Aftermath (Book 1): Only The Head Will Take Them Down (33 page)

There was no response, the man simply sitting there, clearly ready to accept the fate John had bestowed upon him. Before long, beads of sweat began to form on the man’s brow, rolling down his face and dripping off of his chin, the small droplets silently hitting the ground below. Seeing no further reason to delay the execution, John pulled back the loading hammer of the SR22’s small frame.

“Wait”, the man spat out suddenly, “We were just ambushing folk, been doing it since the start, wasn’t my plan I swear, I was… I was forced into it”, he said, his lies so obvious it was almost embarrassing for the two men watching.
“Why?”, John asked.
“Why?”, the man said, almost confused by the question, “Why not?”, he answered, “People got plenty of stuff, and it sure looks like we’re all headed for hell anyways”.
“Maybe you are”, John said. “How many of you are… were there”, he asked.
“How many? Uhh… just three including me”, he said.
“I asked you to tell me how many, not to lie about it”, John growled, clearly angered by the response. “
NOT
to lie about it”, he repeated, re-gripping the pistol as he did.
“Alright alright, four, there’s four including me”, the man spluttered.
“Good”, John said, “Now run”.

Clearly terrified, the man clumsily jumped to his feet, his head barely able to function well enough to keep him up, but allowing him at least to begin stumbling away.
“How’d you know he was lying?”, Andrew asked as the man left earshot.
“Because I already killed three of them”, John replied, before raising his pistol, and firing off a single round.
Before the bullet had even made contact, John turned to begin walking over to the obstructing Mustang, the sound of a body dropping to the floor in the distance all the confirmation he needed.
“Four now”, he said quietly to himself.

The car was secured in place in a crude manner. It was clearly long since dry of fuel, and instead had been pushed and pulled into place using ropes attached to each end, the men having gone to great lengths to block their victims in. The vehicle itself was riddled with holes, many more than John or Andrew had put into it, something they took as potential evidence of the sheer number of times it had been subject to retaliation by the gang’s many targets. John took hold of the rope on the front bumper, and with the help of Andrew – who quickly followed suit by grabbing it further along the line – the pair pulled the vehicle just far enough along to open up a gap for the Ford to pass through.

“John”, Andrew said, as John began to walk back over to the truck.
“I’m sorry Andrew, but it had to be done, you saw him, he’d go out and do this whole thing again if I didn’t put him down”, John said, defending his actions.
“No”, Andrew said, grabbing John’s arm and pulling him to a stop, “I get that, it’s not what I wanted to say”, he said.
“Oh?”, John asked, both pleased and surprised that Andrew was perhaps coming around to the unfortunate necessity of murder in the world they now resided in, “So what then?”, he asked.
“We’ll take you to your family”, Andrew said, “I think it’s the least we can do after all that”.
“What?”, John started, “Are you-“.
“And after that, how about we head for Chicago together, all of us?”, Andrew suggested.
John smiled and nodded his head. “I think that sounds like a good idea”, he replied.

Chapter 34: Milwaukee

Along the miles that followed – which fell away faster than ever – Andrew found it in himself to introduce John to his family, now that he had begun to trust him again. He started with his daughter Hannah, who unfortunately for John, was at that young age of inquisitiveness that saw her extremely keen to find out more about him. John’s hatred for discussing his personal matters was almost famous to Andrew by now, but sure enough, as the young girl wore him down, he eventually managed to divulge some none essential details.

Having completed that introduction, John met Andrew’s wife. Sarah had never been told the full story of John’s past lies and deceits, and so was quick to befriend the man that in her eyes had done nothing wrong, and had in fact saved her husband’s life from day one. Thanks to all of the introductions and numerous stories that each of them had to swap, the remaining two hours were over in a heartbeat, and before long the road widened into a huge five lane concrete super-highway, something that marked their entrance into the central area of the city.

“Milwaukee”, John suddenly said, interrupting whatever conversation had been floating around the truck’s cabin, with a simple word that stunned everyone into silence, and had every eye of every person in that Ford trained on the highway laced cityscape coming into view ahead. “We’re finally here”, he added, his eyelids growing heavy with a need to blink, but his mind adamant that he take every little bit of it in.
“My God”, Andrew interjected, his own eyes open just as wide, and his mouth snapped ajar in astonishment at the sight in front of him.

Milwaukee was in utter ruins. Every building was accompanied by a trail of smoke, every vehicle of the seemingly infinite lines of traffic on the other side of the highway was laden with debris and dirt, and the grey sky and distant sight of lightning helped to illustrate just how badly the city had fared. The entire area felt almost condemned, as if abandoned years ago and left to rot, and yet all of it had happened within just a few months. What was most troubling however, was the number of vehicles that were marked with the unmistakable scars of gunfire, many thousands of the holes spread all over what appeared to be just about every car in sight.

“I heard about this sort of thing”, Andrew said eventually, breaking the uncomfortable silence without taking his own eyes away from the sights in front. “Places the military marched on, tried to retake after it was overrun”, he explained, “They just all out stormed them, threw everything they had into getting it safe so they’d have somewhere to base themselves, but they could never secure anywhere”.
“Mount’ of noise they probably made with all this shooting I’m not surprised”, John replied. “Bet there were a lot more runners back then too”, he added, referring to the significantly higher potential for a runner to catch and kill its attackers before being put down, as well as the sheer number of runners that were still bursting with fresh energy back at the start of the outbreak.

Within seconds of their arrival, rain began cascading down from the sky above. Each droplet was the size of a fist, hitting the tough metallic exterior of the F150 with serious force, thud after thud all but silencing any form of conversation. Nobody could quite believe how the city looked, everywhere they’d been so far had of course seen better days, but none of them had bore such a heavy brunt, and none had come close to the sheer look of devastation that now sat in front of them.

Another crack of thunder sounded out overhead, and filled each passenger with thoughts of a nuclear aftermath, this sort of carnage and chaos normally only ever caused by such destructive forces. But whether a weapon of mass destruction had been used or not, it was certainly no longer the busy, vibrant city it had once been.

Andrew opened his mouth to speak, but quickly realised that unless both the rain and thunder subsided – which seemed incredibly unlikely – nobody would be able to hear him. Bearing that in mind he looked around briefly, before spotting, and subsequently heading for, the nearest off ramp.

Curving round the ramp to the underside of the highway they had just left, the truck eventually came to a halt, the immense noise and reduced visibility from the storms outside all but ceasing with immediate effect, as the large concrete ceiling above them shielded the truck from the elements.
“What do you want to do John?”, Andrew asked as he killed the engine.
“I want to go further in, I want to find them”, John insisted.
“Look around John, the biters are everywhere”, Andrew said, his finger pointing out a series of the undead visible further along the road, as well as numerous barely exposed limbs just visible in the dark corners of the underpass, no signs of either life or death accompanying them. “We need to know where we’re going, we can’t just drive around hoping to stumble into them, it’s not safe”.
John thought it over for a moment, his head knowing that Andrew was right, but his heart adamant that they start looking immediately. Eventually however, he knew he had to see sense.
“Alright”, he said begrudgingly as he reached into the glove compartment and withdrew Donald’s old map, still open to the page of Milwaukee, a red cross marked over the downtown area.

The area highlighted was almost exactly the ground their truck sat on; the downtown region, close but not too close to the water, right along the I94. The problem however was scale, as although the cross itself covered only a small area of the map, when scaled up, it equated to at least nine square miles of search area, in a city so congested and blocked up that a single wrong turn could have them trapped in a deadly position. John flipped to the page dedicated to Milwaukee’s downtown, the map now heavily zoomed into the area around them, but still with no markings to indicate where the camp might actually be.

Like a rescue team analysing the scene of a plane crash, the two began poring over the map. Each spot was analysed for the possible presence of anything of interest, from likely campsite locations, to the raiding points that the camp might visit, and everything else in between. As he looked however, John found himself unable to ignore the ever present possibility that after all this time, the camp might have moved on, or been overrun completely. Quickly he tried to put such thoughts out of his mind.

Within minutes both John and Andrew had noted a series of possibilities, from universities and libraries, to courthouses, hospitals and theatres. The list ended with a series of spots on the coast, which if indeed the location of the camp, would mark the perfect point for survivors to launch off for Chicago. Eventually, having each scoured a reasonable distance in every direction, and double checking each other’s own findings, both men paused for a final glance, before looking over to each other, and knowing it was time for the all-important discussion.

“We need to decide where to go”, John said, breaking the silence.
“And what order to go in”, Andrew added.
“Yeah, can’t get caught out in any one way street, always gotta’ have an exit strategy”, John explained loudly for the benefit of those in the back of the truck.
“And we need...”, Andrew paused to compose his words, “We need to set a time for…”, he paused again, unable to complete the sentence.
“We need to pick a time for when to stop looking”, John interrupted, knowing that it was only fair he release Andrew and his family from their duties at some point. “You know I won’t stop though, right?”, he asked.
“I know”, Andrew replied, smiling slightly at the stubbornness of his companion, which even he had to admit was somewhat admirable at times.
“Let’s work out the priority, few places that are most likely”, John said, “We’ll end at the water so you guys can get away if we come up empty, and then I’ll head back in and carry on”, he added.
“Alright”, Andrew agreed.

After a moment of thought, both men began to pick their primary choices, and before long, a list of destinations was made.

*
      
*
      
*

The final list consisted of just six locations, all spaced out enough to create a route that covered much of the overall area, but each picked for their individual abilities to be a good host to numerous survivors. The first – the Marquette University – was just a short distance from the underpass, and so before long, the gas guzzling, but thankfully still fuelled truck, arrived on site.

The University itself was a sprawling campus, its many buildings separated by pathways, but all of it contained within a single plot of vast land. The benefit of this was that the entire campus could be inspected from the comfort of the truck, and that the numerous pathways – most of which were more than wide enough even for the huge F150 – presented virtually unlimited potential escape routes. The downside however, became quickly apparent.

“Daddy!”, came Hannah’s voice from the backseat, as a small group of the undead came into view at the start of the very first channel into campus.
“I know sweety, just keep your head down, keep close to your Mother, we won’t be here long”, Andrew said reassuringly, as he defiantly drove around the group and onto the first of many pathways.
“Take a right at the end”, John said, his eyes scanning the nursing college to their left, and the science building to the right, seeking even the slightest notion of movement, but finding none.
“Second right up here”, John followed up, as the truck rounded the first turn, the main University building now coming into view, but still no sign of movement anywhere to be seen.

Occasionally a group of biters were spotted in the corners of the area, but most seemed to be out of sight, perhaps massed inside behind the barred doors that had once kept them in for their own safety, but did so now for the safety of everyone else. Regardless, save for the odd straggler which began to slowly trudge along behind the truck, the danger here appeared low.
“Four to our rear now”, Andrew said as he quickly scanned the rear view mirror.
“Don’t worry, they’ll tail off”, John said, as he pointed towards a left hand turn ahead, the next manoeuvre in a series of directional changes which saw the truck carve a path between just about every building on the campus.

Eventually, both men could tell that nothing was to be found. If a campsite had ever been there, evidence of it had been hidden well. Not a single suitable barricade remained in place, no vehicles were parked ready to mount an escape, and no living person had been spotted throughout the sweep. The University, the first on their list of six spots, appeared to be a dud.
“Onto the hospital?”, Andrew asked as the final building – a very modern looking law school – rushed past alongside them.
“Guess so”, John replied, as he crossed the University off of his list with a heavy handed, disappointment laden line.

The hospital in question was the nearby Aurora Sinai medical centre, a hospital and research centre that spanned multiple multi-storey buildings, which were thankfully separated by full roads the Ford could fit down. The nature of the hospital’s complex layout meant that going inside was almost suicidal, and so there was little chance of it being used for much, however the elevated walkways that joined each building together made for an ideal method of travel, and one that was without the risk of being exposed to the world outside. Handled in the right way, it might have made for the perfect base, with ample space to expand and no doubt plenty of medical resources to keep the people inside healthy. However, like most medical facilities, John was certain that it would have been among the first to be overrun, a theory confirmed as the first of the hospital’s wings came into sight.