Rise (24 page)

The crew, other than Darren and I, consists of:

Cpl Eric Craig. He’s an Army guy, tall and skinny, can drink like a fish, but is a really good shot and a wicked hand-to-hand fighter. He’s from Edmonton, and ended up here when they abandoned the infantry base in the city.

Laura Howard, a former mechanic from Saskatoon. Met her on the course we just finished. She’s a bit shy, but a survivor. She can make any engine purr.

Todd McGee, a local civilian. He’s about 50, but taught karate at the Cold Lake Community Center and speaks a little German and Japanese. He’s in good shape and isn’t in denial like some of the locals appear to be.

Jim Ramsland, a journeyman electrician and our scrounger. He’s also a former firefighter, and has paramedic-level first aid training. He’s a big guy, but in great shape.

Kim Barber, a student of jiu-jitsu, and maybe 19. She’s tougher than anyone else in the crew. Met her on the course too. She’s from Vancouver, and made her own way here on a motorcycle when the undead killed everyone else she knew. It was her that passed us that day. She made it all the way from Vancouver with no guns. If she had to fight the undead she used a crowbar.

To keep it simple, we are taking only three types of weapons. Each of us will have a Browning 9mm, and either a C7A1 or a 12-gauge shotgun. Other weapons will include knives, a crowbar in each vehicle, and whatever we want to pick up while out there. We’re also using military clothing, for the most part. It’s durable and has lots of pockets. Ammunition comes in cases, and we are taking lots of it. Also two vehicles, a Dodge Durango that used to be an RCMP cruiser, and a Toyota Tacoma 4x4. Kim has said that if she can find a motorcycle in decent condition she’ll try to salvage it as well.

We are going to carry water purification equipment, and a lot of food and water as well, but we’ll be scrounging water and food as we go. Gas cans are going to be secured into the Tacoma’s truck bed along with supplies and extra clothes. We expect it to get cold while we are away on this little excursion.

The plan is to drive south towards Vermilion, and take the #16 highway into Vegreville. There are a lot of things in that area to check out, and we might be able to get a survey of the local population of undead to see how many we could be dealing with in the future. We’re taking a radio in each car to keep in touch with each other and Cold Lake, and whatever other roving military outfits might be out there. There’s a group of the PPCLI returning from that way in a few days, so we might get some intel from them.

Now, I plan to enjoy the rest of this day outside with Jess, the kids and Christie and Darren. It might be the last chance I have in a while of seeing them all together and happy.

I talked to Sarah on the phone again today. She said they are thinking of moving a lot of the sick and injured to Cold Lake for the winter, and that a disturbingly large number of undead had been spotted in the area recently. Small groups have been seen within ten kilometers, wandering through the fields and trees, and far more of them farther south. I worry about her, but she assures me that they town is well fortified.

One thing that everyone has been curious about has been denied to us. We were hoping that the freezing temperatures at night would freeze the walking dead solid, but so far it hasn’t happened. The observed undead (a group that they keep on the base in a secure field) just kept trying to get at the guards outside the fence. They only have a dozen there, and they are guarded constantly. They are trying to find out what it is that animates them, but so far they have had no luck. The virus theory has been disproved, but that’s all we know. Or all they are telling us.

Darren has brought all his gear here, and we are loading up the vehicles. Going over and over our loads, because we don’t want to miss anything. Once we leave we won’t be back for weeks. Tomorrow we are all scheduled for a medical and dental exam to see if there’s anything dire we need fixed.

One thing that has recently sprung to my attention is the mental health of people exposed to this nightmare. The people here who haven’t been out there amongst the dead are either in denial about it or coping well, despite it being something they can’t quite grasp. They know what happened; they can’t just quite see it as real though. The ones in denial bother me the most. They seem sure that tomorrow things will be back to normal. We’ll be bitching about Ottawa and cheering on the hockey games anytime now.

Survivors have a few issues too. The strain of surviving tends to either make or break people. We’ve seen a few of the broken ones, who mostly survived because they were with others and had help. Sarah and I fall into the category of people who thrived, I think. Jess too, and Darren. The people who break down get paranoid, isolate themselves, or go catatonic. And that’s just the ones I know of.

It’s cold today. We’re packed up and the whole crew is coming over for dinner tonight. Jess wanted to meet everyone at the same time. We are making a huge chili, and baking fresh bread. It really smells wonderful in here.

Medical checks all went well. We are all in pretty good shape, plus I got to see Jay for a few minutes. He’s doing well, and has a lot of patients coming in. He gave us all new toothbrushes and told us what to watch out for while we are out scavenging. Similarly, the doctors who checked us over gave us stern warnings about close contact with the undead. What a strange world.

We set out this morning. Jess came out to see us off, then went to her course. We were both pretty sad that I was leaving, but we’ll be able to talk to each other at least. Once the vehicles were fuelled up and fully loaded we proceeded to the checkpoint at the west side of town, the same one we entered when we all arrived as refugees.

There, we signed ourselves out on official business, all of us signing a form indicating destination, radio call signs, and intended return date. The officer at the gate wished us good luck, and he seemed sincere about it too. The town needed the supplies we were hoping to find.

So, with Darren and I in the Durango, and Laura in the back, we left Cold Lake. Eric, Kim, Todd, and Jim are in the Tacoma, and we are leading. It felt really
wrong
to be leaving a safe and secure area to deliberately go back into zombie infested areas, but the need outweighs the risk. We turned south and headed towards the #28 highway, which led us towards Bonnyville, the town the Air Force destroyed to stop a horde of undead from approaching Cold Lake. The farms we passed were surrounded by high fences, and patrolled by well armed guardians. We saw no undead until we passed the town of Fort Kent, a blink-and-you-miss-it town that was abandoned months ago. Passing through it we could see the remains of a fire ahead. Probably from the blast that destroyed Bonnyville, which we were fast approaching. And sure enough, just as the desolation and ruin came into view, we saw a lurching figure in the field to the right of the road. It was an elderly female, skin blackened, clothing crispy. She must have been on the far edge of the blast, and wasn’t destroyed when the FAE went off. We passed her and kept going. Wrecked cars and trucks appeared on the road and in the ditches, all showing fire damage and shattered glass. We saw bodies soon after that, the rotted corpses lying like felled trees where they had been tossed by the explosion. Not one was moving, so we pressed on. Entering the town, or what was left of it, we saw a few moving undead, burned and blackened, who didn’t even look in our direction. Darren said they probably didn’t have eyes anymore. I tended to agree. The town itself was absolutely destroyed. Since an FAE had been dropped here, it was kind of impossible to pinpoint the center of the blast. The roads were clear through to the other side, and we just kept on going, our tires leaving a trail of soot on the pavement on the other side of the town. Eventually we passed all sign of the conflagration, and were back onto regular roads. We had to slow many times to wind our way past blocked areas, and once had to shoot a walker that got too close while we were refueling. We elected to keep the tanks topped up, so if they got down by a quarter on either vehicle we stopped and refueled.

We could have pushed through to Vegreville in a day, but we stopped at the last human-inhabited farm we knew of instead. This particular farm belonged to Colin and Betty Dawson who, along with the seven guards they had working the property and watching the fences, were the last people alive we’d see in a while. They knew we were coming, and let us in. They wanted to hear all the news from Cold Lake, and we happily told them all we knew. I called Jess from there, and we talked for a while about the kids and her day and what I had seen out here. She sounded worried, and I did my best to reassure her, but we are both realists.

The Dawsons have given us a place to sleep for the night. We are helping with chores and guard duty tonight as well. They haven’t seen more than about ten undead a week for a month now, and have the entire property fenced. We should sleep pretty securely.

We came into town from the east, after a half day of dodging wrecks and small groups of undead. We had come south on the 41, then west on the 16, passing small towns long abandoned. A few times we had to stop to clear vehicles off the road so we could pass, but this was a simple task, and the risk was minimal. Half of us watched out for stray dogs and zombies, while the rest pushed wrecks off the road.

Vegreville was ahead of us on the road still when we made our first find. We saw a big 18-wheeler ahead on the highway, pulled off onto the side. It was a grocery trailer, so we immediately hoped it was full and zombie-free. Checking the area we saw three undead within a half kilometer, all of them staggering towards us in the long grass or down the roadway. I told Laura, Todd, and Kim to watch the walking dead, and the rest of us walked around the trailer, checking underneath and around it for damage, undead stragglers, and anything else interesting. The truck was in good shape, and the cab was empty, so we went to the back and had a look at the doors. They were still sealed tight, so we got a pair of tin cutters and broke through the seal. The doors opened with a little effort; we had to oil the hinges. The smell of rotten food wafted out at us, and we all gagged, but compared to the undead this wasn’t that bad. We backed off and swung the doors open, and inside was a half trailer load of groceries. Some of the perishables had obviously gone bad, but the mass of it was packaged or canned, and should still be okay. There were also a couple of cases of cigarettes, but none of us smoked, so we were not too concerned about those. We sealed the doors up again and went to check out the cab. If the truck started we could take it back to Cold Lake today.

No such luck. It was out of gas entirely. That’s why the driver had abandoned it here, I guess. We managed to get it to turn over twice, then it choked on lack of fuel. So we marked it with a tag, a bright orange flag with Cold Lake Salvage Team #107 printed on it in black, and I went back to call it in. We’d have to find some fuel before we could move this.

We continued on towards the town, and saw that some attempt to fortify had been started, and then abandoned. The highway went right through the center of the town, past a huge coloured egg that baffled me. What was this thing for? We drove up to the edge of the fortifications, a hasty barrier of bricks, lumber, rolls of wire, and soil shoveled into canvas sacks. It was incomplete, and a few decomposed skeletal remains were visible nearby. We stayed in the vehicles for a good five minutes, looking around with binoculars, making note of the gas stations we could see, grocery stores, the local police detachment, and noting how many walking dead were approaching. There were only about a dozen at first. Some were behind the barrier, within sight when we stopped, and they moved towards us immediately, some quickly, others dragging legs along slowly. All looked hungry to me, but maybe I was just projecting. I asked Eric and Laura to thin them out, and they each started taking shots when the undead were about 100 feet away. They worked the line from the outside, Eric starting on the left, Laura on the right, using single shots to destroy the bastards. Eric was a slightly better shot, but I missed Jess right then. She is a far better shot then either of these two.

Once the shooting stopped, and the immediate threat was destroyed, we set about clearing some of the barricade away. It didn’t take long. We pulled some reels of heavy wire aside, and tossed several dozen sandbags after them. This left us enough space to get the vehicles through. Eric and Laura stayed on sentry duty through this, and warned us that more zombies were approaching. We expected that the noise we made killing the first twelve of them would draw what was left of the undead population out into the open to have brunch. What we didn’t expect was that there would be so many of them. Where were they hiding? A few were approaching across the fields, maybe ten or so, but there were easily a hundred in the town, making their slow and steady way towards us. We saw more coming out of side streets behind the main group. I ordered everyone back in the vehicles. This was too many to deal with this way. We’d be overwhelmed if we tried to fight it out. We turned around while the horde was still struggling with the barricade, and drove away east for about ten kilometers. We found a house off the highway and stopped to check it out, deciding that if it turned out to be empty we would stay the night here. It was off the highway, a two story farmhouse with a water pump, and there was a barn out back too. It was far enough from the horde that they’d lose interest and wander about a little, but wouldn’t follow us out here.