Enduring Armageddon Read online

  Rebecca and I had made love every morning and every evening since we got to Virden and I was really starting to enjoy my new daily routine. She still didn’t know why she was so intensely horny all the time, but I’m not one to question the good things in life, so I kept my mouth shut and continued to benefit from my wife’s newfound libido.

  When I kissed her goodbye this morning, her kiss had been almost desperate, like she’d never see me again or something. It didn’t go unnoticed by me and as I walked towards the group for our morning update I wondered if she sensed something that I didn’t.

  The quick briefing, geez, maybe this was a military outfit, focused on the route to the town and our objective: A very large food distribution warehouse. The amount of food that could potentially be in the distribution center could set up a population of five thousand for months. That part caught my ear for sure, because I thought we only had a population of about half that. I knew Virden was planning to expand, but doubling our population seemed like a little too much, too soon.

  Maybe this Allan guy, whom I still hadn’t even seen, was planning on becoming some type of regional sanctuary or stronghold. We needed to get out before that happened. One thing my history lessons in high school taught me was that when there was someone with something and others with nothing, there’s bound to be trouble. I wanted to be far away from here before the shit hit the fan and this place came under siege.

  Jesse said that we needed to be ready for a fight in case there were scavengers living in the town or any freaks in the area. They weren’t prepared for the fight that they got into in Taylorville, so he wasn’t going to let that happen again. Apparently, the reason they didn’t finish unloading the warehouse on the first day was because there were several zombies around. They spent half the morning rooting them out before they were able put everyone to work. Not very efficient. He wanted everyone armed so they could quickly dispatch the creatures and scare off scavengers if we had to. I understood the logic behind it, but it reinforced my belief that a war was coming to southern Illinois and I had to make sure that we got out of there before it did.

  The gathering section had grown to more than sixty men and women, so, in order to better keep track of everyone we were divided into ten-man teams and assigned a specific truck to ride in. It made sense to keep the groups of people together and have a fast way of accounting for everyone. Apparently Jesse and D’Andre had learned that in their time in the army during their younger days serving in Iraq and Afghanistan respectively. Neither of them served past their first term of four years, but they were the only ones with military experience and they were part of Allan’s inside circle, so they ended up being the leaders of the gathering section.

  My new buddy Robert and I were both assigned to Jesse’s command section truck. I guess my impression on him still held up to his scrutiny. That, or he just needed somebody to fill his truck and we got along reasonably well. Either way, I was glad to have a seat in the nicer four-door pick-up truck instead of cramming into the back of one of the semis.

  Before we left, Jesse called a quick huddle to talk to everyone again. “Alright,” he said. “We’re headed over to Jacksonville this morning. You all know the route, north on 4, west on 104, west on 72, north on Main, east on Southbrooke and the distribution center is along the road after a few football fields’ length. Any questions on the route?” He paused for a moment and then continued, “We believe there may be a group of scavengers in the area. We need to stay alert and keep an eye out for them. If you’ve had any run-ins with them before, you know they shoot first and don’t ask any questions, so don’t let them get the drop on you or you’ll be dead.”

  Suddenly, a thought popped up in my head as he was talking. I raised my hand and Jesse pointed at me. “What is it, Chuck?”

  “How do we know they’re scavengers and not just the residents of Jacksonville trying to defend their supplies?”

  Our leader looked at D’Andre, who shook his head and made a sound like he was disgusted. “We know the residents of Jacksonville were driven out by a group of scavengers who have been murdering everyone in their path. We just don’t know if any of them stayed behind.” You could see several men pause and take notice at this new bit of information. Yesterday, the preparations had been for in case of emergency use, now we knew that there was a pretty good chance that we’d end up in a fight and the gatherers had to be ready.

  I nodded dumbly. I was never in the army, hell when I was a kid I didn’t even play along when everyone else wanted to pretend to be soldiers on the playground. I preferred video games and books, then stocks and bonds as I got older. What the hell was I doing in the gathering squad? Surviving, I told myself. This was a messed up world and we needed to ensure that there was food for everyone. Why should those murdering scavengers have it? We were a collective group of hard-working individuals who were trying to continue our way of life.

  My mind focused again on what Jesse was saying. “…Good point, Sam. Any other ideas?” Well shit, I’d just missed a “good point” because my mind wandered off. I glanced over at Sam, our former guide, who’d decided to join the gathering squads instead of keeping her safe job inside the town. I waved to her and she waved back. I’d have to ask her what she had said.

  After a couple more questions, the briefing was done and Jesse gave us a ten-minute warning to finalize anything else before we left. The allotted time came and went, so we grabbed our overnight gear and weapons and then loaded the trucks.

  * * *

  I awoke to the sound of bullets ricocheting off of the side of the truck and people yelling. The driver slammed on the brakes and we were all thrown forward into the seat in front of us. “Get out, get out, get out!” Jesse yelled as he opened the passenger door and dove for cover on the ground.

  I pressed myself into as small a shape as I could until the men beside me cleared a pathway and exited the vehicle. I glimpsed a small neighborhood and a few buildings, which were the outskirts of a larger town that I assumed to be Jacksonville, as I jumped from the truck. I felt a round buzz by my head. I dropped to the ground and rolled into the ditch beside the road. Roger, the last man in the truck after me, gurgled something, but I couldn’t understand him, so I turned to ask him what he’d said. Then I realized why he’d made such a weird noise. His entire face was caved in and blood was running down his chin to the ground.

  “Oh shit, Roger’s hit!” I shouted as I crawled back towards the truck to see what I could do for him. He was sitting half-in and half-out of the truck but bullets continued to strike all around the vehicle and into his body.

  “Forget him, Chuck, grab his rifle,” someone shouted. I think it may have been D’Andre, the squad’s number two man. I nodded dumbly and grasped the barrel of the rifle that was lying on the ground at his feet. I pulled it to me and looked it over. I’d never shot a rifle in my life. I’d gone to several skeet shooting ranges as part of team building with my broker’s office, but that was a shotgun, not some high-tech rifle with a scope and all the gear this thing had sticking off of it.

  “Hey, I don’t know how to use this. Who wants it?” I cried out.

  “Goddammit, Chuck! Here, give me the damned thing,” D’Andre shouted again. I started to get up but he stopped me. “Hey, fucktard, somebody’s shooting at us. Don’t stand up. Crawl over here.”

  Of course, it made perfect sense to crawl instead of walk. People were shooting at us. Why the hell would you try to walk you idiot! I chided myself as I crawled towards D’Andre.

  “Come on, come on,” he said impatiently as I slowly made my way towards him. I finally reached him and slid the rifle to him. He snatched it from my hands and expertly took the scope’s lens covers off, chambered a round and pushed the safety switch to off all in what looked like one motion to me.

  “Come on, where are you?” he kept asking himself as he peered through the scope.

  “Do you have a visual on the shooters?” Jesse asked from a few feet away in
the ditch.

  “Not yet. I’m scanning… Wait, got you, fucker!” D’Andre said as he gently squeezed the trigger and the weapon bucked against his shoulder. He kept looking through the scope for another moment, then laid the rifle down and said, “One guy dead. Headshot. I’ve got to reposition before I take another shot and they figure out where I am.”

  “Okay. Chuck, move with D’Andre, give him whatever help he needs,” Jesse said to me as the incoming fire from the town decreased and our return fire increased.

  We crawled a hundred or so yards down the ditch before D’Andre said we’d moved far enough. “Probably a bunch of those Crimson fuckers,” he said as he looked through the rifle’s scope for another target.

  “Huh?” I asked dumbly.

  “Oh yeah, you’re from up north. The Jacksonville Crimsons were our biggest rivals back in the day. I was a Bulldog, Virden’s football team. Jesse and I hated those fuckers… There you are.” He squeezed the trigger and the rifle bucked again. “Count another Jacksonville fuck down.”

  “What? I thought Jesse said these were scavengers.”

  “Sure, they’re scavengers who are here in Jacksonville,” he replied. “Let’s move again.” As we scooted along the ground, something didn’t seem right.

  We reached our third destination and he fired another round at some far away, but still unseen shooter. He whistled softly to himself and said, “That must hurt. I shot a little high and scalped that dude. Saw the top of his head roll back. Might have to take care of him when we roll into town. Let’s move.”

  We crawled along to another spot and sat there for a few minutes. I lay on my side, watching him, wondering what he would need that I could offer. My elbow began to ache from the pressure I was putting on it, so I shifted to my stomach and focused my eyes on the grass in front of me. A line of ants were busily carrying grass seeds back to their colony. They sensed the early change in the weather, but did we? Is that why we were frantically stockpiling food from everywhere near Virden, getting into firefights with scavengers to do so? How much time did we have before the weather turned god-awful? I thought back to the television show I’d seen about it, but they were vague. Two months ago, all of this was speculation. Hell, I’d never even figured out who nuked us, but here we were.

  At my side, D’Andre searched through the scope for a full ten minutes but didn’t see any other “targets” moving in the town. He startled me from my ant-watching vigil by yelling out, “Okay, guys, it’s clear. I don’t see anyone else.”

  Jesse ran over to us in a crouch holding a giant cannon in his hand. The flashy, nickel-plated pistol would be great at close range, but wouldn’t do shit at the distances that D’Andre was shooting. “Yeah, I was starting to wonder. The firing stopped after you popped that last dude,” Jesse said. “Either they ran or Jacksonville had fewer defenders than we anticipated.”

  “I knew these fuckers were a bunch of pussies.” D’Andre looked pointedly at me and said, “Hey, Chuck, why don’t you go see if anybody else is hurt besides Roger and let everyone know that we’re going to be moving out for the town in five minutes, so they need to patch up and load up. We’ll treat them in the warehouse.”

  “Um, okay,” I mumbled and turned away. As I jogged back to our little column of vehicles I heard D’Andre say something about revenge for senior homecoming and I heard the two of them high five. What the hell was going on?

  * * *

  The road into Jacksonville led through the scattered homes where the people had fired at us from earlier. I could see a few faces in the upper story windows and no one looked happy to see us. We stopped at one old wooden-sided house when an old man in overalls fired a shotgun from the front porch and fled inside. From my seat in the truck, I saw D’Andre and a couple others go to the door and kick it in. Before they could enter another blast rang out from the shotgun and the doorjamb splintered and broke into a hundred pieces.

  D’Andre sent two of the men around the back of the house while he fired into the house from the front porch. The old man fired at the doorway again in response. After a few seconds another shot rang out from inside the house that sounded different and the men who’d went around back came out dragging the old man’s body. He had a single bullet wound to his head. They propped him in his rocking chair on the porch and took the shotgun.

  We didn’t have any more problems as our convoy rolled the rest of the way into town. A man in a semi-clean suit met us at the food distribution center. He had a white pillowcase tied to a fishing pole that he waved over his head repeatedly until Jesse stepped out of the truck. I was starting to get the idea that Jesse wanted me to go with him wherever he went, so I got out of the truck and followed along.

  Jesse glanced over his shoulder at me and shrugged to D’Andre as he joined us with his three men who’d helped him at the old man’s house.

  We walked up to the gentleman with the flag. “Um, hello. Welcome to Jacksonville. I’m the town’s mayor, Jeff Goldstein,” he said as he stuck out an unsteady hand.

  Jesse shook it and replied, “Hi, Mr. Goldstein, we’re here to empty the distribution center and take the food back to Virden.”

  “So that’s where you’re from. How is Al Grable doing? You know, he and I were very close friends. We worked together on the Macoupin-Morgan Counties Collaborative Initiative last year.”

  “Mayor Grable isn’t around anymore,” D’Andre cut in.

  “Oh… Well, I’m sorry to hear that. The people of Jacksonville need the food in this distribution center. We will starve without it.”

  “Look, Mr. Goldstein, there are too many people in Jacksonville for this food to do anything but prolong the inevitable, so we’re taking it to Virden. We have a plan and a way to sustain our population. It’s not up for debate, we’re emptying the warehouse,” Jesse said in a much colder voice than I’d heard him use before.

  “Wait, what about Carlinville, or Litchfield? Hell, Springfield is huge. Go scavenge your supplies from them.”

  Without warning Jesse punched the mayor square in the jaw. He crumpled to the ground and D’Andre grabbed his arm and yanked him up. “That’s not how you show respect, Mister Mayor. We’re ‘gatherers’ for the town of Virden, not ‘scavengers.’ The scavengers are barely human and will kill anyone that they come across for no reason. We were having such a pleasant conversation until you said that and made Jesse angry.”

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Goldstein. All of those towns are on our list. We just started with the biggest thorn in our side,” Jesse said as he patted the mayor on the shoulder. “Look, Virden is an open community and we’re willing to take in all productive members of your town, but we’ve got to be able to feed them. Surely you understand that if our species is going to survive, we’ve got to have strongholds against those mutant zombie-things and a way to feed our population. Our new mayor, Allan, understands that.”

  “All I understand is that you people are animals. You’re condemning us to starvation!” the mayor shouted.

  This time, before Jesse could punch him, D’Andre hit him in the back of the head with the handle of his pistol. The mayor fell to the ground again.

  “Shit, man!” D’Andre exclaimed. “I’ve always wanted to pistol-whip a mother fucker! That was great!”

  “Chuck, pick him up,” Jesse said to me as he gestured towards the mayor.

  I walked stiffly forward. What the fuck was going on? We were the bad guys, not the other way around. I’d been lied to. The people in Jacksonville weren’t scavengers, they were the residents of the town. What the fuck am I going to do? I screamed to myself.

  “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Jesse said as I helped the mayor to his feet. “We’re taking the food and whatever the fuck else we want. Our town needs the supplies that you people are hoarding. Spread the word to the residents of Jacksonville to stay out of our way and everything will be fine.”

  “Except those men you killed earlier, you sick bastard,” the mayor spat a
s he jerked his arm away from me.

  “We were fired on first!” Jesse yelled as spittle flew from his mouth. “I didn’t want any trouble. We came here to peacefully gather supplies for Virden to help feed our growing population. You fucking Jacksonville assholes fired on us!”

  “I hope we killed some of you too. You’re not taking this warehouse without a fight. It’s full of the residents of this town and we’ll fight you for it tooth and nail.”

  “Your townies may, but you won’t. You’re done,” Jesse said. “Chuck, go with Justin and Olan. Take him to the truck and tie him up.”

  The mayor whirled on me suddenly and my head exploded as he hit me with a right cross. My knees gave out and I fell to the ground. It was the first time in my adult life that I’d ever been punched. It hurt a lot more than I remembered from the couple of fights I’d gotten into as a kid. Through tear-streaked eyes I saw the mayor running towards the distribution center yelling something.

  Beside me, D’Andre’s pistol blared to life. “Fuck!” he shouted and fired again. “Shit!” he exclaimed as he missed again. Jesse pulled out the monster pistol that he carried and fired several shots at the retreating man.

  “Shit. Olan, shoot that fucker before he gets away and does something stupid,” Jesse said as he gestured with his useless gun.

  Olan, one of the men who’d gone inside the old man’s house, raised his lever-action hunting rifle to his cheeks and sighted down the iron sights. He exhaled slowly, then caught his breath and gently squeezed the trigger. From my knees, I watched the mayor pitch forward to the ground. He tried pathetically to crawl away, but the huge crimson stain spreading across his back at the entry wound meant that his front side was totally destroyed where the bullet exited. He’d be dead before too long. I don’t know much about guns, but I do know that the entry wound is a lot smaller than the exit wound.