Taking It Back (17 page)

Sheriff Harlan laid out a map. “We’re here. Down this rail line is Streator. We don’t know if there’s anyone alive in there, but considering how far they are from bigger centers, there’s a good chance people are there. The rail line has about four small towns on the way to Streator. If anyone’s there, they’re welcome here. My brother Tim and his family live here,” Harlan pointed to a small dot labeled ‘Ransom’. “If he’s there, I’d be obliged if you’d pass on the message that I’m alive.”

I nodded, briefly wondering about my own brother, who I hadn’t heard from in a year.

The sheriff continued. “We have a rail truck, so you can travel on the lines and get off on the road when you need to. We’ve used it to range north for supplies, but the recent uprising put a halt to that. You’re welcome to it.”

I could immediately see the advantages. Unless we ran into trains on the rails, we could head straight through to Streator.

“Sounds good. We’ll head out in the morning.”

Sheriff Harlan nodded. “Good. Your people can stay at the town hall tonight, I think there might be a small celebration tomorrow. Everyone’s just too tired today.”

We all laughed and after about another two hours of planning, went back to the town hall. I told Sarah about the plan and when we planned to move out. She agreed with what we were doing and then gave me some good news.

“I spoke with Nate today, Jake and Julia are doing fine,” Sarah said. “Jakey misses his daddy and wants him to come home soon.”

I smiled. “That’s my boy.” I stretched out on the carpet of the office and pulled a cushion from the couch. “I didn’t think I’d be this tired after the nap I had.”

“Nate also said a friend of yours showed up looking for you.”

“Who?”

“You’ll never believe it.”

“Tell me.”

“Our friend Dot.”

I was amazed. “I’ll be damned. I thought she was never going to leave her house.”

Sarah shrugged. “Nate said she got lonely and looked for you at the condo complex, but Duncan steered her towards Leport.”

I laid back. “She’ll make a welcome edition to the community.”

Sarah sidled down onto the floor next to me and threw a leg over my waist. “How tired are you?” she breathed into my ear.

“Remarkably well-rested, thank you for asking,” I said, laughing as I wrapped her up in my arms. “What did you have in mind?”

Sarah’s response wore me out much more than the zombie horde could ever have hoped to do.

16

Charlie, Tommy, and I planned on starting down the rails first thing in the morning. Sheriff Harlan had assured us that we had enough gas to get us to Streator and back, but if we wanted to take side trips, we were on our own. I did not immediately see a need to travel off the rails, but if a train was in the way and the possibility was pretty good, we were going to have to use the roads. I asked Harlan if there might be a gas can somewhere and in short order I had two three-gallon cans. Tommy and Jason managed to siphon five gallons out of one of our cars, so we were able to increase our range, if necessary. Tommy stored the gas in the back of the truck while Jason wandered off to find a piece of gum or a breath mint.

Sarah helped me pack and repack my backpack, although I did not see us being gone for more than a day, I packed enough supplies for three days. I figured we would just be scouting and seeing if there were any survivors. We stood a good chance of finding more people the farther we got from large population centers.

Sarah had a look on her face and said, “You know, it’s funny.”

“What is?” I asked, shouldering my pack and adjusting my holster.

“You actually sound hopeful. Before you seemed to look at what you were doing as a kind of mission, that if you didn’t do it, no one else would and the world would eventually die out. Now, you’re almost smiling at the prospect.”

I thought about that for a minute. “Is it a bad thing? Maybe we’ve turned a corner on this whole dead thing.”

“Actually, it is kind of nice. You used to look at situations where if it worked, great, if not, oh well. Kind of attractive, in a way.”

I puffed my chest out and gave my best Burt Lancaster smile. “I won’t let it go to my head. Much.”

“Good,” Sarah said. “You’ll get yourself killed if you do and then you’ll be useless to me and everyone else.”

I deflated when I realized she was right. I was alive because I took nothing for granted, never hoping for too much for fear of running myself into despair when things turned south. When this all started, I had one focus; save my son. Now that I have managed to secure some relative safety for him and others, my focus shifted; finding others and making sure they survived as well. I still needed to survive for my son and when I thought about what might have happened yesterday, I just shook my head. The fight was still out there and I still had a lot of work to do.

“Thanks,” I said, kissing her on top of her head.

“You’re welcome,” she said. “Jake needs you, the community needs you, and I need you.”

“I won’t do anything stupid on purpose,” I promised.

“Good.”

Sarah and I walked down the street towards the east end of town. The sun was just rising, the blue of the sky chasing the purple of night back to the west. The morning air was brisk, it was still spring. But it promised to be a warmer day. I could still smell a little of the decay left behind by the dead and there was a large blackened area by the gazebo where the ghouls had been burned in the piles Charlie and I had made the day before. Looking at the gazebo, I suppressed a shudder when I thought how close of a call that had been. Had Tommy and the others fallen before we could have been rescued, we likely would still be up in the rafters, slowly starving to death.

We passed through the town, raising a hand in greeting to those whose days had started as early as ours. We got many smiles and a few words of gratitude. I was grateful we were able to lend a hand here. This town deserved to live, these people were the kind that would rebuild and make things better than they were before. They had a real sense of community that would be hard to put down. And now, after they had been tested in battle, anyone trying these people would be shoved back. Hard.

We reached the fence line shortly and climbed up the nearest ramp. On top of the fence, I saw we had climbed up too far to the north, so we wandered along the fence to the ladder that reunited us with our friends.

Charlie and Tommy were already there as well as Rebecca and Jason. Charlie was checking the mini-train wheels which kept the truck on the rails and Tommy was finishing securing the supplies on the back.

“‘Bout time,” Tommy said. “You wanting us to wait forever?”

I stared at Tommy. “Yes, I do,” I said with a straight face. “If I let you and Charlie off by yourselves, I’d have to save your sorry asses within ten minutes.”

Tommy scowled and Charlie hid his grin. It was a full minute before I cracked a smile and Tommy realized I was kidding.

“Jesus, I fell for it. Damn, it’s early.” Tommy tried to look busy again, poking around the bed of the truck.

I laughed and gave Sarah a kiss and saw Charlie do the same to Rebecca. Tommy jumped into the bed of the truck and Charlie moved around to the driver’s seat. I waited a second, giving Sarah’s hand a quick squeeze, a gentle reminder that I would be back no matter what.

“Talk to Harlan,” I said to Sarah, Rebecca, and Jason. “I want you guys to work with some volunteers on Z cleanup. We got remarkably lucky yesterday.” I heard an ‘Amen’ from Charlie. “But these people need to be trained if they hope to survive another onslaught. Make sure you include the kids. This is their world too and they should be careful, not afraid.”

Sarah and Rebecca nodded and I could see Sarah already forming in her head how to get the most going at once.

“You have one day,” I said. “Good luck.”

Jason stepped forward. “Before you left, the Mayor wanted you to have these. One of the townspeople is a woodworker.” Jason held out Charlie’s tomahawk and my pickaxe. The handles had been replaced and strengthened. My pickaxe handle was wider at the head, tapering a bit towards the handle end. Charlie’s tomahawk had a new, lengthened walnut handle gleaming with new varnish. Charlie’s eyes grew wide as I passed it through the truck cab to him. He stepped outside and took a few practice swings, getting used to the new length and weight. I swung my pickaxe and the little weapon positively glowed with malice, wanting desperately to sink into some undead skulls.
Soon. Soon
. The additional weight would mean less fatigue in a prolonged fight.

“Tell the mayor he has my thanks.” I climbed into the cab and nodded at Charlie, who started the truck and fiddled with the controls. With a final wink at Sarah, we were on our way.

According to the map, the first town we were supposed to reach was Gorman, but I couldn’t find a population note on the map. Come to think of it, I wasn’t even sure where Gorman was, except that the rail line went nearby. We would reach it in a few minutes, since it was only five miles away.

Charlie kept the speed to thirty miles an hour, giving us a decent chance to look around the country and see how things were. We passed a lot of farmland and there was evidence of a lot of crops that had gone to waste because there wasn’t anyone to harvest them. Come to think of it, there weren’t a lot of people to eat them if they had been harvested. I guess it was good to keep these places in mind in case we got big enough as a population to use all this land again.

Tommy thumped the roof of the cab and I opened the back window of the cab.

“What’s up?” I inquired, not seeing anything of interest.

“Nothing. I have to take a leak,” Tommy said, shifting his rifle to his back and tapping Charlie on the shoulder.

Charlie looked at me and I shrugged, figuring it wasn’t a bad idea. I got out of the truck after Charlie stopped and walked down to the edge of the stones that marked the railroad. After I finished my business, I wandered back up to the truck and looked around as Tommy finished his. I could see a farmhouse in the distance, but it was too far away to see if it was occupied. It looked like a pretty decent place, neat and well-maintained, but deserted. I had a feeling we would see a lot of that on this trip. Maybe one day someone would come and make this place prosperous, but it was going to be a while.

We rolled down the rails and I told Charlie to come to a stop where a road intersected the railway. I checked my map and looked around. I asked Charlie if we had gone about five miles from Coal City and he assured me that we had. I saw a small farmhouse in the distance and another house up the way a bit. A road sign said “Gorman Road” so I referenced where we were.

“Why did we stop?” Charlie asked, looking over at the map.

“We’re in Gorman,” I said, looking around.

Charlie was incredulous. “Really? This place is smaller than where I grew up.”

I just shrugged my shoulders and checked the map again.

“Why did we stop?” Tommy asked from the truck bed.

“We’re in Gorman,” Charlie said over his shoulder.

“You’re kidding.” Tommy stood up to look around. “I guess the town is that house over there.” He pointed to a ranch house down the road.

“Guess so,” I said.

“We need anything here?” Charlie asked.

“Nope. May as well move on. If we have the time, we’ll check the houses on the way back,” I said, scanning the map for the next town.

“Got it.” Charlie thumped on the roof to get Tommy to sit down, then drove off past Gorman, the town you would literally miss if you blinked.

We passed out of the town, or what was supposed to be the town and moved down the rails. The landscape didn’t change much, just expansive fields or crops and vegetation. I could see the winter-bent stalks of corn unharvested
,
and figured hunting Z’s in that mess would be a cast-iron nightmare. Better to burn the whole field than risk an attack.

According to the map, the next town on the rail line was Mazon. This one was actually listed and was supposed to have a population of around nine hundred. Given the remoteness of the locale, I was optimistic about finding a survivor or three.

About fifteen minutes past Gorman, we began approaching Mazon. It was wide open, no sign of any defense works or provisions for dealing with the dead. I motioned for Charlie to stop on the outskirts. I had no intention of running through the town until we had an idea of what we might encounter.

I tapped on the back window to get Tommy’s attention. “Scope out what you can see, I’ve got an uneasy feeling about this place.” I did, too. Something was making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and I had learned not to ignore the feeling.

Tommy stood up in the truck bed and used the scope on his rifle to look a little further into the town. From where I sat, I could see a number of small, ranch-style homes indicative of most of the small towns in Illinois. Here and there were older, more stately homes, and they tended to have the larger, older trees in their yards. The homes were neat and tidy, a few having some expected debris in the yards, but in general seemed to be in good shape. One house in view had several children’s toys still scattered about the back yard.