Aftermath (Book 1): Only The Head Will Take Them Down (37 page)

“Jesus Christ”, Sonja said, knowing that it was the right thing to do, but still hating that it had to happen.
At the rear of the group, Andrew’s wife stood shielding both her own and her daughter’s eyes, adamant to reduce the already obscene amount of violence Hannah had seen in the last couple of days.
“He made his choice, he could have gone on the boat, but he didn’t wanna’”, Lester said after a period of stunned silence. “We can’t lose no sleep over him, we all know it had to happen”, he added, before turning back to face John and Andrew, “Sorry you had to see that”.
“We’ve seen worse”, John replied. “Sorry you had to do it”, he added, angling his words to the sniper, “I’m John by the way, this is Andrew”.
The man said nothing back, continuing his blank stare, still adamant to portray nothing but frosty anger towards the newcomers.
“He’s Harvey”, Sonja cut in, “He can be a real ass, but he’ll come around”, she said, to which he simply shrugged, and walked back over to his post on the outward facing wall.

“You fellas want a drink or something?”, Lester asked, “We’ve got water, or… water?”, he laughed.
“We’d prefer some information if it’s all the same to you”, John said.
“I’m sure you can have that too”, Sonja interrupted, “But you might as well get a drink first, lord knows I need one”, she smiled. “Besides, I’m sure the folk upstairs’d like to meet the fellas who helped clear out that eyesore across the street. They’ve had to stare at that thing for God knows how long”.
John hesitated for a moment, weighing up the desire for information with the desire for supplies, be it a fully cooked meal or something as simple and yet valuable as a drink of clean water.
“This way”, Sonja smiled, as she began to walk over to the staircase, clearly taking John’s hesitation as a yes.

The final staircase to the roof of the car-park was completely blocked off at one end, and in an attempt to funnel potential hordes into a manageable stream, the other entrance was a tangled mess of various hashed together barricades.
“Sorry about the mess”, Lester called out behind him as Andrew inadvertently knocked into one of the many empty tin cans, strewn up on a long piece of string. “Gotta’ make it as hard as possible for anyone or anything to get up, and as easy as possible for us to hear ‘em!”, he explained.
“How long you been here?”, John asked, as he too knocked into another can.
“Me and Sonja been here since the start, started taking people in about… a month or two ago I think”, he guessed, “Not sure really, days and weeks kind of blend together now”.
“Yeah I get that, believe me”, John replied. “How many are upstairs?”, he asked, as he overcame the final barricade.
“See for yourself!”, Lester replied proudly.

Suddenly John was confronted with a truly incredible sight. If he hadn’t known any better, he’d have sworn the heavens opened in that moment, bathing the area in front – as well as the many faces that suddenly came into view – in the natural glow of the sun. Everywhere he looked, another person stood, sat or lay, all of them visibly concerned about the disruption, but gradually reassured at the reappearance of their protectors, as well as two new visitors to the camp.

“My God”, both John and Andrew said in harmony, each of them becoming more and more shocked as more people came into view.

“We have about sixty folk now I think”, Sonja explained, “All women or the elderly, few injured people too, though none with bites”, she added, before closing her eyes and cursing her words, thinking immediately of what had just happened to Tommy.

“My God”, John repeated.

“Yeah it’s pretty impressive, took a long time in the making”, Lester reiterated. “Started out just taking in folk that needed shelter off of the street, then we started heading out to other camps and offering them a bigger space to live, and a nice launching spot if they wanted to head to Chicago. I assume you guys have heard about the stuff going on there?”, he asked.
“Yeah we heard it on the rad-“, Andrew started, before being interrupted by his companion.

“My God”, John said again.

Suddenly it became apparent to Andrew that John was more than just a little surprised. John’s face had gone pale, his hands changing from loose fluent movements to a state of suspended animation, and his limp grip causing the M16 to drop to the ground with an almighty clatter. But to Andrew’s surprise, John appeared to not even notice the loud rattle of the metal rifle hitting the floor. Instead, he simply stood there, the look of someone who was utterly shell-shocked spread across his face
Andrew opened his mouth to ask just what on earth was wrong, but before he could manage any form of question, was prevented from doing so by John uttering just a single word.
“Michelle?”.

Chapter 38: 7-10

Neither Lester nor Sonja had the slightest idea just how important this moment was, and nor did any of the other people nearby that had looked over with great interest in the newcomers. Yet somehow, every single person on that rooftop naturally fell into a stunned silence. For the residents and their guardians, it was simply the shock of a newcomer actually knowing one of their fellow survivors, the odds of that alone having become astronomical by now. For Andrew however, it was the reaction to an almighty rush of emotions – happiness, relief, excitement and suspense at the forefront – coursing throughout his body. All he could do was stand there, his eyes looking from side to side, from figure to figure, man to woman, husband to wife, John to Michelle.

Andrew watched on, as both John and his wife’s eyes met from across the relatively empty space that separated them. Each of them appeared to conduct a double and even triple take, their eyes shaking rapidly with excitement, neither one of them wanting to believe what they saw, for fear of what would otherwise be a catastrophic level of disappointment. Eventually, John somehow managed to break out of his almost comatose state, and place his first foot forwards.

Immediately Michelle dropped her pile of rags and dishes, two or three of them crashing down hard onto the floor below and echoing out loudly over the silent crowd that surrounded them, as her lips began to shake, and her trembling hands all but covered her mouth in shock.
“J-J-J-John?”, she asked between mumbled stutters, tears starting to form in the corners of her eyes, “Is… is it really…”, she tried to ask, her voice muffled by the cupped hands that remained raised and over her mouth.
“It’s me baby”, John replied as the fear began to fade, excitement instead taking its place, and adrenaline surging through his veins, causing him to quicken his pace rapidly towards his wife.

Michelle too began to gain composure, her legs just about managing to regain their feeling. Before long she went from standing still to placing a small step forwards, followed quickly by another, and another, until she began to run, and then to sprint, and then to leap forwards with all of her might into John’s arms. Here was a man she had thought for so long she’d never see again, a man who had finally come in on a promise he had made to her, a promise never to leave her, and a promise never to be far away. Now that same man wrapped his arms around her as tight as he could, squeezing her with every ounce of weary energy he had left, slowly starting to spin round while he held her, his own eyes becoming tearful as he took in the incredible situation. Before long Michelle burst into tears of joy, her words now unfathomable under the immense emotion that rushed out of her.

After many long months of searching, John had found his wife. The emotions he felt were so great that he too was barely able to form any kind of coherent sentence. However, whilst one of the happiest moments of John’s life, this too was one of the saddest, as he prepared to ask a question he knew he didn’t want to know the answer to, but one he knew he had to ask nonetheless. With a heavy heart, and a single tear rolling down his cheek, he braced himself for his wife’s response, and then spoke just one single word, the name of his daughter.
“H…Hayley?”, he asked.
“Safe”, Michelle replied with a smile, and a series of tears still rolling down her cheek.
John simply gasped for breath, confused beyond measure, but now even happier still.
“All the kids were put on a boat to Chicago yesterday, she’s safe baby”, Michelle explained ecstatically.

John was speechless. It took every ounce of consciousness he had left in him to simply grasp his wife into another embrace, holding her tighter than ever, and trying in vain to comprehend the situation as he did. The thought that both his wife and daughter were safe was utterly staggering, and after all this time searching, the fact that things had worked out even remotely close to how he had dreamt, presented such a huge sense of relief that he could barely remain standing. Quickly, he put such thoughts out of his mind, closed his eyes, and held his wife, not the slightest interest in doing anything else.

*
      
*
      
*

“This place is pretty incredible”, Andrew spoke across the fire, as the newly formed group of survivors sat round warming their hands.
“Yeah we’re pretty proud of it”, Sonja replied, “Me and Lester ‘been here since the start, kind of feels like our home now”.
“Seems like a lot of people here probably think of it that way”, Andrew said as he looked around at the dozens of other survivors who sat round their own fires, all of them spread across the first floor of the car-park, having descended from the rooftop upon darkness falling.
The remaining ‘guards’, as Andrew had heard them referred to as, had moved to disassemble the stairway barricades and move them down a floor, following which every person in the camp – without a word or notion of instruction – had happily made their way down the stairs.

The dark night was then illuminated by the many fires every person helped build, which were in turn prevented from lighting the building up too much by the thick concrete roof above. The entire process seemed to be a well-oiled machine, from the firewood that had been stacked up in the corners of the large open plan first floor, to the two guards that remained upstairs to look after the food bank, itself covered by a small shelter built overhead.

Away from the fire, leaning over the side of the car-park, was John and Michelle. Michelle leant against the wall facing outwards into the empty night sky, while John stood behind her, his arms protruding around both sides to embrace her tightly. It was a feeling she had missed so much these past few months, and one that quickly had her feeling much more relaxed – and more importantly much safer – than she had done for a very long time.

“There’s something you need to know”, John said suddenly, “I didn’t just forget about you, I didn’t move on and try for my own survival, I came looking for you the first chance I got”.
Michelle turned slowly to face her husband, his arms still wrapped around her, each of them now looking into each other’s eyes.
“I know”, she replied smiling, “This whole time I’ve known that”, she explained. “Not a single day has gone by where I’ve thought, even for a second, that you’d forgotten about us”.
“Thank you”, John said, his head sinking slightly as he finally began to relieve himself of the guilt that had eaten away at him for so long. His face however, still showed signs of the huge burden that remained on his heart, as he thought worryingly of his daughter.

“She’s safe”, Michelle said, knowing exactly what he was thinking. “The people here, they sent all the kids on that boat with supplies, protection, and everything else they needed to get there”, she explained. “There’s not a doubt in my mind that she’s sat over there with those other kids right now having the time of her life”.
“I know sweetheart”, John said, “I know”, he repeated, raising his head to plant a single kiss on Michelle’s forehead, to which she closed her eyes, and nuzzled her way into John’s chest.

Back at the campfire, Andrew’s daughter Hannah had finally summoned the courage to begin asking her own questions, having been too shy up till this point to speak up.
“How come everyone here is old?”, she asked suddenly, “Or a woman… or both…”, she added.
Everyone around the campfire smiled. The presence of a child was clearly a welcome sight, whether they’d been gone for a day or a year, children’s sudden departure from any group was a sorry thing to go through.
“Well”, Sonja started, “Those of us that can fight, like me, we run round keeping things here safe. Then those people who can’t fight, like the old, or some of the folk here that aren’t too handy with weapons, they stay up here and do other things”.
“Like what?”, Hannah asked inquisitively.
“Like prepare the food, clean up, those sorts of things”, Andrew’s wife Sarah cut in, “Right?”, she asked of Sonja.
“That’s right”, Sonja replied, smiling. “And then you’ve got the children, that’s you”, she said, pointing to Hannah. “Up until yesterday there were quite a few, but we decided to send ‘em all over to Chicago, so they can be a little safer”, she explained.
“But if it’s safer there, why didn’t everyone go?”, Sarah cut in again.

“Boats”, Lester said from over Andrew’s shoulder, his huge figure suddenly emerging from the darkness, as he completed yet another sweep of the building. “Not enough of ‘em to get everyone over”, he said. “People been using them to escape since the start, now we can’t find any more”.
“You can’t go further inland to find some?”, Andrew asked.
“We tried that”, Lester said as he sat down on the ground in the midst of the group, “We lost a few good people out there looking”, he explained sorrowfully. “Problem is, the more people we send out, the worse off we are here. Hell, if you folk hadn’t shown up when you did, and those biters across the street had broken out, we’d all be doing about as well as Tommy is right now”, he said, the teenager’s body now stowed away somewhere out of sight.

“Andrew”, came John’s voice suddenly, to which Andrew promptly turned around in response, “Got a minute?”, he asked.
“Sure”, Andrew replied, before stroking the hair of his daughter – who still looked as puzzled as ever – and getting quickly to his feet.
“We okay to head upstairs?”, John asked of Sonja and Lester.
“Of course”, Sonja replied, “Just no fires, and keep the noise down alright?”, she asked.
“Sure thing”, John replied, before turning and walking over to the stairs.