Rise (13 page)

Marty called back about half an hour later and told us they had cooked up a plan to distract the undead long enough for someone to rush out, open the locks on the gate and cover door, and then retreat inside again. He said it was going to take a while to set up, but it would probably work. I asked what the plan was and he told me it was something stupid, and I didn’t want to know. This only got us all more curious, so I kept pushing him to tell us. He finally caved and told us that they had figured out that these damned things were attracted to light (or motion) and noise, so they were going to cause a distraction at the front of the store by lowering a ghetto blaster down to about ten feet from the ground, and let it play loud music. If the zombies fell for it (and I was sure they would, they’re no brighter than a can of slugs) the group would wait until they all were around the sides of the building away from the cage, and Marty would go and unlock the gate and cover. He’d then retreat back inside until we got there to show them the way out. Hopefully the swarm would be distracted long enough to get everyone away. I’d hate to leave anybody at all, and I didn’t give a chain link fence much chance of holding back several thousand of those things for longer than a minute or so. If they caught sight or sound of any one of the survivors it would become very bad, very quickly.

The problem was we’d have to go out there and wait in the tunnel for the door to open from above, and then get everyone in as fast as we could. We also needed to move the vehicles here, one at a time, substantially raising the risks for us. Every trip we made increased the likelihood that we’d be seen or heard, so we planned to get this done tomorrow. We spent part of today moving the vehicles and parking them with keys in the ignitions, just up the slope from the opening to the sewer. This took some time, since we had to avoid a few undead. Fortunately they are pretty stupid, so it’s easy once we know how they act. So now it’s evening, getting late, and we are holed up in the house. I’m taking first watch again, and then Jess is relieving me. First thing tomorrow we contact Marty and Darren and I will head down into the sewer while Jess and Sarah guard the entrance. I wish we had a couple of radios to carry with us. I wish we could get more supplies out of there. I wish I was on vacation in Bermuda, but what can you do, really?

I’m injured, and so is Marty. Marty could die, he shattered a rib when he fell down the ladder, and Sarah thinks bits of splintered bone may have torn some lung tissue. We’ll know in a day or so, if he starts spitting up blood. My own injury is less life threatening; a badly sprained ankle. Jess and I can hobble along together now. Darren’s already said how cute that would be.

We managed to make it to the tunnel under the store easily this morning, and faster than we expected. Scouting the route really cut some time off the travel. The plan seemed to be working, and we could hear some loud C&W music being played on a stereo out of sight. For us to hear it here in the sewer it must have been loud indeed. After a while the undead must have moved away around the other side of the building, but this took a long time. Understandable when you are talking about so many of them. They didn’t move like herd animals either. Each one chose to go check out the noise, and bumped into its fellows seeking a path of least resistance to the front of the building. The ladder was about twelve feet high, and there was a drop at the bottom of about four feet. Numerous smaller pipes met the main storm sewer here, but they were trickling rather than gushing.

Five minutes later we heard them coming. Someone, presumably Marty, opened the gate and approached the lock on the door above my head. He pulled it open and there I was. He jumped back in surprise then, realising who I was he grinned and shook my hand. After that he didn’t waste any time, just started passing me packs to drop down to Darren below. He had made up two more, one for Darren and one for me, since we hadn’t brought ours along. Extra supplies? Hell yes!

Within two minutes we had the packs at the bottom of the ladder, and it was time for people. First was the little girl, who looked terrified at first, but put up a good brave face and climbed down after me. She was followed by Christie, a young blonde girl who held Megan’s hand tightly at the bottom. They both got packs on, and I saw that Darren already had his on too. Jay came next, and shook hands with us and said hello, then grabbed a pack himself. Amanda and Adam followed, and Sanji was just starting down the ladder when we all heard the sudden uproar from above. My guess is that one or two of the dead had come back around the building and had seen Marty and Sanji starting to climb down. Sanji yelled and came down so fast I thought he’d let go. He landed as I was telling Darren to lead them out, and everyone turned on flashlights. Marty was still up there, and just as I was about to start climbing to see why, he jumped into the shaft and tried to grab a rung. He missed and fell about halfway before he grabbed on. He cried out then dropped the rest of the way, landing hard. The others were well down the tunnel by now, and Darren was leading them to the waiting vans and trucks. I helped Marty up and he gasped out that he’d locked the gate before the undead could knock it in, and it should hold for a while. I had my doubts, but grabbed the last two packs and pushed him ahead of me into the dark tunnel.

About three minutes later we heard a crash behind us. I was guessing that it was the fence collapsing, and that soon the tunnel would be hip-deep in the crouching dead. I had the Glock in one hand, and a large Maglite in the other and I turned around and aimed both back where we had just come from. I could hear them groaning as well as the sound of the metal being bashed around, but I didn’t see anything following us. I kept going, and soon caught up with Marty. He was wheezing and panting, and I hate to think what a smashed rib must have been doing to him, but he kept right on going. I could dimly see the others ahead, the light of their flashlights just coming back to us.

I heard a loud thump behind me, then another, and then several more. I guessed that the fence had been pulled away from the opening in the ground, and that several zombies had just fallen into the pit. I really hoped enough would all fall on top of each other that they couldn’t pursue us, but I wasn’t going to bet on that. Darren and I had a surprise planned up ahead just in case.

We came to the first turn, and I showed Marty which way to go. When he was safely off down the tunnel I turned to the gas can we had left there earlier, and poured a few precious liters of gasoline all over the tunnel mouth and farther inside the sewer, then stood well back, got out a pack of matches, and flicked a lit match at the far wall. Almost instantly there was a hot dry blast, and for the second time during a rescue I found myself on my ass. Flames leapt up the walls and along the sewer pipe behind me, and hopefully would burn long enough for us to get out. I was just about to turn and follow when I saw one come along the tunnel towards the fire. It must have seen me, and it picked up the pace. An old man, this one was…had been. He stopped at the fire’s edge, and as I backed away he reached out towards me. Something black and wet dripped from his mouth as he snarled, and I had to resist the urge to shoot him. That image is going to cause me some lost sleep, I just know it. I couldn’t see others behind it, but they must be following. I turned and went along as quickly as I could. There was no telling how long those flames would last. Sheer pressure from behind might even push many of them through the flames.

I caught up to Marty at the second-to-last turn, and he seemed in a lot of pain. I told him it wasn’t far now, and he moved on. We made it to the last turn, and just as we stepped down into the last stretch of tunnel I turned my left ankle on some rock or root or branch buried in the muck. I went down. The pain was unreal, and as I lay there in the mud gasping at the thought of a broken ankle, I was sure I could hear the moans of the undead come from the tunnel behind me. That was motivation enough. Marty helped me up with his left arm, but kept the right clutched to his side. He gritted his teeth the whole time, but the two of us managed to help each other along the tunnel towards daylight. Fifteen excruciating minutes later and the two of us staggered outside. Darren and Jess and Sarah and Sanji were all aiming guns at the tunnel, and put them up when they saw it was us. The other folk were loading the packs into the vehicles quietly, and turned to look when we came outside. Darren jumped down and slammed the gate closed behind us, and then Jay and Adam pushed several large blocks of concrete slab down on top of it. Jess took charge while Sarah checked us both over. She made a point of asking if either of us had been bitten. The others helped Marty and I into the vehicles, and we drove away from there. Within fifteen minutes we had left the city, on a direct route that we had planned out earlier. We went northwest, going well around the swarm and the shopping center, until we were about a dozen kilometers away. We then pulled over, having seen no undead anywhere nearby, and Sarah gave Marty a thorough exam. She gave him painkillers, wrapped his chest in a large tight bandage, and told us his ribs were busted pretty badly. My ankle got a tensor bandage. It wasn’t broken, it just hurt a lot, and she told me not to be a baby about it. Ha!

We also took the time to get introduced. They all seemed like nice folks, and were really happy to be out of the store. We decided to find a safe place to sleep for tonight, and discuss plans for the future. I had some ideas in that direction that I wanted to share, but maybe after a meal and some getting to know each other.

Sitting around a wood-burning stove in an empty house, drinking instant coffee, tea, and iced tea (oh thank you, thank you, Amanda for bringing that!) all day, talking, making plans, and cooking a big meal was pretty much all we did today. It turns out that Sanji was a police officer, VPD for six years, knew a lot about the guns we had, and what to look for if we found any more. Jess and Sanji were talking shop like old friends, and we left them to it. Amanda and Adam are a couple, and were living together before the rise, and both were musicians who had been planning a tour of their band, Elegant Blasphemies (and thank you, thank you, Amanda for NOT playing any of your music for us!), but it got interrupted by the re-animation of several million corpses. Jay is a dentist! That’s great news, since we probably all need a little check-up by now, though without Novocain it’ll hurt a little if we need work done. Christie is 21, was just going to college for her first semester of Criminology, and has decided to pursue a major course in Survival instead. She’s been looking after Megan, whom she found on the street all alone and crying and about to be attacked by a crowd of zombies, and has become a surrogate mom to her. Megan is quiet and shy, but was very happy to meet Sparkle and Michael, and Jess let her sleep with Michael and the cat last night.

Marty is a mess. His broken ribs (it’s plural for sure) are painful and the bruising will be spectacular, but it looks like he didn’t puncture a lung. He’ll be in bed a few days, and then he’s allowed to be up and about. He argues with Amanda all the time, about anything. She is definitely his daughter, she argues right back. Adam just stands aside and lets them go to it. Smart guy. Apparently Amanda’s burn was a result of trying something similar to what I did when we rescued Dave. She set a car on fire to distract some pursuing undead, and it blew up before she got away. Sarah has examined everyone, and says Amanda has some impressive scars from the shrapnel, but nothing that didn’t heal cleanly.

We talked a lot about possible destinations. The amount of scavenging we’ll need to do has just increased a lot. We talked about where we could go, and an island off the coast was suggested, as was a farmstead somewhere in the backwoods, or maybe a small town that had managed to isolate itself (but where we would find that I have no idea). I think I surprised everyone when I suggested CFB Cold Lake. After the initial ‘what the hell?’ reaction, I explained my thoughts. The military at Cold Lake would have likely survived an outbreak like this, and would have weapons, supplies, and vehicles, not to mention a hospital, a huge lake for water, and plenty of room safe from the hordes of walking dead things. Sanji asked me why I thought they had survived. I reminded him of the planes we have seen three times now, on the same course, one of them just a few days ago. It seemed like a good bet that the base was intact if they were running air flights out of it. We had a map of Alberta, so we looked at it and I showed them where Cold Lake was. I also explained that while it was warm now, in a few months it was going to be freezing at night, and without proper shelter we’d all likely have a much harder time surviving.

It took some more talking, but in the end we decided that it was our best option. The journey would be long and dangerous, but I hoped we might rescue others
en route
, gather more weapons and vehicles, and get safely to Canadian Forces Base Cold Lake. What we’d find there was anybody’s guess. We leave in the morning.

I am in hell. I am typing this in the van. It’s around 4:15, and for the last hour Amanda and Adam have been arguing. Amanda is driving, I am in the passenger seat of the Odyssey, Jess and Adam and Michael are in the back, and the others are behind us split up between the other vehicles. My ankle won’t let me drive, but at this point I think I’d rather walk. Without weapons. Through the horde of undead we just left behind, wearing barbeque sauce and a sign that says “Eat me”. What are they arguing about? The topic for the last hour has been whether the last album by a mysterious German black metal band called
Gemalte Leiche
, an opus with the pretentious title of
Lattentragödie
is superior to the previous album,
Über Winter Hinaus
. After listening to this for an hour I think I may go completely mad. It has become apparent that Amanda’s chief method of communication is argument, and she’s pretty good at it.