Enduring Armageddon (6 page)

“Alright, but before we even walked into this place, we agreed that we’d stay for a couple weeks. Give me that at least. We’ll go south, but I need a little bit of time to recharge my batteries.”

I held up two fingers and said, “I don’t like it, but if you promise me that we’re leaving at the end of the two weeks, then we can wait. We’ll use that time to stock up on supplies and get some traveling gear so we’re a little more prepared for the trip. Some heavy-duty backpacks, heavy coats and maybe a tent.”

“I want to try to get a couple of the real gas masks like some of the people around here have too. These paper ones aren’t going to last nearly as long as we’ll need them to,” Rebecca said as she picked up her old surgical mask.

“Okay, I’ll add that to the list,” I said as I lay back on the couch to stretch out. Suddenly I was more tired than I remembered being in a long time.

“Hey, no sleeping,” my wife said as she slapped my knee. “Come on, let’s go get you cleaned up. I’m still crazy horny so I need some time for me.”

I perked up and said, “I’m gonna go to the bathroom real quick and then get cleaned up.”

“I’ll be waiting for you in the bedroom. I found some outfits of the former occupant’s that I’m sure you’ll enjoy so don’t take too long!”

I sat for a moment and watched her ass sway as she strutted back to the bedroom. It was a crazy day in a crazy life. I’d killed a person with my bare hands today. Fine, a diseased, sick individual who would have killed me and probably eaten me.
Do they do that?
I thought. After killing the thing, I’d somehow become a minor hero to the gathering squad and Jesse freakin’ loved me. Now Rebecca wanted to fuck again. She’d never been as horny as she was right now, not even when we were first dating. Not that I was complaining, but I wondered what was going on. Maybe it had something to do with her feeling safe here in Virden.

I pondered this as I walked to the bathroom, finally I’d be able to relieve the pressure in my bowels.

Two days had passed since my run-in with the zombie in Taylorville. I was still a minor celebrity with the gathering crew, but most of the shine wore off when they realized I was just one lucky son of a bitch. I wasn’t some superhuman strongman or some martial arts expert, I’d just been scared out of my mind and the adrenaline took over. I’d read somewhere that sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good and I was alive to prove it.

We spent the entire day after the run to Taylorville unloading the trucks into wherever we could put supplies. There were several medium-sized businesses near the center of town that were now overflowing with goods so we had to requisition a few of the empty houses from the registration office in order to store what we’d brought in. We all knew that wasn’t enough to last, so the mission was still scheduled to go to Jacksonville.

Admittedly, I hadn’t been there on the prior day’s trip to Taylorville when they had to fight off scavengers or the preparation for the mission either, but the way Jesse and D’Andre went about getting the gear situated and ready for Jacksonville seemed a lot more like a military operation than a supply run to me.

Aside from the standard overnight gear that we already knew we needed, we packed a lot of weapons and ammunition. I was given a handgun at first, but once they found out that I didn’t know how to use it, they took it back and gave me a big knife called a KA-BAR. I was told that’s what the Marines carried, back when there was a Marine Corps. It looked wicked-deadly and I hoped that I’d never have to use it. In addition to that, I had my trusty baseball bat that had been with me from the beginning.

Rebecca and I had made love every morning and every evening since we got to Virden and I was really starting to enjoy my new daily routine. She still didn’t know why she was so intensely horny all the time, but I’m not one to question the good things in life, so I kept my mouth shut and continued to benefit from my wife’s newfound libido.

When I kissed her goodbye this morning, her kiss had been almost desperate, like she’d never see me again or something. It didn’t go unnoticed by me and as I walked towards the group for our morning update I wondered if she sensed something that I didn’t.

The quick briefing, geez, maybe this
was
a military outfit, focused on the route to the town and our objective: A very large food distribution warehouse. The amount of food that could potentially be in the distribution center could set up a population of five thousand for months. That part caught my ear for sure, because I thought we only had a population of about half that. I knew Virden was planning to expand, but doubling our population seemed like a little too much, too soon.

Maybe this Allan guy, whom I still hadn’t even seen, was planning on becoming some type of regional sanctuary or stronghold. We needed to get out before that happened. One thing my history lessons in high school taught me was that when there was someone with something and others with nothing, there’s bound to be trouble. I wanted to be far away from here before the shit hit the fan and this place came under siege.

Jesse said that we needed to be ready for a fight in case there were scavengers living in the town or any freaks in the area. They weren’t prepared for the fight that they got into in Taylorville, so he wasn’t going to let that happen again. Apparently, the reason they didn’t finish unloading the warehouse on the first day was because there were several zombies around. They spent half the morning rooting them out before they were able put everyone to work. Not very efficient. He wanted everyone armed so they could quickly dispatch the creatures and scare off scavengers if we had to. I understood the logic behind it, but it reinforced my belief that a war was coming to southern Illinois and I had to make sure that we got out of there before it did.

The gathering section had grown to more than sixty men and women, so, in order to better keep track of everyone we were divided into ten-man teams and assigned a specific truck to ride in. It made sense to keep the groups of people together and have a fast way of accounting for everyone. Apparently Jesse and D’Andre had learned that in their time in the army during their younger days serving in Iraq and Afghanistan respectively. Neither of them served past their first term of four years, but they were the only ones with military experience and they were part of Allan’s inside circle, so they ended up being the leaders of the gathering section.

My new buddy Robert and I were both assigned to Jesse’s command section truck. I guess my impression on him still held up to his scrutiny. That, or he just needed somebody to fill his truck and we got along reasonably well. Either way, I was glad to have a seat in the nicer four-door pick-up truck instead of cramming into the back of one of the semis.

Before we left, Jesse called a quick huddle to talk to everyone again. “Alright,” he said. “We’re headed over to Jacksonville this morning. You all know the route, north on 4, west on 104, west on 72, north on Main, east on Southbrooke and the distribution center is along the road after a few football fields’ length. Any questions on the route?” He paused for a moment and then continued, “We believe there may be a group of scavengers in the area. We need to stay alert and keep an eye out for them. If you’ve had any run-ins with them before, you know they shoot first and don’t ask any questions, so don’t let them get the drop on you or you’ll be dead.”

Suddenly, a thought popped up in my head as he was talking. I raised my hand and Jesse pointed at me. “What is it, Chuck?”

“How do we know they’re scavengers and not just the residents of Jacksonville trying to defend their supplies?”

Our leader looked at D’Andre, who shook his head and made a sound like he was disgusted. “We know the residents of Jacksonville were driven out by a group of scavengers who have been murdering everyone in their path. We just don’t know if any of them stayed behind.” You could see several men pause and take notice at this new bit of information. Yesterday, the preparations had been for
in case of emergency
use, now we knew that there was a pretty good chance that we’d end up in a fight and the gatherers had to be ready.

I nodded dumbly. I was never in the army, hell when I was a kid I didn’t even play along when everyone else wanted to pretend to be soldiers on the playground. I preferred video games and books, then stocks and bonds as I got older. What the hell was I doing in the gathering squad?
Surviving,
I told myself. This was a messed up world and we needed to ensure that there was food for everyone. Why should those murdering scavengers have it? We were a collective group of hard-working individuals who were trying to continue our way of life.

My mind focused again on what Jesse was saying. “…Good point, Sam. Any other ideas?” Well shit, I’d just missed a “good point” because my mind wandered off. I glanced over at Sam, our former guide, who’d decided to join the gathering squads instead of keeping her safe job inside the town. I waved to her and she waved back. I’d have to ask her what she had said.

After a couple more questions, the briefing was done and Jesse gave us a ten-minute warning to finalize anything else before we left. The allotted time came and went, so we grabbed our overnight gear and weapons and then loaded the trucks.

* * *

I awoke to the sound of bullets ricocheting off of the side of the truck and people yelling. The driver slammed on the brakes and we were all thrown forward into the seat in front of us. “Get out, get out, get out!” Jesse yelled as he opened the passenger door and dove for cover on the ground.

I pressed myself into as small a shape as I could until the men beside me cleared a pathway and exited the vehicle. I glimpsed a small neighborhood and a few buildings, which were the outskirts of a larger town that I assumed to be Jacksonville, as I jumped from the truck. I felt a round buzz by my head. I dropped to the ground and rolled into the ditch beside the road. Roger, the last man in the truck after me, gurgled something, but I couldn’t understand him, so I turned to ask him what he’d said. Then I realized why he’d made such a weird noise. His entire face was caved in and blood was running down his chin to the ground.

“Oh shit, Roger’s hit!” I shouted as I crawled back towards the truck to see what I could do for him. He was sitting half-in and half-out of the truck but bullets continued to strike all around the vehicle and into his body.

“Forget him, Chuck, grab his rifle,” someone shouted. I think it may have been D’Andre, the squad’s number two man. I nodded dumbly and grasped the barrel of the rifle that was lying on the ground at his feet. I pulled it to me and looked it over. I’d never shot a rifle in my life. I’d gone to several skeet shooting ranges as part of team building with my broker’s office, but that was a shotgun, not some high-tech rifle with a scope and all the gear this thing had sticking off of it.

“Hey, I don’t know how to use this. Who wants it?” I cried out.

“Goddammit, Chuck! Here, give me the damned thing,” D’Andre shouted again. I started to get up but he stopped me. “Hey, fucktard, somebody’s shooting at us. Don’t stand up. Crawl over here.”

Of course, it made perfect sense to crawl instead of walk. People were shooting at us.
Why the hell would you try to walk you idiot!
I chided myself as I crawled towards D’Andre.

“Come on, come on,” he said impatiently as I slowly made my way towards him. I finally reached him and slid the rifle to him. He snatched it from my hands and expertly took the scope’s lens covers off, chambered a round and pushed the safety switch to off all in what looked like one motion to me.

“Come on, where are you?” he kept asking himself as he peered through the scope.

“Do you have a visual on the shooters?” Jesse asked from a few feet away in the ditch.

“Not yet. I’m scanning… Wait, got you, fucker!” D’Andre said as he gently squeezed the trigger and the weapon bucked against his shoulder. He kept looking through the scope for another moment, then laid the rifle down and said, “One guy dead. Headshot. I’ve got to reposition before I take another shot and they figure out where I am.”

“Okay. Chuck, move with D’Andre, give him whatever help he needs,” Jesse said to me as the incoming fire from the town decreased and our return fire increased.

We crawled a hundred or so yards down the ditch before D’Andre said we’d moved far enough. “Probably a bunch of those Crimson fuckers,” he said as he looked through the rifle’s scope for another target.

“Huh?” I asked dumbly.

“Oh yeah, you’re from up north. The Jacksonville Crimsons were our biggest rivals back in the day. I was a Bulldog, Virden’s football team. Jesse and I hated those fuckers… There you are.” He squeezed the trigger and the rifle bucked again. “Count another Jacksonville fuck down.”

“What? I thought Jesse said these were scavengers.”

“Sure, they’re scavengers who are here in Jacksonville,” he replied. “Let’s move again.” As we scooted along the ground, something didn’t seem right.

We reached our third destination and he fired another round at some far away, but still unseen shooter. He whistled softly to himself and said, “That must hurt. I shot a little high and scalped that dude. Saw the top of his head roll back. Might have to take care of him when we roll into town. Let’s move.”

We crawled along to another spot and sat there for a few minutes. I lay on my side, watching him, wondering what he would need that I could offer. My elbow began to ache from the pressure I was putting on it, so I shifted to my stomach and focused my eyes on the grass in front of me. A line of ants were busily carrying grass seeds back to their colony. They sensed the early change in the weather, but did we? Is that why we were frantically stockpiling food from everywhere near Virden, getting into firefights with scavengers to do so? How much time did we have before the weather turned god-awful? I thought back to the television show I’d seen about it, but they were vague. Two months ago, all of this was speculation. Hell, I’d never even figured out who nuked us, but here we were.