Revenence: Dead of Winter: A Zombie Novel (13 page)

     "I know there was an Army surplus store around here somewhere," Daphne said as she and Hugo made their way eastward along the wall of the reeking, overrun settlement.  "I saw a sign for it on the way here."

     "What are you looking for in there?" Hugo asked.

     "Lots of stuff that might be useful," Daphne replied.  "Compasses, magnesium sticks to start fires more easily, clotting packs to stop bleeding...I could go on and on.  Lotsa small stuff that we can squeeze into our packs."

     Hugo nodded.  "You know a lot about survival, huh?"

     "I guess you could say that," Daphne muttered.

     "How did you learn all that?" Hugo asked.

     "I taught myself," Daphne said.  "When I was a kid."

     Hugo nodded, his expression inquisitive.  "Oh."  He wanted to ask more, but he could sense Daphne's reluctance to go into details.  "Well," he continued, "I'm glad I found you and Shari.  You two seem to know a lot of useful things."

     "So do you," Daphne said.  "It seems like you're a quick learner.  I wouldn't be surprised if you get to know more than Shari and me before too much longer."  She glanced over at Hugo, who was grinning sheepishly and beginning to blush.

     "Yeah," he said.  "I guess I pick things up pretty fast."  They walked on in silence for a few minutes, the early afternoon August sun beating down on them and casting shortened shadows of their forms to the east ahead of them.  Hugo stopped to pick up a weathered notebook that lay on the road in front of him.  "English lit," he read from the words scrawled on the front cover, opening it to thumb through the pages.  The first dozen or so pages were standard college notes, but the topic seemed to diverge from there. 

     "Hey Daphne," he said, nodding toward the walled encampment to their right, "I think this belonged to someone in that settlement."

     "What does it say?" she asked.

     "Uh...."  Hugo paused.  "It says something about blowing up the stadium."  He went back a couple of pages to read more.

     Daphne frowned.  "I guess some nutjob never got to carry out their plans, huh?"

     "Hold on...." Hugo said, still reading.  "No.  They're not talking about a terrorist act.  I think this was after the zombies."

     Daphne's eyes lit up with curiosity.  "What?"

     "It says here they locked everyone in town into the stadium the day after the zombies hit."

     Daphne let out a low whistle of distress at the thought.  "That's not right," she murmured.  "Why sentence them all to that?"

     "Yeah, it's messed up," Hugo concurred.  "They're saying that everyone in there has been dead for awhile."

     "I bet they have."

     Hugo continued to peruse the unknown survivor's journal.  "So...everyone in the stadium is dead--"

     "Or
un
-dead, at any rate," Daphne corrected.

     "And they wanted to blow it up," Hugo continued.  He gazed briefly at the settlement to their right.  "I wonder whose this was, exactly.  They're probably not around anymore." 

     He and Daphne stared solemnly at the ruined settlement of former survivors as they continued their eastward progression down the street.

     "I don't want to go in there," Daphne uttered in a low tone.  "I really don't want to step foot inside that place, but I can't help but wonder...."

     "Wonder who they were, and what they were about?" Hugo asked.

     Daphne nodded.  "I think we need to go to go get Shari, and then make a trip to the stadium."

     Shari climbed the ladder of the water tower, hoping to get an eagle's eye view of the area. 

    
Daphne was right,
she thought. 
She was right...something happened while I was in there, they had to run, and now  God knows what's going to happen to them.
 

     For a split second, she toyed with the idea of just letting go, just swan diving from the watertower's upper platform down, face first, to the brick road beneath her. 

    
I can't do that
. 
I'll never find them if I'm dead.
 

     She raised her assault rifle, gazing through its scope at the cityscape around her.  She only saw the dark, hazy outlines of clusters of undead as they stumbled through the otherwise uninhabited streets.  Shari sighed and lowered the assault rifle, noticing a particularly rotted, androgynous zombie trying to scale the ladder in a futile attempt to feed on her. 

    
Not sure how that one's still moving,
she thought, wrinkling her nose in distaste.  She descended the ladder, taking her frustration out on the zombie and kicking it in the face as she neared the bottom.  Its head ripped free from the neck, spinning as it sailed through the air, torn muscle and tendon trailing it like a jellyfish. 

     Shari uttered a dark laugh.  "
Ooh,
that's a first!" she cried, sighing as her grin gave way to a grimace.  She hopped down from the ladder, strolling languidly eastward.  She was about a quarter-mile from the radio station when she heard a faint nickering. 

    
Eva?
 

     She looked around, sure at first that she had imagined the sound.  She surveyed the area, making sure there were no undead in her direct vicinity, and clicked her tongue a few times.  A moment later, she heard a loud snort in response.  She gazed down the street, noticing a horse trailer on the next block.  Shari began to jog toward the trailer. 

    
I'm not gonna get excited yet.

     As the thought crossed her mind, she threw it aside and broke into a full run, an sensation of relief attempting to overwhelm the corners of her mouth into a giddy, childlike smile.  She reached the trailer and peered in cautiously.  Upon verifying that the trailer contained only her horse and nothing more threatening, she flung the doors open.

     "Eva!"  She hugged the horse around the neck.  "Eva, I lost our other friends, but at least I've got you back."  She led the horse out into the street and mounted her.  "I bet you're thirsty, aren't you, old girl?"  She paused for a moment. 
Did I eat or drink today?
  She couldn't recall.  "Let's get us some lunch,"she muttered, setting off down the street.

     Daphne reached into her pack, taking out a small crowbar. 

     "I'm assuming the zombies aren't smart enough to reach their arm in and unlock this thing," she told Hugo as she shattered the glass of the army surplus store's front door with the crowbar, breaking out each remaining shard before she put her arm through the window.  The window of the door was roughly the height of her head, and at one foot by three feet, it wasn't big enough for most zombies to crawl through. 

     "Just don't get close enough to the door for them to grab you," she told Hugo. She attempted to reach down the inside of the door to unlock it from the inside.  "Can't quite reach," she muttered.

     "Let me," Hugo said.  "I've got at least a foot on you."  He slid his arm in through the broken window, easily reaching the lock and pulling the door open.  "After you," he said as Daphne slipped into the building's dark interior. 

     Once they were both inside, Hugo closed and locked the door.  He hunted through his backpack until he found a small but powerful LED flashlight.  He panned the beam of light across the building as Daphne stood at the ready, her titanium knife raised in case the building was occupied.  They conscientiously stalked each square foot of the place, relaxing slightly when they were certain they were alone in the building. 

     "Now that we've found our treasure chest," Daphne said, her eyes lit up like a child on Christmas morning, "let's see what treasures it holds."  She walked down an aisle, sliding her fingertips across the merchandise stocked on the shelves.  "Oh, I'll be taking one of these, for damn sure," she said, picking up a wristwatch-style compass.  "Come to think of it, one for each of us."  She picked up two more, handing them to Hugo.

     "Good thinking," he said.

     "You may as well pick up the most comfortable-looking backpack or bag you can find," Daphne told him.  "We'll be filling it, and it'll be for you to carry.  You've only got that one backpack so far, and we'll all be getting
way
too much stuff to fit it in the bags we're already carrying."  She continued down the aisle, more giddy than Hugo had ever seen her.

     "Wow," he said, "this kind of stuff is really your thing, huh?"

     "Yeah," Daphne said.  "The way the world is now, it should be your thing, too."

     "I'm sure there's a lot of useful stuff here," Hugo said, "I'm just not as sure as you are exactly what I should be looking for."

     "You might want a survival knife," Daphne said.  "I'll look for that.  I've got my own light."  She dug through her pack, pulling out a flashlight.  "You just look around...if you see anything interesting, let me know.  I'll have a look at it, see if it's worth having or not."

     "Okay," Hugo mumbled, illuminating the row or shelves before him as Daphne stalked off in search of the knives.  "This bag should work," he said, picking up a large duffel bag.  "Looks big enough."

     He perused the selection of wares, picking up a package to examine it more closely.  "Hey Daphne," he said, "I found some emergency blankets...they look like they're made of foil, or something.  They're really small, though, and light--think I should grab some?"

     "Yeah, stick some in your bag," Daphne said from across the room.  "Those could come in handy for a lot of things.  They may not look like much, but they'll trap heat like you wouldn't believe.  I'd say take about a dozen or so."

     Hugo nodded, stuffing the packages into his newly acquired duffel bag.  He continued browsing the aisles. 

     "There's a surplus of surplus in this place," he said, performing a drum roll against his legs.

     Shari rode westward as the sun coasted lower toward the western horizon.  She had spent the afternoon fruitlessly attempting to find Daphne and Hugo, and she was ready to concede for the evening.  When she returned to the trailer where she had discovered Eva earlier in the day, she dismounted the horse, which reluctantly allowed itself to be led back into the trailer.

     "I'll be back first thing in the morning," she promised.  She closed the trailer, turning the handle into the locking position.  She lit up a smoke as she began walking back toward the radio station.  As she walked, she focused on trying to be optimistic.  The recovery of her horse had raised her spirits considerably, but she was still exceedingly distraught by her inability to locate her two human companions.  It was around nine o'clock when she reached the radio building, crossing the lawn to the front doors and pressing the buzzer.

     "It's me again," she said.  "I still can't find my friends, and I was hoping I could stay here for tonight."  Her request was met with silence, and she uttered a sigh as she sank down against the wall beneath the buzzer.  She supposed they either didn't trust her, or they were sleeping for the night and didn't want to be bothered, or perhaps both.  She took a bottle of water from her pack, guzzling half of it down without pausing for breath.  She stood and began to walk away when she heard the professor's voice come over the intercom. 

     "Well, Shari," he began, "we don't feel right turning you away.  I just hope you're as trustworthy as you seemed to be.  Don't give us reason to regret helping you.  Come around to the west side, we'll send the ladder down for you." 

     She took a deep breath, relieved to have shelter for the night, and made her way to the window through which she had entered the building earlier.  She saw a light come on in the second story room, and a moment later she saw the professor's hands lowering the rope ladder which was her salvation from a menacing night in the dark, dead streets of Champaign.  She climbed up gratefully, pulling the ladder in after her once she was safely inside the building.

     "I was afraid you guys were asleep for the night," she said, turning to address the professor.  "Sorry if I woke you up."

     Henry shook his head.  "Nah," he said.  "We're relatively safe, but even so, our sleeping schedule isn't exactly regular these days."  He smiled, his eyes sparkling with warmth.  "I'm sure you can understand that."

     Shari nodded.  "I'm pretty sure I can.  I guess it'll be a long time before any of us can rest easily, if ever."

     "You're damn right," Phoebe muttered as she entered the room to join them, another male of about thirty by her side.  Shari presumed he was the sniper whom she hadn't previously met in person.  "I see you haven't had any luck finding those two, huh?" Phoebe continued.

     "No," Shari said meekly.  She sighed, staring at the ceiling as she spoke.  "I can't help but feel like it's my fault.  Daphne--my friend--tried to tell me it was a bad idea to split up, but I insisted.  And now--well, now I have to live with this on my conscience."

     "I hate to say it," Phoebe said, "but it doesn't look good for them.  If they were alive and well, odds are that they'd have shown up here by now." 

     Henry turned to stare at her, his gaze reproachful. 

     "I'm not trying to sound heartless," Phoebe said, "I'm just brutally honest.  I'm sorry."  She looked back at Shari, her features softening.  "Hey, we were about to have some dinner.  You hungry?"

     Shari shrugged.  "A little, I guess."  She squeezed her eyes closed, rubbing them vigorously.  "I mean, not really, but I know I probably should eat."

     "Follow me," Phoebe said, leading the way out of the room and down the hallway to what Shari supposed had once been an employee break room. 

     "It's not exactly a gourmet kitchen," Henry said, nodding toward the kitchenette spanning the width of the room, "but it's much better than nothing.  Phoebe and Anthony scavenge for food, and I work my culinary miracles...as best I can with a microwave, at any rate."

     Shari turned to Anthony, smirking.  "Nice to meet you, by the way."

     "Same here," Anthony replied.  "Hey, no hard feelings about me pointing a sniper rifle in your direction, right?"

     Shari shook her head, waving her hand casually.  "I'm still here, right?  Still in one piece.  You guys were about as civil as anyone could expect you to be, given the circumstances.  You can only trust people so far these days, far enough to coincide with the distance most of us can sling a piano.  I'm under no illusions about that."

     "Glad we're all on the same page," Anthony said, sinking down into a cushioned chair at a circular table in the middle of the room.  "So Phoebe and the professor tell me you guys are trying to make it to Wisconsin.  Any particular reason?"

     "Yeah," Shari said, "we think the cold should make the zombies less of a threat.  It doesn't seem like their circulation is working anymore, which means they should freeze solid in the extreme cold.  Their winters are more severe in northern Wisconsin, and they come much earlier."  She paused, shaking her head.  "I mean, we're not doctors or scientists, so we're not one-hundred percent sure about any of the physics of the undead.  Just making educated guesses based off of observations."

     "Sounds like a solid enough plan," Anthony said.  "I mean, you guys made it this far, right?  You came from what, Kentucky?"

     Shari nodded.  "I lived in Central City.  I was on my way to Carbondale to see my parents for Easter when all this started, but I never made it.  I was lucky enough to get stuck on a farm in Crittenden County, which was very sparsely populated."  She reflected back on her days on Fauna's farm, the incubation period which had prepared her to face the new world she was getting to know.  "I was already well on my way to being a different person when I left there just a handful of weeks ago."  She snorted.  "If you asked me April 20th what I'd do in a zombie apocalypse, I'd probably have said, 'Stick my head in the sand and either die, or wait for it to be over.'  I used to be a librarian...I'd never shot a gun, never held a bow in my hands.  The thing about this whole scenario, it forced a lot of us to either evolve, or lay down and die."

     "Yeah," Phoebe said, "and you guys have been out in it.  I mean, we've had to venture out, but we always have the sanctity of the station to come back to.  You guys must be pretty hardened, if you've been traveling and winging it."

     "I suppose we are," Shari said softly.  "I never thought much about it, but yeah...we've improvised, stayed where we could, when we could."

     "It's one hell of a way to live," Anthony said.  "If you want a break from that lifestyle, you're more than welcome to come to Chicago with us.  I'm sure we could use whatever knowledge and skill you're willing to share."

     "I can't," Shari said.  "I need to find my friends.  I can't just leave them.  Even if it's a worst case scenario...."  She paused, her eyes far away as she continued speaking.  "Even if they're dead, or...or undead....I can't just leave without knowing.  Wherever they are, whatever happened to them, I'm at least partially responsible."

     "I can understand that," Phoebe said.  "You've been through a lot with them.  But you should know that we're leaving here the day after tomorrow, so just think it over.  Do whatever you think is best."

     "I'm gonna go out first thing in the morning to try looking for them again," Shari said.  Her mostly empty stomach rumbled as Henry made his way to the table carrying a pot of steaming food.

     "Just a couple boxes of Skillet Helper," he said, "fresh from the microwave." 

     Phoebe set out four plates, scooping heaping spoonfuls of noodles, sauce, and potted beef onto each plate.  She opened a mini-fridge, taking out four cans of carbonated juice.  "We'll have the fancy stuff tonight," she said, smiling as she handed Shari a can, "in honor of the occasion."

     "Thanks," Shari said, popping the tab and enjoying the fizzing sound.  She guzzled down a few gulps, then dug into the plate of food before her.  "So," she said through a mouthful of food, "how exactly did the three of you wind up in this building?"

     Phoebe smirked, pausing to swallow her food before she responded.  "Well," she said, "to answer that question, I'd have to explain a little bit of my background.  You see, I used to be a student here at U of I.  I was majoring in computer science, in my second year.  I graduated high school at sixteen, then started college the following semester."

     "So you're what--eighteen?" Shari asked.

     "Yeah," Phoebe said, "as of this past February.  Anyway, the asshole dean kicked me out in April for allegedly hacking into people's email accounts."

     "Allegedly?" Henry interjected.  "I could have sworn you had admitted to it.  And those email accounts happened to belong to university staff, including the dean himself."

     Phoebe glared at him, narrowing her eyes.  "Okay, I did it," she said.  "Moving on...he kicked me out, and I happened to have some dirt on him, some very personal dirt that his wife--and the university itself--would have found very interesting."

     Anthony let out a hearty laugh.  "She hacked the dean's email account and found out he was sleeping with a male student," he said, "which, as you can imagine, is a major no-no."

     "So," Phoebe continued, "I was in here, in this very building, on the morning of April 21st.  I planned to use the station's frequency to make a very public service announcement about what the dean had been doing.  Even though a lot of people were gone home for Easter, I know a lot of the students still listened to the web stream.   But, well...as you can imagine, by the time late morning rolled around, no one gave a damn about the dean getting it on with a student.  The world was already unraveling, and--"  She sighed.  "I never got to have my revenge."

     Shari raised her eyebrows.  "You know," she said, "you've got a skill that will come in handy quite a bit nowadays."

     "I know," Phoebe said, grinning a devilish grin from ear to ear.  "I plan on using it, too...especially with no one around to stop me."

     "What about you guys?" Shari asked, intrigued by the anecdote, looking in turn at Anthony and Henry.

     "As for myself," Henry began, "I came in here early that day.  Most of the rest of the university staff was off for the weekend, getting ready for Easter.  I teach--taught--radio theory, so the station has always been my baby, as it were.  I came in just to make my usual early-morning rounds before the morning D.J. came in, then I planned on going over to my sister's house to help get the place ready for company the next day.  However, upon arriving in the building...."  He paused pointedly, glancing over at Phoebe.  "I discovered that the place had been infiltrated by a certain rogue former student.  I called campus security, and it happened that Anthony was working the overnight shift.  He showed up within a couple minutes, and well--you get the rest.  We left once to go to Urbana, just east of here, to check on my sister, but we found the place deserted with no clues left as to where she went.  Other than that, we haven't left the building since then, except to scavenge when we're in dire need."

     "My family is in Nebraska," Phoebe told Shari, "so I never really entertained the notion of trying to find them.  Hell, we didn't even want to try to make it as far as Chicago without some weapons, which we now have, courtesy of you."

     "And me," Anthony said, "I'm just a bachelor security guard.  No wife, no kids.  At this point, even if i left here, I wouldn't really know where to go, other than to follow these two knuckleheads around.  We're family now, isn't that right?" he said, grinning at Phoebe and Henry.  "The hacker and the professor, they're the only family I need."

     Henry snickered.  "Would everyone please stop addressing me as the professor?  I swear, I'm going to have to resort to calling you two Mary Ann and the Skipper."

     Phoebe threw her head back, letting out a loud belly laugh.  "Didn't you have a red-haired friend?  She gets to be Ginger," she said, turning to Shari.  "So what about you and your friends?  Did you know them before the apocalypse?"

     "No," Shari said, "I met Daphne about a month ago, and we started traveling together.  Then the two of us found Hugo earlier this week in southern Illinois."

     "So he's the sole survivor you talked about meeting in Illinois?" Phoebe asked. 

     Shari nodded, and Phoebe's eyes became momentarily clouded by the gravity of the situation, which Shari realized was uncharacteristic for her. 

     "Damn," Phoebe murmured, "we really are screwed as a species, aren't we?"  She scooped the last spoonful of Skillet Helper onto her spoon, standing as she brought the food to her lips.  "I don't know about you guys, but I'm ready to crash for the night."

     "Do you guys usually take turns keeping watch at night?" Shari asked.

     "I'm always the night guy," Anthony replied.  "Then they let me go to sleep in the morning."

     "I'd be happy to keep an eye on things," Shari said.  "I think it's the least I could do."  She felt self-conscious as the words left her lips, realizing the offer may raise suspicion. 
They don't know if they can trust me,
she told herself. 
They won't just go to sleep with a stranger watching them.