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Chicago, IL
Four months after The Rise
It wasn’t until the survivors reached the shore of Lake Michigan that Chicago’s skyline finally came into view. Fog had rolled in, making the skyline look skeletal and morose. There was no more bustling energy, no vibrancy. There was only a cluster of buildings that had been forsaken by the world of tomorrow—The World of the Variants.
The survivors no longer walked in cliques. Instead, they trudged along single-file like some melancholy game of Follow-The-Leader. Martin was in the back, Annie a few feet in front of him. He watched her ponytail bounce back and forth with hypnotic rhythm. She hadn’t said a word since they left the Variant’s body in Park Ridge.
They arrived at Lower Wacker Drive a touch after 6:00 p.m. Lower Wacker: built in 1926 at the cost of eight million dollars and named after chairman of the Chicago Plan Commission, Charles H. Wacker. The design was meant to alleviate traffic congestion at River Street and Rush Street and the double-decked roadway design was an architectural revolution at the time. Now, however, Lower Wacker was nothing more than an underground graveyard without the appropriate headstones.
As they made their way past the decaying bodies—some still in their cars, some in the street, others hanging over the concrete barrier—Martin handed Annie a handkerchief to cover her mouth and nose. It was hard to tell through the eternal gridlock, but Martin thought there were anywhere between five hundred and six hundred souls who perished down on Wacker. It was a traffic jam of the foulest things he had ever seen.
“Fucking stinks!” Lara said stuffing her nose into the crux of her elbow.
“What do you expect?” Captain Blake shook out his handkerchief and cupped it around his nose.
Enrique didn’t use a handkerchief. He stepped through the lawn of bodies with a solemn respect. He never looked into their eyes, regarding each of them in his own right. It was this sort of quiet reverence his mother taught him when he was a child. A quiet reminder as to the gentle soul Enrique really was.
“Ain’t there no other way we can go?” Lara asked.
“This is the best way,” Martin said. “Lower Wacker takes us directly under the city all the way to Lake Street. From there we should be able to make it to the United Center undetected.”
“Undetected?” Lara questioned with her usual skepticism.
“Sun’s going down soon. If we can’t make it to the United Center by then, at least Lower Wicker will give us some sort of camouflage.”
“And if the Variants are down here waiting for us?” Lara asked.
“Then we’re already dead,” said Enrique. He was staring down at the body of a pregnant woman. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years old. Her skin was pallid and looked like freshly cut leather, drawn taut.
“Let’s just keep moving,” Martin said.
Nobody moved.
“I said ‘move out!’” he shouted with an anger Annie hadn’t expected.
“Come on,” Captain Blake told the others. “You heard the Doc.” He climbed over a battered blue Cadillac leading the way for them to follow.
They traversed their way over the first cluster of automobiles, silence their only companion. Sunlight spilled through the north end of Lower Wacker. It was a soft, dying sunlight that meant only one thing: nightfall was upon them. The Variants would be coming soon…
“Heeeeeellllllppppppp…” came a small voice from behind them.
Annie was the first to turn around. “Did you hear that?”
“Heeeeeellllllppppppppppp…” the voice waned.
“I sure as shit did,” Lara said, unholstering her .357.
“Hello?” Enrique called down the tunnel.
“Are you nuts?” Captain Blake stepped forward and slapped the back of Enrique’s head.
“Oww! Watch it, yo!” Enrique cried.
Annie pulled herself onto the hood of an F-150 and climbed onto the cabin. She peered through the crippling darkness and saw, no more than a hundred yards back, the outline of a young girl. “I see somebody!”
“Annie, wait!” Martin called. But it was no use. Annie’s motherly instincts kicked in and she was going back for the girl. Martin slid past the F-150 and followed after her.
“It’s all right,” she called to the girl. “We’re here, everything’s okay.”
The girl was wearing a dingy white blouse and khaki capris. Her hair was greasy and black as if it had been dunked into a bucket of tar, then glossed in a layer of canola oil.
And then there was the smile. That decrepit, ghastly smile of a girl who was no longer a girl. A girl who had been left to navigate the wastelands of the world without hope of returning to the innocence she once had. But a Variant like this little girl couldn’t help but smile at the trap she had set.
“Annie, stop!” Martin yelled.
But Annie had already met the girl, and now she could see the cracked, yellow teeth leering back at her.
“God…” was all she could muster before the girl leapt at her.
The girl’s mouth foamed as she threw punches into Annie’s chest and abdomen. Annie screamed and felt a chunk of flesh tear away from her collarbone. The girl grabbed a tire iron under a nearby car and raised it up, ready to strike, when her eye exploded out the back of her skull.
Annie looked back and saw Martin jump down from a nearby Toyota, his Desert Eagle leaving a trail of smoke as he did.
“Come on,” he said helping her to her feet.
There was a thundering of footsteps farther down Lower Wacker and Martin watched as a band of Variants emerged from the darkness. 200 large, at least. The sun bounced off a nearby building and illuminated them for a brief moment. The Variants cringed at the star’s burning light, but didn’t waver.
They’re adapting, Martin thought. Christ almighty, they’re adapting.
“Go back,” Martin said and gave Annie a little push over the Toyota.
The Variants gave chase, their feet pounding over the paralyzed automobiles with thundering effect. The herd trampled over the windshields and sunroofs and emitted a rumbling battle cry like something out of a 50s war film. The ringing echoed off the tunnel walls and Annie suddenly felt entombed.
The survivors’ bullets came next, whizzing past Annie and Martin. Lara, Captain Blake, and Enrique were dropping Variants, but not nearly fast enough. The ones in front fell back and were immediately trampled by the other ravenous warriors.
“Keep moving!” Martin ordered and didn’t stop to wait for the others.
Enrique was the first to turn and follow. Lara and Captain Blake unloaded a few more rounds then scampered after them.
Lara turned back every so often, dropping the frontline of Variants. She would turn and run, turn and run, like some modern dance she had created for this new age.
She and Captain Blake passed an abandoned garbage truck. The driver in the front was dead, a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the temple. The name “Earl” was stitched on his navy blue jumpsuit and the glass on the driver’s side door had been blown out. Whether it was from the bullet or the Variants trying to break their way in, it didn’t really matter. Either way, old Earl got off easy.
Well done, Earl. Godspeed. We should all be so lucky.
Captain Blake and Lara took cover behind the truck’s massive wheels. Lara reached under the truck’s frame and fired off a single shot. She howled with pleasure as the bullet split through a small opening between a Jeep and a battered Lincoln and lodged in the brain of a front-running Variant. The race was over for that poor bastard.
Captain Blake flipped open the top of his bag and reached inside. Lara’s eyes filled with mischievous wonderment when he produced two exquisite looking grenades. The webbed green exterior was like a beautiful sculpture and they shared a smile as Captain Blake pulled each of their pins.
“Fire in the hole!” he called and Lara howled like a wolf at the moon.
Captain Blake stuffed the two grenades under the garbage truck’s wheels and he and Lara took off, their legs kicking wildly at the pavement beneath them.
“Get down!” Martin called.
He, Annie, and Enrique dropped next to an empty city bus, wrapping their arms around each other in a faux group hug.
Captain Blake and Lara, now thirty yards away, leapt into the cab of a brand new Dodge Ram. Damn thing didn’t even have its license plates yet. Crying shame for that missing owner.
The Variants trampled over a small red Kia—its frame giving way to their tremendous weight—and rounded the garbage truck. The leader of the Variants was smiling when the grenades went off. The explosion ripped the skin from his face and his teeth exploded out the side of his mouth.
The truck flipped onto its side crushing the lead of Variants. The explosion propelled another pack of Variants over the side of Lower Wacker only to be swallowed up by the depths of the Chicago River.
When the dust and smoke settled, the dump truck and a few automobiles rotated in such a way that Lower Wacker was completely blocked. The scream of the surviving Variants was still audible, but their threat was no longer real. They were trapped in a tunnel of death, with only the entrance as a way out.
“Hot hell that was good shit!” Lara said hopping out of the truck.
When they reached the others, they noticed a foolish looking smile on Enrique’s face.
“What are ya grinnin’ at ya goof?” Lara asked.
“Just glad we’re all still alive,” he said.
Captain Blake and Lara had let them live to see another day. Which, they supposed, was both a blessing and a curse.
Would like to know what is in the united center - Pedro
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