Chain Gang
11 Oct
1232
I awoke this morning to the feeling of cold rain on my face. I glanced at my watch, which indicated 0520, and I could tell my core temperature was falling quickly by the annoying chatter of my teeth. I was dog thirsty and fought through the cold to reach into my bag and pull out an old plastic MRE pouch from days ago. Wrapping the wool blanket around my cold body and tangling my foot into my pack strap, I leaned over the edge of the roof and hung the MRE pouch over the edge where the water was steadily streaming down to the first-story ledge below.
After I filled up I drank the shingle-flavored water until the pouch was empty and then I filled it again. Fighting the chill that nearly shook me off the roof, I kept gathering water until my water bladder was full. I repacked my gear (sans the wool blanket), leaving the bladder drinking tube accessible to the outside of the pack and started to think about moving again. There were no dead in sight from my view on the roof. Using my knife, I cut a slit in the center of the wool blanket so that I could fit my head through and use it as a poncho. It was wool and wet so there was no use packing it away. At least wool keeps its heat even when wet.
I then attempted to position the ladder for my descent to the first-floor overhang of the house. As I lowered the ladder my grip slipped a little and the other end hit the overhang with a loud bang. I put the ladder where I wanted and then put on my pack and started my descent. The rain seemed to be getting worse as I climbed down. When I reached the bottom of the ladder I nearly jumped off the roof in fright, as one of those creatures had its face pressed against the second-story window in response to the noise I had made when dropping the ladder.
I saw it and it saw me. Quickly, I positioned the ladder on the ground so that I could start climbing down. The thing was beating on the window in an attempt to break out and get to me. From the sounds, it did not seem that it had enough strength to break through. I didn’t want to think about why, but the visions and memories in my mind when I reached the bottom of the ladder were not of an adult corpse—it was a child.
I left the ladder where it stood and made my way to the road that I had used to find this overnight sleeping arrangement. The rain was making me miserable, and I wanted nothing more than to build a fire somewhere and hang my clothes to dry. I thought back to central heat and air and remembered how dependent we were on electric power to survive as a society. I’ll bet we lost thousands of elderly over the summer just because of the heat waves. It had been a bit since I tried my radio so I decided to give it a go and xmit out on the preset distress frequency. After going out three times with no response, I switched the radio into beacon pulse mode and decided to leave it on for a few minutes. The rain continued as I shadowed the road, which I remembered from the day before as Highway 59 South.
As the rain lessened in intensity, I could hear the familiar hum of a distant engine. I had heard this sound on more than one occasion since my helicopter crash miles and lakes behind. Part of me thought it was due to my head injury and the infection that I had endured. I rubbed the area where my stitches had been days before. The soreness and sensitivity were virtually gone. I continued to follow the direction of the road for what seemed like miles. It started to warm up around 0800, and the rain decreased to a light drizzle. The haze was thick and there were patches of fog, largely due to the moisture, combined with the heat of the rising sun. My feet were sinking deep into the mud as I kept my distance from the seemingly empty Highway 59.
After a few hundred yards I had to turn ninety degrees and head to the highway, as I realized that the mud was not related to the rain. I was walking into what appeared to be a swamp. The road started to elevate and just as a patch of fog blew by I could see for an instant that a section of the highway a quarter mile down the road was up on short stilts to raise it above the marsh. It seemed to go on forever that way into the distance. I didn’t fancy disease, and I knew that swamp bacteria or hypothermia from walking waist deep in cold mud could kill me just as easily as any of those things. Adding to my fear were the various open wounds I had on my body from being banged up from the crash and on the run from those things. My wounds were scabbed over, but that was nothing that a few hours of submersion in swamp water couldn’t fix.
Having no choice, I had to take the road as it departed from ground level and continued into the haze and fog south over the swamp. Visibility was poor and I could see only maybe a hundred yards in front or snapshots of the distance during random breaks in the fog. I walked for twenty minutes and there was no sign of dry land on either side of my position. There it was again . . . the sound of an engine somewhere in the distance, or perhaps over my head. I wasn’t sure of the source. My concentration was broken by a metallic sound up ahead. It sounded like chains being pulled across concrete. I tried to listen and separate the sounds of the chains from the mechanical buzzing sounds but could not.
Both sounds became insignificant when I heard one of those things trip over an old bumper that lay rusting on the bridge. It was coming from the same direction I had just walked. I walked over to it and shot it in the back of the head with the SMG. As I looked up beyond the corpse into the distance from where I had come, I noticed more shadowy figures in the fog. It seemed I had some undead stalkers closing on my position. They were still a couple of minutes out. I turned around and continued in the direction of the metallic sounds at a better pace.
Leaving the stalkers behind me, I started my jog ten paces, walk ten paces regimen. Then came the sound of metal on concrete again. I slowed, knowing that the undead behind me were perhaps ten minutes from my position. I had passed abandoned cars up to this point but none of them were occupied and they all showed signs of the gore marks, like those on the house I had slept on last night. I crept further. The sound of metal got louder and drove me mad.
It was almost as if the mechanical sound abated to allow for the metallic sound to increase its intensity in a cruel game to send me over the edge. The lack of visibility made it even more torturous. I knew the sound up ahead of me had to be within a few hundred yards, but with the highway up on stilts and the barriers up on either side, the sound could be coming from much farther off.
I tried to drive the thought of the creatures behind me out of my head, impossible as that was, and kept moving forward, squinting as if that would help me see through the fog. The noise was very loud at this point and I could hear the sounds of undead activity up ahead. I now had a choice to make: either turn around and deal with the stalkers behind me or push ahead and deal with the noisy dead in front. The other option was to jump into the cold swamp and hope that the other side was near, and also hope that there were no undead in the swamp waters to greet me as I made my way to land. Since going north was not my objective and getting my ass bitten off was out of the question, I chose to press south on Highway 59 toward the metallic sounds.
The fog remained thick but I could see far enough ahead to know what I had gotten into. I estimated that the stalkers on my tail should be about five to seven minutes behind me, judging from the pace I had used to get here. As I moved forward I could see at least thirty undead dressed in bright orange jumpsuits. On the back of the jumpsuits were reflective letters that said COUNTY. Leg shackles and chains bound most of the creatures.
They consisted of units of three to five inmates per chain gang. It looked like only a few were immobilized. One of them was chained to what was left of a shriveled human leg. It walked around and tugged the leg behind. The things could not see me and I used this five minutes before the others behind caught up to figure out how to get past them. Only around thirty were visible. As I thought of ingenious ways to evade them by jumping on cars or running past, one of the first stalkers appeared from the fog behind me. I shot it in the face, decided that thinking was a dead man’s game right now and pushed forward.
As I made my way to the chain gangs, I picked the left side to attempt a breach. The right side seemed to have more of the unhindered variety. My tactic was simple: to shoot the ghouls on both ends of the gang, leaving the middle creatures trapped by the literally dead weight. In all I had to shoot five creatures to accomplish my goal. I used a whole magazine.
I’m not sure whether it was the lack of visibility, or knowing that I was surrounded, or the fact that there were large undead inmates in orange jumpsuits and chains coming at me that made me so nervous. I was freaking out and practically praying and spraying my way out. I had to stuff one of the empty mags in my leg pocket and rack another one as I made my way past the bulk of the gang.
Even though three of the five-man chain gang teams were hindered in movement, they still continued to pursue as the unhindered teams marched past them toward me. The sound of the chains scraping across Highway 59 scared the living shit out of me as I ran from these things. They were not the only threat out there. I passed fifty other undead as I escaped the chain gang. The pack was heavier than ever as I returned to my jog ten, walk ten pattern. Up ahead the fog was beginning to clear . . .
I kept on. Looking back into my new circle of visibility I could see nearly a hundred of them in pursuit less than a quarter of a mile behind. I was starting the undead snowball effect. They were making enough noise to start a chain reaction . . . each pack of wolves howling at the next.
The sound of metal and undead approached as I heard the buzzing again. I couldn’t hold this pace forever, and I didn’t think that losing a hundred undead could be easily accomplished in one day. As I neared the end of the stilted section of Highway 59 and looked back, I could see much more than a hundred.
I glanced down at my watch; it read 0950. I had been evading for hours. Just as I looked up from my watch I witnessed a huge explosion in the mass of the undead and instinctively cupped my ears and sat down on the ground. Just as my ass hit concrete the overwhelming sound of the explosion hit me like a punch to the chest, rolling me over. I got to my feet and noticed that the explosion had done overwhelming damage to the group that pursued. I didn’t question where the explosion came from or why I had encountered a f*cking dead chain gang, I just accepted it and got the hell out of it. After a short lunch break sitting under an old propped-up car hood out of the rain, I intend to continue south shadowing the highway again, pending swamps, random high-order explosions or undead chain gangs.
2148
Tonight I have found respite in an old refinery field with sections of high chain-link fence squares spread throughout the area. The oil pumps have long since stopped movement. Most of them are grown over with weeds and are home to nesting birds. The small fenced area was securely locked with a hardened chain and padlock so I was forced to climb over. After throwing my bag over the fence I draped my wool blanket over a section that I thought wouldn’t be damaged by my climbing it.
There was no barbed wire at the top, but it was half habit and half safety to have the blanket there to protect against sharp edges. I could not afford to take the chance of getting an infection—there was no place to receive a tetanus shot. After getting inside the perimeter I carefully and slowly walked around the fence looking for holes that wild dogs or undead could squeeze through. Satisfied that there were none, I picked one of the refinery pumps to camp near for the night. It stopped raining down on me around 1500 today, giving me a chance to dry out somewhat before reaching the campsite.
I had some wet gear, so I decided to lay it out to dry on the horizontal metal pipes of the rig. It had been a little cold outside because of the recent rain, but not as bad as it is right now. My thoughts were on today’s events and the mysterious explosion that had occurred. I also thought of chain gangs and how I seemed to remember that they were outlawed years before this all went down. I guess when society is failing and you don’t have enough police to guard the inmates, chaining them together makes sense. Poor bastards. I can’t imagine the horror of it. One of them gets infected and the others are left to fight it, or even worse, four are infected and one is left to fight. No wonder they all eventually turned.
I wondered if the undead child in the house was still banging on that upstairs window trying to get at me, as if I were still within reach. As truly gruesome as the thoughts of the chain gang and child were, the explosion . . . Was it an old weight sensor charge left on the overpass?
In any case I didn’t know what to think. As the sun was setting I searched the area for anything of value and found nothing but an old stripped-out Phillips screwdriver half buried in the polluted ground at my feet. I set one of the large rattraps along the fence in an attempt to conserve my nonperishables. With the rest of my remaining daylight I inventoried my ammunition and counted 210 rounds of 9mm. The chain gang fight had depleted thirty rounds of my supplies.
I walked the perimeter once more, careful to avoid the trap, just as the sun dipped below the horizon. There was movement on Highway 59 off in the distance, probably what was left of the group that was tailing me on the swampy overpass. I felt relatively safe here and didn’t think that any of them knew where I was. Even so I will still sleep with one eye open and my finger on the trigger and the safety between my ears. Before racking out tonight I intend to slip the NVGs over my head and sleep with them. If I need to investigate something, I won’t have to fumble with them and I can just switch them on as needed throughout the night.