Drink in case of Emergency (21 page)

             
Scott woke the next morning with a stiff hangover. It wasn’t the worst he had had lately, but it still left his body feeling exhausted. Once everyone was awake, the group stocked up on supplies and stole a second SUV from a local dealership. Gassing up the vehicles at the pump wasn’t going to be an option anymore, with the power out. Scott’s solution was that they could always switch vehicles as they traveled, constantly grabbing new cars, but it was Amy who suggested something she had seen in a movie once, and Scott had to admit, he was impressed.

Amy grabbed a heavy duty screwdriver and an oil drip-pan from the automotive shop of the dealership. Walking up to a brand new sedan that was on the lot, she crawled underneath the car for a moment, finding the gas tank and puncturing a hole in it. Using the drip pan to catch the gas, she was able to fill several portable gas cans in a matter of minutes. It wasn’t as fast as the pump, but it would get the job done.

The group set out early. Chris suggested they make a few quick stops along the way, instead of doing the entire drive all at once. Downtown Chicago was only four hours away, and Chris secretly hoped that going progressively through larger cities would give them an idea of what to expect when they arrived in a metropolis like Chicago. Would the zombies be lining the streets? Or would they still mostly be indoors?

Scott thought this was a terrible idea. And now that it was his turn to get his way, he didn’t seem to want to take any precautionary steps for his or anyone else’s safety. It took Jessica pleading with him to talk him out of being one of the drivers.

Jessica’s concern was well founded. Her reservation was based on the fact that he had wine with his breakfast. Only wine. Only a bottle of wine for breakfast.

The first hour of the trip passed without incident. They did not see anyone else on the road as they raced down the highway. Despite the brash attitude he was trying to give off, this fact had Scott a little worried. It was unnerving, driving down completely empty freeways. He never realized how much he relied on other cars to help set pace and relate distance traveled. Three lanes of nothing running in each direction was overwhelming, like being out in the middle of the ocean. It was a reminder of how big the world was, and how alone they were in it.

Despite these feelings, they made very good time, as the highways were absolutely clear. There were a few times when they had to swerve to avoid overturned cars or vehicles crashed into bridge embankments, but these were unique occurrences.

As they approached the suburbs of Chicago, the wrecks became more common. There had been more cars on the road when the incident occurred, so there was more to swerve around, and they had to backtrack four different times due to the freeway being completely blocked. By the time they had reached the southern border of Chicago Heights, it was dusk.

Scott was relieved when, as a group, they decided to set up camp for the night. Amy spotted a four story office complex that looked promising, and turned out to be. They were able to barricade the doors in a similar way to the method they used back in Middleton. Scott had initially insisted that they find a hotel or mansion to stay in, but Chris talked him out of this by reminding him how many zombies would be inside the average 200 bed hotel, and the lack of information about where to find local mansions made this idea impractical, for now.

They made due with the office building, staying on the fourth floor and taking turns standing guard, just in case something or someone was following them.

***

The next morning, the group set out early. Scott was surprised how great he felt. No headache, fewer body pains, all this despite standing watch for two hours in the middle of the night. It took him a few minutes to realize that it was the first night since this had all began that they hadn’t stayed up drinking. He assumed everyone else felt the same.

They had to continue on foot from this point, as the wrecks that blocked the entire highway were now coming up every half mile or so. They could have taken the SUV’s off of the highways and onto the side streets, but these streets were littered with hundreds of zombies, making this impractical too.

They walked almost twenty miles, hampered by the regular wrecks that made them skirt the edges of the highway. By the time they had stopped, they had made it to Englewood. The travel was becoming more difficult, as more and more sections of the highway were completely blocked and there were even a few zombies that had survived their car crashes and had made it onto the highway. Scott felt like they were passing houses and blocks and cities full of zombies, but that most of them simply hadn’t figured out how to get outside yet. Or maybe they just hadn’t run out of food indoors yet, it was difficult to be sure of anything. After spending another night in another high rise building, on the third day, they reached the South Loop of downtown Chicago.

***

Chicago was a mess, with the streets packed with crashed vehicles and at least a hundred zombies milling about on every block. Chris had two fears when they were traveling to Chicago. His first fear was that there would be literally millions of zombies covering the streets. His second fear was that the city would have burned down to the ground due to someone who turned zombie while cooking a late dinner and set their apartment building on fire. It would turn out that both of these fears would be well founded. He had a third fear as well, but he wasn’t entirely sure what it was yet, more of a gut feeling than anything specific at this point in time.

“We’re not going to make it to the Tower.” Jessica said glumly, looking at a fifty thousand dollar watch that she had liberated from a high end jewelry shop before they had left that morning. Between the gold and diamonds, she was able to read that it was nearly five o’clock.

“That’s fine, I’m sure we can find somewhere to hold up.” Justin said, Chris noticed a fake note of optimism in Justin’s voice. It was well masked, but like a smile that doesn’t reach the eyes, it was fake.

They were now halfway through Chinatown, walking in a long loose line. Chris and Scott led, Tyler and Amy followed almost twenty yards behind, and another thirty yards behind were Justin and Jessica to bring up the rear.

Chris marveled at how different the city looked compared to Middleton. Chicago really looked like the apocalypse had come and gone. It looked as though they were walking into a ruined city, not the metropolis that had been a major center of art and commerce less than a week ago. A fire had ravaged almost a third of the neighborhood, and they could see smoke on the horizon of a far off fire, still blazing. Chris hoped that the fire had not reached the Willis Tower.

The charred remains of buildings towered around them, shadows of the beautiful marvel that had been Chicago. The streets were covered in a fine gray ash, which puffed into small clouds when anyone took a step.

“It’s okay!” Scott shouted from the front, showing the most energy he had all day. “I can see some unburnt buildings. We just have to go through about a mile of this, then things clear up.”

“I don’t mean to sound rude, but we could all really use a bath.” Amy mentioned nonchalantly to Tyler as they hiked along the bridge. Tyler tried to conceal a quick whiff to check for odors in his armpit before responding.

“Were you a bath person, or a shower person before all this happened?” Tyler asked, trying to spark a conversation. Amy muttered something under her breath instead of responding to the question. Tyler had noticed a bit of a trend with Amy. Whenever anyone asked her about herself, even something as simple and nonintrusive as whether she preferred baths or showers, she would mutter and go silent. The only things she seemed willing to discuss were those things that had happened since the world ended. Tyler had let it go long enough, and he thought it might be a good time to try to press his luck further.

“What was that, I couldn’t hear you?” His tone came out a little more aggressive than he had intended it to, but he couldn’t take it back now.

“Nothing...” Amy said, and began walking a little faster, increasing her pace to that awkward level reserved for when you find yourself accidently walking alongside a stranger on the sidewalk.

“No really, I just want to know what you said.”

“It doesn’t matter, just leave me alone.” Amy turned her awkward rushing walk into a jog, and ran to catch up with Chris and Scott.

“Jeeze,” Tyler muttered under his breath. He had slowed down so much that Justin and Jessica had caught up to him. He found out immediately that they had heard the entire conversation.

“Don’t worry about it bud, maybe she’s just menstruating?” The way Justin made the statement, it seemed more to be a question posed to Jessica. She looked understandably uncomfortable at discussing this.

“We aren’t quite that close of friends yet. Only just met her the day before I met you guys.”

“I honestly have no idea what girls talk about all day with each other if it’s not about menstruating.” Tyler said, jokingly.

“Mostly fast cars, big dicks, who has the bigger boobs. You know, girl stuff.” Jessica seemed to be getting better at picking up on Tyler’s sarcasm.

The group crossed the rest of Chinatown that way. Two groups of three. Tyler lost track of the topic of discussion between Jessica and Justin. He couldn’t stop himself from remembering Amy’s face when the zombie child was rushing at her. That uncontainable smile that crept across her lips. Tyler had no idea what she was thinking about, but he knew exactly what she was feeling in that moment. She was feeling the same thing that he had felt when he was boxing zombie Charlie Westin. There was something in that moment that she wanted, she wasn’t supposed to want it, but she was going to get. Something visceral and primal. Tyler couldn’t put his finger on what about shooting a charging zombie in the face could be so enjoyable to her, but he knew that there was no mistaking the smile that he saw. She felt what he had felt that same morning when he sunk his fist into Charlie Westin’s fat stupid zombie face.

As they reached the edge of Chinatown, they came into what felt like a graveyard. Every building was charred from the fire, and one out of every four was either crumbled, or in the process of crumbling into themselves. The cars that lined the streets stood in black pools of melted rubber that were once their tires. The bodies of the vehicles, once blue and red and yellow, were now all a consistent black or gray from sitting through the inferno that had raged through the neighborhood.

They soon had to weave from block to block, detouring around major car wrecks and walls where buildings had fallen into the street. Tyler noticed his white tennis shoes quickly turned dark gray as they scraped up the ash and soot from the pavement.

Gonna need some new kicks, he thought to himself. He felt a little disappointed at how quickly they wore out, and then he remembered all the shoes that were left in the world, and he felt better.

The next half hour passed in relative silence, broken up by Justin calling out warnings of hazards in their path. Eventually the blocks they passed became less and less damaged, until the only damage was gray soot covering the windows, presumably the fallout from the blocks they had already walked past.

As they passed a corner market, Chris and Scott broke through the service door in the alley, and the group resupplied on food, batteries and alcohol. They walked another few blocks North, planning on finding a suitable office building around Roosevelt park. They found a high rise, broke in and moved to the fifteenth floor, where they broke into a small law office. They had to also break into a CPA’s office as well as a social service agency before they had enough couches for everyone to sleep on.

The rest of the night went similar to most that had happened since the end of the world, drinking, laughter and stories being shared. Along their journey to Chicago, Jessica had transposed their bucket list from the original yellow legal pad into a very handsome looking leather bound journal. She claimed that it was to help preserve it, but it also allowed her to add a few of her own edits. Three more items were added to the list that night. Amy became adamant that, for purely historical purposes, she would need to have sex in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House. This goal caught the attention of both Tyler and Chris, who both declared it to be a fantastic addition to the list, and suggested that since they were already so close, maybe they could just run down to DC after their time here in Chicago. Scott, who was now warming up to the idea that they had literally inherited the entire planet, with only a fraction of the previous population to share it with, added two items to the list.

First, he demanded that the four guys of the group absolutely had to race sports cars in the streets of San Francisco. Amy’s eyes lit up at this, and there was a brief discussion about the women racing too, which led to a brief but heated argument about whether men or women were better drivers. Eventually the argument settled, after Amy had smashed an entire bottle of Don Perignon through an office window. Scott’s second addition to the list was one that seemed a little more difficult to achieve. He wanted to walk the entire length of the Great Wall of China. The actual walking wasn’t perceived by any of them to be all that difficult. After all, nobody was there to stop them, and they could fairly easily pack enough supplies to carry them from town to town. Jessica also assured them that there was likely gift shops and rest stations along the way where tourists would buy knick-knacks and bottled water. The real challenge was the location.