In Hiding: A Survivors Journal of the Great Outbreak (4 page)

Some of the other employees
scrambled to turn off the system that controlled the automatic doors. While
they worked on that, a few of the others raced over to try and help Cody escape
from underneath the infected monster that was trying to kill him. I didn’t
move. I was frozen in place. Everything was moving in slow motion for me at
that point. Call it fear. Call it whatever you want but I couldn’t move. I
can’t even remember how long it took me to snap out of it.

I do remember that the man had
Cody pinned to the ground. I can still see him biting at the air, getting
closer and closer to Cody’s face. The one good thing was that Cody had a hold
of the old Zeds neck and was managing to keep his mouth at a safe distance. Two
of the other employees arrived on the scene and started trying to pull the old
man off of him. One of them grabbed the back of the man’s shirt while the other
grabbed him by his shoulders and they both tried to pull him away.

It happened fast, the shirt ripped
and one of the employees who had gone over to help went flying backwards and
slammed onto the ground. Just as that happened, the other employee lost his
focus for only a brief second and while he watched his co-worker fall back onto
the pavement his hand slipped off the old man’s shoulder and it dropped right
in front of his face.

The old Zed’s eyes shifted from
Cody to the hand in front of his face. His head turned quicker then his rigid
body looked like it could and he bit down on the young man’s hand. As it all
happened I remember everything having an artificial feel about it. It didn’t
seem real. I was in some kind of haze as I watched it all unfold right in front
of me. That was until I felt someone shaking me by my shoulders. It was another
one of the customers who was trying to get me to go over and help.

He was right in my face. Shouting
about helping them, saying we had to do something. It was the same man who only
moments before had been pointing a loaded weapon at me. That was when I finally
snapped out of it. Things went back to real time and together, we both started
running to the aid of strangers. I am not sure that either one of us were sure
what we would do when we got there. But luckily for me he got there before I
did.

Cody was still on the ground
fighting off the infected old man. The other two employees were both lying on
the ground. One was holding his hand trying to stop the bleeding. The other was
trying to get up after banging his head on the ground. The customer running
with me, the man who had the gun, well that was Paul. He delivered a swift kick
right to the head of the old man, knocking him off of Cody and allowing us to
complete the rescue.

The last thing I remember was
helping Cody up off of the ground, while a few of the others grabbed our
wounded and we all pulled back inside the store before the old Zed was able to
get back onto his feet. I didn’t take a long look, but I could see that there
were other people closing in on the front doors and just by the way they moved,
I could tell that they weren’t coming to help us.

Once we were all safely back
inside the store and had safely closed and locked the doors we all took a few
steps back and watched in silence as the old man got back onto his feet and
started moving towards the door again.

A few of the others tried to help
the young man who had just been bit by the Zed. I would come to learn his name
was Bruce. We didn’t know at the time what being bit meant for Bruce. There
were a ton of rumors floating around of how the virus was spread. We were
however smart enough to realize that getting bit by someone who was obviously
infected wasn’t a good thing. But we didn’t know the full extent of what it
meant for Bruce or for us at the time.

There were six of us at that point
and we were all busy watching that zombie like old man pound on the
shatterproof glass. Even more terrifying was that he wasn’t alone anymore.
There were three others that had joined him at the front doors and they were
all pounding widely on the front doors.

Under normal circumstances we
would have called an ambulance or drove Bruce to the hospital. Under normal
circumstances we would have called the police to come and save us from the
monsters outside. But those weren’t normal circumstances. None of our cell
phones were working. No signal, busy signals, you name it. Besides I doubted
that an ambulance would have come even if we had managed to get through. My
guess was that they were pretty damn busy that morning. Hell, even if an
ambulance had been dispatched, getting through traffic would have been near
impossible, which also ruled out anyone of us driving him to the hospital. That
and the fact that none of us were eager to go back outside with those things
out there.

I remember through all of the
chaos Paul shouting for Cody to get on the PA and tell anyone that was left in
the store to meet us at the front of the building. He wanted everyone to be
together. Safety in numbers I guess. But before Cody even had a chance to make
it to one of the phones, others had already started to arrive. There weren’t
many of them, but they came and they came quickly. They were running and it was
obvious that they were running from something. They were all screaming about
something getting inside, they were screaming about some of them being in the
store.

Their arrival had brought the
groups number up to twelve. Every one of us absolutely horrified and every one
of us scared. Those first moments when we were all together, well it’s hard to
describe how critical they were for us. We were all divided on what to do next
and those decisions we made would come with consequences. Some of us just
wanted to run for our cars and try and get away, but in all honesty we felt
trapped. There were Zeds at the front doors and we had just learned that there
were some of them inside the building with us. None of us knew where to go or
what to do.

There was yelling, there was
name-calling, there was panic, and then there was Paul. When we were scared,
when we were all so terrified, he remained calm. He tried to talk some sense into
us. Sure we didn’t want to hear it, but he talked us into staying together. I
have to say that he probably stopped us all from rushing off and doing
something stupid.

None of us were ready for this.
Outside of a few of those bunker nuts that I used to think were crazy, nobody
was prepared for anything like this. I don’t think that there was a person out
there who knew what to do in a situation like this. It wasn’t like there was a
guidebook for surviving this type of thing. Everything we had been taught in
school, everything we knew about medical science had told us that this was
impossible. Zombies were a thing of fiction and fantasy. They weren’t something
we needed to be afraid of in the real world. We were confused, we were scared,
and we felt like there was no way out.

Our arguments were interrupted
when we heard a loud noise that sounded unnatural. At first we had thought it
had come from the infected old man or his newly found friends outside. However,
once we heard it again we were quick to realize that it had come from somewhere
inside the building.

I remember Paul raising his pistol
and scanning our surroundings for a target. We couldn’t pin point exactly where
the sound was coming from. We heard it again, that time much louder then the
others, and there was little doubt that it was closer that time and it sounded
like it was closing in on us.

We learned from two of the
employees who had just joined us that the receiving doors had been left open.
They were waiting for a delivery from one of the local vendors who usually
arrived around that time in the morning. We guessed that was how they were
getting inside the store. When the two employees saw a few of the Zeds come
wandering through the back doors they ran. Mistakes like that were what got
people killed in those early days. So now with the doors open, there was no
telling how many of them could have walked right into the store while we had
been up there talking.

With the front doors blocked, and
without knowing how many of those things were inside with us, we decided to
hide.

It’s hard to describe exactly what
was going through our minds at that very moment. We couldn’t exactly see what
was happening outside. All that I knew for sure was that there was a growing
number of Zeds at the front doors and an undetermined number of them coming in
through the back door. I felt surrounded and I could tell that most of the
others felt the same way. Hiding probably wasn’t the best choice, but it seemed
like the only option at the time.

All of a sudden I remember we were
all running towards the back end of the store. At the time I couldn’t
understand why we were running towards the area we figured the sounds were
coming from but whoever was leading us knew where they were going, so I
followed. We ran through the store until we ploughed through the swinging doors
at the back that said employees only and entered the store’s stock room. I was
still just following.

I heard another loud sound, that
time I could tell it had come from somewhere close. We continued running
through the back room, past freezer doors and caged in areas that held tobacco
and alcohol. We ran past racks of clothing and shelves that contained
everything from bike helmets to televisions and before I knew it we were
running up a flight of stairs. The man behind me was pushing at my back trying
to make me run faster. We were so tightly packed together as we hurried up
those stairs that I couldn’t move any faster even though I desperately wanted
too.

When we reached the top of the stairs
we went through a door that led to a long hallway. That hallway had several
doors on each side of it, but we blew right past them on our way to a door at
the end of the hall. When I got there I saw Paul holding the door open, waiving
everyone inside with his gun in his hand.

Once inside I realized that I had
been led to an employee break room. There were tables and lockers, a microwave,
a sink, and a pair of bathrooms. The walls were covered with notifications and
safety posters just like you would picture most break rooms. Once we were all
inside, we barricaded the door by moving a few of the lockers in front of it.
We laid them on their side and piled them up four high. We were trapped. But at
least we were safe for the time being.

I saw one of the girls grab a
first aid kit off of the wall. She immediately tried to clean and bandage
Bruce’s wounded hand. Her name was Kerri. I had no interest in being near the
blood and the virus that young man had most likely been exposed too. But she
didn’t think twice about it. I had to give her credit, she was a lot braver
then I was.

Instead
of helping, I just stood around and listened to the discussions taking place
about what our next move should be. In all honesty I was just happy to be safe
for the moment, but Paul was quick to tell the others and me why staying where
we were was a bad idea.

First of all, Paul made it pretty
clear to all of us that we didn’t have enough food or water to hold up in that
break room for any real length of time. Secondly, Paul reminded us that the
receiving doors had been left open. If we stayed upstairs for too long, there
was no telling how many of those things could find their way inside. At that
point we knew if we didn’t do something quick, there was a good chance we could
end up trapped in that break room until we all died of starvation.

So
what we did next wasn’t out of some newly found courage. Believe me when I tell
you that several of the others were completely against it and I wasn’t exactly
thrilled about the idea of going back downstairs with god only knows how many
Zeds in the building. We did it because we really didn’t have any other choice.
It was what needed to be done if we were going to survive.

Paul
convincing us what we needed to do was one thing. Getting everyone to agree on
how we were going to do it was another. There were several members of our newly
formed group that wanted to make break for it. They weren’t exactly keen on the
idea of being stuck in the store for an undetermined amount of time. After all,
they had family members and friends out there and they couldn’t comprehend the
idea of leaving them out there with everything that was happening.

But
deciding between leaving and staying wasn’t the only thing that we were
fighting about that morning. How we were going to handle the Zeds that were
already in the building nearly started a war. One of the employees that had
been in the back room didn’t like the idea of not having a plan on how to deal
with the infected that we were sure to encounter once we left the safety of the
break room. His name was Trevor. He along with a few of the others wanted Paul
to use his gun and shoot our way out. Well, that was met with stiff opposition.

You
see there were still a good percentage of people who still believed that the
Zeds were just sick people. Shooting them wasn’t an option for them, not then,
and after a lot of yelling and name-calling, we all decided against it. It
seemed the only thing that we could agree on was that we all needed to work together
if we had any chance of getting out of there in one piece. We knew we needed to
close the back doors. We knew that even if we were going to leave it was going
to take a group effort to get all of us past the monsters in the store and in
the parking lot.