The next morning, I met with Mark Wills and Bill Kowalski. There hadn’t been time to talk yesterday with getting them in and prepared. The ground was covered in about 6 inches of snow, and the sun was amazingly bright on the white ground. The world seemed so fresh and new it was easy to forget what we were about or how we got there. The conversation with the two men from Chicago reminded me soon enough. We used a conference room in one of the offices.
“I was on a call for the north side when things suddenly turned over.” Mark started. “We had been listening to the reports and such for a week, but we weren’t getting much information. The mayor had been on television a couple of times telling us to go about our lives as usual, but you could see the strain on his face. It was like he knew something was up but couldn’t talk about it. I guess it made sense. If he came out and said the dead were walking, we would have had anarchy sooner than we did. There was stuff all over the internet, so people were pretty well informed, but all of a sudden it came to a head.” Mark paused to collect his thoughts. “I got a call from my supervisor that a transformer had blown in Wilmette, and I needed to get up there. No big deal, standard stuff, thinks I. Well, I get there and there’s this weird silence, like the world had paused to take a breath before it screamed. I changed the transformer and got back in the truck. I radioed my dispatcher and got no response. Heading back, I see swarms of cars trying to get out of the city. There’s smoke everywhere and I could see lots of fires. Sirens are going off, and over it all I could hear screams and moans. Screams and moans.”
I nodded and urged him to continue.
“I drove my truck into the city and I could see them everywhere, attacking and eating, breaking into houses, tearing people apart. I felt like I was moving in slow motion. I ran into a couple of them and they got right back up after they bounced off the fenders. I saw cars smashed in, and people just running. One woman was on the twentieth floor of an apartment building and I saw her hold her baby as she jumped to her death. A second later, about five of those things were at the window, reaching for the meals that chose to die instead.” He shook his head at the memory. “I managed to get home and told my wife we had to get the hell out of there. I didn’t know where to go, or how we would live, but I knew if we stayed, we were dead. It just happened so fast. I guess so many people were infected at the same time, and turned all at once. There was no preparation, no nothing. I could see my neighbor trying to protect his wife from his turned teenage children, and get killed for his trouble. I watched a police officer empty his gun at a group of those things and they ripped him to pieces in seconds. There was nothing left to reanimate.”
Mark paused and Bill started talking. “My story is pretty much the same. But I think I was lucky in that I hadn’t gone to work in several days due to a round of the stomach flu rolling through my house. I think that may have saved my kids, too.” He stared off into space, thinking about what might have been. Bill continued. “I wanted to run, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know what I was going to do with my family. I could hear the sounds of death all around our apartment as the infected fed on the living. The old woman living upstairs had her head ripped off her shoulders, and two toddlers hiding on the fire escape screamed for a long time before they died at their parents’ hands.”
Mark nodded and continued his story. “Teri and I grabbed what we could and headed for the lake. I figured our best bet was to try and get a boat and at least sail away from the mess. We made it about a block and a half before we were spotted and had to run for it. We made it four blocks to an apartment building and hid there. That happened to be where we hooked up with Bill and Sally and the kids.”
Bill took up the story. “We had abandoned our apartment after the neighbor was attacked. We went down the emergency stairs and luckily no one was there. We were hiding in the maintenance room when the door crashed in and Mark and his wife tumbled in.”
Mark smiled. “We had three of them sniffing for us, and we just managed to fall in out of sight. Luckily the smell of chemicals masked our scent and they left us alone. Of course, back then, we didn’t know how good their sense of smell had become. Sometimes I wonder how many hiding places were discovered by the smell of fear?”
I remember thinking the same thing when I was trying to figure out how the enemy operated and their strengths and weaknesses.
“Anyway,” Mark said, “We found ourselves stuck in a basement with nowhere to go. But we got lucky. Bill’s son found an access panel behind an old mattress to the electric tunnels under the city. We had a way out, but if any of those things were down there, we were dead for sure. We moved as best as we could, checking every place we came to for a way to get out and to find food and such. We had a close moment when we were discovered at a business, but we gave them the slip in the tunnels. We headed south as best as we could, and then we ran out of tunnels.”
Bill and Mark looked at each other, then Mark continued. “We spent a lot of time moving from place to place, avoiding not only zombies but other predators as well. I picked up the shotgun from a home we broke into, but it wasn’t good for much against the dead. Everywhere it was the same. People dead or dying, walking dead trying to eat the living, fires, looting. I saw a man running down the street from a pack of zombies carrying a plasma TV. Dumbass.”
Bill picked up again. “We managed to find a car and we headed south, but the roads were choked with cars and dead people. We heard the announcements about the state centers, but we had no way to get to them. In hindsight, I’m glad we didn’t, when we heard they had been overrun with infected. Anyway, we moved as quietly as we could, at one point floating down the canal to escape zombies. We found a car in what used to be Westchester, and headed south again. Everywhere was death.”
Mark started again. “It took us 9 months to get that far, hiding and scrounging and living in fear. We were at the end of our string when we saw your truck pull up to that house. I was scared stupid when you pulled that gun on me.” indicating my SIG. “Why?” I asked. “You had a shotgun. You could have nailed me when I opened the garage door.” Mark looked sheepish. “I was out of shells. I had been out for a month.” I shook my head. “Good way to get killed.” Bill smiled. “Looks like you have things under better control out here.”
I smiled back. “You have no idea. This is a small group. To the south, there’s another community of over a hundred people.” I enjoyed the look that showed up on both their faces. “We’re making a push to the river, then we’ll hook up and the real work begins.”
Mark asked, “What’s the real work?”
I stood up and answered simply. “We’re taking it back.”
I left them wondering about that and went out into the main office area. Charlie and Sarah and Tommy had gone on a recovery mission. I had sent them to the small gun shop that was several miles to the west, in a town that was right on the river. They took the plow and cleared the road, since we were going to need it later this winter. Duncan and Pamela and several others had taken the axe and tools I had brought from my house and were making serious piles of firewood for the winter.
The truck pulled up and Charlie swung down from the cab. Sarah scooted out the other side and ran towards the building, carrying something long. Charlie motioned me to the back of the truck. Stepping back there, I whistled when I saw what he had found. Ammunition of all types was back their, in boxes and crates. Apparently, the locked storage room had been left alone. I had a lot more ammo for my carbine, and there was a lot more ammo for the AR’s we had, as well as plenty of ammo for the handguns. Hell, looking at the stuff, we were ready to go to war.
Charlie spoke up after I had whistled my appreciation. “Storage room was right where you said, still padlocked and everything. Everything else was pretty much looted. There weren’t any guns to be found, but we did find a lot of cleaning supplies and extra magazines.” He handed me three additional magazines for my SIG. “P226, right?” I gratefully accepted the magazines and put them in my pockets to be filled later. “Anything else?” “Not from the shop, but we found something weird.” “What’s that?”
“We were headed back and Tommy thought he saw something in a subdivision we passed. We went back and there was a pile of zombie corpses in the middle of the street.” “Really.” That was interesting. Maybe were not alone out here. Charlie nodded. “Really. Want to hear the weird part?” “That wasn’t the weird part?” I asked, perplexed. “Nope. The weird part was all of the corpses were headless.” Charlie waited for my reaction. I scowled. “What?” “Want to hear the really weird part?” Charlie seemed to be enjoying himself. “It gets weirder?” I was almost afraid to ask.
“We found no fewer then eight piles of zombie corpses, all of them headless. I figure there had to be over three hundred zombie heads missing.”
I was stunned. No wonder the activity around here was less than I expected, environment not withstanding. Somebody had been hard at work and had been really effective. But why remove the heads? The heads were still alive and still able to bite and cause infection. Something was definitely wrong here, and I said as much to Charlie.
“Definitely need to keep our eyes open. I’ll radio Nate and give him a heads up.” I said.
Charlie nodded. “Good enough. I’ll take this stuff upstairs and distribute as needed. I heard we have an electrician?” he asked hopefully. I nodded. “Grab him and see what he can do with our generators. I’m looking forward to a meal not cooked over a fire.” Charlie laughed. “Amen, brother, amen. I went upstairs to find Sarah playing with Jacob. She had a funny look on her face when I came in and I asked her what was up. “Got a present for you.” She said, indicating with her eyes the bundle on my bed.
Curious, I went over and undid the towel that had wrapped what appeared to be a rifle of some sort. When the towel fell away I was holding a beautiful Springfield M1A rifle.. 308 caliber with a twenty round clip. A very effective rifle out to 600 yards or better. I couldn’t imagine a better rifle to go into battle with.
My expression must have revealed how I felt. Sarah just called from the floor “You’re welcome. There are extra magazines and ammo
I was speechless for a moment. “Where did you get this? Charlie said you didn’t find any firearms.” I checked the action and found the gun to be in excellent working order.
Sarah laughed. “I told Charlie to lie to you. He was very accommodating.”
I put the gun down and kissed the top of her head. “Thank you very much. I’ve always wanted one of these but never could justify the expense.” Sarah changed the subject. “Charlie tell you about the heads?” I grimaced. “Yeah. That’s a new one. We’ll have to see where it leads.” “So what’s the plan for today?” Sarah wanted to know. I shrugged. “Beats me. I’m staying home today. Jake has been without his daddy for a few days and I need some baby time.” Sarah smiled. “Sounds good.” I smiled back, but I had a strange feeling it was going to be a wild spring.