Rise of the Dead Read online

  "Well, we appreciate your advice," says Danielle. "We are trying to locate someone, though.”

  "Suit yourselves." He turns to climb the steps, and then he pauses and eyes Danielle. "If you need anything just come find good ole Chuck in room 304. That's me."

  He gives her his most charming cowboy smile and goes back up to join the other soldiers.

  We head across the lighted courtyard toward the parking lot that we saw when we arrived. I glance up at the buildings. Snipers track our movements from the rooftops. We cross the service road that passes in front of the headquarters and into the gloom of the parking lot on the south side of the building.

  There are people piled in truck beds, on the roofs of RV's, and even just laying out on thin blankets in the grass. Most of them are just as filthy as we were when we arrived, and they clearly don't have access to the kind of facilities we were given. Some of them eye us curiously in our military shirts. A delirious woman runs over and clamps a hand around my arm. She clutches a photo of a child in a hockey uniform.

  "Please, help him," she cries. "Someone needs to get him from school."

  "I'm sorry," I stammer.

  "He's alone out there," she points to the city. "Please go help him."

  A man I presume to be her husband comes and retrieves her, apologizing. He leads her back to the trunk of the minivan they are living out of now.

  Here and there amongst the refugees, I spot a child. There aren't many, and the sight of each one troubles me. They all seem to have the same tired, traumatized stare.

  We get to the end of the row of cars, and I realize then the lot curves around and spans the entire rear side of the building. People don't just fill the parking lot either; the refugee camp extends down a grade and across a wide road and into the golf course beyond. All the way to the lake, it looks like a massive junkyard with thousands of people living amongst the battered vehicles. The camp is lit up at night by makeshift guard towers, snipers with spotlights perched atop the raised booms of utility trucks and fire engines. Military and police vehicles weave through the rows of cars, soldiers with machine guns ready for anything.

  We walk from row to row looking into every unfamiliar face. Half a dozen bikers in leather jackets sit drinking hard liquor from bottles. An old man pushes a cart around, picking through empty cans of food that seem to be lying everywhere on the ground. Another man stares at me while he urinates in the space between two parked cars. The whole place is already starting to smell of rotting food and human excrement.

  The more we see of the place, the more I am hoping I don't find my family here. I realize there will be no fight to take back the city. The military can't handle the people that are alive inside the base, let alone the millions of undead that are wandering the streets. I wonder if the captain has any idea how desperate the situation is outside.

  A brunette woman without pants stumbles between the rows of cars, clutching a bloody wound in her abdomen. Blood soaks her ripped shirt and trickles down her thighs. She collapses on the ground a few feet in front of us, her face smacking the hard surface of the road. She lies motionless. Her wavy hair masks her face. Danielle moves to help her, but I pull her back a few feet. Several other people get out of their cars and look on as a spotlight locates the woman's body. No one moves as a squad car comes around a corner and approaches the scene.

  A petite cop gets out of her car, removes the pistol from her holster and moves cautiously toward the body on the pavement. She crouches down beside the woman, then pins the body to the ground by planting her knee on the woman's back as she checks for a pulse. She stands back up and then fires a round in the back of the woman's skull. Without looking back, the cop turns and goes back to the squad car and ties the body to the bumper of the car and reverses down the aisle. No questioning the witnesses or pursuing suspects. Nothing. Case closed.

  “What is going on here?” Danielle whispers.

  “I don’t know,” I sigh.

  “I can’t believe no one is doing anything about it,” Danielle says. She looks at the people nearby as they turn their backs away.

  “I guess they all have bigger problems to deal with,” I say.

  "I never imagined there'd be a place as horrible as this," Danielle whispers. I look over and can see she is crying, her lips quivering. I put a hand on her shoulder, but she turns and sobs into my chest.

  "I've seen enough," I tell her. "We should go back now."

  "No." She lifts her head, wiping at her eyes with her fingers. "We've come this far. Let's finish looking."

  As we move through the cars, the hours pass, and people begin to settle into their shelters for the night. The sounds of constant gunfire from the barricades rattles in the distance.

  A dog appears suddenly alongside us, a big, scruffy terrier, wagging its tail, panting, oblivious. It stops to sniff some empty tin cans and selects one to piss on. It runs back to catch up with us, and Danielle bends down and scratches the top of its head between the ears. It rolls onto its back, and Danielle rubs it on the belly. The dog gets up and runs off ahead, stopping here and there to beg for food until the people chase it away.

  In between the unfamiliar hopeless faces, my eyes keep going back to the dog. I cling to the sight of its constantly wagging tail amidst all this despair. The dog doesn't remember the horrible things it witnessed yesterday and doesn't fear what might become of it tomorrow. The dog lives only in the moment. I envy the stupid animal because it is a stupid animal.

  At the back of the golf course, in the last line of the vehicles, I spot a long, yellow school bus. I try not to get my hopes up, but as we approach it to my amazement, the lettering on the side of the bus reads, LYONS ELEMENTARY.

  "That's Abby's school," I tell Danielle. We hurry to the door of the bus, but I can't see anything inside the interior. I bang my fist on the door and call her name. The door swings open, and a frightened woman stares down at me.

  "I'm looking for my daughter," I stumble over the words. "Abby Wakefield."

  The woman holds a finger in front of her lips and exits out of the bus. "Please, they're sleeping inside. Your daughter goes to Lyons?" she asks.

  "Yes."

  "What grade?"

  For a second, I can't even remember, and then it comes to me. "Second grade."

  "These kids are all in sixth grade," she says. "I'm sorry."

  I can't believe it. She has to be on that bus. For a single moment, I had hope that I would find her there against all odds. For a moment, I believed that fate was a real thing and that I had been dragged through hell for a purpose, to find my daughter. Only to have it turn out to be a sick coincidence. Another statistical improbability, unrelated to any grand design. But it didn't feel like that. I felt like a character in a novel that the author was fucking with.

  "How did you get them all the way down here?" I ask the woman.

  "These kids weren't in classes. They were going on a field trip to the planetarium," she says. "We were just very lucky."

  Lucky. I lose the strength to stand anymore and have to lean against the bus.

  "I got a call through to the school when this first started. Some of those things were already inside. They were trying to lock down individual classrooms. It sounded pretty bad, so we didn't head back there. That's all I know."

  Danielle comes over and starts to lead me away. "Sorry if we woke you and the children."

  "It's fine. I'm really sorry I don't have your little girl with me here. I hope you find her."

  The door of the bus squeaks closed, and we start the long, quiet walk back to the barracks. I can only guess at the time, but it must be one or two in the morning. The soldiers have vacated the steps out front. We call the elevator and return to the third floor. I use the swipe card to unlock my door, and Danielle follows me in.

  "We can check the hospital tomorrow," she says, watching me collapse onto the mattress. She sits down on the opposite bed. "I want to see how Chet is doing, too."

  I mu
mble some words of agreement, but I am so exhausted I can barely form a sentence.

  "Are you sure you don't mind sharing the room?" she asks.

  I hear the question but I am already drifting off to sleep, and I say nothing at all.

  Eleven

  The next thing I know, I open my eyes and see Quentin standing in my room having a whispered conversation with Danielle. It's light outside. The bright sunlight leaks through the window shades onto my face. I hear Danielle telling him about our walk through the camp last night.

  "This place isn't safe," she says. "Not at all. I think it's only going to get worse. The people out there are desperate. You need to talk to him again."

  "Talk to him," says Quentin. "Right. In case you didn't notice, he doesn't really give a shit."

  "Well, we better figure out a plan when things go bad here," says Danielle. "Because it's about to happen."

  "You don't know that," he says. "There's food, water and electricity here. This place is worth fighting for."

  "She's right," I interrupt. I sit up and look at the clock. It's just after eight. "That's no army out there. Those people aren't soldiers. If I can find a way out of this place, I'm leaving before things get out of control."

  "And go where?" Quentin asks.

  "I don't know," I say. "I like my chances better when I'm on the move. That's how we survived this long. When we tried to hole up, we were nearly eaten alive."

  "The only family I have now is here," Quentin says. He plants his fist on the desk and leans forward, looking across to the headquarters. "I don't understand why you think it's better to keep running."

  "No one expects you to come with," I tell him. "I expected to be going it alone."

  "But you're not," says Danielle. "And we're not leaving Chet here unless he decides to stay. So you have time to think about it anyway." She tilts her head towards me as she says this and raises her eyebrows, a look I know from years of marriage means don't even think about going against me.

  A knock on the door breaks up the conversation, and I open it to find Lt. Commander Reynolds in his pressed white naval uniform. His face is clean shaven, and his trim brown hair is clean and neatly combed. I catch a scent of some strong aftershave or cologne. If you saw him, you would never believe the human race was on the verge of annihilation. Maybe that is the point. He looks past me and notices Quentin and Danielle in the room as well.

  "We have a situation," he says. "Captain Black ordered me to get you to headquarters immediately."

  "What kind of situation?" asks Quentin.

  "An urgent situation," Reynolds said in a flat tone. Soldiers walk back and forth through the hall, some dressed in fatigues, loaded with packs and headed to the line, others in robes and towels headed to the showers.

  "I just woke up," I say. "Just give me a minute to take a piss." I turn toward the bathroom door, but the officer clears his throat.

  "I'm sorry, we don't have a minute," he says.

  "Fuck," says Quentin.

  It's clear the situation Reynolds mentioned must mean that we are in immediate danger. We follow him down the hall and toward the elevator. The soldier in the cowboy hat we spoke to the previous night is in the elevator car and spots us approaching so he holds the door. He pinches the tip of his hat down in greeting to Danielle.

  “Hi Chuck,” smiles Danielle.

  “Morning, miss,” Chuck nods.

  I watch the lighted numbers as we pass the second floor. When we reach the lobby, we follow Reynolds out to an armored Humvee parked out front. No golf carts today apparently. The air is humid, the kind of muggy summer days I have always hated in Chicago. I notice there is a lot of gunfire coming from the direction of the hospital.

  "Did they get inside?" Danielle asks Reynolds as he opens the rear door for us.

  "It's happened before," he says. "We have always driven them back out again. We had to retake that hospital once already. Lost the whole medical staff, though. We're preparing to evacuate just as a precaution." He closes the door and gets in behind the wheel. The soldier in the cowboy hat, Chuck, gets in the front passenger seat, so I guess he's with us now, too.

  As Reynolds starts the truck, I lean forward to ask him a question. "How are you going to evacuate all these people?"

  "We aren't evacuating at all yet," he says.

  "But if you had to," I push the point, wanting an answer.

  He accelerates toward the end of the block. "We have a few large yachts anchored just offshore. Only room for maybe eight or nine hundred. It would be impossible to evacuate all of them." He takes a right around the corner, pulling up behind another Humvee parked in front of headquarters.

  "Don't worry, though, it'll be fine," he says. "If there is a problem, the Captain ordered us to take you out on one of the helicopters with us." He gets out of the car, and we follow him up the front steps. Some soldiers are piling sandbags around a couple of serious looking machine guns at the base of the steps. The snipers on the roof keep their attention focused east, watching for any sign of a breach. A couple of the Blackhawk helicopters circle a battle going on near the hospital building. It doesn't take any military training to see that things are becoming desperate at the station.

  We follow Officer Reynolds downstairs to a storage area, which now serves as the armory for the base. An armed guard keeps watch over a gate and salutes Reynolds when we approach. Reynolds swipes his card and unlocks a cage door, nodding to the sentry.

  "What are we doing down here exactly?" I ask.

  "My orders were to get you ready for evac," says Reynolds. Then he added, "in case the situation degrades. We stop at a caged window in the middle of the long hall, with a supply clerk stationed beyond it.

  "If you will all let the private here know your measurements, we will find some more suitable clothes," says Reynolds. "There's a locker room down the hall for you to change. Sorry, there won't be any time for showers just yet. Lieutenant Fletcher and I will round up some supplies and be back to collect you in ten."

  The cowboy and Reynolds leave us, and we tell the young clerk our shirt, pant and shoe sizes, which he jots down on a slip of yellow legal paper. The soldier begins collecting items from shelves and racks in the storeroom and piling the neatly folded clothing on the counter.

  "This is crazy," says Danielle. "Why are they giving this stuff to us?"

  "My father thinks he owes you for helping me," says Quentin. "He feels obligated to return the favor."

  "Favor? It feels like I'm being enlisted," says Danielle. "I'm no soldier."

  "We are all soldiers now," I say. "We don't really have a choice. But we're not getting this gear to fight. This stuff is to give us a chance to survive.”

  I grab up a pair of uniforms and the boots off the counter and walk to the locker room. Danielle goes on the opposite side of the aisle of lockers, and we change into the uniforms we were issued. One set was black and the other a green camouflage. I picked up the black pants with large cargo pockets, but Quentin tells me to wear the other one.

  "Black is for night only," he says.

  I kick off my leather shoes and strip out of my tattered dress pants and pull on the uniform. I button the top right over my Navy t-shirt. I find these separate pads which I don't understand until I watch Quentin strap one around his kneecap, so I do the same. I look down at my outfit and feel sort of ridiculous like I am some kid dressed as a soldier. I look down at the floppy hat and decide not to put it on. I lace up the pair of tan boots.

  Danielle walks around from the other side of the lockers, her dark hair now back in a ponytail. She looks like she has aged ten years in a matter of days. She is still bruised and has several slim scabs along the right side of her face. Instead of just an attractive young woman, she also looks every bit a hardened soldier too.

  "You look ridiculous," she says to me. Then she looks at Quentin. "You look better this way."

  The door opens, and Reynolds and Fletcher come in with assault rifles slung over their
shoulders. They each carry enormous rucksacks full of god knows what. Food and ammo, I imagine, but there must be a whole lot of it. I look at the heavy packs hoping they don't expect me to lug one of those around everywhere.

  "Holy crap," says Danielle. "I hope you don't expect me to be able to carry all that."

  “Hopefully, you won't need to," smiles Reynolds. "If you're all ready, let's load up and go see the captain."

  We lug the gear back up the flight of stairs and as we approach the lobby I can hear the sound of gunfire just beyond the doors. We go outside, and I can see the corpses lining up at the hurricane fence beyond the courtyard.

  "The damn bastards got the hospital again," says Chuck.

  I notice a look of concern cross Reynold’s face as he stares off at the horde pressing against the flimsy barricade. Troops are pouring out from the barracks now, some only half-dressed, spreading out into the courtyard and spraying the bodies at the fence with bullets. The snipers on the roof are firing more slowly, but steadily and without end. From this distance, I can only make out the massive size of the crowd. There are hundreds of thousands of corpses trudging forward like a glacier of rotting meat. It's just a matter of time before they topple that fence and there isn't enough firepower here to hold them off.

  "We better hurry," says Reynolds. He opens the trunk, and we heave the heavy supplies and assault rifles into the back. Quentin is already running up the stairs for the door by the time the last pack is loaded. We follow him up the stairs and down the hall to the captain's office.

  "We need to get the fuck out of here now!” Quentin pleads.

  Captain Black stands behind his desk, looking out the window at the courtyard beyond. The captain has changed from his dress uniform into some battle fatigues. He has a pistol holstered at his waist and has traded in his cigarettes for a big cigar that he chews between his teeth. He turns and looks at Quentin, and grins. I have to wonder if the guy is losing his mind.