“Good thing we took the SUV this morning instead of the Lincoln,” Darryl said.
John just nodded.
Larry and Greg weren’t far behind and the two vehicles raced out onto the city streets where it was a scene of mayhem. Cars were strewn all over the road, several nearby buildings were burning, and infected seemed to be everywhere.
“How did everything fall apart so fast?” the Premier said.
The two vehicles raced as quickly as possible through the growing insanity and fled the city for the relative safety of the countryside.
Chapter 9
September 23rd
Every time Xander and his buddies watched a zombie movie, they would joke about the perfect place to hideout.
“A place in the mountains is the way to go,” Johnny would always say. “That way, you don’t have to worry about hordes of people or zombies, and if your food runs out, you can hunt or fish.”
“No way, if that ever happens, I’m going to my cottage near Sylvan Lake. It’s built entirely out of brick and isolated enough that you won’t have hordes of zombies or people trying to get in, and there are several farms around, so you can grow whatever you need to survive. Get tired of that and the lake is full of fish to catch,” Mark replied. “And if push comes to shove, you can run back into Red Deer and loot stores for extra supplies.”
“I always thought Costco on 50th would be the perfect hideout,” Xander said, adding his two cents.
“What?” Johnny exclaimed.
“Are you crazy?” Mark asked.
“Look, that Costco is made out of steel and concrete, and filled to the roof with food and supplies,” Xander explained. “Why wouldn’t you want to stay there?”
“Because that Costco is near tons of houses and apartment buildings, that’s why!” Mark countered.
“Didn’t you ever watch Dawn of the Dead?” Johnny inquired. “Remember those guys trapped in that mall surrounded by hundreds of zombies?”
“If you’re going to hide out in a Costco, why not the one in the west end? You know, the one smack dab in an industrial park on the Yellowhead,” Mark added.
“Assuming you don’t do something stupid like fill the Costco with your friends, there should be enough food to last months, or even years. Plus you’ve got camping supplies, DVDs, and all sorts of other shit to help you waste time. I mean who knows, maybe the horse will sing, eh?” Xander said.
“The horse will sing?” Mark replied.
“You know, maybe, just maybe, someone will show up and you can leave. Or do you think that zombies will annihilate everyone and you’ll be the last person alive, Mark?” Xander asked.
“Who knows, but I wouldn’t want to be surrounded 24/7 by tons of zombies,” Mark said. “Too creepy.”
“That, and in the movies, they always seem to find a way inside,” Johnny added.
So that’s why a week and a half after the crisis started, Xander, his new girlfriend, his sister, and some friends were holed up in a Costco in Edmonton’s north end. He lucked out because he had gone to high school with the manager of that Costco, Steve Penney. Steve and Xander had chatted every time he shopped there, and even went out for a beer now and again. They had both gone to the same junior high school, but Steve hadn’t been much of an athlete, instead being one of the smart kids in school. Maybe not the smartest kid, but an honours student nonetheless. While Xander was playing Major Junior in Ontario, Steve went to high school in Edmonton and got good grades, then went to the University of Alberta where he got a Bachelors degree in Commerce. He fully expected to get an MBA at some point in time, but he landed a part-time job at Costco in his second year of university and never looked back. Even before he graduated, he was working as a manager, and afterwards, the company fast-tracked him to be an assistant regional manager and sent him to work at a number of stores around Alberta. Within five years, he was back in Edmonton directing all the Edmonton-area stores. That was when he had bumped into Xander again.
After his apartment had proved less secure than he originally had hoped for, he called Steve up and told him his plan. Steve also thought it was a good idea and agreed to meet Xander there in an hour. After that, Xander tried calling his parents and the rest of his family. After getting the same annoying “We’re sorry, all circuits are busy, please try your call again later” recording, he got frustrated that he couldn’t get through, so he used a barrage of emails, text messages and IMs to get reach them. With the phone lines being clogged, it took him most of the night, but he was finished by 3:00 a.m. All of them agreed to get there as soon as possible.
Xander had also contacted a couple of friends who lived relatively close by and told them the plan. Mark and Johnny still felt their plans were still better and decided to head out on their own. He didn’t even bother trying to contact that asshole Rick. His buddies from his former job, Jack and Fred and their families, also decided to join Xander.
While he was trying to get a hold of everyone, Evelyn feverishly packed up their supplies of canned goods and survival supplies in several backpacks and gym bags. When both were ready, Xander slid the patio door open quietly and slowly lowered all of his supplies onto the ground with the rope he had mounted earlier. He was extra careful not to spill any of the gas in the jerry cans. All the while, he kept his eye open for infected. When he was finished, he helped Evelyn over the side and lowered her to the ground, too. He covered her with his AR-7 while she ran to the X-Terra. She jumped in and drove over to where the supplies were and waited. By this time, Xander had shimmied down the rope as well. He quickly and very quietly loaded the supplies into the back of the truck and covered them with the tarp. Then he jumped in and they drove towards Costco.
Xander had told them to meet there as soon as possible and not to stop for anything. Pretty much everyone was on time, and Steve made sure everyone was okay and that no one had been bitten. The only late arrivals were Xander’s sister Diane, her husband Donald, and their son Jared.
“Sorry, we stopped to grab some guns at Canadian Tire,” Donald said.
“Canadian Tire was open at this hour?” Evelyn asked skeptically.
“Of course not, but someone rammed the front door and it was wide open, so we went in and took what we could. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much left,” Donald replied.
“Better late than never, right?” Diane said.
“Let’s just get in there so we can lock the doors,” Xander replied.
As it turned out, Donald and Diane’s idea had been a good one. Xander had told everyone to bring whatever weapons they had, and since, like most urban Canadians, most of them didn’t own firearms, so the weapons they had were a motley lot. In addition to Xander’s AR-7 and .38 pistol, they had a few bolt action hunting rifles, each with a couple hundred rounds of ammo, a few axes and hatchets, a mini-crossbow with a dozen or so bolts, and an interesting assortment of knives, from a jackknife to an eight-inch WW2 surplus K-Bar. Jack had brought his Airsoft BB guns, including one that looked like an assault rifle, but aside from killing pigeons or intimidating real people, it didn’t look like it’d be of much use. Costco itself didn’t have much in the way of weapons either. No firearms, no knives, and not much else in the way of survival equipment except for some camping equipment stored in the back that had been destined to return to its manufacturers. Diane and Donald had grabbed a couple hunting rifles, a target pistol, and boxes and boxes of ammo.
Because the day they arrived on was a Sunday, Costco wasn’t going to open for another six hours, so there was no horde of people waiting to buy food or survival goods. Of course, the threat of infected lurking in the darkness was probably also a deterrent. Everyone parked his or her car close to the back, near the staff entrance. Steve arrived quickly and they all headed for the door.
“Let’s get inside right away, it’s creepy out here,” Steve said.
They filed inside, where they made an interesting discovery. One of the shift managers and a few staff were still there, as t
hey had worked the night before and didn’t feel it was safe to go home until it was light outside. After watching the news all night, most of them simply felt it was better to stay here. Once inside with the doors locked, everyone got to work.
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As the numbers of infected swelled, chaos reigned in and around Edmonton while the city gutted itself, there were incredible acts of courage, of cowardice, of brutality and of stupidity.
Adam Harper fought off a dozen infected while protecting a woman and her child, who were total strangers. He met them in a hallway in his apartment building as he fled a fire in his own apartment, and was helping them to their car when infected suddenly appeared from one of the apartments at the far end of the hallway. He fought a desperate rearguard action, holding them off with an axe. In the end, all three were able to make it to her car, whereupon they raced out of the parking lot.
After a few minutes Adam said, “I’ve got some bad news.”
“What is it?” she said.
“We got out of there, but I got bitten by one of them. You have to stop and let me out somewhere,” Adam replied.
“I can’t just abandon you! Let me take you to a hospital or a clinic.”
“There’s no point. No one has survived a bite yet and there’s no reason to think I’m anything special,” he said.
“But it’s not right. Especially after everything you did for my daughter and me.”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s right or not. It’s what you need to do to protect her,” Adam said with an air of finality.
As the car reached the outskirts of city, she slowed down, then finally stopped.
Neither spoke another word as Adam opened the door and got out. She looked at him for a moment, then shifted gears and left.
“Good luck,” Adam said to her minutes after she was out of sight. Then he began walking, trying to get as far away from the city as possible.
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Neil Murphy and his family were fleeing their house in Millwoods, hoping to go to their cottage about a hundred kilometres southeast of the city, to wait out the epidemic that was sweeping the city. His wife was a dozen steps away from their Kia Sorento, while Neil was carrying his daughter’s baby seat, with cute, little Joanna snuggled safe inside, when a pack of infected appeared from out of nowhere. He momentarily froze, then as the infected descended on the Murphy family, he dropped the baby seat, jumped in the SUV and raced off, abandoning his family to a terrible fate. In the rearview mirror, he saw his wife tackled by several infected, and several others grabbing for the baby seat.
Twenty minutes later he sat at the side of an abandoned road on the outskirts of the city, all alone in his car. The gravity of his actions hit him like a ton of bricks and he just sat there, totally immobilized. Eventually, the guilt overwhelmed him and he stuffed his pistol into his mouth and fired. Unfortunately for Neil, the bullet missed his brain and merely paralyzed him. The wound, however, wasn’t enough to kill him, so he sat there, unable to move, and slowly began to bleed to death.
Neil’s luck went from bad to worse because the shot attracted several infected from a nearby acreage. They surrounded his SUV, and he was faced with the choice of being devoured or slowly bleeding to death. In the end, it really wasn’t his decision, as the infected broke into the vehicle and tore him to pieces.
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In the suburb of Lewis Estates, a group calling itself the Anti-Zombie Division got out their firearms, barricaded the entrances to the area with cars and trucks and began patrolling the neighbourhood. Despite the best of intentions, in under a day, they began systematically ‘culling’ infected from the area, most often with a bullet to the forehead.
At first, only truly infected were culled, but soon they began culling anyone they could find with a scratch or a cut. Several hours after declaring the area clear, they then began knocking on doors and forcing citizens to submit to strip searches. Those who resisted were beaten or even shot. Some of the Anti-Zombie Division members preyed on younger, vulnerable women, ordering strip searches, and in at least one case, raping one of them.
As the situation spiraled out of control, residents began to fear their neighbours and as allegiances grew, a Lord of the Flies mentality took over. People began to ‘inform’ on neighbours they didn’t like, triggering a number of innocent people to be murdered.
After she had been raped by an Anti-Zombie Division member, Alice Hunt took matters into her own hands. First she called police and alerted them to the insanity. Then she opened her window, and rifle in hand, began sniping at Anti-Zombie Division members, starting with the person who had raped her. Unfortunately for them, Alice had been part of the Canadian Olympic Biathlon Team and her aim was lethal. The Anti-Zombie Division fought back, but were unable to silence her deadly accurate rifle. Eventually, frustrated at their inability to deal with Alice, they tried to fire-bomb her house.
The first squad car to appear was fired on by members of the Anti-Zombie Division. Several other cars arrived to cordon off the area and the Tactical Team was called to deal with the Anti-Zombie Division. With brutal efficiency, the Tactical Force moved house to house and annihilated the Anti-Zombie Division without taking any casualties of its own. The Tactical Force arrived just in time to see Alice kill yet another member of the Anti-Zombie Division. She identified herself and put her weapon down. The Tactical Force members were stunned by Alice’s marksmanship. In front of her house lay nearly a dozen Division members, yet she had neither a wound nor was her house harmed, aside from dozens of bullet holes.
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Eddie Busch lived with his parents. Or rather, had lived with his parents, until the day came when neither one came home from work on the 20th. Given that they were police officers, he wasn’t too surprised. After a couple of days by himself, he realized that they were not coming home at all.
Alone, bored and confused, he sat around wondering what to do. Inevitably, Eddie came up with the same thing that every teenager comes up with when his or her parents leave them alone and unsupervised for any length of time; he was going to have a party. But this wouldn’t be just any party. He wanted to hold a ‘Pandemic Party’ on the 22nd. He texted and IMed all of his friends, and told them to text and IM all of their friends, too. Soon, he had confirmations from dozens of kids from all across the city, many of whom he didn’t know. He told them to raid their parents’ liquor supplies and pantries and to show up anytime. Kids from all over the city soon appeared, begging rides from family or friends, or in the case of a couple well-to-do kids, bringing their own cars or taking taxis.
Eddie’s father had always been a bit paranoid, so the house had steel roll shutters on the windows, bars on basement windows and an alarm system connected to a local monitoring company, as well as a generator in the garage with several jerry cans of gas stored nearby. There was also a gun safe in his dad’s office, from which Eddie unlocked and retrieved a pistol. He was sure he could convince at least one girl to give him a blowjob or something if he stuffed it in his belt and looked all macho. With a little luck, maybe he could nail a couple of them. Just to be sure, Eddie locked all the windows and then rolled down all the shutters on the main floor. As friends started showing up, the party kicked off, with loud music and booze flowing in copious amounts. Sure enough, several girls thought Eddie looked hot with the pistol and did their level best to gain his attention.
The party was a great success initially. Tons of people, lots of fun, loud music, a load of stolen beer and hard liquor, made for something the Romans would have been proud of. Even better, there were almost a dozen hot girls, almost all of whom Eddie hoped to sleep with at some point over the next few days. What the partygoers never noticed was that the loud music and raucous noise coming from the house attracted the infected roaming the neighbourhood. At first, it was a single victim, a young man, dressed in a Domino’s outfit. He scratched and clawed at the windows, doors and walls trying to get inside to feast on the veritable smo
rgasbord partying within. The party lasted all night long, and most stayed overnight and lay passed out around the house. Eddie woke up in his parent’s bed, with a blonde on his right and brunette on his left, to the faint scratching sounds outside. He opened his blinds to see the pizza delivery guy pawing at his living room window. As he glanced around the yard, he could make out other infected moving about. He frantically dialed 911 and got nothing but a message about the circuits being busy or something like that. He ran to another bedroom and saw that the house was surrounded by at least two dozen infected, several of whom looked like kids from the party last night.
It was only a matter of time before someone else inside saw what was happening outside and freaked out. First, a shouting match started, filled with recriminations and insults. Eddie pulled out his pistol and told everyone to fuck off and go home. Of course, no one wanted to go outside with the infected so close by. A struggle with another teenager ensued and Eddie’s pistol went off. Sadly, for Eddie Busch, the bullet entered his chest cavity and tore apart his heart, killing him instantly.
The teenager who had struggled with Eddie scooped up the pistol and proceeded to threaten everyone else in the room. As someone Eddie and most of the others didn’t know, he was terrified of what they might do to him. One of the other boys yelled, “Get him!” and the crowd descended on him. He managed to fire once into the crowd, hitting a pretty blonde girl in the shoulder before the other boys got their hands on him. He was beaten senseless, then dragged upstairs and tossed out one of the windows for the infected to feast on. While he screamed in agony below, everyone else fled the house, streaming out the front door for their cars. Most of them made it.
Zombie Night in Canada (Book 1): First Period Page 10