Zombie Night in Canada (Book 1): First Period Page 17

  After a few seconds, the door flung open and dozens of infected streamed into the tunnel. The officers alternated firing, one man firing, while the other reloaded, slowly walking backwards. This continued for a full minute, until they both ran out of ammunition.

  “Well, you can’t live forever, can you?” the taller officer said to the other.

  “Nope.”

  “Sir, we’ll hold them off as long as we can,” the taller officer shouted to Stewart. Then he and his companion slung their MP-5s and pulled out expandable batons. Each gave them a hard flick, and they grew from six inches to twenty four inches in length. Then they braced themselves and as soon as the infected reached them, they started swinging, cracking skulls as quickly as they could swing the batons. They survived for almost fifteen seconds before they were pulled down and torn apart.

  The Prime Minister was in shock at seeing his detail annihilated before his eyes. Stewart pulled out his pistol and began firing into the infected shambling down the tunnel towards them.

  “Sir, get to the end of the tunnel and go out the door. Then up the stairs and out the emergency exit. You’ll emerge right at the landing pad, where a helicopter is ready to take you back to CFB Petawawa,” Stewart shouted.

  “What about you?”

  “Don’t worry, I’m right behind you,” Stewart replied, ejecting his magazine and jamming a fresh one home.

  The Prime Minister ran down the tunnel as fast as possible. Over his shoulder, he heard Stewart firing his pistol and turned just in time to see him disappear into a group of infected. Stewart hadn’t moved one step from where he had began firing. The Prime Minister heaved on the door and stepped into the stairwell, then began climbing. He had just made it to the emergency exit when the door below opened and infected appeared.

  He stepped outside and was temporarily blinded by the brilliant beams of klieg lights set around the perimeter. Less than fifty metres away, a helicopter was sitting, its engine roaring and the blades rapidly spinning.

  Well, that was close, he thought to himself.

  He stepped outside and at that second, an infected appeared from out of nowhere and chomped down hard on his hand. He screamed and kicked the infected woman in the gut and she tumbled to the ground, rolling away.

  Then, summoning every drop of adrenalin left in his body, he ran to the helicopter. Infected seemed to be everywhere, and only the barricade of barbed wire around the landing pad held them at bay. He had criticized the military for erecting it, as well as all of the other defences around Parliament Hill as unnecessary. Now he thanked the powers that be that he had never demanded they tear them down.

  When he got close to the helicopter, a pair of soldiers jumped out and helped him aboard.

  One of them handed over a headset.

  “Should we wait for anyone else, sir?” one of them asked.

  “No, no one else made it.”

  Then they slammed the door shut and the helicopter lifted off. About ten minutes into the flight, one of the soldiers noticed the wound on his hand.

  “Are you okay, sir?”

  “It’s nothing, I cut it when I fell in the stairwell,” the Prime Minister replied hesitantly.

  “Well, let me patch that up for you, sir.”

  Chapter 16

  September 27th

  “Bad news. There’s an infected outside near the front doors. She’s pawing at the doors, trying to get in,” Fred told Steve when he walked into the office. Steve glanced down at the security monitors and saw a once beautiful young woman scratching and pawing at the main door. Now, most of her face had been ripped off and her clothing was drenched in dried blood and gore.

  “What do you think we should do?” Steve asked.

  “Well, if we shoot her, we run the risk of attracting others. Or we can ignore her. Or we can go out there and bash her head in. Those are the only options I guess. Don’t know, it’s your call, ,” Fred replied.

  “I say just leave it alone and make sure all the doors are closed nice and tight. We don’t have enough ammo to kill all the infected that are probably around here,” Steve said. “Let me ask around at breakfast.”

  “If you’re going to send someone outside, you should ask Xander. It was cold the way he dispatched that infected guy yesterday. He was like a fucking Terminator, dude.”

  Steve walked out to the common area where everyone slept. With no interior walls in the Costco, they had been forced to rearrange the smaller shelves in the pharmacy department into a large square, and then stuffed pallets of heavy items underneath them, forming a large square with only one entry point. Generally, one person stayed awake all night long watching the entrance just in case the exterior was breached. People were just starting to stir awake, stretching and rubbing the grogginess out of their eyes. Steve walked over to where Xander was sleeping and noticed that Evelyn was still in their double sleeping bag but Xander was not.

  From behind him, Steve heard Xander say, “Get a good look at my gal?”

  Steve spun around and saw Xander standing there with a toothbrush in his hand, grinning. Ignoring the comment, Steve said, “I was just looking for you. Let’s go for a walk.”

  They headed off into the warehouse.

  “We’ve got an infected outside. I’m not sure if we should go out there and deal with her, or just leave her alone. What do you think?” Steve asked.

  “If there’s a chance to get rid of her without making any noise, then we should, but if we start shooting, it’ll just attract more of them.”

  “The problem with that is finding someone to go out there and do it. It’s easy to find people to stand watch on the roof, drinking beer and listening to music, but I haven’t found anyone enthusiastic to go outside and ‘get rid’ of infected, as you put it,” Steve said.

  “Well, I’ll volunteer if no one else will,” Xander replied.

  “You’ll go out there?”

  “I’ve dealt with them several times already. I’m not a pro, but I probably have more experience than anyone else in here.”

  “Fair enough, when do you want to go outside?”

  “Anytime, just find a couple reliable people to back me up if it goes wrong.”

  “Translation, not Donald…” Steve trailed off.

  “Yeah, pretty much. Fred, Jack, Gary, yourself are all capable.”

  “Okay, let me set it up and we’ll come get you,” Steve said.

  Steve wandered off and Xander walked back to the sleeping area.

  About an hour later, Xander stepped outside to deal with the infected woman. It was almost anti-climatic. She had been very young, barely a teenager, when she had been infected. She moved slowly and awkwardly and he easily dispatched her with a blow to her skull. She crumbled to the ground without a sound. Xander waited to make sure she was gone and then went back to the door and pounded on it. Above, Steve radioed down to Gary, who opened the door and let Xander in. Seconds later, he hopped on a nearby forklift and moved the pallet of shrink wrapped flour sacks back in front of the emergency exit.

  Xander walked back inside and stopped in the entertainment section. They had left one in the back on CBC’s 24 hour news channel. He stood in front of the TV, watching it silently. He noticed a tremor in his hand and glanced at it. The spasm slowly spread from his hands, up his arms, and took over his body. He choked back a sob and steadied himself, thinking it would devastate Evelyn to see him like this. He grabbed the shelf and drew several deep breaths and calmed himself. Once his heart rate slowed and his eyes cleared, he walked into the main area, where he found Evelyn. He quietly sat down beside her and joined the conversation with some of the others.

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  Xander and Evelyn walked into the staff break room, which of late doubled as a dining room for everyone here.

  Several tables had been set up and one held a variety of food – steaks, chicken, all kinds of meats, as well as some French fries and other starchy foods. A couple giant bowls of salad were at the end of the
table – but if history was a guide, the salad would go largely uneaten.

  He and Evelyn grabbed a couple of paper plates and filled them up with exactly what they wanted and then sat down at a table and began to eat. They were halfway through dinner when they heard someone yelling.

  “Fuck! Chicken again! Can’t we have something else for a change? How about some of that Kraft Dinner or Stagg Chili I see every time I walk down the aisles?”

  “Sorry, Donald, but we make only what we’re told to make,” Sandy said, one of the Costco employees who did most of the cooking.

  “If you want to eat chili, you ain’t sleeping in the same sleeping bag as me,” Diane said. Several people nearby chuckled.

  “Well, that’s bullshit! I’m sick and tired of the same food over and over. Can’t we have a little variety?” he shouted. Donald turned to face those eating. “Anyone else agree?”

  A few people nodded, but no one spoke up.

  Donald was about to unleash another tirade at Sandy when Xander stood up.

  Donald looked over and said, “Do you agree with me, Xander?”

  “Not at all. Think about it, numbnuts. We haven’t seen a cop car in days, the neighbourhood nearby is full of infected, and we’ve had two brownouts today.” He paused. “Stop for a minute and think about that!” Xander said, his voice rising.

  “What do we do when there is no power to cook?” he continued. “What happens to all that food in the meat department? In the freezers? It’s all going to fucking spoil, you stupid asshole!”

  “But–” Donald sputtered, and then Xander cut him off.

  “Then we’ll have only a couple of days to eat all that stuff in the freezer, and shortly afterwards we’ll be eating canned food. Do you really think we won’t be here for weeks? Or even months?

  “We need to save those canned goods so we don’t fucking starve, you idiot! Now sit down, shut up, and eat your fucking dinner!” Xander dumped his half-eaten food in the trash and stormed out of the break room.

  A few minutes later, Evelyn found him sitting alone in the clothing department.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah…it’s just been a rough week. Maybe I should go apologize to Donald.”

  “Why? You said exactly what most of us already knew. He needed a wakeup call. Let’s go watch some TV and relax.”

  Xander always tried to watch a few hours of TV each night – news mostly. Many people thought him morbid for paying so much attention to the death and destruction being wrought on a global scale, but he mostly watched in hopes of hearing good news – that a cure had been found or that a better method than killing the infected was discovered. Nothing of the sort was ever mentioned.

  As time went on, one by one, TV and radio stations fell silent. The cable stations in the big cities in the eastern part of the country were the first to go. Those located in the heart of the larger cities, like Much Music and Teletoon, went first, while those located in the suburbs, like the Weather Network, held out longer, barricading themselves in and running on emergency generators after the power went out. Eventually though, one by one, the major networks shut down. The kids really hated losing Much Music and the cartoon channel, but there was nothing for it. Diane had quickly solved that problem by seating them in front of a TV with a DVD player and leaving a stack of Disney DVDs nearby. Xander missed the hot chicks on CTV Newsnet most of all – although of course, he never told Evelyn that.

  Even worse, as power became more tenuous, each night more and more of the city was dark, the phones – both cellular and landline – died, as did the water pressure. Steve had had people fill up every bucket, container and barrel with water he could find the day they had locked themselves inside, but with almost two dozen people, even that was beginning to run low. The awful ‘if it’s yellow let it mellow, and if it’s brown flush it down’ rationing method had been instituted to stretch the water supplies. The public bathrooms everyone had used so casually just a few days ago quickly became a nasty, smelly place to visit.

  Some people were still in a foul mood after Donald’s outburst at dinner, so instead of watching the news before going to sleep that night, Xander hooked up a Blu-Ray player and watched a comedy to lighten the mood. For the most part it worked. People laughed and forgot about the horrors occurring outside – at least until they went to bed and tried to fall asleep in the middle of the cold concrete floor of the Costco they were now taking refuge in.

  Xander was disheartened after supper when he heard from Steve that there were more infected outside. Only now instead of one, there were four infected outside, shambling around, seeking a way inside. He sighed and rationalized that that was the point of barricading all the doorways, to prevent potentially large numbers of infected from getting inside. He thought he had been prepared for a siege, but the sudden reality of it still shook him slightly.

  Donald walked over to the electronics section where everyone was watching the movie Xander had set up near the end of the night. He looked over at Xander a few times, expecting Xander to come over and apologize, maybe even grovel, but Xander didn’t budge from where he and Evelyn were sitting. Finally, when the movie ended, he walked past Donald, who wouldn’t even look Xander in the eye.

  Chapter 17

  September 28th

  Xander had just finished brushing his teeth and was walking back to the sleeping area when he heard shouting from the main office.

  “Wake up, you lazy bastard!” Steve shouted at the top of his voice.

  “Huh? What?” Donald said groggily, his head down on the desk.

  “I said wake the fuck up, you moron!” Steve shouted again. This time he kicked the chair Donald was sitting in, sending both careening across the room into a wall. Donald fell off the chair in a heap. He came up cursing.

  “What the fuck?”

  “You lazy fucking shiftless bastard, you fell asleep! You bitched and moaned about doing any real work around here, so I gave you guard duty. Then you bitched that it was too cold outside, so I let you do this instead. How fucking hard is it to glance at a couple of TV monitors every few minutes?” Steve shouted at Donald.

  “Sorry, man, I was tired.”

  “Sorry doesn’t cut it, fucktard! What if the infected got in here while you were sleeping? We’d all be dead or fucking worse,” Steve paused. “Fuck!”

  Xander, Jessica, and a half dozen others suddenly appeared in the doorway, some carrying weapons and all of them only half dressed.

  “What’s going on in here?” Xander inquired.

  “This lazy fucker fell asleep while on guard duty, that’s what’s wrong!” Steve shouted.

  “Is that true, Donald?” someone asked.

  “Look, it was only for a minute or two,” Donald replied sheepishly.

  “Really? It was only for a minute or two. Tell me, how many infected are outside right now?” Steve said angrily.

  “Last time I checked there were only four,” Donald said.

  “Look at the monitors, dumbass, there’s more than a dozen now. You’re telling me that they only showed up in the last two minutes. That’s bullshit and you know it!” Steve fired back.

  “Look, I…”

  “Stuff it, Donald. Get your ass out of the chair and let someone responsible do it!”

  Donald, face red, was slow to get up. He scanned the crowd, desperately looking for someone who might support him. No one spoke.

  “I said get the fuck out!” Steve screamed at Donald.

  Donald stood up and slunk out of the room, where, just outside, his wife Diane waited for him.

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  Master Corporal William Stone was exhausted – both mentally and physically. He had been awake almost non-stop for the past thirty-six hours and was running purely on adrenaline and coffee. Well, that and Alertec. Supposedly it could keep you awake for seven days straight with no side effects, but he didn’t believe it for a second. Still, he popped them because it took the edge off his weariness. His s
houlder was so sore from firing now that he was beginning to lose the feelings in his fingertips and was constantly debating whether or not to try firing left-handed. Almost continuously since that large group of infected tried to breach the base’s defences, more infected had been shambling north towards the base, likely attracted by the noise the first battle had made. Almost every soldier on the base was at fence line now, firing into the seemingly limitless numbers of infected streaming north.

  In the immediate aftermath of the assault on the base by thousands of infected, snipers had fired at anything that moved in the area now called ‘No-Man’s Land’ by the troops guarding the base. While the supply company restocked troops with ammo and refilled the tanker trucks, an engineering team had been preparing to go outside the wire into No-Man’s Land to dig another deeper trench further from the fence.

  Then another horde of infected erupted from the tree line, but this time it was much larger than the first. A siren blew and troops along the fence line scrambled from their tents to again deal with the infected. Again, a furious fight ensued and once again, the troops held the fence line, although this time almost a dozen troops were lost, from a pair that was torn apart after they fell off their firing platform into the horde below to a squad injured when a mortar shell went off prematurely and sliced them to ribbons. Dozens more went down with injuries, mostly from bullet ricochets or fragments from grenades and mortar shells.

  The attacks, if they could be called that, kept up for the rest of the day. In Master Corporal Stone’s opinion, the most frightening time was that night, as the infected stumbled towards the base in near total darkness. Thick cloud cover obscured what little moonlight there might have been, and the handful of searchlights along the fence line were nowhere near enough to properly illuminate the battlefield. Mortars popped star shells and several vehicles were moved so that their headlights shone out into No- Man’s Land, but there were still plenty of dark, murky places for the infected to disappear into. Most of the time, you didn’t even know an infected was nearby until it growled.