Generation Dead - 07 (24 page)

Julia looked at me and I took her hand and gave it a squeeze.  “Good thing you’re not part of this guilt
trip,
” I said.

Jake shook his head at Julia’s nod.  “Actually, she is.  Her dad was as much a part of the rebuild as ours. 
There’s
some revelations in there for Julia as well. It comes down to this.  Our dads fought a war, for us.  We need to fight for the peace, for them.  It’s that simple.”

We sat around the table looking at each other for a long time.  I was at a loss for words, but I felt better than I had for months.

Julia broke the silence.  “What are we supposed to do?”

Jake smiled that half smile of his and showed us a crude map of the place
in
Josli
n
we needed to go.

“We fulfill our obligation and then after that it’s time to clean up.”

Chapter 37

We spent the rest of the day getting things ready.  This was going to be a trip up the road, and the good news was
it
wasn’t going to be a long drive. 
Josl
i
n
was relatively close, and
the
place we had to get
to,
was on the west side, on the far edge of town.  If we were lucky, it would be a quick in and out. 

About
noon,
we finished our preps and had some time to kill.  I sat down on the porch with Julia and together we started reading the book.  It was nice to lounge on the patio with a gorgeous blonde in my lap, winding away the hours learning about our fathers.

We didn’t get as far as I had hoped, since Julia insisted on making out every other chapter, but I wasn’t complaining about the distraction.  I
had
a healthy new respect for our fathers, and what they went through
,
trying to
make the country again.  When I read the part about Coal City, I suddenly realized how close I came to not existing at all.  Julia discovered the truth about her parents,
and was silent for
a long
time a
fterward. 
However,
she handled it better than Jake did, realizing that her
foster
parents
had done
the best they could.

We all went to bed when the
sunset
, figuring to leave first thing in the morning.  I stayed awake for a little while longer, reading and looking for clues as to where my father might have disappeared.  I never thought for a second that he or Julia’s dad might be dead.  For whatever reason, I felt like I would know if he had passed, and I didn’t get that feeling, ever.

The drive to
Josli
n
was uneventful, each of us contributing to the conversation as to what we were going to do next.  I played devil’s advocate and wondered aloud why we were trained the way we were if our dads had made the world safe.  Jake nailed that quickly by pointing out that we were probably the only ones that had been recently trained and
who
kept it sharp by using it all the time.

I couldn’t argue that, so I tried a different tack.  What would we do once we finished the new
objective?
  Julia took that one, explaining that we probably would never be done, since we would have a lot of educating to do.

I took it at face value, and wondered to myself why I was questioning things so much.  Part of me wanted very badly to believe that we were finally doing the right thing, that we would realize our true goal.  The other part was intimidated by how big the goal actually was.

I kept those thoughts to myself as we turned off Route 6 and made our way through some very rough back
roads to the main road the destination was on.  We made our way up Bush Road to
Houbolt
, and crossed under I-80 before we reached the drive
that would take us to the
Josli
n
Junior College.  The west side of the road looked fairly harmless, lots of trees and bushes, with the occasional pond thrown in for good measure. 
The
other side of the street
was what
made me pause.

It was a huge subdivision, with hundreds, if not thousands of homes.  If there was any lesson learned from the end of the world, it was subdivision
s
, especially in this country, either lived or died.  There was no i
n between.  Given this was
Josli
n
,
I knew that subdivision was dead, and nothing lived there.  That gave us about three thousand potential zombies coming our way if things really turned against us.  I
hoped they had all drifted to the east when things had gotten bad, and had completely forgotten the way home.

Jake worked his way through a lot of broken driveway, and across a field that may have once been a parking lot,
but
it was hard to tell.  In the distance, a huge building sat amid the trees and bushes, half of one side had completely collapsed, giving the building
a
lopsided look.

“Please tell me we don’t have to try and dig through that
mess,” I
said, unbuckling my seatbelt as we came to a stop.

“Hang on.” Jake looked a
t
the map he was holding,
and then
up at the
building;
then
at the map, and then at the building.  I was starting to get a bad feeling about this.

“Nope, we’re good.  It’s supposed to be on the fifth floor of that building right in front of us.”  Jake put away the map and started putting his gear together.  Julia pulled out her spear, and was about to belt on her knives and gun when she suddenly left the truck and walked through the tall grass of the parking lot.  She went about twenty paces,
and then
suddenly stabbed down into the grass.  Walking back, she wiped off her blade and smiled at us.

“Saw some grass move when it shouldn’t have, and when I went over, I found a legless zombie working
its
way towards us.  That would have been a nasty surprise when we came back to the
truck,
”
she
said.

Nasty indeed.
  It was one thing to face a zombie head to head, no distractions.  It was another to open a door and have one fall on you.  That tended to darken your whole outlook for the day.

We loaded heavy after that, each of us taking our melee weapon and one of the secondary rifles we kept in the trucks.  These were just .22 rifles, but they allowed us to carry a lot of ammo.  Between the three of us, we could take on over fifteen hundred zombies if we had some good cover.  Julia and Jake had
Ruger
10/22s, while I had a Winchester 9422.

“All right, according to the information, there is a stairwell that takes up all the floors, and it should be right
inside,
”  Jake
said.

“Let’s go
then,
”  I
said, feeling like this might be easy for a change.

“After
you,
” Julia said brightly with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.  I knew that look, and she was not about to be first.

Jake nodded, flicked off the safety of his rifle, and headed for the doors.  The grass had taken over most of the parking
lot,
but it ended at the concrete steps towards the building. We looked around once we reached the top of the steps but did not see any more creepers in the tall grass.

The doors to the building were smashed in, and we carefully made our way around the broken glass.  That was a good way to get infected, since the dead never worried about things like that and often cut themselves silly on broken glass.  The virus lasted a long time in the open, and you could get infected by getting cut on zombie glass.

Inside, it was dark and musty.  Mold grew all over the place and we quickly covered our faces with our bandanas.  We tried to avoid stepping on any of
it,
because it was nasty when it was disturbed.  Administrative offices were to our left if the fading signs were to be believed, but one look into the weird jungle that was
growing there put our curiosity to rest.  The high ceiling had a lot of spider webs all over the place, and as we got deeper into the
building,
I swore I could hear the spiders as they scuttled from place to place.

“Over
here,
” Julia called us to the stairwell
doors.
Jake and I were surprised to find the doors not opening.  We pushed, but they were stuck.  I tried a final time, and managed to get the door to move an inch, which told me there was something on the other side. 

Jake and I pushed again and this time the door slid open enough for Jake to get his head and a flashlight in to look around and see what was blocking it.

“Oh,
man,
” Jake said, and managed to squeeze
himself
through the door.  Julia and I waited on the outside and heard a lot of strange noises.  Julia took the moment to try and sneak in a quick kiss, but our gear got in the way and we wound up giggling at each other.

Suddenly Jake opened the door and motioned us inside.  We stepped in and saw a pile of corpses on the landing between this floor and the one below us.

“What the hell?” I asked.

“Just a pile of dead people blocking the door.
  Don’t look like they were zombies, so I’m guessing they got trapped in here and chose to just die instead of being eaten or making a fight of it.” Jake said.

That made no sense to me.  If you were looking at death anyway, why not take out a few of your
killers.
  That’s what I always told myself I would do, anyway.

“Well, at least they weren’t zombies when you stuck your head through the
doorway,
” I said.

Julia tapped me on the arm.  “Don’t be silly.  Jake wouldn’t make a mistake like that.”  She winked and added
. “He would never forget to
lock the exit doors to keep the zombies from following him and wind up spending twelve hours in a women’s bathroom.”

I chuckled.  “That’s true.  He would never, ever, think of not trying to arouse dormant zombies and get chased for three miles by the slowest group of
ghouls we’ve
ever seen.  Not Jake.”

Jake gave us both an evil stare before heading up the stairwell.  It was dark as night in the enclosed space, and our flashlights weren’t much help.  The stairs were wide, and on a few
steps,
we could see old signs of trouble, like a splattering here or there, or some dark stains over the banister and doors.

Chapter 38

We reached the fifth floor without incident, and Jake opened the door with Julia and
me
at the ready with our rifles.  Zombies that had been around for a while were decayed up to a point, and their bones weakened significantly. 
So much so that a little .22 was
effectively
able to kill a zombie given the weakness of their skulls.
  Fresher zombies needed a little heavier firepower.

The fifth floor was the library, and it had a huge wall of windows that allowed a lot of light in.  That helped a great deal.

“Where’s the thingy?” I asked, moving around a couple of table
s
to a map cabinet.  Maps were extremely valuable, so I wasn’t going to let this opportunity go to waste.

Jake looked around and spotted a glassed-in room with a lot of computers in it.  “Over there, I’ll be right back.”

Julia wandered off to find some books of her own, while I dove into the maps.  There were big road maps for all the states, plus a couple of county maps for Will, Cook,
Dupage
, Kane, and Kendall counties.  These were a huge find, and I quickly rolled up the maps into a big tube.  I tied off the two ends with a string and slung the whole bundle over my shoulder.

Julia came over a little while later, and she was holding about five books, all of them romance.  When I gave her a lopsided grin, she just shrugged.

We waited for Jake, who took fifteen minutes to get back to us.  He was holding what looked like it was another computer tower, only thicker.

“I think I got
it,
”
he
panted. “I’m not one hundred percent sure, but it fit the description better than any of the others.”

“Did you grab the power cord?” I asked. 
“
I’m not coming back here for that.
”

Jake looked sheepish.  He handed the se
r
ver over to me and scooted back into the computer room.  He came out with a small chord that he put into his backpack.