Last Stand of the Dead - 06 (11 page)

The booth was just a small control center, with a series of switches and dials on one wall.  There was a table, a chair, and a small broom.  The floor was rubber, likely to avoid static buildup.  Charlie took the furniture out and carried it to the other platform.  When I looked at him funny, he just shrugged.

“Whoever sleeps over there would probably like a little protection from the rain that’s
coming,
” Charlie
said, pointing to the dark clouds just peeking under the setting sun.

“Good point.  Maybe we can all fit in the
booth,
” I
said. 

“Think they’re heading this way?” Charlie wanted to know.

“No idea for sure, just a hunch, but they seem to be travelling in this direction, for whatever
reason,
”  I
replied.

“You check the map for their possible destinations?” Charlie seemed to want a confirmation of what he had seen on the maps he had looked at.

I looked around and saw
that
no one else was near.  “Yeah, and we need to get home as soon as we can.  If they stay on this course, they’re going to run dead on into Starved Rock.”

Chapter 19

We didn’t say anything after that, and just settled in for the night.  The booth was a tight little box, and Duncan and Tommy elected to go sleep on the other end of the platform.  They liked sleeping outdoors, so that was fine with me.  A breeze was picking up, and we could smell rain in the air. Fortunately, the windows angled out and down, so we could keep them open even in a rainstorm.

We all crashed
hard
, and the only thing that woke me up was the sudden rush of wind and rain that came in the middle of the night.  Tommy and Duncan moved in the night to the far side of the booth to get out of the rain, and all was well for a while.

It must have been around two or three in the morning when I woke up.  I don’t know what caused me to be suddenly wide awake, but when I glanced over at Charlie, I saw he was awake as well.  He nodded towards the outside, and I disentangled myself from Sarah to get up and outside.

The rain had stopped, and the night was full of that fresh-washed, earthy smell that gave a sense of renewal no matter where you were.  The wind was slower, but there was still a good breeze from the west.  Charlie and I walked out to the platform on the other silo, and I took the chair while he sat on the table.

“What woke you up?” I whispered.

“Just a
feeling,
” Charlie said.
“Just a feeling.”

“Yeah, me too.”

We didn’t speak after that, and it was a good thing, because suddenly, they were here.  One moment, the night was quiet and dark, and everything was where it was supposed to be.  The next moment, shadows were flowing around buildings, going into homes, checking out garages.  From where we were, we could see several glowing eyes moving through the night like malignant fireflies that never blinked.  They moved so fast and were upon the town so sudden, if there was anyone down
there;
they were dead before they knew it.

This was how they attacked towns.  Waiting until they were all in position,
and then
running through without stopping.  It explained why town after town fell, why they were able to be so effective.  I watched them climb fences and flow up stairs without a second’s hesitation.  The eerie part was the pace.  Every single one of them moved at exactly the same speed.  It was a fast walk, a quick search, and then on.  There was a brief flurry of movement as an animal was disturbed out of
its
nest, but a squeal was all that remained of that critter.

The shadows flowed towards the silos, and Charlie and I simply froze.  If anyone looked up, we would be part of the scenery, hidden against a dark sky.  If anyone else from our group made a sound, however, we were all dead.

Charlie watched the flow, and his ha
nd
strayed to his firearm, but I shook my head as slightly as I dared.  I understood his rationale, but we were limited in the ammo and the supplies we had with us. 

The zombie kids kept moving, and in about thirty minutes
,
had faded into the surrounding brush.  I waited another ten before I spoke, and even
then,
it was barely a whisper.

“The town is about a half mile in size, which means they are travelling at about two miles an hour.  That gives us a good clue as to where they are going to be in the morning
,
” I said.

Charlie watched the dark spot where the kids disappeared.  “Why couldn’t we have had our fight here? They couldn’t get us.”

“Yeah, but what happens when we run out of ammo or water? I forgot to set up a cistern for rain.  Did you?”  I asked, moving quietly back to the shack. 

Charlie chuckled.  “As a matter of fact, I did forget.”

We reached the shack and settled back down with our spouses, who never knew we had left, to try and get a couple more hours of sleep.  Strangely, I didn’t dream of anything weird.

Chapter 20

In the morning, we quickly got off the tower and back to our vehicles.  If the little Z’s heard us or decided to double back for any reason, we needed to be mobile and not trapped up in the air.

I checked the map, and figured the zombies were headed towards Galesburg.  Ordinarily, that would be a worry, but Galesburg was
as
dead as the day is long.  A major highway runs alongside it, and a lot of fleeing, infected people were around Galesburg in the bad years.  People from the east and north converged on the town, and it became a nightmare of blood and death.  Even now, I never considered the town completely clear, even though we had been through it several times.  There were a lot of places for zombies to hide, and the hordes that travelled the country could easily have gone to ground in a place like Galesburg.

“Stay on 34, we’ll try and take it around
Galesburg,
” I told Sarah as we pulled out of Cameron.

“Ugh.
The
Galesburg?”
She said.  Sarah hated the place.

“That’s the
one,
” I
said.

“Think the body is still there?” She asked.

I hadn’t thought about it in years. 
“Maybe.”
  The mention of the body brought back a bad memory.  When we were going from town to town and cleaned out zombies wherever we found them, a couple of men joined us.  They were called Ben and Tim, and from the
start,
they were trouble.  Ben was a white-haired man about ten years my senior, and Tim was a younger man with the same whitish hair.

Tim was forever trying to seduce the women that travelled with us, and even a stern talking to by Sarah didn’t have any effect.  He basically told her to mind her own business un
less
she wanted some of his.  Sarah put him on the ground for that, and I stepped in later to tell him in no uncertain terms
,
what I would do to him
with my knife
if he ever spoke to my wife like that again.

That seemed to do the trick, but then we started to notice things were getting sloppy.  Doors we thought we had locked were opened, weapons were not w
he
re we had left them, and in general
,
we were being set up to have a catastrophic failure which would get a lot of us killed.

Charlie finally caught Ben and his brother trying to sabotage some of our ammo, and that was the last straw.  We held a quick trial, and banished the brothers from our group, never to return on pain of death.

That worked for a time, and we didn’t see hide
or
white hair of either brother until Galesburg.  During a heavy fight, Tim popped out of a store and grabbed one of our female fighters, dragging her inside and trying to rape her at gunpoint.  She stuck a knife in his side and escaped, leaving him to our justice.  He tried to fight, but Charlie overwhelmed him and that was that.  I personally tied the noose around his neck and hung him from a streetlamp.  Duncan was the one who put the ‘rapist’ sign around the dead man’s neck.

We never saw Ben again, and I always wondered what had happened to that sneaking son of a bitch.  I figured him
for
dead.

We drove slowly around Galesburg, and I saw a lot of places where we had fought.  I saw the factory where Duncan nearly died, and the alleyway that saved all of our lives at one point.  Tommy radioed in with his memories, and I had to say I was not unhappy to put Galesburg behind us.

At the north end, Sarah pointed to a light.  “Well, I’ll be damned.”

I looked, and although I expected to see a corpse, what I saw was better.  Swinging in the wind, like a tether
ed
ball, was a skull on the end of a rope.  The rest of the body
either must have
fallen away
,
or was pulled down by predators.  Part of me wondered if Ben ever came back and tried to bury his brother, but didn’t have a ladder so he had to make do with the parts he had.

We crossed Interstate 74, and could see the lines of rusting cars stretching away to the north and west.  If we bothered to take 74
,
we would be days away from home, and that wasn’t going to happen.  We needed to get along the path to get in the way of the zombies, and I was hoping a great deal that they were delayed in Galesburg.  I didn’t see any sign of them, but
that
sure as hell didn’t mean they weren’t there.

The next town on our route was
Wataga
, and I had a good feeling that there were people there.  The town was far enough away from 74 to not be a place for fleeing people, and there wasn’t any exit from 74 in this area anyway. 

  Route 34
took us to the west side of town, and we pulled over at Casey’s General Store.  I didn’t see anyone about, but the town looked tidy, and the mowed lawns told me
someone
was living here.  I got out and stretched, and joined the rest of the crew in taking a little stroll to the general store
.  In the better times, it was
a typical place to get supplies for the road, gas and such.  If your beef jerky supply was low, this was the place to stock up. 

Duncan and Tommy took a quick look into the store, and shook their heads when they exited. 

“It’s stocked, somewhat, so somebody was running the place.  But there’s no one
here,
” Tommy
said.

Charlie looked around and went over to the road that led into town.  “I’m not seeing any activity, and I doubt they all decided to sleep in today.”

“Make
ready,
” I said, and at those words
,
every
one
broke into action.  Rifles were pulled out and magazines were checked.  Knives and ‘hawks were loosened in their sheaths
,
and guns were eased in their holsters.

“Let’s split up.  Sarah, you’re with me and Duncan. Tommy, you’re with Charlie and Rebecca.  Swing to the north,
and then
slow walk to the south.  We’ll take the south-north route and meet you in the middle.  If they’re in hiding, call out as you walk, let them see you.  If they’re friendly, they’ll come
out,
”  I
said, patting myself for
mags
and knives.

“And if they aren’t friendly?”  Tommy asked.

“Try not to get
killed,” I
said.  “Let’s go.”

We got back in our vehicles and I drove to the southern end of town, parking on a street appropriately named East South Street.  We radioed to Charlie that we would be walking down Simmons Street, and if he cared to join us, that’s where we’d be.  Charlie replied he’d be delighted. He reminded me that we needed to be quick.  If the
little zombies were on their way, the middle of a street wasn’t the best defensible place.

“On our
way,
” I said.

We got out of the truck and moved fast, checking houses and streets.  It was eerie, walking through places that looked lived in, but no one was home.  In one
house,
we found the remains of breakfast, and Sarah commented that the eggs weren’t that cold.  I looked out back and saw the chickens were just fine, getting in the morning pecks before getting down to the busines
s.

I went into one house that looked to be occupied, and found no one.  I even checked the upstairs bedroom and found no one there, either. 

I checked in with Sarah, who was emerging from another house, and she found nothing out of sorts.

“Everything okay?”
I asked.

“Yes and
no,
” She said.

“Meaning?”