Revenence: Dead of Winter: A Zombie Novel (28 page)

     "Yeah," Shari said.  "I think it's safe to say that duffelbag is full of what we think it's full of.  And that means--"

     Daphne finished the sentence for her.  "It means a bunch of pissed-off sadists who are going to want their stuff back."

     "Things are going to get real at some point," Shari said, "it's just a matter of when.  I'll be in my room cleaning my leather, if anybody needs me."

     It was close to dusk when Maximus found Shari on the roof, dressed in her kevlar and leather finery.  After thoroughly cleaning and disinfecting her armor, she had spent the rest of the day soaking up the layout of the facility and its barricaded perimeter, or at least the parts of it which weren't off-limits.

     "Getting a feel for the place yet?" Maximus asked her as the last of the sun's rays glittered through the mass of buildings to the west.

     "Yeah," Shari said.  "At least a general idea, sort of."

     "So how was it you came to be aware of what was going on earlier?" Maximus asked her.

     "Daphne and me were walking around," Shari said.  "We happened to have a good view of the situation from the concourse.  Do you mind if I ask what happened with that Merlin guy?"

     "He dragged a shitstorm over here, that's what happened," Maximus muttered.  "The duffelbag was filled to the gills with drugs.  Cocaine, heroin, pills.  He robbed those guys blind, and now we're screwed.  Letting him go won't help us, since he'll most likely run as far away as he can with the drugs.  Those three shitheads on the motorcycles saw him swim over here, and unless they find him somewhere else, they're unlikely to believe us that we just sent him packing.  They'll be here to fuck out shit up, unless we deliver him to them."

     "They'll fuck our shit up anyway," Shari said.  "Just a matter of when.  If they got as close as they did, then they'll be back one way or another.  Only thing to do now is prepare for the confrontation."

     "Yeah," Maximus said.  "It's coming, sooner or later.  Merlin also mentioned how there was a settlement at Navy Pier.  Well, still is, technically, but they were overtaken by sadists.  According to Merlin, we're next.  That's why I came to see you.  Neil tells me you're interested in working security, and I need all the help I can get."

     "Security is what I would most prefer," Shari said.  "I can't see where else I'd be of much use.  I'll admit, I didn't know jack shit about guns or survival before Easter, but the crash course I've gotten since then seems to have done me pretty well.  Daphne and me, we've been out there.  We've seen people struggle to survive only to be kicked when they're down by other so-called human beings.  I want to make those fuckers pay.  It's the only thing I can think of to do with my life anymore."

     "I hear you were a librarian before this," Maximus said.  "How did you make the decision to go out into the world the way it is?"

     "Survival of the species," Shari said.  "I decided a long time ago that this wasn't going to all be for nothing.  Something good has to come from it, but that won't happen without people like me enforcing it.  There may be no real law anymore, but there's my assault rounds and the tip of Daphne's dagger.  No one will be able to pick up the pieces if someone doesn't protect them long enough to do it."

     Maximus snorted.  "Lofty goals you have," he said.  "Admirable, but lofty."

     "Maybe I'll pull it off," Shari said, "and maybe I won't.  But I'm compelled to do it, regardless.  Working security here would be a good start."

     Maximus nodded.  "Alright," he said, "you made the team.  Meet us at the lakefront in the morning, you and your friend Daphne.  We meet up every day at seven, and that'll give you a chance to meet the rest of security.  'Til then, keep doing what you're doing.  Get comfortable with the place, get to know your way around.  Most of all, get ready, because there's a shitstorm brewing."

     Shari squeezed her left eye closed, looking with the open one through the scope of her assault rifle.  It was almost two weeks since she and her friends had arrived in Chicago, and the early autumn air was unseasonably warm.  A light breeze rustled through the empty city, stirring the debris and fallen leaves.  Shari had gotten to know the complex intimately, and she had learned to do it while wearing the heavy riot gear and shield issued to her by Maximus.  After becoming familiar with the public areas, she had moved on to those marked as restricted.  As she explored these forbidden parts of the convention center, she realized that they comprised the majority of the complex.  She marveled at the massive sprawl of exhibition halls, meeting rooms, office space and foodservice establishments. 

     As she and Daphne worked to gain a working knowledge of the buildings, their former traveling companions worked at their own trades.  Hugo quickly absorbed the knowledge and skills of those around him in the workshop.  As a result, he was soon repairing, installing and building alongside his co-workers.  Phoebe and the Professor were both tasked with helping in the effort to establish links with existing satellites, with their goal being to re-boot some form of telecommunications.  As for Finn, he quickly bonded with the other orphans and nannies on the seventh floor, and had been living there full-time since the first week after arriving in Chicago.  He still requested to see Daphne every few days, her child-like charm having struck a chord with the boy.  She had been taking half an hour here and there when she had time to read to the boy from a military survival manual she carried with her.

     Since the group had arrived at McCormick Place, its inhabitants had warmed up slightly to them, their fear and suspicion abating as they ceased to be strangers, and Shari and the others began to quickly merge into the community, not just through their work, but through progressively more social interactions with the other residents.

     Shari was alone on the roof of the west building, contemplating how the structure could be reinforced, when she heard the unmistakable rumble of motorcycle engines in the distance.  She pointed her scope northward, in the direction of the sound.  She couldn't see them, but from the sounds bouncing between the towering skyscrapers of the Loop, there seemed to be a lot of them approaching, perhaps dozens.

     She took her walkie-talkie from her pocket.  "Maximus," she said into the mouthpiece, "this is Shari.  Do you read me?  It's important."

     After a moment, she heard his voice on the other end of the receiver.  "What is it?"

     "Civilians should get somewhere safe," she said.  "Trouble's coming."

     "How far?" Maximus asked.

     "Minutes," Shari said, "but not many."

     "Keep me updated," Maximus muttered. 

     She placed the walkie-talkie back into her pocket, raising the barrel of her AK to resume her observation of the situation through her scope.  As the sound of the sadists' engines approached Grant Park down the highway, Shari heard her walkie-talkie crackling, taking it again from her pocket.

     "Get down to street level on the corner of Indiana and Cermak," Maximus told her.  "Hurry."

     She took the stairs back into the building, then exited a heavy security door near the skywalk, entering the unprotected of the building.  Since all of the stairwells were temporarily barricaded between the first and second floors, she had to drop a rope over a second-story railing, then shimmy down to the first floor.  She threw the end of the knotted rope ladder back upstairs and headed toward the glass facade of the building, ignoring the few well-weathered, enfeebled undead roaming the lobby.

     She pulled open a glass door, stepping out into the sun-drenched street and noting that two other security guards had also exited the west building and were making their way north down the street.  She hurried to catch up to them, identifying one of them as Renee, the pale-skinned blonde she had met when the group had entered the convention center for the first time.  The other was Lemar, who had worked security in the building since the 1970s. 

     "What's going on?" Renee asked as Shari approached.

     "Sadists on the way," Shari responded.  "I don't know how many, but more than the few we saw last time."

     They rounded the corner, heading east, and Maximus appeared from an entrance further down, motioning to follow him.

     "The rest of the group is meeting us on Lakeshore Drive," he said as the four of them headed east.  They made their way to Lakeshore Drive, hugging the outside of the northern barricades.  The undead outside of the complex were beginning to converge on the highway, heading northward toward the approaching sadists.

     The four of them caught up with the rest of the group.  In all, they comprised about half of the security team, or roughly forty individuals.

     "Dacee," Maximus said into his walkie-talkie, "how does it look?  You got a count for me?"

     "Probably around 30," Dacee's voice crackled back.  "And as for their entourage of undead, too many to count."

     "Where are they now?" Maximus asked.

     "Just coming up to Soldier Field," Dacee said.  "You should be seeing them any second."

     The rumble of the sadists drew closer, and a moment later Shari could see their motorcycles gleaming in the midday sun.

     "Let's go," Maximus said to his ground troops.  "Follow my lead.  Don't shoot unless they shoot first.  Our snipers are moving into position, and they've got out backs.  We have those fuckers vastly outnumbered."

     "Where are we going?" muttered Renee as they followed Maximus northward down Lakeshore Drive.

     "I would assume he's trying to stop them from getting right up next to the convention center," Shari said.  "No need to let them get up close and personal, let alone they undead they'll be dragging with them."

     "You think they'll shoot?" Renee wondered aloud, her voice trembling.  Shari glanced over at her, noting for the first time how young she was.  Shari had never seen her without her riot helmet, but as she gazed from up close through the clear face shield, the young woman's youth and vulnerability were plainly visible.

     "I doubt it," Shari said.  "It would be incredibly stupid on their part.  We're in riot gear, with shields, and they appear to be in leather, at best--some of them in jeans.  We outnumber them, and they've got to know we've got snipers, on top of everything else."

     They came face to face with the sadists outside of Soldier Field.

     "We're looking for Merlin," the lead sadist said.  "Scruffy-looking, drugged out of his gourd.  We saw him swim across the marina awhile back."

     "Yeah," Maximus said.  "We told him to fuck off, or we'd shoot him in the face."

     The sadist frowned, the thick skin of his forehead drawing together above the bridge of his nose.  "Why would you do that?"

     Maximus shrugged.  "I don't need that kind of trouble around my people."

     "Where's the duffelbag?" the sadist asked.

     "Whatever he came here with," Maximus said, "he took with him when he left."

     "You could make it easy on yourselves," the sadist said, "and just give us the duffelbag."

    
Bullshit,
Shari thought, biting her tongue as the glared at him through the face shield of her riot helmet.

     "I'm afraid that won't be possible," Maximus said, his posture and his stance unflinching.

     The sadist's gaze scanned the facade and roofs of McCormick Place.  Behind the motorcyclists, a sizable crowd of undead milled ever closer.  A few had already reached the rear sadists, who easily took them down with nightsticks and machetes. The sadists looked anxiously toward their leader, knowing that the much larger wave approaching would not be dealth with so easily.

     "It looks like you're about to have bigger problems than a missing duffelbag," Maximus told the sadists, nodding toward the advancing horde.

     "Listen, you little pissant," the sadist sneered, steering his idling motorcycle north, "I want that bag back, and the little junkie thief who stole it.  You think your snipers and your ground troops saved you, but let me tell you something--when I come back, you're going to wish you had dealth with this today."

     He started northward, presumably intending to beat the undead to the intersection of Lakeshore Drive and Roosevelt Road.  Heading west down Roosevelt was their only option to get out with their motorcycles, as it was the first available road leading west.  The highway was blocked to the south at McCormick Place, the east was bordered by the lake, and the undead were filling the road beginning just north of Roosevelt.

     As the lead sadist passed a church to his left, a stream of undead came pouring out of its entrance.  Shari saw, much to her horror, that they all appeared to be very newly turned, just beginning to decay.  In some far-off part of her mind, she mused that they were likely quite alive when she had first arrived at McCormick Place less than three weeks prior.

     In the conscious center of her mind, however, she responded to the situation at hand, automatically and reflexively.  She reached around and brandished her ever handy titanium drywall hammer slung on her back.  She prepared to confront the undead, who were swarming their primary targets, the sadists, since they were closer and louder. 

     A gunshot went off, fired by sadist toward an undead man who had at least a hundred pounds on her.  The zombie pinned the sadist to the ground, gnashing at her face.  One of the unseen snipers at the convention center, clearly one with an itchy trigger finger, responded by shooting a 5.56 round from their AR-15 into the head of the nearest sadist.  The spent bullet exited the far side of the sadist's skull, pulling with it a plume of bloody fluid and brain matter.  All at once, a fire fight erupted between the two sides while the sadists also battled the undead.

     About twenty yards away, a sadist crept up behind Renee as she aimed her Glock at a nearby sadist.  Shari reached behind her, trading her hammer for her bow.  She nocked an arrow as the sadist prepared to charge at Renee with a two-and-a-half foot-long metal battering ram.  Shari let the arrow fly toward the sadist, but she was too late.  The sadist swung back, then propelled the end of the battering ram into Renee's lower back, missing Shari's arrow in the process.  Renee dropped her gun, crumpling to the ground.  Shari didn't stop right then to wonder if the young woman was dead, or merely crippled and in shock.  She nocked another arrow and let it sail through the air toward the sadist who had killed her co-worker, not missing the second time.  The arrow found its mark deep within the sadist's brain.

     She ducked behind an overturned bus to discreetly survey the extent of damage to both parties.  She noted that the sadists, who had been outnumbered around two to one by undead, had been reduced to around a dozen.  Most of them had either succumbed to gunfire or the undead, although Shari saw at least two retreating on foot across the railroad tracks and through the yards to the west, leaving their motorcycles behind.  She raised her bow, thinking to stop them, but within the next moment they had slipped away from her field of vision.

     She realized that many of her fellow guards had begun to retreat toward the convention center.  Some of them continued to pick off the few remaining sadists,who were losing their battle with the undead.  Shari jogged over to Renee, crouching down carefully to check for signs of life.  The young woman's striking light-green eyes were wide open in what Shari was certain to be a death grimace.  She placed her riot shield between herself and Renee's lifeless face and lifted a limp hand, feeling for a pulse.  After a moment, she felt the young woman tugging back.  Shari looked down at Renee's face through the clear shield, which she held firmly in place with her knee and much of her body weight.  she was heartbroken to see that the young woman was, without a doubt, undead, gnashing in vain at the shield.  Shari reached back, grasping her drywall hammer before standing up to lift the shield away.

     As what remained of Renee scrambled to its feet, Shari swung the hammer hard from the right side, cracking and shattering the left side of the skull around the rather clean entry wound made by the head of the hammer.  She yanked it free of the bone into which it was embedded, exposing more of the inside of Renee's head than Shari had ever cared to see.

     She slung the corpse over her shoulder, assured that it was no longer capable of biting, and headed south toward McCormick Place.  She wondered how many more had been lost on her side, though in the mix of slain sadists and zombies it wasn't yet possible to get a body count.

     She followed her fellow survivors past the planetarium, where residents of the convention center sent lifeboats across from the other side of the marina.  Shari, still hauling Renee's lifeless body, settled into one of the lifeboats.

     "I brought her back," Shari said as Maximus and another male guard lifted the corpse from the rowboat onto the shore.  "I didn't know what the policyi was for bodies, if you guys bury them or what not, but I didn't want to leave her there."

     "That's one accounted for out of nine missing," Maximus muttered, nodding back toward Soldier Field.  "Eight more out there, laying dead in the street."

     "Are you going to just leave them there?" Dacee asked.