Leave it to fucking Walmart to profit from this, he thought to himself. Then he hustled out to his X-Terra and drove to a nearby Home Depot.
He made sure everything was well hidden in the back of his truck and ran inside, where he bought a half dozen 2x4s, a giant 6-inch eye bolt, some matching nuts and washers, and finally, a wood saw. He was pleasantly surprised when he noticed that Home Depot didn’t gouge him for it either. He loaded it into the back of his truck, and then drove home. Instead of parking it in the underground parkade as usual, he parked in the surface lot, where he had a space as well. Luckily for him, it was less than fifty feet from his balcony.
It took several trips to lug everything up to his apartment, but he carried everything upstairs, except for two of the three jerry cans full of gas, which remained hidden in the back of the truck. Once everything was inside his condo, he began slicing the beef roasts as thin as he possibly could. It took more than an hour, and by then, his arm ached from the cutting. He tossed the sliced beef into a bowl and seasoned it with Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, salt, some garlic powder, and a touch of brown sugar. He put it all in the fridge to marinate for a couple of hours.
The pistol and ammo went in his bedroom with his rifle, and the jerry can went on his patio. He hid it behind some tools as a precaution to prevent its theft. The battery for the drill went on the charger, as did his cell phone. He made sure to plug in his laptop as well. His propane tanks went into the closet with his camping gear, and then he measured exactly how wide his door was and began cutting the 2x4s to a length six inches longer. He took one to make sure it was wide enough, and when he was 100% sure, he marked where the screws should go on each. In a rush, he would mount them over the doorframe to block the door. Push came to shove, he could always move his sofa in front of the door, too. Later, after the drill’s battery was fully charged, he would pre-drill the screws into all eight of his planks.
His next step was taking one of the fifty-foot ropes he had bought and doubling it, tying a knot in it every foot twenty-five times. He was only on the second floor and about fifteen feet above the ground, but it seemed better to have more rope than less. In short order, he had a rudimentary rope ladder that he could use to escape from the condo if necessary. The eye bolt would be mounted in his wall and serve as the anchor for his rope ladder. All that remained was to drill a hole in his wall and mount it.
He made himself lunch from his fresh food, including a big salad, pasta and some BBQ chicken. He turned on the oven to 125 degrees Fahrenheit. The trick in making beef jerky was to dry it thoroughly, not to actually cook it. Once it was fully dry, he would pack it into plastic bags and leave it in his fridge.
He was just about to put the beef jerky strips in the oven when his phone rang.
-------
The police cruiser raced at top speed down 144th Avenue. The siren blared and the lights flashed as they dodged in and out of traffic, avoiding other vehicles and boulevards. Just minutes ago, they had received a frantic call from Sandra. It consisted of shouts and incoherent screaming, and ended after what sounded like a window breaking, followed by a gunshot, and then silence.
Ed was driving and Dan fervently wished he were driving instead, despite knowing in his gut that Ed had taken the EPS Advanced Driving course and he hadn’t. On the Tactical Team, it was always the senior members who drove, and junior members like Dan were forced to use the passenger seat, or in the case of the big, black EPS Suburbans the Tactical Team often used, the backseat. Still, Dan was a man of action and longed to do something.
Ed turned north on 82nd Street, then a hard left on 149th Avenue. The car fishtailed and the tires screamed in protest at the hard driving. The cruiser was a Crown Victoria, but wasn’t a standard model, rather the enhanced Police Interceptor model that most police forces used, with a bigger, more powerful engine, heavy duty transmission and brakes, Z rated tires, and a ram on its front bumper. In spite of all this, the car was being driven far beyond what its specs said it should be, with the engine redlined for most of the past twenty blocks.
They turned down the side street in Evansdale where Dan and Jessica lived, and Ed jammed on the brakes in front of the bungalow they owned. The car doors flew open and Dan and Ed leapt out of the vehicle, not even bothering to turn off the ignition. Dan grabbed the shotgun and was loading it as he ran to the house. It was rather typical for the area, a plain-looking, non-descript home with brick walls and the usual front bay window most homes had. The basement windows had bars on them, and stickers for a local security company adorned all the main floor windows and doors. The front yard was simple, with grass and a spruce tree, and a few flower boxes on the veranda, near the front door.
“Sandy!” Ed screamed at the top of his lungs as he ran.
Ed and Dan raced up the sidewalk and vaulted onto the veranda, where a dead man lay. The front door was ajar, a stack of mail was strewn about and there was a massive pool of blood under the victim. Something had been dragged or crawled through the blood, as there was a blood trail that led inside. Ed went in first, sweeping left to right with his pistol, and Dan followed a half second later sweeping up to down with the shotgun. Inside the doorway, the air was filled with the smells of gunpowder and the ozone tang of blood.
“Jess! Where are you? What’s going on?” Dan shouted.
They followed the blood trail and advanced from the front door, through the living room, and then into the kitchen. Lying on the floor was Thomas, Dan’s mailman for the past few years. Beside him, two infected, apparently a teenaged boy and a middle-aged woman, were feasting on his arms and legs. They looked up at Ed and Dan, then unleashed an animal-like growl.
Ed didn’t hesitate and fired at them. His first shot took the woman in the head and blew her brains out, scattering them all over Jessica’s super expensive LG Fridge. His next shots missed the boy, but Dan’s shotgun blast took his head clean off. Thomas, horribly was still alive, although it didn’t look like he would last long. He raised his head and begged Dan to end his misery.
“The pain is terrible, Dan. It feels like fire in my veins. Please, I don’t want to end up like those two. You know what you have to do.”
“Sorry, Thomas,” Dan said as his shotgun fired again.
Ed glanced down at the two infected. The teenaged boy was wearing a ‘Pedro for President’ T-shirt and jeans, while the middle-aged woman was in a business suit.
“Let’s find Sandy and Jess,” Ed whispered.
They moved out of the kitchen and noticed that the blood trail went both downstairs into the basement and towards the bedrooms.
“You take downstairs; I’ll take the bedrooms,” Dan said.
Dan moved down the hall to the bedrooms. The bathroom and the two smaller bedrooms were quickly checked and were empty. The door to the master bedroom was locked.
“Jess? Sandy? Are you in there?” Dan called out.
No reply. He double checked the shotgun and then forced the door open with his shoulder. The door splintered and Dan fell inwards, landing on their bed, which had been pushed up against the door. He regained his footing and slid off the bed. He swung his shotgun to the left and headed towards the ensuite. That door was also locked, but he could hear someone breathing behind the door.
“Jess?” he said.
“Oh my god!” Jessica screamed.
The bathroom door opened and Jessica stumbled out and into Dan’s arms. On the counter rested the pistol Dan had left for her protection.
“What happened?” Dan asked.
Jessica was about to answer when several gunshots broke the silence.
“Lock the bathroom door and stay here. I’ll be right back!” Dan shouted as he raced out of the bedroom.
He tore down the stairs and into his basement. He passed the furnace room and was heading towards the family room, when Ed backed out of it, firing again. An infected shambled after him. Ed fired again, hitting the infected in the torso.
“Ed! Get down!” Dan yelled
.
Ed fell to the floor and Dan’s shotgun roared in the confined space. The infected dropped like a sack of potatoes a few feet from Ed.
“What happened? Where’s Sandy?” Dan asked.
“In there,” Ed said emotionlessly.
Dan jacked the slide on his shotgun and entered his family room. In the centre of the room lay several infected, all unmoving because of Ed’s marksmanship. He looked closer and suddenly realized that Sandy was lying on the floor, surrounded by the dead, her throat ripped open. A fan spray of bright arterial blood had splashed across the room, coating Dan’s entertainment unit and LCD TV.
“Oh my God,” Dan whispered and left the room.
“We better get upstairs,” he said to Ed, who was standing in the stairwell in a state of shock.
They went back to the master bedroom and coaxed Jessica out of the ensuite bathroom.
“What happened, Jess?” Dan inquired.
“Well, we were in here doing everything you told us. We left the lights off, the drapes closed and we didn’t even watch TV. We just sat at the table and chatted quietly. I got up and glanced out the window on the front door and saw Thomas coming up our walk. I couldn’t believe it; in the middle of a pandemic the government was still delivering mail! How ridiculous is that?” She paused for a moment.
“I asked Sandy what she thought we should do and we decided to pretend no one was home. I had the pistol nearby and stood behind the door, just in case. As he stepped forward to put the mail in our box, several infected appeared from behind Mr. Perry’s place next door. They saw him right away and cut him off so he couldn’t escape. He pounded on the door and begged to be let in. I took a chance and opened the door to let him in.
“That was our mistake because now they knew we were inside. The infected got to the door maybe ten seconds after I locked and bolted it and began pounding on the door. I yelled at Sandy to call you and then one of them broke the window. I shot through the broken window and I think I hit one of them, maybe. They battered down the door and attacked us. Thomas tried to distract them and got the worst of it, as several of them piled on top of him. I screamed ‘Run’ to Sandy and headed for the bedroom. Sandy and I had agreed yesterday that was our back-up if infected got in somehow; I just assumed she would follow me, but she ran downstairs instead. I think she was planning on drawing them away from me, because she yelled at me to hide in the bedroom.
“So I ran to the bedroom, pushed the bed up against the door and then hid in the bathroom. I sat in the tub for what seemed like hours until you two showed up. Where’s Sandy, is she all right?”
Dan looked at Ed and then back to Jessica and shook his head, no.
Jessica began sobbing uncontrollably. “I never should have told her! I knew I shouldn’t have,” she bawled.
“Told her what?” Dan asked.
“I’m pregnant! I haven’t been to the doctor because of everything that’s been going on, but Sandy brought over some home pregnancy tests and every single one was positive!” Jessica said.
“She was trying to protect both of us when the infected got in. If only I hadn’t let Thomas in…Ed, I’m so sorry!” She broke down and began sobbing again.
Outside, two other patrol cars had raced up and the officers inside spilled out. They came to Dan’s house and ran right in, sweeping and clearing rooms as they moved.
Seeing Dan holding a weeping Jessica in his arms and Ed staring off into space, they paused.
“I think we got all the infected, but you guys might want to make sure. There are a couple in the kitchen, and a few more in the basement,” Dan stated.
-------
George Garber had worked for Petro-Canada for most of his life. He had done all sorts of jobs around the world, supervising drilling projects, working with geologists to find new deposits, and for the last decade, as a power engineer at the Petro-Canada Edmonton refinery. Given his seniority, he now had his choice of assignments. So, because it fit his family’s needs best, he managed the night crew, which ran from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. As usual, he got up just in time to see his wife bring his daughter home from elementary school. They ate dinner as a family and watched a little TV, then he got ready and headed to work. His wife, having watched part of the Prime Minister’s press conference in the morning, wanted him to call in sick, but he had used up all his sick days in the spring fighting a bout of the flu, and his vacation time had been used so they could go to Disneyworld during the summer. That meant taking an unpaid day, and given their precarious finances, it simply wasn’t possible.
“Just lock the doors real tight, honey, and don’t forget to turn on the alarm when you go to bed,” he said as he left, trying to placate her.
He got to the refinery a full half hour before his shift started, so he could run down the day’s happenings with the day shift supervisor. He didn’t like doing that, but if he didn’t, he wound up behind the eight ball if a problem arose.
“Anything of note today, Janice?” George asked.
As a woman engineer, Janice Sparks was an anomaly. When she had gone to university, there had only been one other woman in the entire faculty, and she had transferred to another faculty in the second year, citing a brutal pace and sexist male students. So when Janice graduated and began working in the field, she already had a thicker than normal skin when it came to the daily goings on of a male dominated workplace. She ignored the bikini calendars, the rude jokes, and most everything else that existed in the background. The one thing she would not put up with, however, was sexual innuendo, which in a massive facility built out of massive metal pipes, rods, and the like was just natural for most guys. She had stomped down hard on a couple of guys with sexual harassment allegations and after that, pretty much everyone began calling her the ‘Bitch’. Of course, that was behind her back because most of them were too cowardly to say it to her face. The fact that she was stunningly beautiful and smarter than most men working at the refinery probably also had something to do with it. Her acid tongue and sarcastic tone were the other nails in her proverbial coffin.
George, though, was one of the few guys at the plant who had zero problems with her. He appreciated her insights and intelligence, but most of all, found her professionalism in the face of everything refreshing. Instead of looking for ways to ‘get even’, she did her job better than most of her critics. George also knew that given her smarts, her top notch education, which included a Masters in both Engineering and Business Administration, and her go-getter attitude, that one day she would be his boss, if not everyone’s, so there was little point in being petty.
“Not really, some big rush orders came in this afternoon from the military, they said they’d be sending some trucks tonight. Other than that, not really.”
“Have a good night, bitch,” George said cheerily.
“You too, asshole,” Janice lobbed back, grinning.
As things went, the Petro-Canada refinery in Edmonton was a relatively small facility, capable of processing about eighty thousand barrels a day. It made a variety of products, from a full range of automotive fuels, LL100 for small aircraft, JP-8 for passenger jets, and a variety of other smaller scale products used in industrial and commercial processes.
The shift was nearly half over when a pair of police cars with their lights flashing rolled up to the main gate. Behind them, a small convoy of military vehicles sat. The refinery got military fuel trucks on occasion, but this was different. Several tanker trucks were sandwiched in between a Coyote LAV, several medium trucks, and a pair of army G-Wagon jeeps. The gates to the facility opened and the entire column drove in and stopped in front of the main building. George went down to find out what was going on.
When he got down to the parking lot, the trucks had disgorged about two dozen troops, who were all armed and surveying the area. The tanker trucks had moved to the terminal and started filling up.
“Girardi, get a man to the guard shack, and then get the rest of your squad to take up positions aroun
d the main building, facing the gate,” an officer barked.
“Carney, I want your section patrolling the fence line,” the officer ordered. “Make sure every group has functioning night vision goggles.”
“Yes, sir!” Carney replied.
George walked up to the soldier giving orders. “Umm, can I ask what you’re doing?”
“I’m Lieutenant Koch, and my platoon has been tasked with protecting your facility. We’ll do our level best to stay out of your way and simply mind the perimeter.”
“Is there a terrorist threat on the refinery?” George inquired.
“No, the government is concerned that there might be a supply issue shortly, due to the rash of rabies infections popping up across the country. To prevent critical infrastructure from crumbling, we will maintain a strict quarantine on this facility, meaning nobody in or out.”
“Is it that bad? Really?” George posed.
“Don’t you watch the news? Hundreds are dead in Toronto, with thousands more infected. The police and Militia are outnumbered and for the most part have abandoned central Toronto. It’s total anarchy in the GTA. We’ve been ordered to prevent anything like that here,” Koch replied.
“What about our families? What are they supposed to do while we’re stuck in here?” George asked.
“Look, I know it sucks, and I have some latitude in my orders. You can tell your staff that their families can come here to stay in the facility with you. I would suggest they bring some sleeping bags, canned food, and a few changes of clothes, because odds are we’ll be here for at least a week or so until this thing burns itself out. At least that’s what my CO told me,” Koch said sympathetically.
Zombie Night in Canada (Book 1): First Period Page 5