Revenence: Dead of Winter: A Zombie Novel (29 page)

     "We'll send a team out later to bring back as many as they can," Maximus said, "but not now.  It's too dangerous."

     "Why didn't you just give them the drugs?" Dacee prodded, a hint of confrontation in her voice and her stance.

     Maximus grabbed a hold of Dacee, embracing her tightly but not violently, then ducked behind a six-foot-tall monument where only Shari could see them, although he wasn't aware of her presence.

     "Listen," he hissed, his fingers loose but menacing around her throat, "you've known me for a long time, right?  Long enough to know that I really hate having my judgment second-guessed.  You think you know better than me, hmm?  Are you really that naive, to think they'd have left us alone after we gave the drugs back?"

     "He's right," Shari said, "the sadists are never to be catered to, ever--for any reason.  You give them an inch, they'll kill you.  That being said--he really needs to take his fucking hands off of your throat."

     Maximus glared back at Shari for a moment, ultimately deciding to back off, at least for the moment.  The three of them headed toward the east building, catching up with the rest of the group.  Maximus continued to glare at Shari while she stared back at him with a face full of disdain.

     After dinner that evening, Shari and Daphne sat at the bar with Maximus, Dacee, most of the security team, and Dr. Liu, the only physician at the convention center.  He had performed quick physicals on the group their first morning at the convention center.  The atmosphere was oddly jovial, with everyone trying to avoid thinking of the fact that some of their own had been lost that day. 

     "We need a plan," Maximus said, pulling at the label of his bottle of beer absent-mindedly.  "We can't have this happen again."

     "Merlin will be a useful ally," Dr. Liu said between sips of dark lager, "if he can detox enough to be lucid."  He set his bottle on the counter in front of him with his left hand, causing Shari to look again, as she had several times that evening, at the absent right arm.  She wondered what had happened to the limb, if he had lost it in the old world, or post-apocalypse.

     "I talked to him today," Maximus said, wincing slightly as he swallowed a shot of whiskey.  "He seems pretty certain that they'd want a lot more people before they actually come in and try to storm the place.  When they took Navy Pier, they only had a small percentage of the people we have."  He shook his head.  "But who knows if he was in his right mind at all when he was with the sadists?  We don't really know that he knows shit."

     "How's he doing with the withdrawal?" Shari asked Dr. Liu.

     "Not as bad," the doctor replied.  "Starting to taper off.  Christ, I don't think I've ever met anyone who was so resistant to sobriety."

     "Dude's like a cockroach," Dacee said.  "I don't know how he's still alive."

     "You know what he told me today?" one of the guards, Emmanuel, asked the group.  "He said, 'I'll do anything if you get me some pills.  I'll suck your dick, let you piss on me, anything.'  No joke."

     "So did you take him up on it?" another of the guards teased.

     "No," Emmanuel retorted, "I told him, 'Wait 'til Leo's shift, he likes stuff like that.  A little salad-tossing, and he might hook you up.'"

     "So about the sadists," Shari said, directing her gaze at Maximus as the rest of the group continued to laugh and joke amongst themselves, "what's the plan?"

     Maximus shrugged.  "Fortify as much as we can before they show up."

     "You guys have anyone who specializes in explosives?" Shari asked.

     "So-so," Maximus said.  "I wouldn't say specialize,
per se
."

     "Talk to Phoebe in telecommunications," Shari suggested.  "She's the one I picked up in Champaign.  She's annoying as shit, but useful enough to make up for it.  She knows all types of communications and hacking stuff.  You can try Hugo in mechanics, too."

     "Might have to do that," Maximus said.  "We could use all the expertise available to us."

     "I'm gonna call it a night," Shari said.  "Maybe get an early start tomorrow.  Lord knows there are things to be done."

     She stepped down from her barstool, turning to address the group on her way out.  "Night, folks," she said, starting toward the skywalk that led to the hotel.  Maximus followed her out, catching up to her about fifty feet from he rest of the group.

     "I'm no fucking extra," he growled,stepping in close and staring down at her, "I'm the leading man.  I'm only gonna ask you this one time--don't make an enemy of me."

     Shari stared back up at him.  "Alright," she said, adding just before she turned to walk away, "don't be a bully to these people, and we won't have to be enemies."

     It was roughly a month later, and the sadists still had yet to return to McCormick Place to settle their score.  The inhabitants of the convention center had taken a number of initiatives to maximize their chances of winning a large-scale battle with the sadists.  They halted the work being done to secure the west building, choosing to focus instead on securing the areas where it connected to other parts of the complex.  They increased the frequency of scavenging raids in the hopes of gathering more weapons and ammunition.  They also made gun training mandatory for all adult civilians who were physically and mentally capable of operating a firearm.  Scavengers kept an eye out for fuel life extenders, as the gas left over after the apocalypse was waning in potency to the point where it was generally ineffective without additives.

     It was three days before Halloween, and the people of McCormick Place had pulled out all the stops dressing the public areas in the holiday spirit.  Decorations both scavenged and homemade hung from ceilings, posts and walls.  In a largely unused doorway, three pubescent girls had woven a spider web from fishing line.  The web covered the entire upper half of the doorway.  In the middle, they were tying a large, fairly realistic replica of an alien arachnid from one of the sci-fi displays.

     The plan for Halloween was to begin with an afternoon and early evening of activities and trick-or-treating for the kids.  After the children retired for the evening, the adults would indulge in a night of debauchery and skimpy costumes, similar to the way Halloween had been celebrated in the pre-zombie world.

     Shari made her way through the crowded dining area in the Commons.  She was still in the middle of her shift, weighed down by her riot gear as she navigated through the hordes of diners on their lunch breaks.  She joined the back of the line, waiting to see what was on the menu for the day.  She felt a nudge in her ribs, and she turned around to see Phoebe standing behind her.

     "Shouldn't you be working?"

     "I'm due for a break," Shari said.  "I've been at it for six hours now--you know, since this thing called the morning."

     "Sucker," Phoebe said.  "I just rolled out of bed to have breakfast and start my day, and it's noon."

     "Lunch," Shari said.

     "Says you," Phoebe said.  "So what have you been up to lately?  Getting ready for this get-together we're supposed to be having with the sadists?"

     Shari nodded.  "Working non-stop," she said.  "Me, and everyone in security."

     "I know how it feels," Phoebe said.  "Believe it or not, I've been putting in a lot of time myself, between the communications stuff I've been working on and the explosives Maximus needs."

     They reached the front of the line, where Shari quickly assembled a chicken sandwich on a styrofoam plate.

     "Catch you later," she said to Phoebe, turning to head back to her post with her lunch.

     "Are you coming to the Halloween party?" Phoebe called after her.

     "I don't know," Shari said, looking over her shoulder at Phoebe.

     "You should!" Phoebe said just before Shari rounded the corner.  "Have some fun for once!"

     Back at her post on the concourse, overlooking the surrounding buildings to the west, Shari found Dr. Liu waiting for her.

     "I wanted to speak with you," he said.  "It's about the sadists we had the run-in with last month.  It turns out that the ones who got away are living across the street."

     Shari's eyes flared open, scanning the surrounding buildings.  "Where?"

     "In the storage garage," Dr. Liu said.  "It's not what you think, though.  They've defected.  The guards working the western perimeter earlier today saw them waving a white flag, holding up signs saying they've never killed anybody and that they want to fight on our side.  They also said they're running out of water over there."

     "A-ha!" Shari said.  "So do we believe them?"

     "I think I do," Dr. Liu said.  "But Maximus won't.  That's why I want you with me when I talk to him.  We have to give these people the benefit of the doubt, because it's not just grown-ups at stake here.  Apparently, they have a few children in there with them, as well."

     Shari was stunned.  "What?  I didn't think sadists had families."

     "I would imagine all types of people get caught up in that type of business," Dr. Liu said, "and likely wind up regretting it.  Apparently the ones across the street did."

     That afternoon, a small group left the convention center and headed for a storage facility across the street.  Shari and Dr. Liu had convinced Maximus to allow an excursion to, at the very least, speak to the two families who had defected from the sadists.

     "This better yield something useful," Maximus muttered as they crossed Martin Luther King Drive, "or else it's a waste of our time, especially mine."

     "I'm assuming that helping someone in need doesn't qualify as useful in your book," Dr. Liu said.

     "Listen, Liu," Maximus sneered, "I've kept around a thousand people alive in that convention center since this shit broke out.  That qualify as useful in
your
book, hmm?"

     They arrived at the large, featureless building.  It has a twenty-foot-high garage door and a separate entry door.  As they approached the facace of the structure, they heard a voice from above. 

     "I'm Will.  Nice to meet you all."

     They looked up to see a man, roughly in his mid-thirties, on the roof.  Shari remembered him from the confrontation in front of Soldier Field.  She had seen him running to the northwest as the firefight erupted, heading toward the southern end of the Loop.  She shuddered as she recalled that she would have shot him if he had been in closer range, assuming as she always had that sadists were fair game for murder.

     "We're just here to talk," Maximus told the man.

     "I know," Will replied.  "Your people let us know to expect you."  He lowered a 30-foot ladder to the street.  "We can talk from up here."

     "You should know that my people next door have their eye on you," Maximus said as he scaled the rungs.

     "Understandable," Will said.  "You don't have to worry, though.  We're not bad guys.  That's why we left that place."

     "You seemed to have been fighting on the side of the sadists pretty recently," Shari said as she climbed onto the roof behind Dr. Liu, spotting him on the way up in his one-armed state.

     "Sadists?" Will repeated.

     "The sadistic assholes whose side you were on," Shari said.  "You care to explain that, Will?"

     "You don't understand," he said.  "They don't get people like me and my brother to join by telling us how sick they are, all the terrible things that they do.  They recruit guys like us because we have skills that are useful to them.  Even sadists need people who know heating and cooling, electric work, plumbing, mechanics.  They bullshit us, tell us they've got a thriving community going.  Obviously, we bought it hook, line and sinker.  We were so eager to get our families somewhere safe that we fell for something that sounded too good to be true."

     "Do any others get out?" Dr. Liu asked.

     "I've seen a lot of men and women die trying to escape," Will said.  "They don't want to deal with the slight chance that someone will come back with an angry mob if they get away alive.  Me and my brother were lucky to have escaped with our families intact."

     "How many between the two families?" Maximus asked.

     "It's me, my wife and our twins," Will said.  "A boy and a girl, James and Jessica.  They just turned eleven.  Then there's my brother, his wife and their six-year-old daughter.  Oh, and then there's Chance and Thorn."

     Maximus grimaced.  "I don't suppose those are people names."

     "They're not," Will said.  "They're my brother's huskies, and they're the biggest babies.  Well, until he gives the word, that is.  He's a renowned dog trainer...well, all types of animals, really.  And let me tell you," he said, "those dogs have saved our asses more than a few times."
     "Seven people and two dogs," Maximus said.

     "We'll understand if you ask us to leave the dogs," Will said.  "We'll do whatever it takes to save our families.  We don't stand much chance of making it out of the city, let alone the suburbs, alive."

     "How soon are you willing to leave?" Maximus asked.

     Will shrugged.  "If you guys agree to take us in, we'll leave right now."

     "Are you willing to share any information you may have regarding the sadists?" Shari asked.

     "Absolutely," Will said without hesitation.  He smirked.  "That's half the point.  We owe those guys no favors, and we'll tell you anything we can."

     "That's all I wanted to hear," Maximus said.

     "Come down this way," Will said, opening a hatch and descending from the roof into the interior of the building.  "I'll introduce you to the rest of the family."

     Inside the building, a young mother paced nervously.  "Do we get to go?" she asked as Will climbed down the ladder.

     "They agreed," Will informed her and the other two adults.  "Everyone get ready to go, get your stuff together."

     The young woman squealed with delight, reminding Shari of a person who had won a free vacation to the Bahamas.  She ran off to pack and prepare for the move.

     "That's Jenna," Will said, "my sister-in-law.  She's in a hurry to get out of here, but then again, I guess we all are."

     He introduced the group to his brother, Damian, and his wife, Patricia.  After a few minutes of gathering possessions and trying to talk the kids into using the bathroom, the group exited the building through the heavy steel entry door.

     "Where will the dogs sleep?" Damian and Jenna's young daughter asked Maximus.

     "I don't have an answer to that question right now," Maximus said.  "We'll figure that out when the time comes."

     "Oh," the little girl said, silent as she contemplated her next question.  "Where will
I
sleep?"

     "We'll see, Amelia," Jenna said.  "Stop asking so many questions."
     "There are a lot of other kids your age," Dr. Liu told Amelia.  He turned to address Will's eleven-year-old twins.  "Some your age, too, guys," he added.  "You'll all fit right in."

     They approached the stairwell that would lead them into the north building.  Maximus took a keyring from his inner pocket, preparing to unlock the security door and enter the stairwell.  As he fumbled with the keys, the male out of the two young twins let out a shrill cry of terror.  At his feet crawled and clawed a very decayed and weathered zombie.  Most of its body had been severed, leaving little below the armpits. 

     "James!" Patricia cried out as the boy stumbled backward in fright, tripping on a lawn sprinkler obscured within the tall, untended grass. 

     Will brought a size thirteen, steel-toe boot down in to the back of the thing's skull.  As his foot made contact, a spray of putrid sludge and bone shards rained out in all directions, splattering across the bottoms of all nearby pant legs.  More undead lurked nearby, having spotted them.

     Maximus finally found the required key and swung the door open.  As he stepped into the stairwell, he held his M16 up to Will and Patricia, motioning for his team to follow him inside.

     "The boy's not getting inside," Maximus told the two parents.

     "The hell he's not!" Will thundered at him.  "There's more of those things out here!  Let us in!"

     "Maximus!" Shari hissed.  "What are you doing?"

     "The kid was bit," Maximus said, pointing to a rip in the boy's pants, torn away from the shin and exposing a thin wound, blood trickling out lightly.  "He's not coming in here."

     "He wasn't bitten!" Patricia protested.  "He fell on a sprinkler in the grass out there and it cut him.  Please, I'm begging you--let us in!  There are undead everywhere out here!"

     Maximus lowered his rifle.  "Everybody but the boy can come in," he said.  Jenna entered the stairwell with her daughter and niece.  Damian came in behind them.

     "It's not right," he said, his extended finger grazing Maximus' face and leaving a faint suggestion of blood on his right cheek.  "We told you, that boy wasn't bitten!"

     "I don't take any chances!" Maximus roared, pointing toward the street.  "You like to take chances, go take 'em out there!"

     Outside, Patricia and her son screamed.  Damian ran back outside to help his brother.

     Shari strode up to Maximus, shoving him hard in the chest.  He staggered backward, falling into the steps.

     "Let him in, you fucking sociopath," she said in a low growl.

     Maximus rose to his feet, approaching Shari until his chest nearly brushed hers.  "I'm getting real tired of your shit," he muttered, reaching for his handgun in its holster.  At that moment, Shari heard a swift ringing sound, and Maximus crumpled to the floor.  Dr. Liu had snuck up from behind him, kissing him on the head with his aluminum baseball bat, rendering him unconscious.  Having incapacitated the tyrranical leader, Dr. Liu and the others hurried to see what had happened to the others outside.