Joseph Talluto - Taking It Back

We passed a rail yard and a little farther up there was what looked like a truck shipping yard. Trailers were arranged neatly along the canal and there was a small pavilion for the workers near the water. Overhead was the expressway and even from our vantage point, we could see it choked with cars. I couldn’t see the status of the vehicles, but I assumed there was the usual carnage and abandoned vehicles. I gave it little thought. The road wasn’t going anywhere I wanted to be and since the canal was just as useful and relatively safe from attack, why bother?

We moved on and came to the beginning of the true Chicago suburbs. There were smallish homes everywhere and from what I could see, they were all destroyed. They were the little bungalow style homes with detached garages. Flags flew on the mailboxes, grim reminders of the hope that people once had for help during the Upheaval. As we moved past, Charlie and I could hear the echo of thousands of undead moans, as the ghouls wandered in search of prey. Whatever might have survived this long wasn’t going to survive much longer.

Suddenly, we heard something out of the ordinary. The moans of the dead seemed to grow louder and the ones we could see were clearly agitated by something. I couldn’t see anything and Charlie shook his head that he couldn’t see anything, either. Judging by the sounds the dead were making, something was in there they wanted and wanted badly. Anything the dead wanted was usually alive.

I signaled Tommy to steer over to the bank under the overpass. Charlie looked at me and I shook my head.

“Don’t worry, we’re not going in there. I’m climbing the bank of the overpass to see what’s going on.” I jumped off the boat and onto the bank of the canal.

“Good. I’d hate to risk my ass for something like a cat or a dog,” Charlie said as he joined me.

“Who are you kidding?” I asked as I headed up the steep bank of the overpass. “You chased a cat three miles just because Rebecca thought it would be nice to have a kitty for Julia.”

“Yeah, but that was in the country, not in the middle of an infested suburb,” Charlie retorted.

“If I recall correctly, it was in the middle of downtown Freeport, through an area that hadn’t been secured yet and six zombies were chasing you as you chased the cat.”

“Still doesn’t change how I feel about this little hike,” Charlie said as he slipped on a bit of wet grass.

“No one asked you to come along,” I said, stopping near the top and checking for roaming Z’s.

“After all we’ve been through, you knew I’d be along, just like you’d come with me if I was going somewhere, no matter how stupid,” Charlie replied as he joined me near the top, his rifle balanced in one hand as he kept himself from falling with the other.

“True.” I didn’t see any immediate danger, so I hoisted myself up and over the guardrail. There were several cars on the bridge, but none occupied. By the looks of things, it seemed like someone had arranged the cars as a sort of defensive barricade. Nothing that would stop a determined zombie, but it would slow them down. The position of the cars made me wonder what was on the other side and if there were survivors somewhere.

Charlie tapped my shoulder and brought my attention back to the situation at hand. I looked out over the vast subdivision with its rows upon rows of houses, stacked neatly up against each other. If I had to guess, I would have said there were thousands of them, making the approximate number of zombies in the tens of thousands. But what really held my attention was the lone figure running down the street, pursued by roughly five hundred walking dead, with that number growing by the minute. Their groans were awful to hear, a wail of anguish and never-ending hunger.

Charlie sighted in the figure with his scope. “Woman. Early twenties. Looks like she’s been surviving for a while. Got a pack, gun, knife, and what looks like a pipe.”

“Any cuts or blood on her?” I asked, bringing my rifle up and attaching my scope. I didn’t use it often, but it did have its purposes, since I never got around to carrying a pair of binoculars.

“Not yet, but if she keeps on going the way she is, she’s going to be bloody,” Charlie said.

When I looked through my scope, I could see why. She was running towards us, but a group of zombies was coming at a cross road and would make the intersection before she would. On top of that, there were other zombies coming out of homes and holes, attracted to the noise of their brethren. In short order she was going to find herself surrounded and eaten. It wasn’t going to be pretty. The down side was we really couldn’t help her. Sure we could shoot down a bunch, but that would actually just waste ammo and only prolong the inevitable.

Charlie looked at me as if to ask the question we were both not wanting to answer. I shrugged and couldn’t see a solution. There was no way she was going to get out of this one unless she learned to fly in a hurry.

Suddenly, it hit me. Fly! Of course! “Cover me!” I yelled as I sprinted down the road. I needed to get to where I could be seen and heard by the besieged woman. Charlie moved over to the side of the road where he could brace his rifle to shoot more accurately. I ran down the road, making sure there weren’t any lurkers to make my life miserable and stopped within what I hoped was earshot of the running woman. The zombies who were going to cut her off had just emerged from the side street and I could see the woman pause. She drew her sidearm, looked at it, and then holstered it. I figured she was dangerously low on ammo and was contemplating finishing herself off as a last resort.

I jumped up onto a car so I could be seen. “Hey! Hey!” I yelled, waving my arms. The woman looked at me with a stunned expression, like the last thing she expected to see was a lunatic jumping on a car in the middle of zombie infested territory. Can’t say I blamed her. “Get up on the roofs and head this way! We have a boat!”

Hope surged in the woman’s young face as she sprinted for the nearest house and clambered up the iron railing on the side of the porch. There was a desperate moment when it looked like the gutter wasn’t going to hold her weight, but she swung her legs up just as the first zombies reached up to try to drag her down. She rolled up onto the roof and scrambled to the peak.

Sitting down and taking a breath, she looked over at me and yelled “Watch your back!”

I spun around on my car roof and fired a rifle round through the head of a small zombie that had managed to sneak around behind me. The heavy bullet blew his head apart like a ripe melon and he dropped into a pile of decaying flop. The shot galvanized the zombies on the ground who saw their original prey climb up out of reach. The horde that was chasing the woman turned their attention to me and started to head my way.

“Cross the houses on the roofs, head for the canal. We’ll wait for you there!” I yelled as I dropped off the car and sprinted back the way I came. I had no intention of sticking around any longer. I gave the woman a chance and if she chose to take it, great. If not, I tried.

Stealing a look back I saw the woman running down the shingles and leaping across the small space between the homes. It was only a six foot jump, but if she slipped she was dead. Talk about your hurdles of death.

I quickly outstripped the horde and headed back towards Charlie. He waved me past him and I took a breather as we watched the progress of the woman. The line of houses she was on took her on a curving path towards the canal and if she could get ahead of the horde, she stood a good chance of living. I glanced over the bridge and waved to Tommy, who brought the boat around.