Rise (17 page)

Down the hallway about fifty feet there was a rough staircase of dirt and wooden planks. It rose up to another door, a small hatch. Sanji went up and listened, then peeked through the cracks to see what he could determine about our foes. They were nearby, and too close to risk us fleeing without a distraction. Darren looked up, and said he had a plan involving a portable compact disk player and a compact disk. He went back to the house, and a few minutes later we heard music. I recognized the song. It was REM’s
It’s the End of the World As We Know It
. Darren came back and we all just looked at him like he’d committed a great crime. He just grinned.

We waited for the song to end, and then it began again. The little shit had put it on repeat. Sanji opened the door, and we snuck out into the morning sun. There were plenty of trees between us and them, so we made a quiet getaway. The makeshift splint on my arm was taped up pretty well, and I had it slung next to my chest. I had my Glock, but Sanji was carrying the carbine now, since with a busted arm I couldn’t hold it to fire. This sucked.

Nearly an hour of walking through the trees led us to the road, about a kilometer from the house. We found ourselves upon a hill overlooking Hinton. A familiar sight. We could see the Safeway and the van from here, and with the binoculars we could also see the four undead who refused to believe there was nothing there for them to eat. They were walking around the van, bumping into each other, or just staring off into space.

We needed that van and its supplies. Getting there from here was going to take a bit of work. There was about three kilometers of ground, a highway, a bunch of houses, and a large empty parking lot with several zombies in it between us and the van. We set off down the slope and took several hours to get across the expanse of trees and brush. We went slowly, trying to be as quiet as five people can be. We reached the edge of the residential area, and sat quietly for a while. We all remembered the groups of walking dead that had emerged from houses the day before. When we heard nothing, we moved on. Another hour of us creeping about the alleyways and across streets. We hid, we scouted, and we snuck. We were careful, and avoided anything too open or suspect. We made it to the highway around three in the afternoon, and watched with dismay as our van was surrounded by six undead. Two more had shown up in the hours between. We needed to do something about this quickly before more arrived. Jess suggested that she and I set up a sniper position across the highway, and that the rest go to get the van while she took out the six we could see. I’d be her backup in case anything came up behind us. We talked over the specifics and set up a field of fire for Jess. The other three would approach from the west and only step into the open when Jess had finished shooting. We ate a bite really quickly, and they left. We’d give them half an hour to get into position, and then Jess would take out all six of the walking dead in the parking lot.

True to her word, she started shooting in exactly thirty minutes, lining up her first shot and gently squeezing the trigger. I’d never really watched her shoot before. She seemed to have an entire love affair with this rifle that I was just realising existed. She talked to it, like it was a person. She must have seen my expression, because she just smiled and shrugged. Her first shot took off the top of the skull of one that was standing just a few feet from the front of the van. It fell and didn’t move, and she switched targets. The other five were standing, trying to figure out where the sound had come from, and she shot again. Another one, this time a former businessman, dropped with finality as a bullet passed through his forehead. I stopped paying attention to that end, and looked around us. We were up on top of a kids’ play park set in a schoolyard across the highway from the Safeway. She was leaning on the monkey bars, steady as a rock. I scanned behind us and around us, and nothing was moving. I counted five shots, and she stopped for a moment to change clips. One last shot and we were set. She missed nothing. Everything she had pointed her gun at had died. My girlfriend is scary.

She packed up and we ran down onto the highway and across the pavement. The others were at the van already, and Sanji and Jay ran inside to grab the last of the things we had set down. They came back a minute later with armloads. We got there and packed it all in the van as fast as we could, then climbed in. Jess drove. We did a u-turn in the lot, and sped back the way we had come the day before. We made it back to the others without incident, and Sarah took a look at my arm and winced when I told her what I’d done. She set it properly, after I had a few shots of some really nasty whiskey we’d found.

That brings us up to date now. We are still in the house. We sorted everything, and have been eating well. No undead have approached, though we know they are there in the town. With luck we’ll be able to slip by easily when we decide to leave.

It’s raining now. Appropriate weather for a funeral. We lost Marty. He died last night, coughing up blood and phlegm. Sarah says it was pneumonia, a complication of infection from his shattered ribs. And we all thought he was doing better. He started coughing several days ago, and it just got worse. We didn’t have the right antibiotics from the raid on Hinton, didn’t even know we’d need them.

We haven’t left the house yet, outside of town. It’s as secure as we can make it and nothing living or dead has found us.

Amanda is taking it pretty badly. She sat up last night talking to her dad, and stayed with him until he died around midnight. She’s lost her mother and father to this nightmare and the only person she has left is Adam. She was up all night crying, and Sarah and Jess and pretty much everyone else have been there for her.

We buried Marty this morning. Sanji and Sarah and Darren dug a hole in the back yard, and Jay made a marker out of some two-by-fours and carved Marty’s name into it along with the relevant dates.

He didn’t rise. He stayed dead once he died. I don’t know what that means, if the thing that makes the dead return is active in all of us he should have risen. If not, then it must be a directly transferred thing. I have no idea. But we wrapped him in some bed sheets, and buried him early this morning just as the rain was starting.

My wrist is feeling better. The pain is more manageable since we returned from Hinton with some pretty amazing painkillers. The problem is that if I take a heavy dose I end up really sleepy. That’s why I haven’t written much the last few days, I’ve been sleeping. And now my arm is all itchy under the cast Sarah managed to make out of some of the supplies we returned with.

We drove through Hinton this morning, our little convoy of stragglers and survivors, heading east into the prairies. We passed down out of the foothills and into less rugged terrain. A few undead took notice of us in the few towns we passed, and some tried chasing us. It didn’t do them any good. Nowhere did we see signs of survivors or any kind of recovery. Just wreckage and death. We’d checked the radios periodically, both CB and the AM/FM sets just to be sure, but we got nothing but static. There has been some discussion of the route we are going to take. None of us want to risk Edmonton. It’s too big a city to be safe. The former population there would be sure to engulf us without really trying, so we planned to avoid the city, which was on a more or less direct route between us and Cold Lake. After discussing it, we decided on the following route. We’ll take the #16 to where it meets the #22, and go north to Mayerthorpe. From there we will swing east to Barrhead and then to Westlock. Then onto the #2, and north to Athabasca, east again to Lac la Biche, and then south-east on the #55 to Cold Lake. This route will take us well around Edmonton and the high population regions in the center of the province. Going south isn’t really an option, since the area between Edmonton and Calgary was huge and heavily populated. This journey is going to be over 650 km from Hinton to Cold Lake.

We have to get some diesel for the rig pretty soon too. It’s a little ironic that it cannot use the fuel it is carrying. I am going to update more later on. There’s something on the road ahead that we are going to check out.

Ahead of us on the road was a horse. It was standing by another body lying on the pavement, a man’s body by the look of it. The horse was brown with a white diamond on its nose. It was saddled, and very much alive. We couldn’t tell about the fallen figure from this distance. We stopped the vehicles about 75 feet away from the horse, and all the adults got out. We quickly looked around, and saw no undead within sight. We decided to leave Jess, Jay, and Amanda driving the vans and truck, and Sanji in the rig in case they had to haul ass out of there. That left Adam, Darren, Sarah, Christie and I to investigate. We all went armed, Darren with the 30-.06, me with the Glock (damn wrist, can’t fire the carbine), Christie with the police shotgun, and Adam with the other Glock. We brought a first aid kit in case the figure on the street was alive.

Nearby there were several cars wrecked on the highway. One was driven off the road into a tree, but we couldn’t see a body in it. We spread out and approached. I thought the figure might be alive, since the horse was standing right there. Most animals we’ve seen are terrified of the undead. Given that this horse was standing still and occasionally sniffing the figure, it was a good bet he or she was still alive. Approaching, we could see green pants and black boots, and what looked like a military vest. A soldier maybe? There was blood. We could see it on the man’s clothes, and were now close enough to see it was indeed a man. He looked about 25, and was badly injured. Christie went to the horse and let it sniff her. She calmed it down as it shied a bit, and then took its reins and led it away, and I waved to Darren to go with her. Sarah, Adam and I looked at the man, and he surprised us by opening his eyes. He was sunburned, and had three bites on his body, one on his arm, and two on his legs. He asked us for some water, and Adam gave him some. He drank a little, then coughed it up. We gave him some more.

Eventually he was able to talk to us. His name was Master Corporal David Chambers, of the 3rd Battalion PPCLI. He was feverish and shaking, but very glad to see us. He told us he was part of a scouting unit that was checking the western highways for “survivors, salvage, and hostiles”, but his squad had been destroyed by a large number of undead last night. He himself was badly wounded, but managed to get away in the chaos. He estimated between fifty and seventy undead had swarmed his squad’s camp at about 2 a.m., and his unit of horse-mounted scouts, fifteen men and women, had all been killed. His unit was now based out of CFB Wainright, and had contact with CFB Cold Lake and CFB Comox. Apparently the military was trying to reclaim as much of the provinces as they could. Several thousand survivors were being sheltered at Cold Lake, and missions were constantly sent out to search for more.

We explained our story and what we’d seen, places we’d been. Master Corporal Chambers asked us to relay his mission report to his superiors at Wainright, if we made it there. He knew he was doomed, knew he’d come back as one of the walking dead when he died. From his condition, we were amazed he was still alive. Sarah was checking his pulse and temperature, and wanted to move him out of the road, but he kept insisting that we take his report. I agreed, and he took a notebook from his vest and handed it to me, and had me copy down his last report. He dictated it and I recorded it exactly, to hand over to his superiors. I promised him we’d do this. He also gave us one set of his dog tags, and asked us to look after his horse, whom he’d named General Veers. He also told us that there was a larger unit from the 3rd Battalion, with vehicles and medical staff, somewhere between Westlock and Swan Hills, that was heading north to see about survivors around the Lesser Slave Lake.

We moved him back to the vans, and made him as comfortable as we could. He looked surprised to see the children and cat. He also noticed Jess’ rifle, and asked her where she had gotten her hands on a C3A1 Sniper Rifle. She told him that an old boyfriend had given it to her, ‘on loan’ while he was in the Gulf. He asked her if she knew how to handle it, and I told him that she was the best shot I’d ever seen, and everything she got in her sights died. Jess nodded, and Chambers looked at her for a minute, then asked her to shoot him when the time came. He really did not want to re-animate, and wanted her to promise that once he died, he wouldn’t get up again. She looked at him sadly, and agreed to do it.

He didn’t last much longer. He went into convulsions after another half hour, and started raving. His fever peaked and stayed hot, and Sarah found a few ampoules of morphine in his vest and gave them to him. That calmed him, and he died about twenty minutes later. We all sat around for a few minutes and watched him, but he didn’t move. We remembered it can take up to an hour. So Jess and I dragged his body off down into the ditch, and I watched him while Jess went back for the .22. She returned, and we sat and watched him together for a few more minutes. He was dead. No breath, no pulse, just dead. Finally, Jess stood, and pointed the rifle at his head. She stood there almost motionless for about five more minutes, before she turned to me, and I saw tears running down her face. I stood up and hugged her, whispering to her that it was what he wanted. He didn’t want to come back. He had asked us and we had agreed. She sniffled, and wiped her eyes, and told me, “I really love you, you know that?”