“Alright then,” I said to Zach through the radio. “We do it cautiously and carefully. First sign of danger and we’re out of there.”
Zach responded with a car horn beep as we made our way down route three.
We reached the stadium in a matter of minutes. It was not too far down route three and the extra signs guided us directly to the safe zone. Each passing sign became creepier as it went. One was torn half down with a blood stain following it. Another sign was littered with bullet holes. The last sign was ripped to shreds, blown apart by what looked to be a high explosive or tank shot. Something definitely went down, and it did not make the feeling in the pit of my stomach any better.
The parking lot was mostly barren as expected, but there were signs that life once stayed here. Collapsed tents were common to find, mostly near the numerous outhouses in the parking lot. Garbage had been blown all over the grounds, though whether it was recent or from the last football game played here was impossible to tell. A few motor homes were still parked, signs of a once bustling tail gaiting community, but all of that was now gone.
We began to drive aimlessly through the parking lot, navigating around fallen tents and inconvenient curbs. After two laps, we decided that it was safe enough, the lot anyway, for us to get out and investigate the stadium.
“No guns,” I said to Zach when we got out of the cars near the main gate. “We don’t need a whole crowd of former football players turned contaminated chasing us down. I don’t’ think that we would win that.”
“Fair enough, though I’ll have one gun on me just in case,” He replied, holstering a gun in the back of his pants. “Only for severe emergencies, I promise. Scout’s honor,” he said, holding up two fingers for the Boy Scout salute.
“I didn’t know that you were a Boy Scout,” Chelsea said.
Zach shrugged his shoulders, “I’m not.”
I looked ahead. The main gate was a huge black structure of steel bars that receded into the main building. They were almost completely open, about a quarter of the gates sticking out on each end. The military must have forgotten to shut them in their haste to leave the stadium.
The sky began to let off a light rain onto our heads as we entered. There was no electricity working any part of the stadium as far as I could tell, thusly we were forced into walking up the immobile escalator, which was just a set of inconvenient stairs.
We came to the first level, where the expensive seats were, right at field level. I never had the chance to purchase such tickets as they were extremely expensive to buy for a college student with a part time job giving a mere average twenty hours per week.
The little boy in me took hold as I stood at the entrance of the first section of seats. They were a standard dark green, lining all of the rows with less than two inches between each seat. The stands at 1b looked out onto the bright green turf field right at the thirty yard line. I practically skipped down to the very front of the stands, looking over the wall as if someone was going to Lambeau Leap right onto my lap.
My hands were stretched out over the dry guardrail. Realizing that it was raining outside, I looked up. Across the top stretched a huge canvas that covered the entire stadium. It was nothing thick, as the stadium was not a normal dome but was wide open. The cover was thin, letting in a decent amount of dim light but keeping the rain out all the same. It must have been something that the military decided to do because of the emergency at hand. It reminded me of the old Roman Coliseum.
“Over here, guys!” Chelsea called down the main walkway.
I looked over to see Zach walking by, and I joined him. “What did you find?” Zach asked.
Chelsea was waiving near an open door held open by a wooden wedge. “I think I found the command center or something like that,” She said, gesturing inside. “Come see this.”
Zach and I followed her into the room. It was not a large room, slightly larger than an average high school class room. The walls were cinderblocks painted a cream color with pictures and cork boards decorating them. Each different board was filled with papers, numerous different documents attached per pin. A thick metal desk with a fake wood top sat on the far side of the room, also littered with papers and other documents. Round tables and the chairs surrounding them comprised the remainder of the room. The blue plastic chairs were scattered across the floor as if the people who once occupied them had left in a hurry. A black chalkboard in the corner of the room was smeared in certain places, leaving the remaining bit somewhat unreadable.
“I would say that this was the command center,” Zach said. “Other than the obnoxious amounts of papers, it also has a good positioning near the entrance allowing the high authority the ability to deliver quick action to any situation.” Zach pulled down a document off of a cork board and looked over it as he spoke, “Of course this would put those with power at risk as they would be the first responders and organizers, but in a situation with the contaminated attacking a refuge for a few thousand people, that is needed.” He placed the document pack on the cork board and stuck it with
