrew asked desperately.
“If we don’t help, and they get overrun, that’s a whole lot more bodies that’ll be roaming round this city and a whole lot more people who won’t ever find their families, who won’t ever live another day on this earth. I won’t leave them here, not to face that”, he said, pointing towards the almost completely assembled crowd that was slowly ascending the stairs separating the museum and its car-park, its numbers now topping the hundred mark.
Andrew stared back, trying his hardest not to give in and agree to help, and yet knowing how his conscience would forever haunt him if he simply left.
Before he could reply, John turned once more to the still unnamed man. “There a rear entrance, one for cars?”, he asked.
“Yeah”, he replied.
“There”, John said, turning to face Andrew again, “Things turn bad you’ve got an escape route, I won’t let anything happen to you or your family, I swear it”, he said.
“You can bring the truck inside, park it by the exit”, said the woman’s voice, herself apparently much more willing to accept the offer of help.
“God damn it”, Andrew said to buy himself a moment of contemplation. “Fine”.
Chapter 37: Open Fire II
Quickly the Ford swung through the curved entrance to the car-park, its headlights piercing the darkness and suddenly revealing the huge, almost completely empty space in its entirety. The distance to the ramp leading to the upper floors was a good fifty metres from the entrance, and made for a perfect shooting gallery, where the noise would be at least somewhat muffled by the vast layers of concrete, and there was no chance of stray bullets inadvertently releasing any more of the trapped biters. Heading in with the rest on foot, John introduced himself, keen to reduce the chance of him being shot, by at least humanising himself to the people who potentially still thought of him as a would-be bandit.
Aftermath (Book 1): Only The Head Will Take Them Down Page 28