In the morning, we packed up the pontoon boat and shoved off. The enclosed space had been taken off and the deck was surrounded by a small wall of wood secured to the railing. The wood only went waist high, but it was sufficient cover if we needed it. It wouldn’t stop bullets, but it would allow you a small measure of security in case things got ugly. We each had our packs, rations, and weapons. I was back to the M1A and Charlie and Tommy were carrying their AR’s. Charlie had done some modification to his AR, swapping out the carbine upper for one with a flat top and lengthened bull barrel. He topped it with an ACOG site he had recovered from State Center Bravo, so he was clearly ready. I preferred iron sites myself. Tommy did as well. We had enough ammo for defensive killing and escape, not eradication. I carried a lighter and small squeeze bottle of kerosene for that.
We drifted north, the purr of the motor moving us at a decent clip. It hadn’t rained in about ten days, so the canal wasn’t moving as fast as it could have. We were all quiet, each of us tucked away in his own thoughts, wondering what this trip might bring, wondering if we had sufficiently said our goodbyes in case this trip was our last. I had left before Jake had awakened for the day and as usual, I had made my promise to return to him. Despite all the progress we had made, he was still my whole world. Sarah had gotten up with me to send me on my way and the way she was smiling made me wonder if she and Dot hadn’t cooked up something between them.
At first we didn’t pass anything of interest and for the most part, couldn’t see that much beyond the foliage on the banks of the canal. After about a half hour, we reached the split in the canal that would take us east and to the lake. There was a refinery on our right, the silent storage bins seeming to watch us pass on the canal. I didn’t see any activity on the ground, but that wasn’t much of a surprise. Big refineries and places like this weren’t attractive to zombies as a source of food. There just weren’t enough people outside of a skeleton crew to watch the gauges and make sure everything was running smoothly. Besides, when everything went south, anyone who worked here would have tried to go to their families.
The sun climbed higher, throwing a wave of brilliance that promised to be a beautiful day. Because of the depth of the canal, we were still in shadows, which helped us move relatively unseen. We couldn’t do anything about the noise of the motor, but a pontoon boat was meant for quiet cruising anyway, so the motor wasn’t that bad.
We moved on and in a little ways we found another industrial area. This one looked like a power transfer area, but I couldn’t be sure. There were actually zombies here, and they shambled over in our direction, but we were going to be past them long before they reached the canal banks.
The only real indication of zombie activity was the roads that crossed the canal and through our binoculars and rifle scopes we could see several of the cars that were occupied by the undead and several other zombies wandering among the vehicle debris. They raised a forlorn moan at our passing and one actually fell into the canal and disappeared beneath the dark waters. We kept a close eye on that situation, since we were pretty certain the zombies stayed away from water for a reason, although we weren’t entirely certain it killed them. If it did, it probably took a long time, so caution was necessary.
We went past a huge complex big enough to be seen from where we were and it took me a minute before I realized what it was. It was a distribution center for a parcel carrier, one of the largest in the area. I thought about all the undelivered items stored there and made a mental note to check it out in the future. I had no idea the canal went right past it.
“Big place,” Tommy said from his perch at the steering wheel of the boat.
“It’s huge and full of goodies,” I said, shifting my pack.
“Really? How do you know?”
“It’s the distribution center for United Shipping.”
Tommy looked around. “So that’s where we are. I thought this area looked familiar, but I’ve only seen it from the expressways. Weird how things change when you’re moving slow and from a new direction.”
Wasn’t that the truth. Charlie nodded in agreement and returned to watching the canal. He was making sure the way was clear of obstacles, like branches and other debris. We hadn’t seen much so far, but in the catches along the canal banks we could see things like suitcases and other floating castaways, reminders of people who chose the canal as their escape route. I idly wondered how many people drowned just trying to get away any way they could.
“Contact,” Charlie said from the front and I shifted my weapon to the ready. Tommy steered the boat towards the middle of the canal and I could see what Charlie was talking about. On the right side of the canal was a subdivision and from what we could see this one had been hit hard. Burnt out homes and smashed windows, doors torn off their hinges, black marks everywhere. We could see rotting corpses down every street and it took little imagination to figure there were more in the homes. Several cars had smashed into homes and blood splatter was all over the interiors. The streets had dozens of zombies lurching around and for the most part, they were ignorant of our passing.
I looked at Tommy and shook my head. There was nothing here. It wouldn’t even be worth it to try and scavenge something from the homes. Until the zombies eventually rotted away on their own, they were the lords of this area.
Some of the zombies turned our way on account of the noise of our motor, but they didn’t do much, just shuffled in our direction. By the time they reached the road that ran along the canal, we were past them. There was also a fence that ran along the road, so we were in no danger. As I looked back at the subdivision, I saw the telltale white flags adorning nearly every mailbox.
We passed a rail yard and a little farther up there was what looked like a truck shipping yard. Trailers were arranged neatly along the canal and there was a small pavilion for the workers near the water. Overhead was the expressway and even from our vantage point, we could see it choked with cars. I couldn’t see the status of the vehicles, but I assumed there was the usual carnage and abandoned vehicles. I gave it little thought. The road wasn’t going anywhere I wanted to be and since the canal was just as useful and relatively safe from attack, why bother?
We moved on and came to the beginning of the true Chicago suburbs. There were smallish homes everywhere and from what I could see, they were all destroyed. They were the little bungalow style homes with detached garages. Flags flew on the mailboxes, grim reminders of the hope that people once had for help during the Upheaval. As we moved past, Charlie and I could hear the echo of thousands of undead moans, as the ghouls wandered in search of prey. Whatever might have survived this long wasn’t going to survive much longer.
Suddenly, we heard something out of the ordinary. The moans of the dead seemed to grow louder and the ones we could see were clearly agitated by something. I couldn’t see anything and Charlie shook his head that he couldn’t see anything, either. Judging by the sounds the dead were making, something was in there they wanted and wanted badly. Anything the dead wanted was usually alive.
I signaled Tommy to steer over to the bank under the overpass. Charlie looked at me and I shook my head.
“Don’t worry, we’re not going in there. I’m climbing the bank of the overpass to see what’s going on.” I jumped off the boat and onto the bank of the canal.
“Good. I’d hate to risk my ass for something like a cat or a dog,” Charlie said as he joined me.
“Who are you kidding?” I asked as I headed up the steep bank of the overpass. “You chased a cat three miles just because Rebecca thought it would be nice to have a kitty for Julia.”
“Yeah, but that was in the country, not in the middle of an infested suburb,” Charlie retorted.
“If I recall correctly, it was in the middle of downtown Freeport, through an area that hadn’t been secured yet and six zombies were chasing you as you chased the cat.”
“Still doesn’t change how I feel about this little hike,” Charlie said as he slipped on a bit of wet grass.
“No one asked you to come along,” I said, stopping near the top and checking for roaming Z’s.
“After all we’ve been through, you knew I’d be along, just like you’d come with me if I was going somewhere, no matter how stupid,” Charlie replied as he joined me near the top, his rifle balanced in one hand as he kept himself from falling with the other.
“True.” I didn’t see any immediate danger, so I hoisted myself up and over the guardrail. There were several cars on the bridge, but none occupied. By the looks of things, it seemed like someone had arranged the cars as a sort of defensive barricade. Nothing that would stop a determined zombie, but it would slow them down. The position of the cars made me wonder what was on the other side and if there were survivors somewhere.
Charlie tapped my shoulder and brought my attention back to the situation at hand. I looked out over the vast subdivision with its rows upon rows of houses, stacked neatly up against each other. If I had to guess, I would have said there were thousands of them, making the approximate number of zombies in the tens of thousands. But what really held my attention was the lone figure running down the street, pursued by roughly five hundred walking dead, with that number growing by the minute. Their groans were awful to hear, a wail of anguish and never-ending hunger.
Charlie sighted in the figure with his scope. “Woman. Early twenties. Looks like she’s been surviving for a while. Got a pack, gun, knife, and what looks like a pipe.”
“Any cuts or blood on her?” I asked, bringing my rifle up and attaching my scope. I didn’t use it often, but it did have its purposes, since I never got around to carrying a pair of binoculars.
“Not yet, but if she keeps on going the way she is, she’s going to be bloody,” Charlie said.
When I looked through my scope, I could see why. She was running towards us, but a group of zombies was coming at a cross road and would make the intersection before she would. On top of that, there were other zombies coming out of homes and holes, attracted to the noise of their brethren. In short order she was going to find herself surrounded and eaten. It wasn’t going to be pretty. The down side was we really couldn’t help her. Sure we could shoot down a bunch, but that would actually just waste ammo and only prolong the inevitable.
Charlie looked at me as if to ask the question we were both not wanting to answer. I shrugged and couldn’t see a solution. There was no way she was going to get out of this one unless she learned to fly in a hurry.
Suddenly, it hit me. Fly! Of course! “Cover me!” I yelled as I sprinted down the road. I needed to get to where I could be seen and heard by the besieged woman. Charlie moved over to the side of the road where he could brace his rifle to shoot more accurately. I ran down the road, making sure there weren’t any lurkers to make my life miserable and stopped within what I hoped was earshot of the running woman. The zombies who were going to cut her off had just emerged from the side street and I could see the woman pause. She drew her sidearm, looked at it, and then holstered it. I figured she was dangerously low on ammo and was contemplating finishing herself off as a last resort.
I jumped up onto a car so I could be seen. “Hey! Hey!” I yelled, waving my arms. The woman looked at me with a stunned expression, like the last thing she expected to see was a lunatic jumping on a car in the middle of zombie infested territory. Can’t say I blamed her. “Get up on the roofs and head this way! We have a boat!”
Hope surged in the woman’s young face as she sprinted for the nearest house and clambered up the iron railing on the side of the porch. There was a desperate moment when it looked like the gutter wasn’t going to hold her weight, but she swung her legs up just as the first zombies reached up to try to drag her down. She rolled up onto the roof and scrambled to the peak.
Sitting down and taking a breath, she looked over at me and yelled “Watch your back!”
I spun around on my car roof and fired a rifle round through the head of a small zombie that had managed to sneak around behind me. The heavy bullet blew his head apart like a ripe melon and he dropped into a pile of decaying flop. The shot galvanized the zombies on the ground who saw their original prey climb up out of reach. The horde that was chasing the woman turned their attention to me and started to head my way.
“Cross the houses on the roofs, head for the canal. We’ll wait for you there!” I yelled as I dropped off the car and sprinted back the way I came. I had no intention of sticking around any longer. I gave the woman a chance and if she chose to take it, great. If not, I tried.
Stealing a look back I saw the woman running down the shingles and leaping across the small space between the homes. It was only a six foot jump, but if she slipped she was dead. Talk about your hurdles of death.
I quickly outstripped the horde and headed back towards Charlie. He waved me past him and I took a breather as we watched the progress of the woman. The line of houses she was on took her on a curving path towards the canal and if she could get ahead of the horde, she stood a good chance of living. I glanced over the bridge and waved to Tommy, who brought the boat around.
“We have a survivor and she should be showing up downriver about two hundred yards. I’ll be down in a sec and we can go get her.”
“What about Charlie?” Tommy hollered about the growing din of the undead.
Charlie poked his head over the side. “Right here, dickhead. Go get the girl with John and swing back towards the other side of the bridge, I’ll see you there.”
Tommy waved. “Go swim, loser,” he joked. I just shook rolled my eyes at the two of them, as I climbed over the guardrail and slid down to the banks of the canal. The zombie horde that had chased me was advancing on the road, and Charlie was going to keep them distracted while we picked up the woman. As I jumped aboard the boat, I heard Charlie’s rifle crack as he sent a hot. 223 round into the head of a nearby Z.
Tommy moved the boat farther ahead, then cut the power down to keep us relatively motionless in the water as the current gently tried to push us back. I could see the woman still on the roofs, jumping from one to the other and gaining ground on her pursuers. She had about four homes to go before she would have to abandon the houses and make a sprint for the canal. I heard Charlie’s rifle crack again and I saw several ghouls break off their pursuit to head in his direction. Push came to shove, Charlie could jump off the bridge. It was only about a thirty foot drop into twenty-foot deep water, so he would be okay if we could keep him from sinking with all his gear.
Tommy watched the woman closely, trying to time his approach to the bank as she got closer. When she reached the last house, she slipped down to the gutter and hung for a second. Dropping to the ground, she raced past a tangle of children’s toys and jumped the fence that circled the yard. Zombies came pouring through the houses in their attempt to get to her and I took the liberty of shooting two of them that were faster than the others. The woman scrambled to the edge of the canal and leaped on board the boat as soon as it was in range. I directed her to a chair in the front while Tommy spun the wheel and headed to the bridge to pick up Charlie who was standing on the far bank of the canal, his rifle trained on the bridge.
When Charlie was safely aboard, Tommy swung the boat back north and moved away from the hordes of zombies that stared at us helplessly from the shores and bridge. I moved up to where the woman was seated and handed her a bottle of water.
“Welcome aboard. My name is John Talon and these are my friends, Charlie James and Tommy Carter. Who might you be?”
The woman took a long drink of water and then eyed me warily. “I’m Angela Brooks. Thanks for your help. I figured I was done for sure that time.” Angela had dark hair, bright blue eyes, and a homespun face that was handsome rather than pretty. She had smudges of dirt on her face and looked like she hadn’t seen a good meal in days, but she seemed healthy enough. She was wearing a dark blue hoodie and faded jeans. Her backpack looked like it was from a junior high. Her weapon was a Glock 9mm, the handle protruding from a holster on her belt.
I nodded. “Glad to help. God knows there’s few enough of us left these days. Before we get to know each other better, I need you to hand over your weapon.” I held out my left hand, keeping my right hand near my SIG. Charlie shifted his grip on his rifle so it was across his lap, but the muzzle was pointed in Angela’s direction
“Why do you want my gun?” Angela said, her eyes narrowing.
“Honestly? I don’t know you and until I do, I’m not having you armed on this boat. I’ve gone through too much to have everything I’ve fought for lost because I turned my back on someone with a personal agenda. I’ve been shot at by females before and I would rather not repeat the performance. Now please hand over your weapon.”
“And if I refuse?” Angela said, shifting in her chair.
Charlie stood up and held his rifle casually, the muzzle now directly pointed at the woman. The look on his face clearly said he would kill without hesitation if the wrong move was made.
“We put you on the bank of the canal immediately and say our goodbyes and good lucks. If you take a shot at us, we’ll kill you. We’d rather not.” My smile didn’t reach my eyes. I had no patience for this sort of thing.
Angela considered the proposition and with a resigned sigh handed over the weapon. I looked at it, ejected the magazine and shook my head at the two rounds left. I asked if Angela had any more magazines or bullets and she shook her head. I passed the gun to Charlie, who field stripped it at the little table on the boat and started cleaning it.
I sat down across from Angela. “Now, what brings you to that little piece of hell?”
Angela seemed to deflate and leaning back in her chair, told me how she was working downtown as a nutritionist for a health club when the world ended. She and a friend named Dana had managed to escape the city when the Upheaval had started and had stayed in the woods that were across the canal for the last three months. Before that, they had been on the run, hiding where they could, looting what they could find for food and supplies during the winter. She and her friend had hooked up with some other survivors, but their shelter had been overrun, and she and Dana barely escaped with their lives. The rest of the group had been torn apart. I nodded. It was not an unfamiliar scenario.
Angela and her friend had headed south and taken shelter in the woods. The zombies didn’t seem to want to cross the river or the canal, so it seemed like they would have been safe for a while. Then during the winter, her friend got sick and died from pneumonia. Angela buried her friend and resolved to go on when the weather was good enough for travel. She was doing a supply run in the subdivision when the zombies woke up and came after her. That’s when we showed up.
When she finished, I started explaining who we were and where we came from. I told her about Leport and the community we had built there. Her eyes widened when she found out we had nearly four hundred people living there. I told her about the other communities we had contact with and how we were managing to take back what we had lost. Her eyes drifted for a minute and I knew she was reliving some memory from her past. We all did that from time to time.
When I finished, I had a question for her. “If you’re interested, you’re welcome to join the community. We can give you a place to stay, friends to make, and a chance at life. We could use a nutritionist to help with the kids and our limited food supply. Interested?”
Angela’s eyes misted, then she buried her head in her hands and sobbed. I got up and left her to sort things out for herself. I had seen this before from survivors who suddenly found themselves safe, able to relax and not worry that the bump in the night was going to try and eat them.
I sat down by Charlie as he finished putting the Glock back together. “Will she join us?” he asked, casting a glance her way.
“Probably,” I said. “She’s seen a lot and we’ve only scratched the surface of her story, but it will take a while to come out. I’m just stunned anyone is alive out here.”
Charlie nodded and handed the Glock back to me as well as a fully loaded magazine. I took both and headed back to the front. Angela seemed to have composed herself and looked up at me with red eyes.
“Sorry,” she said. “I haven’t been that emotional for a while. I guess the shock of suddenly being offered a chance to live after nearly dying for so long catches up to you.”
I waved it off. “Happened to a lot more people than you think.” I handed her weapon back and the full magazine. “Charlie cleaned it and loaded the magazine for you. You’re good to go.”
“You’re trusting me with my gun? What if I shoot you and try to take this boat?” Angela asked, inserting the magazine and chambering a round before returning it to its holster.
“It’s been tried before. I take a lot of killing and you’d be dead before you got the gun out of the holster.”
“You’re pretty sure of yourself.”
I shrugged. “Goes with the territory. My girlfriend thinks it makes me cute.”
Angela rolled her eyes and turned towards the canal. We were making good time and passed quite a few communities and industrial parks. We saw zombies nearly everywhere and in each community I saw the telltale white flags fluttering uselessly in the morning breeze. When we passed the train depot, with it’s thousands of train cars, I started to pay close attention. My side trip was getting close and I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss it. I hadn’t told Tommy and Charlie about it yet and was likely going to get some fierce opposition, but I didn’t care. I needed to do this.