Drink in case of Emergency (22 page)

They had discussed South American destinations a few times, and in their conversations had flirted with European destinations, but nobody had really committed to an overseas location yet. This of course led to an argument about traveling across the oceans. Scott had assured them that he had watched his father, an amatuer pilot, on dozens of occasions and (although it may have been the wine talking) was almost positive he could fly them from Alaska to Russia. This drew concern as the group discussed commandeering a cruise ship and crossing the distance by sea instead.

“The downside to going to China is that nothing is going to make sense. We don’t speak karate.” Jessica mumbled. The group had found that when drunk, mild mannered, politically correct Jessica became just a bit racist.

“We can still figure out the basics from signs though, and lots of other countries have signs in English too.” Scott said, not wanting his contribution to the list to be overlooked due to language barriers.

“If we run into anyone though, they’re not going to understand us. And they know karate.” Jessica reiterated, and then finished very solemnly. “It could be dangerous.”

Tyler, who was only two coffee cups of wine into the evening, pondered on this quietly while Amy tried to explain to a drunken Jessica that ‘karate’, is not a language, it is a martial art, and that not all people of Chinese descent were practiced in it.

“Although she may be misguided, I think our slightly intoxicated friend does have a point on this one.” Chris said, breaking Tyler from his pondering. “We know that whatever did happen to turn people into zombies happened last Thursday night. And we know from our experience thus far that the only people who survived were those who had alcohol in their system at the moment the change occurred.” Chris took a long drink from his beer before continuing. “I’m afraid we might be the exception to the rule of who is likely left in this world.”

Justin screwed up his face in confusion. “What do you mean? We’re the only ones left?”

“No no no no.” Chris shook his head with each no. “We’re relatively well adjusted, calm and rational people. For just a moment, imagine what kind of person someone would have to be in order to survive from last Thursday to today in this new world.” Chris held up one hand and began counting on it.

“Number one, they would have had to be drinking, most likely heavily, on a Thursday night. Statisically, almost half of adult Americans don’t even drink in the first place, much less on a Thursday night. So right off the bat, we lose all children, and let’s be extremely generous and say that a fifth of all adults were drinking last Thursday. Number two, they would also have to be away from people who weren’t drinking. As with what happened in Emily’s case, if you were in the same room as one of those zombies while you were asleep, there’s a strong likelihood you didn’t survive Friday morning.” Jessica’s eyes began to water at the mention of Emily’s name, but Chris continued. “Number three, they would have to either be so cautious, or have such a distrust of their fellow man, that when they saw their first zombie struggling to walk, or heard one of them moaning, they wouldn’t run up to help them.” Tyler remembered his initial response to Justin’s neighbor. He realized that if he hadn’t been completely hungover and feeling like garbage, he would have tried to help her, thinking that she was having some kind of medical emergency. Tyler’s thoughts were interrupted by Amy’s voice.

“So basically, you’re saying that all we’ve got left on this world is probably a bunch of drunks who may have been lonely before this all happened and clearly don’t trust other people. In fact, there’s a good chance they would have to be okay with homicide, as we’ve already killed a dozen or so zombies to survive.” Tyler’s mind began processing this number, remembering the four zombies that he knew they had killed, and wondered for a moment what Amy and Jessica had done on that first morning before they met.

“The cream of the crop.” Justin mumbled into his coffee cup of wine.

The next morning brought a beautiful sunrise with piercing hangovers. Tyler looked out over the city and saw that the few zombies they had seen yesterday seemed to have multiplied, he could see almost thirty lining the street in front of the office building. He imagined that over time, as food ran out or they simply ran out of things to do, that the zombies would eventually all end up outside. He was surprised that there weren’t more out wandering in the streets at this point in time.

Tyler made cold instant coffee for the group, which they had with crackers and cheese wiz for breakfast while they discussed the plan for the day.

Sometime during the night, Amy had decided that she didn’t want to go to the Willis Tower. She suggested that her and Jessica just go shopping instead. Scott and Justin initially protested to this, remembering Chris’s words from last night about who was likely left alive in this city besides themselves. Amy silenced the argument by pulling, seemingly out of thin air, two small handguns that nobody had ever seen before.

“I think we’ll be okay.”

***

The group packed up their supplies and left. They headed North on foot, parallel to the Grant and Millenial Parks. After a block of heading in the same direction, Amy got frustrated with Justin constantly saying how glad he was that they could all still stay together, that they would all be safe, so she grabbed Jessica’s arm and pulled her east at the next intersection.

“Oh sweety, you just have to see the shoes that I saw in this window blah blah blah.” Amy shouted sarcastically over her shoulder, emphasizing the “blah”’s.

A few blocks behind them, a single man watched the group split in two and whispered a silent prayer. “Dear father, I give you thanks for leading me to these young souls and giving me this mission. Now I pray to you, provide me guidance in this task you have set before me. Show me the path to victory.”

Father O’Connell was grateful when he came upon the party of young people as they drove up the interstate the day before. They weren’t difficult to follow, but the good father had observed almost immediately that he wouldn’t be able to set these souls free with a simple lie as he had done with the group in Father Nile’s apartment. They were different, they were special.

He could see that they were well armed, and seemed to move as a coordinated group. He could hear them argue on occasion, but even when they fought, they stuck together. How to save these six souls?

This was how he knew that this was the task for him. Father O’Connell had set many souls free in the last few days, but none that were like this. These people, they were different. They had a certain spirit to them. He could see it in how they walked, talked, and moved. Every other soul he had saved had been running scared. Treating every encounter with the empty vessels as a new emergency. These people moved without fear. It wasn’t just the weapons they carried. He saw them use the weapons on the husks. Cutting down God’s without respect to what it once was or what it had become. They had courage, and it was because of this that Father O’Connell knew this was his true mission. He had to set these spirits free.

How to do it would be the challenge. He knew that tricking them wouldn’t work. They were too well armed, and planned things out too thoroughly to be done in by simple tricks. He had watched them barricading the stairwells of the office building they had stayed in the night before. They also stayed together, he couldn’t lead one or two away, and use them to lead the others into a trap as he had done in Tawneyhill. Nor could he simply pick them off. He had a pistol, but he wasn’t a sharpshooter. And one pistol against six well armed people, he didn’t like those odds. He wasn’t worried about dying, but he wanted to ensure he saved all of them before he left this earth. He wanted to fulfill this mission from his savior.

He knew he would need a much grander plan to free these souls. It looked as though they were splitting up. Better to follow the bigger group. They would be easier to track, and if he got the chance, he would be able to save more of them at one time.

After walking another three blocks North, the group of four gentlemen turned East, moving towards the familiar shape of the Willis Tower looming overhead in the distance, unaware that a shadow was tailing them, a few blocks behind.

“There’s really not a lot of zombies on the roads, I wonder what’s up with that?” Scott commented nonchalantly.

“I think they get stuck indoors, like they can’t figure out the door knobs?” Chris suggested, miming in the air what it might look like to claw at a door with zombie claw hands.

“Maybe there hasn’t been much moving around out here to attract them outside?” Tyler offered, holding his arms up in the air to emphasize the dead silence that was surrounding them.

The group had become so accustomed to the new silence that had once again fallen on civilized areas that this was the first time it had struck them how eerie it was. They were walking in downtown Chicago, in broad daylight, and the air was basically silent. The only sound was the far off noise of birds chirping happily in the nearby parks. Tyler realized that this might be the quietest that it had been on this street for over a hundred years.

They walked on for another twenty minutes before they reached the base of the Willis Tower. The walk was boring, however they did begin to notice a few more zombies in the street as they got close to the tower. They passed one apartment building where a mob of the creatures were spilling from the front door and tumbling down the front steps. They went around this block, as the mob was quickly growing from a dozen, to two dozen, and more. It was like a faucet, only instead of water, the door poured out zombies.

Once they had reached the base of the towering structure, Chris pulled a bottle of whiskey from his backpack. “Here boys, drink up.” He offered the bottle around. Tyler took a long drag from it before wincing a little as the dark flavor burned down his throat.

“Really? Whiskey? This is my item from the list, and I want to enjoy it.” Scott said, with a haughty look on his face.

“Dude...it’s for safety.” Justin said as he took his own pull from the bottle, “We don’t know what we’re going to run into in there, and we know that being drunk protects us if we get bit by the zombies. Ergo, the safest thing to do is to get shitfaced.” Justin took a second pull before handing it back to Chris. Tyler noticed that Justin hadn’t winced at all from the burn, and he felt a twinge of jealousy, both at the lack of twinge, and that he had used “ergo” and “shitfaced” in the same sentence.

Scott took a deep sigh, the kind of noise that indicates a person knows they just lost an argument. He drank hard from the bottle, which was now less than half full. Chris up ended the bottle and drank an absurd and disgusting amount of the amber liquid while his eyes filled up with tears. He passed the bottle around the circle of friends once more, and then threw it nonchalantly over his shoulder. The empty glass bottle flew end over end before shattering into a thousand pieces on the pavement, glinting in the morning light.

The front doors of the Willis Tower had already been broken in. The two revolving doors looked like some kind of sick carnival ride, a rough metal frame holding broken glass in place. The handicap accessible door looked as though it had been broken cleanly enough, so the four friends crept through it.

****

Three blocks to the south, hidden behind a dumpster at the edge of an alley, Father O’Connell watched in fascination as the group of young men huddled together in the shadow of a familiar towering structure. He was sure that it was the Sear’s Tower, but the sign out front seemed to declare it was the Willis Tower. It was so hard to keep up with how fast everything changed these days.

The group huddled together for a few minutes, talking quietly and passing something around the group. Father O’Connell couldn’t get a clear look at what they were doing. He considered moving a little closer, but didn’t want to risk being seen. This group was clearly on edge. They were each armed, and he couldn’t risk tipping them off to his presence too soon. It might make them even more cautious, or worse, they might send the good father to heaven before he had the chance to free them from this mortal coil.

Caution turned out to be the better choice. Father O’Connell watched from his hiding place as one of the men, the heavy set one, threw a glass bottle that they had all been drinking from and it shattered on the sidewalk. Then the four men calmly walked into the tower, and Father O’Connell felt an idea strike him.

God? Is that you? Are you speaking to me, through this vision?

Father O’Connell looked back over his shoulder, watching a swarm of zombies push out from a side street onto Wacker drive.

Perfect.

Father O’Connell could see it all so clearly. This wasn’t a dark tower in front of him. It was a stairway that would lead his young charges right to heaven. They only needed an appropriate chaperone. Rising to a standing position, Father O’Connell looked to the sky and whispered a silent prayer to himself. Turning completely toward the mob of zombies that now blocked half of the street, he began walking toward them.

Not too close. Just enough to chase.

****

Despite the bright morning sunlight outside, the lobby of the Willis Tower was dim. It was like switching from morning to dusk. There was enough light to see, but there were still dark corners for things to hide.

Chairs and debris had been strewn about the expansive lobby. It looked like someone had tried to barricade off the stairwell, as there were a few tables leaning against the stairs.

Walking gingerly through the lobby, Scott felt the familiar buzz of the whiskey hitting his brain. This warm, mellow sensation came in interesting contrast from the alarm bells that his brain was trying to send out. Everything about the space made him uncomfortable, but still they moved through the lobby.

They arrived at the bank of elevators which would take them to the top of the building. It was at this moment, a significant fact dawned on the increasingly intoxicated group.

“Oh....fuck...” Chris mumbled, seeing the same recognition of fear and frustration in his friends eyes. “We’re gonna have to take the stairs.”

***

At or around that same moment, twenty blocks away, Jessica and Amy had just stumbled into their own adventure. After wandering aimlessly for a half hour, they arrived on the commercial section of Michigan Avenue. There were boutiques and shops for as far as their eyes could see. Many of the big display windows had already been smashed in, and there were a few dozen zombies loitering around, but otherwise the block was exactly what Amy imagined heaven might look like.

“Where...” Jessica was having trouble with her words, so overwhelmed by the sights around her. “Where do we start?” Amy, not wanting the nature of the situation deter her, pointed at a nearby shop.

“There.” Amy began running toward the storefront without waiting for a response from Jessica. The store was a mid sized shop, with a French name that Amy didn’t even want to try to pronounce. Three impossibly thin female mannequins stood in the window styling spring clothing that would have made it to suburban Illinois in about five years, assuming that everyone in the world hadn’t turned into zombies, which meant that it might take as long as ten years now.

Jessica admired bright orange shorts that the middle mannequin wore, and was about to comment on how cute she thought they were, when a dark shape flew past her head and smashed through the shop’s front window, toppling all three mannequins like bowling pins. Jessica’s instinct had her fall back and pulled her arms over her head to shower herself from attack. When none came, she looked up to see Amy climbing through the broken window and picking up her backpack from a pile of shattered glass. “C’mon. Let’s find some cute shit.”

The duo spent only fifteen minutes in the shop. Jessica picked out a pair of the orange shorts she had liked, and Amy had grabbed a few tops she thought were cute. They tossed the clothes into a large designer bag and climbed back through the broken window into the street. They repeated this shopping experience through another five stores. Grabbing what they liked and moving on, until the women had around a half dozen outfits. All adorable, but of varying functionality. Some of the clothing was light and bright colored for spring, shorts and tops and shoes to look cute on the beach adventures they assumed they would soon be having. While others were more functional for living on the road, long sleeve wool shirts and rich denim jeans with real leather boots for kicking zombies. Each outfit chosen had a combined price tag of at least a thousand dollars, clothing that neither had even dreamed they would own in their entire lives.

Through the entire shopping trip, the few dozen zombies loitering in the streets didn’t bother them much. Amy had shot a few that had followed them into a shoe store, and she had made Jessica shoot one that had followed them into a lingerie boutique as well. Jessica hadn’t wanted to go into the boutique at first, but Amy had a compelling argument.

“If I’m going to have to live without electricity, I’m at least going to wear the finest underwear that money can buy.”

When the zombie followed them in, Amy had insisted that Jessica be the one to dispatch it. “You have to pop your cherry.” She said, offering one of the handguns. Jessica shied away from the weapon, as if the mere proximity to it was causing her discomfort and harm. “This isn’t exactly an option, kiddo. At some point in time, you’re going to have to learn how to shoot one of these things. Would you rather do it here, alone, with me? Or when all the guys are around to see you whimper and whine?”