“Gotcha,” came the terse reply.
He grabbed his radio and walked out of the security office. He went to the break room where they all usually spent their off duty time. Sure enough, Constables Kelly and Carson were awake and playing cards with a couple of engineers.
“There’s a situation down at the gate. I need you guys to suit up and take the security office.”
“Sure thing, Sergeant,” Constable Steve Kelly said. They got up, clipped on their gun belts, and ambled off to the security office, while Ellett took the stairs down to the main floor.
He stepped out the door and immediately he could hear loud moaning. From the steps outside the front door, he could see at least a dozen infected, scattered around the perimeter fence. They were rocking the fence back and forth, trying to breach the gate.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” he swore as he raced down to the cruisers. He popped the trunk and pulled the shotgun out of its rack, then grabbed a box of shells and began loading it as he walked to the main gate where Arniel was standing nervously.
“What do we do, Sarge?” Arniel asked as he approached.
“We’ll fire off a couple of warning shots, then if they don’t disperse, we’ll take them out. Got it?”
Ellett leaned the shotgun against a table in the guard shack, then stepped out and pulled his pistol.
They each fired off two shots into the air, then pointed their pistols at the pair standing in front of them. The infected didn’t flinch, or even notice the weapons pointed their heads. They paused for what seemed like forever.
“Open fire,” Ellett said flatly.
Ellett shot point blank and took the head off an infected woman standing only a few feet away from him. Arniel stood there, completely frozen.
“I said open fire, Arniel.”
“I can’t, Sarge, he looks a lot like my grandfather. You’ll have to do it.”
“No, Arniel, you’ll have to. Now open fire.” Ellett waited. “That’s an order, dammit!”
Arniel fired, but missed the infected elderly man’s head. The bullet spanged loudly off a nearby lamppost.
“Goddammit! You did that on purpose,” Ellett roared at Arniel. He fired again, taking the old man’s head clean off.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
As they fell back from the gate, they noticed that the other infected began slowly moving to the front gate. From the houses only a few blocks away, Ellett could see others appearing.
“Grab the shotguns from cars and get inside,” he hissed at Arniel.
“Kelly, wake the others and get everyone down to the front entrance, now!” Ellett shouted into his radio.
Ellett himself loaded up all the ammunition he could find and followed Arniel inside the building. There was already a crowd of a dozen at the front gate.
“Hurry, let’s get some furniture to block these doors,” Ellett commanded.
People hurried to shove sofas and desks up against the doors. Outside, the crowd had swelled to more than fifty in only a few minutes. The fence was rocking back and forth and would fall any moment.
Constables Kelly, Carson, Pietrangelo and Babych appeared moments later. Arniel handed them all shotguns, while Ellett distributed ammunition.
Ellett called the plant manager over. “Do you know of any other entrances where they could get in?”
“Yes, there’s two other entry points, the entrance near the cafeteria and one near the loading dock.”
“Okay, Carson and Babych will head to the loading dock, while Kelly and Pietrangelo will go to the cafeteria. Take a couple of guys with you to help you block those doors. Let me know right away if they get inside.”
“Okay, everyone, if they get in, our fallback point is the central office. From there we can still operate the plant and watch the facility with the security cameras. Let’s get going!”
The other constables answered, “Check,” almost as one, then turned around to gather help. People peeled away and ran towards the other exits. Soon, just Arniel and Ellett were at the front door.
“Look, Arniel, you don’t have a choice. If you freeze up again, you’ll get us both killed.”
“I know, it’s just that guy was a dead ringer for my grandpa.”
“Well, was it?”
“It couldn’t have been; he died a couple of years ago. Don’t worry, Sarge, I promise I won’t freeze up again.”
Outside, the fence had just come down, and the crowd had swelled to well over a hundred and was growing larger and larger, as they poured into the yard. Instead of all going for the front door though, the horde split up and seemed to head to all three entrance points. That’s odd, Ellett thought.
The first wave of infected surged against the front doors. Miraculously, they held. Ellett and Arniel checked their weapons one last time and readied themselves.
“Why, oh why, did I wish for action,” Ellett mumbled to himself. Ask and ye shall receive, sayeth the Lord was the only answer that popped into his head a second later.
The glass at the front doors started to flex, cracks crawling like fingers across the panes. The doors shattered with a huge crash and the infected poured in, only to be stymied by the furniture blocking the interior sets of doors. The interior doors, made of less stern materials than the outer doors, shattered almost instantly and suddenly arms and faces were peering over the makeshift barricade, seeking flesh to devour.
“The front doors are breached!” Ellett said into his radio, then turned to Arniel. “Open fire.”
Their shotguns roared, and in the confined space could not miss. Two infected went down with head wounds. The others tried to shove and claw their way forwards. Their shotguns roared again and again, each time taking out a pair of infected at least. Very soon, however, the force of so many infected was beginning to move the barricade.
“Let’s fall back!” Ellett shouted.
Arniel nodded and fired again.
Ellett’s radio crackled. “They’ve breached the entrance at the cafeteria, falling back to central,” Pietrangelo said.
Ellett and Arniel stepped back and fired again, just as the barricade was breached. Arniel began to reload his shotgun, so Ellett fired quickly again and again, holding the infected back. Just as he emptied his shotgun, Arniel’s weapon roared again. Ellett took a step back and began reloading. They fell back in unison to the stairwell and fired a pair of quick blasts into the horde of infected stumbling towards them. Then they slammed the door shut and Arniel pulled a zip tie off his belt and tied the door handle to handle on the door frame.
“That should hold them for a few minutes,” he said. They both turned and ran up the stairs, taking them three at a time. Just as they reached the third floor where central control was located, Ellett’s radio crackled again. “They have breached the loading dock. We are retreating to central,” Babych shouted.
They opened the door to central and looked around. It was totally empty of people.
“Where the hell is everyone else,” Ellett wondered.
They found a desk and some chairs nearby. Arniel pushed the office chairs through the doorway and down the stairs. Soon, a decent pile of them blocked the landing between the second and third floors. Together, they shoved a metal desk down the stairs. As it tumbled down, its drawers popped opened and pens, a stapler, and office paraphernalia bounced out and down the stairwell, falling in some cases to the ground floor. Moments after the desk came to a rest near the top of the pile of chairs, the door Arniel zip tied splintered open and the infected poured in.
They both made sure their shotguns were fully loaded and Ellett stood on the third floor landing, waiting, while Arniel slid further down the stairs. The infected shambled up the stairs and as soon as they were in sight, both their shotguns roared. Pellets flew everywhere and the infected fell in heaps on the stairs, but more and more climbed the stairs. Each shotgun blast stopped three, four or even five infected, but their numbers seemed limitless. Soon they were at the chairs
and shoving them aside.
“Time to go!” Ellett screamed at Arniel, who was half a dozen steps below him, filling the stairwell with death.
Arniel looked up and turned to run. Just as he did though, one of the infected below grabbed his ankle and tripped him. His shotgun slammed into the stairs and went off. Pellets gouged a chunk out of Ellett’s thigh and he screamed in agony. Arniel rolled over, grabbed his shotgun, and fired again at the closest infected, then sprinted up the stairs.
“Sorry ‘bout that, Sarge!”
“Shit happens!” Ellett grimaced. “Let’s get out of here!”
Ellet grunted when Arniel heaved him off the ground and dragged him inside. He quickly zip tied the door shut, then muscled a desk in front of the door.
He went over to Ellett, who was lying on his back, breathing heavily. He propped him up against a desk and examined Ellett’s leg.
“It doesn’t look too bad, Sarge. You should be up and dancing by next week!” he said jokingly.
“I don’t think any of us are going to go dancing anytime soon,” Ellett grimaced. “Did you check the other doors?”
“On my way, Sarge.”
Ellett grabbed his radio. “Where the hell is everyone!” he shouted. “Pietrangelo, Carson, Babych, Kelly, sound off!”
The radio was totally silent.
Suddenly, the stairwell door started thumping. As Arniel neared the only other entrance to central, it burst open and infected poured in. Several of them wore the same lab coats as the engineers who operated the plant. In the back Arniel thought he could see an infected Pietrangelo staggering towards him. He ran back to where Ellett was.
“It looks like no one else made it. They just came in the other door. We have about fifteen seconds before they’re on top of us. What do we do?”
“Take the fire exit and see if you can get to the cars. If you can, get the hell out of here and don’t come back!” Ellett said.
“But you can’t make it down the fire escape!”
“No, I can’t,” Ellett said flatly.
Arniel looked at him and hesitated.
“That’s all right, I’ll cover you. Now go!” Ellett pulled his service pistol out and laid it beside him. He aimed the shotgun down the hallway the infected had to come from.
“You might need these,” Ellett said as he tossed a pair of car keys to Arniel.
Arniel grabbed his shotgun and ran. He heard Ellett’s shotgun fire twice. Then he heard his Glock bark in rapid succession a half dozen times, then he heard a loud, short scream. Then nothing else.
He hammered the fire door open and raced down the fire escape, jumping the last six feet. He landed on the grass, rolled onto his shoulder, and leapt to his feet. He glanced back at the power plant and then raced to the car. He jerked the door open, fired up the engine, and sped off in the unknown.
Without the engineers to maintain and operate the power plant, it went off line less than eight hours after it had been overrun. That caused the water station to immediately stop pumping. Within minutes, there was no power or water for any of the city residents living as far north as the Yellowhead, as far south as Whyte Avenue, west and east of downtown. Essentially, the city had just had its heart cut out. Emergency services units in those areas, including hospitals and ambulance stations, as well as police and fire stations, had back-up generators with a week’s supply of fuel. Emergency services would struggle from now on to provide rescue to city residents. But for residents, the loss of power was near catastrophic. Phones went dead, refrigerators died and stoves could no longer be used to cook with. Worst of all, TVs, computers and other communications devices, unless battery powered, could no longer warn residents of the increasingly critical nature of the crisis. Even cellular phones became useless, as the towers, which formed the very heart of the cellular phone system, lost power.
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It had taken the better part of week to finish fortifying CFB Edmonton, but there were now guard towers, a three-metre-deep anti-vehicle ditch and roving patrols of infantry protecting the base.
CFB Edmonton was home to the 1st Mechanized Brigade, roughly one-fifth of the entire Canadian Army. General Raine had several thousand of the world’s best trained and battle hardened troops at his command. They were equipped with a squadron of tanks, APCs, artillery, helicopters, and plenty of heavy weapons, and millions of rounds of ammunition were stockpiled in the base’s armories. Based on reports from agencies worldwide, heavy weapons knocked down the infected, but didn’t stop them. A .50 caliber bullet or 25 mm cannon shell would rip off an arm or leg, but the corpse would drag itself along, still looking for victims. That meant the bulk of his firepower was next to useless in urban combat situations. Fortunately, those same reports had also told him that a bullet to the brain took them down for good. Therefore troops were all issued carbines and/or sidearms and ordered to shoot selectively in urban combat situations.
His force had two full infantry battalions, one mechanized and one of light infantry. The light infantry’s vehicles weren’t deemed safe enough for operations in the city, so 3rd Battalion’s platoons maintained the patrols and guard towers. The mechanized infantry were available for operations inside the city if need be. A full company had already been committed to protecting critical infrastructure, so that really only left two companies available for urban patrols. So far, they had only been used to protect his medical and Military Police units trying to assist the civilian authorities in the city.
Both the mayor and city council, more left wing than General Raine personally preferred, had worried that the sight of APCs and tanks on city streets might panic citizens, while General Raine had argued the opposite, saying that it would show how committed the authorities were in maintaining order. However, the military takes its orders from civilians, so he deferred to them. In actuality, that had been a blessing in disguise, as he hadn’t been forced to deploy them in squad-sized penny packets around the city like most generals around the world were doing. Instead, he had been able to keep his best combat troops mostly bottled up on the base. After thoughtful consideration, he realized that a concentrated force would prevent the massive loss of troops he had seen on CNN in so many other countries. It would also allow him to hold off hordes of infected if necessary. CFB Edmonton was fortunate because Canadian Forces Base Valcartier had already been overrun by infected. Several other military bases in central and eastern Canada, at least those close to major population centres, had reported that they were already surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands of infected. And with their troop contingents deployed mostly outside the wire, the personnel remaining inside those bases were essentially helpless.
Initially, General Raine wasn’t very interested in accepting refugees, simply because that was exactly how CFB Valcartier’s integrity had been compromised. They let in people that they didn’t know were infected and soon the whole base was overrun. Initially, he had only allowed soldiers to bring their immediate families on base. He had been convinced in the first few days to let families of the civilian contractors stay on the base if they wished, but he had no desire to hamper his ability to deal with the pandemic by filling his base with civilians. To house all of the people he already accepted, he had had to move all of the soldiers from the on-base barracks into other quarters. In a lot of cases, it meant sleeping on the floor of buildings housing armoured vehicles or artillery. It led to a little grumbling, but there was no other choice.
Finally, after much debate with both his superiors and local politicians, Raine accepted a compromise and initially housed any refugees who made it to the base in the army prison, guarding it round the clock with a full platoon of his best troops. Canadian Forces Base Edmonton was the site of the only military prison operated by the Canadian Forces. Normally, it was tough place to stay in, with limited privileges and a very basic diet, and as such, the recidivism rate was less than half of one percent, which, compared to federal government prison’s recidivism rates of around thirty
percent, was absurdly low. Generally, any soldier who was found guilty three times was dishonourably discharged from the Forces, and in some cases, after only one offence. But it was brand new, with razor wire fences, isolation rooms, and a state of the art security system. Better still, it was isolated on the northern fringe of the base and an outbreak there would not affect the integrity of the base itself.
After a thorough medical inspection and a minimum stay of five days, followed by another thorough medical check, they were released and allowed to join everyone else on the base. Anyone with bites, scratches or any other open wounds were forced to stay a full two weeks in quarantine. They were fed and housed and then put to work, building defences, cooking and other basic maintenance jobs. After the first week, the number of refugees on the base was already over one thousand and growing steadily. At first, they were billeted with families who lived in the housing adjacent to the base, but soon those homes filled up and Raines needed more space. So he ordered troops living in the barracks designated for unmarried soldiers to move out. When that filled up, he started billeting them at the elementary school and base gymnasium.
By the beginning of the second week, Raines’ medical teams, Military Police and reservists were reporting that they were heavily outnumbered and unable to make any real difference. Apartment complexes were the worst, as they usually had dozens or sometimes even hundreds of infected to deal with. He thought of pulling them back onto the base, but re-considered. Instead, he sent them deeper into the city and had them reach city hall to check on the civilian authorities. Mayor Johnson and several councillors who were in City Hall when the problem started were fine, but most of the city administration was nowhere to be found. A fair number of police officers and other emergency services personnel were also there, trying to maintain some semblance of order. That effort was akin to bailing a rowboat with a teaspoon.
Ultimately, Raine was forced to send a convoy of vehicles, led by a Leopard armoured engineering vehicle, into the city to rescue the mayor, the city council and his surviving personnel, who were hunkered down in the basement of City Hall, inside the city’s Emergency Response Centre. He could have sent several Griffon helicopters, but he wanted to preserve his fuel supplies, which while currently adequate, would be re-supplied who knew when. The Leopard AEV, basically a tank chassis with a huge bulldozer blade mounted on its front, blasted its way through traffic jams comprised of wrecked and abandoned cars, as well as dozens of infected, running them over and squashing them like ants, leaving a trail of broken, shredded corpses and twisted metal in its wake. The Mayor and his staff knew exactly where to be and when, so that the troops wouldn’t have to stop in place for very long.
Zombie Night in Canada (Book 1): First Period Page 12