Tommy scowled and Charlie hid his grin. It was a full minute before I cracked a smile and Tommy realized I was kidding.
“Jesus, I fell for it. Damn, it’s early.” Tommy tried to look busy again, poking around the bed of the truck.
I laughed and gave Sarah a kiss and saw Charlie do the same to Rebecca. Tommy jumped into the bed of the truck and Charlie moved around to the driver’s seat. I waited a second, giving Sarah’s hand a quick squeeze, a gentle reminder that I would be back no matter what.
“Talk to Harlan,” I said to Sarah, Rebecca, and Jason. “I want you guys to work with some volunteers on Z cleanup. We got remarkably lucky yesterday.” I heard an ‘Amen’ from Charlie. “But these people need to be trained if they hope to survive another onslaught. Make sure you include the kids. This is their world too and they should be careful, not afraid.”
Sarah and Rebecca nodded and I could see Sarah already forming in her head how to get the most going at once.
“You have one day,” I said. “Good luck.”
Jason stepped forward. “Before you left, the Mayor wanted you to have these. One of the townspeople is a woodworker.” Jason held out Charlie’s tomahawk and my pickaxe. The handles had been replaced and strengthened. My pickaxe handle was wider at the head, tapering a bit towards the handle end. Charlie’s tomahawk had a new, lengthened walnut handle gleaming with new varnish. Charlie’s eyes grew wide as I passed it through the truck cab to him. He stepped outside and took a few practice swings, getting used to the new length and weight. I swung my pickaxe and the little weapon positively glowed with malice, wanting desperately to sink into some undead skulls. Soon. Soon. The additional weight would mean less fatigue in a prolonged fight.
“Tell the mayor he has my thanks.” I climbed into the cab and nodded at Charlie, who started the truck and fiddled with the controls. With a final wink at Sarah, we were on our way.
According to the map, the first town we were supposed to reach was Gorman, but I couldn’t find a population note on the map. Come to think of it, I wasn’t even sure where Gorman was, except that the rail line went nearby. We would reach it in a few minutes, since it was only five miles away.
Charlie kept the speed to thirty miles an hour, giving us a decent chance to look around the country and see how things were. We passed a lot of farmland and there was evidence of a lot of crops that had gone to waste because there wasn’t anyone to harvest them. Come to think of it, there weren’t a lot of people to eat them if they had been harvested. I guess it was good to keep these places in mind in case we got big enough as a population to use all this land again.
Tommy thumped the roof of the cab and I opened the back window of the cab.
“What’s up?” I inquired, not seeing anything of interest.
“Nothing. I have to take a leak,” Tommy said, shifting his rifle to his back and tapping Charlie on the shoulder.
Charlie looked at me and I shrugged, figuring it wasn’t a bad idea. I got out of the truck after Charlie stopped and walked down to the edge of the stones that marked the railroad. After I finished my business, I wandered back up to the truck and looked around as Tommy finished his. I could see a farmhouse in the distance, but it was too far away to see if it was occupied. It looked like a pretty decent place, neat and well-maintained, but deserted. I had a feeling we would see a lot of that on this trip. Maybe one day someone would come and make this place prosperous, but it was going to be a while.
We rolled down the rails and I told Charlie to come to a stop where a road intersected the railway. I checked my map and looked around. I asked Charlie if we had gone about five miles from Coal City and he assured me that we had. I saw a small farmhouse in the distance and another house up the way a bit. A road sign said “Gorman Road” so I referenced where we were.
“Why did we stop?” Charlie asked, looking over at the map.
“We’re in Gorman,” I said, looking around.
Charlie was incredulous. “Really? This place is smaller than where I grew up.”
I just shrugged my shoulders and checked the map again.
“Why did we stop?” Tommy asked from the truck bed.
“We’re in Gorman,” Charlie said over his shoulder.
“You’re kidding.” Tommy stood up to look around. “I guess the town is that house over there.” He pointed to a ranch house down the road.
“Guess so,” I said.
“We need anything here?” Charlie asked.
“Nope. May as well move on. If we have the time, we’ll check the houses on the way back,” I said, scanning the map for the next town.
“Got it.” Charlie thumped on the roof to get Tommy to sit down, then drove off past Gorman, the town you would literally miss if you blinked.
We passed out of the town, or what was supposed to be the town and moved down the rails. The landscape didn’t change much, just expansive fields or crops and vegetation. I could see the winter-bent stalks of corn unharvested, and figured hunting Z’s in that mess would be a cast-iron nightmare. Better to burn the whole field than risk an attack.
According to the map, the next town on the rail line was Mazon. This one was actually listed and was supposed to have a population of around nine hundred. Given the remoteness of the locale, I was optimistic about finding a survivor or three.
About fifteen minutes past Gorman, we began approaching Mazon. It was wide open, no sign of any defense works or provisions for dealing with the dead. I motioned for Charlie to stop on the outskirts. I had no intention of running through the town until we had an idea of what we might encounter.
I tapped on the back window to get Tommy’s attention. “Scope out what you can see, I’ve got an uneasy feeling about this place.” I did, too. Something was making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and I had learned not to ignore the feeling.
Tommy stood up in the truck bed and used the scope on his rifle to look a little further into the town. From where I sat, I could see a number of small, ranch-style homes indicative of most of the small towns in Illinois. Here and there were older, more stately homes, and they tended to have the larger, older trees in their yards. The homes were neat and tidy, a few having some expected debris in the yards, but in general seemed to be in good shape. One house in view had several children’s toys still scattered about the back yard.
Tommy tapped the roof and I stuck my head out. “What’s up? See anything?”
Tommy looked down at me with a puzzled expression. “I don’t see anyone, living or dead. I did see a lot of white flags on mailboxes, though.”
I could feel my gut tighten instinctively at those words. The infection had made it here, then. So much for being far enough out to avoid contamination. We needed to be careful. “Keep an eye out, we’re heading through,” I said to both Charlie and Tommy.
“You want to head down Main Street or stick to the rails?” Charlie asked.
“Let’s stick to the rails, but if we see something worth looking at, we’ll take a peek.”
“Will do,” Charlie said as he put the truck in gear and pulled forward. Tommy stayed upright, and scanning the town, looking for any sign of life. I noticed a couple of cats running from house to house, but that was the extent of the activity. I began to get the hunch we weren’t going to see anyone at all, that this whole town had up and disappeared. That hunch gave rise to the question of Where? Did the people go to the state center? Did they head to a larger town like Coal City? The empty houses and abandoned swing sets mocked us with their eerie silence.
Charlie stopped the truck on a railroad crossing near the edge of town. We could see down a main thoroughfare which I guessed was the business district. Several stores and shops were there, a couple of restaurants, a fast-food place, one gas station, and two banks. ‘Earl’s Rail Stop’ was just across the street from us, advertising chicken dinners for under five bucks.
Everything seemed normal except there was no one around. No living, no dead, nothing. As far as I could see, the town had not been hit by looters or anyone.
“This is just weird,” Tommy said from his perch, scanning the street. “I don’t see anything out of place. There’s not a single piece of debris, no broken glass, no sign of violence. No bodies, no blood, nothing.”
