Last Stand of the Dead - 06 (13 page)

I was concerned about the lack of communication.  We should have been able to raise
somebody;
we were close enough to a couple of communities
that
I knew were active, but perhaps the storm knocked out a few
comm
centers.  I just didn’t know.

Oneida had been wiped out, but
Altona
had survived, having been visited by a group of soldiers the evening before.  They didn’t do anything special but lock their doors and windows and stayed inside until the danger passed.

Galva had been hit this morning, and they were cleaning up their friends and neighbors when we arrived.  The situation looked to be the same.  The zombie kids swarmed
in
,
attacked
who they could, carried off who they could, and disappeared before the defenses could be set.  Tommy had to punch out a man who grabbed his shirt and started screaming in his face, and I had to draw my sidearm to keep the situation from getting worse.  I was curious as to why the soldiers hadn’t been here to warn them, but got the answer when the town leader told me a couple of their farmers found some dead soldiers about five miles from town.  Freeman was late
,
again.

At around noon
,
we reached the town of Kewanee, and at first
,
it looked like we were going to have a situation like we did with
Wataga
. 
But on the north side, Charlie spotted something, and we drove north on 78 until we reached Johnson Sauk Trail State Park.

The park was heavily wooded, even more so since no one had been working to keep it back in its boundaries for several years.  The trees had extended their growth, and the weeds had reclaimed large tracts of land on the southern end of the park.  East State Road proved no barrier to the wilderness, and I suspected in about twenty years, the former state park was going to become a national forest.

We were greeted at the entrance to the park, which was a small road that dipped slightly before going up a small rise.  Hills of tough scrub surrounded us as we made our way carefully to the barricade that stretched across the road.

“You Talon?”
A burly man called out from the other side of the
fifty-gallon
drums that blocked the entrance.

“That I be.
  Who am I talking to?” I called back.

“Francis.  Jerry Francis.  Is it safe to head back to Kewanee?”  A stocky man stepped out of the woods, cradling a long-barreled lever action.  I’d guess that gun had a history with Jerry’s family, and in all likelihood, the man could probably shoot extremely well with it.

“We just passed through there, and didn’t see any sign of the zombies, so I’d say you were safe.  Just to be extra careful, I’d post a watch on the southern end for a few days, and everyone should stay closer to
home,
” I advised.

“Obliged to you.
  We’ll head back this
afternoon,
” Francis
said.

“If you’re heading back, may I make a suggestion?”  I asked.

“Please.”

“Just send a small group ahead, well-armed.  Let them set up the first watch and then bring everyone back.  You don’t want to get hit as you just get back to town.” I said.

Jerry mulled it over. “Good thought.  We’ll get it done.  Thanks.”

I reached across the barrier and shook his hand.  “Stay safe.”

Jerry smiled.  “If you’re chasing these ghosts, you do the same.”

“Done.”

We turned our trucks around and headed back south, turning off Route 34 and following
Kentville
Road.  Tommy told us that Neponset hadn’t been hit, and they had been in contact with
Scheffield
and Buda, and those towns had been warned by the military.  Sarah crossed them off the map, which put our enemy somewhere to the north of us, and in all honesty, somewhere behind us. 

“What’s your call, John?” Sarah asked.

I pulled over to look at the map.  Even though we were the only ones on the road, I didn’t need to off road it right now.

“I think our best bet is to stay where we are, and cross the bridge at Hennepin.  I’ve thought about these guys and going through water, and nothing we’ve seen so far tells me they like water
anymore
than the regular
Z’s,
” I said.

“What about the wet zombie’s we saw?” Sarah asked.

“I forgot about the rain that hit us.  Chances are
that
they just got caught in a storm, and why would they seek shelter like we would?”  I
asked
.

The radio popped to life. “
You planning
on moving soon?” Charlie’s voice came over the speaker.

I picked up the transmitter. “Hang on. 
Trying to figure where to go from here.
  Two minutes.”

“Oh.  Take your time.
Charlie out.”

“The waterways should steer them south, whether they’re try
ing or
not.  Freeman’s got the northern end sealed up, it looks like, and there’s nothing but dead towns along the I-80 corridor.  Princeton’s dead, and if Freeman had half a brain…
hold
on.” I grabbed the transmitter.  “Tommy, can you raise any army people?”

“Not really.  We’re too small and there’s too many hills with the river valley to get a good
signal
.,
Tommy replied
,
“Why?”

“Never mind, just had an
idea,
” I
said. 
“Out.”
  I looked at Sarah.  “If we could get him to deploy along 180, then he’d have the advantage of cover and give the zombies a serious fight.”

Sarah looked at it.  “Yeah, and send them all south, which, if they stayed on their course to the east, would put them in our backyard. 
Maybe not.”

I looked again.  Damn, she was right.  Thank
God,
we couldn’t reach Freeman. 
“All right.
  Let’s get moving and get ourselves on the right side of the river.  With luck, we could be home this evening.”

Sarah squeezed my hand.  “Magic words, Mr. Talon.  Make it happen.”

Chapter 23

I drove as quickly as I could, dodging the worst of the potholes and cracks, slowing for the other ones.  Road maintenance was the lowest of priorities in the post-Upheaval world, and it
was
up to the communities to do it themselves.  The roads outside of the communities suffered the most, with only I-80 being the most regularly maintained.  It just meant that a trip that should have taken ten minutes
was now a half an hour or more.  In some parts of the
country,
it was literally faster to walk.

We reached Route 29, and I gratefully pointed the truck north.  A half mile later, we were on I-180, grinning like kids who start to see the signs for the amusement park they have been travelling forever to get to.

One mile later and I
was
out of the truck, staring in disbelief at the ruined bridge in front of me.  Sarah was by my side, and the rest of the crew was staring as well. 

A barge was half-sunk in the river, after colliding with the center support.  The impact had cracked the bridge, and subsequent freezes and thaws had widened the cracks, allowing for great chunks of the bridge to fall into the river below.  At most, there was about two feet of bridge left to cross to get to the undamaged side and across the water.  Twisted metal hung down, supporting hunks of concrete, making the bridge look like it had been bombed. The barge was rusted and decayed, telling me this accident had happened years ago, back when people were using whatever they could to get to some kind of safety.  The irony was they could have just stayed on the barge in the middle of the city and been perfectly safe.

“Are you kidding me?”  Duncan asked, summing up what all of us felt.

I sighed.  “Let’s find a way around.  Hopefully there’s another bridge close by.”

We climbed back into our vehicles and I turned south.  Sarah and I didn’t say much, but we were feeling the same thing.  This was just a delay we didn’t need or want.

Seven miles south and another half an hour later, we were looking at the afternoon sun shining on the small town of Henry.  Henry was a river town that managed to survive the Upheaval
,
by diverting part of the river to form a barrier around the three defenseless side
s
of the community.  We stopped only briefly to tell the people there about the possible threat, and they responded by posting a watch on the town’s water tower.  If anything came within ten miles, they’d know right away.

We drove through the rest of Henry, and I had to admit, it was a nice town.  People had gardens they were tending, there were a lot of children running around, and for the most part, people seemed to have moved on from the tragedy of the earlier years.  It was a good thing to see, after all of the dead towns we had been to over the course of the last week.

As nice as Henry was, the nicest part was the lovely, intact, unbroken bridge that crossed the Illinois
River
. I nearly had tears in my eyes as I crossed the water to the other side.  We were sixteen miles from home, as the crow flew, and I almost became nostalgic for a horse.

I took us east on 18, then turned north on 89.  I couldn’t use I-39, since that was a backed up disaster of cars and zombies.  Once the wars were over, I had decided to open only one road south, and I-39 wasn’t it.  The only thing we had done was seal the exits so the zombies that did free themselves from the cars had nowhere to go
,
and the elements would take care of them.

As we reached the intersection of 71 and 89, Tommy called over on the radio.

“John?  We might want to look at
Grainville
.”  Tommy sounded disturbed.

Shit.  Nothing was going well. “Why?” I hoped it was a good reason and not some weird farm festival.

“I’m getting a looped distress signal.”

That wasn’t a good sign.  Could the little zombies have beaten us here?  “Is it on regular channels?”

“The military one.”

Oh, hell
. 
“All right.
  Tell everyone to gear up, this could be bad.”  I put the receiver down and looked over at Sarah just as she shook her head.

“It’s not fair.  What did we do so wrong?” she asked as she checked her magazines.

I thought for a moment.  “I think it was when we told Dot we’d take this stupid mission.  Lesson learned.”

I turned left onto 71 and could see the outskirts of
Grainville
immediately.  There was a lot of smoke
rising
in the sky, and from where we
were
,
we could see at least two houses on fire.  I turned up Elm
Street
to get into the town proper, and it was bad from the beginning.  Two torn bodies were draped over each other inside a
car;
the door
was
flung open and covered in blood. 

I turned west on Main
S
treet, and there were more bodies.  Some were lying flat on their
face;
others were crouched in little balls in corners of buildings.  Pools of blood decorated their places of death. 

The bodies grew in number as we went further west.  There were older and younger dead here, as well as a number of dead zombie kids.  A small park in the center of town looked like it might have been used as a place o
f
a last stand.  Dozens of bodies covered a small white gazebo.

The sight of that gazebo brought a lot of memories flooding back, and none of them
was
too pleasant.  I just kept shaking my head as we moved slowly through the carnage. 

West Main Street ended at Division Street, and I turned north to see if there was any chance of survivors.  At the turn, I moved the truck back the way I had come and headed south.  At the intersection of Division and South Street, I thought I saw a military truck, so I headed back east.  Sarah had said nothing this whole time, just shaking her head at the mess of everything.

At the end of the road, there
were
three military trucks, and a lot of empty brass lying on the ground.  We had run out of road, so I got out of the truck and slowly approached the vehicle.  Charlie and Tommy were out and circling wide, while Duncan kept a watch on our backs.  Sarah and Rebecca walked carefully to the south, looking for anyone who might have survived.

The truck cab was clean, but I noticed the radio had an odd yellow light that was flashing in a regular pattern.  I flicked it off, wondering if I had cancelled the distress call.