Zombie Night in Canada (Book 1): First Period

by Friesen, Jamie

  As soon as all four cars stopped, police officers jumped out of the cars and began shooting the infected. Bullets snapped past Todd and he ducked reflexively.

  He clawed for his walkie-talkie and pulled it to his lips. “I’m under fire!”

  “What’s happening, Todd?” Xander’s voice said over the radio.

  “There’s a bunch of cop cars in the parking lot, firing at the infected outside,” Todd shouted. “Just a second.”

  Todd chanced a glance over the edge of the roof and saw that the men were targeting the infected below, not him.

  “They’re firing on the infected, not me,” Todd added.

  “Okay, we’re on our way up,” Xander said.

  The carnage was fast and furious. Even though there were only a half dozen cops, they were well-armed with a combination of shotguns, pistols, and assault rifles and the numbers of infected quickly dropped from hundreds to dozens to a few and then to none.

  After all the infected were down, they moved from corpse to corpse, giving each a coup de grâce to the head. Other infected, from the apartments across the street and around the power centre, shambled towards them. Each was given the same treatment – lead and lots of it.

  To Todd, the shootout seemed to last forever, but in reality, it had lasted only about ten minutes.

  The ground around their cars was sprinkled with brass from their firefight and after they felt that all of the infected were down, three of them began to collect their spent brass, while the others watched alertly.

  “Hey, it’s great to see you guys!” Todd shouted down at them.

  One of the cops looked up at Todd, then turned to his other officers and said something too quiet for Todd to hear.

  “Hi, I’m Constable Smyl. We need to come inside to get some supplies for North Division,” he said.

  “I’m sure we can spare some stuff – there’s only a few of us inside,” Todd replied.

  Xander had just pulled himself onto the roof when he heard bullets crack once again. Todd never had a chance. He was hit several times and pitched over the side of the roof, landing with a sickening crunch on the pavement below.

  Xander grabbed his walkie-talkie and called to Steve, “It’s an attack, we’re going to need some Martinellis up here right away.”

  Inside the main office, Steve watched as the men outside shot and disabled his cameras one-by-one. Too bad for them that that system was dead, a victim of the power outage, but another, smaller set of cameras provided an excellent view of the battle raging below.

  “Steve, did you hear me?” Xander shouted into the walkie-talkie.

  “They’re coming right up. I’m going to mobilize everyone else,” Steve shouted back, as he ran into the common area where everyone usually hung out.

  “We’re under attack; everyone needs to get to the middle of the store right now!” Steve yelled, running out of the office. People scrambled to comply.

  “Donald, Jack, Fred, and Gary, come with me!” Steve shouted.

  Xander crawled to the edge of the roof and chanced a quick glance over. The men below were still picking up brass. Almost as soon as he ducked back, bullets ricocheted off the metal nearby. Xander backed away nervously.

  Fred, Gary, and Donald were the first ones up on the roof, followed shortly by Jack and Steve. Each of them carried a pair of Martinelli bottles in their arms, and had a rifle slung over their backs. Xander crawled back to where they were all assembled.

  “Where’s Todd,” Gary asked.

  “They shot him,” Xander hissed back.

  “What do we do? They’re cops! They’ve got way more firepower than us!” Fred said.

  “Not to mention training, experience, you name it,” Gary said.

  “We’re totally fucked,” Donald added.

  “Look, officers or not, they had no right to kill Todd without a warning. Now they’ve stopped firing, but they know I’m up here. It’s going to be dangerous, but we can take these fuckers out,” Xander said, whispering. “You three go that way and wait for my signal, you two come with me.”

  Xander, Fred, and Steve crawled to the northeast corner of the building and readied themselves, while Donald, Gary and Jack crawled to the southeast corner. Xander poked his head up for a second.

  “Spread out and start taking shots at them. Try and hit them, but it doesn’t really matter.”

  The three of them popped up and fired a series of shots at the men below. A shout went up and Xander thought they might have hit one or two of them. Even before they had ducked back, gunfire screamed back at them. The fire lasted for a second or two, and then Xander popped up and fired back. As he dropped back to the roof, Fred and Steve popped up and fired, too. Again, return fire tore into the roof.

  Sliding back from the edge, Xander waved to the other three. They produced lighters and each lit a rag stuffed in a Martinelli bottle then tossed it as hard as they could.

  After the first group had tried to use force on them, Xander had done some planning and developed some ‘defences’ against future would-be intruders. Xander’s preparation’s included three key steps – setting up a security system using half a dozen wireless cameras located at different points on the roof – all controlled by a laptop and powered by one of the solar chargers from the trailer at the loading dock.

  Another step had been to build a massive deadfall above both the north and south exit doors that had been designated escape routes and left unblocked by pallets of furniture or other heavy items. Mounted precariously above each doorway was a pallet stacked with almost a thousand pounds of heavy items – weights from several Nautilus sets, tool sets, and anything else that weighed more than twenty pounds each. Individually each item was nothing much, however if the contents of a deadfall dropped on someone’s head, it would incapacitate or seriously harm them, if it didn’t kill them outright. It had been a major chore getting them set up, and just about everyone was worried that they would come crashing down on an unsuspecting person, but Xander had put signs and caution tape around the area, warning everyone walking by to be extra vigilant.

  Finally, his biggest and most elaborate step had been to make a dozen firebombs with the gas he had brought back from his truck. First, he had liberated a dozen empty Martinelli bottles from the dining room. Then, in a large tub, he had mixed two parts gasoline with one part laundry detergent flakes – which according to the internet was poor man’s napalm. After stirring the concoction for about an hour, it had thickened into a Jell-O-like substance and he had enough to fill half of the bottles with the mixture, spooning it ever so carefully into each one until they were three quarters full. He capped each with a rag soaked in gasoline. The other six bottles were traditional Molotov cocktails – a glass bottle half filled with gasoline and then stuffed with a gas-soaked rag. Originally, they had been stored on the roof, but with the cold temperatures overnight of late, Xander had had to bring them inside lest the gasoline freeze and render the bombs useless.

  The three Molotov cocktails sailed out into the parking lot and exploded as they hit. The first two missed by a long shot, one far too short and the other way wide of the cars. The third landed on top of one of the cruisers and spread burning gasoline over an area covering several square metres, engulfing one of the police officers. He screamed as the flames licked their way across his face and chest. One of his compatriots ran to help him, while the rest continued firing at the roof.

  Xander, Steve, and Fred continued firing at the police officers, then crawled backwards and ran to where Donald, Jack, and Gary were.

  “Okay, you guys head over to where we were a few minutes ago,” Xander said to them.

  They followed his instructions, while Xander, Steve and Fred waited. Once they were all in position, the three men popped up and started firing. The cops were surprised slightly, expecting more firebombs from that direction. They shifted their fire towards Xander’s group.

  Seconds later, three more bombs flew through the air and this time, a
ll three hit. Two were napalm bombs and they spread jellied gasoline everywhere. Everything the mixture touched burned, the parking lot, the cars, and worst of all, the men. All but one of the six men below were covered in flames and screaming horribly. The smell of burning flesh permeated the air. The lone survivor slid over the hood of one of the cars and ran. Xander’s shot took him in the back of the head.

  “Okay, let’s put them out of their misery,” Xander shouted.

  A hail of gunfire from the roof tore into the stricken officers and one by one, they fell dead to the ground.

  “Should we go out there and make sure?” someone asked.

  “I ain’t going out there,” Donald said.

  “Fuck that, I mean, what’s the point?” Xander said. “I think that’s a great advertisement to anyone who thinks that they can get in here and take this place away from us.”

  “What about Todd?” Gary asked.

  “Not much we can do about him,” Steve said, looking down at his broken body, Todd’s head was caved in from the fall and blood still seeping from several massive gunshot wounds.

  “All we can do is remember him and his sacrifice,” Xander said. “That could have been anyone of us, and this time, Todd didn’t flinch from his duty to the rest of us.”

  The group nodded solemnly.

  Chapter 27

  October 12th

  In Canada’s far north, a monster lurked. Huge and uncaring, it had slowly grown for days, from a small entity above the Beaufort Sea to a massive creature covering thousands of square kilometers. The creature, a massive Arctic high, was filled with frigid subzero temperatures from above the Arctic Ocean.

  Its presence had caused the Beaufort Sea to freeze much earlier than usual this year. As it hovered there, the entire Arctic Archipelago became locked in deep cold, with temperatures well below average, even for this time of year. Eventually, it grew so large that it began to creep south. As the frigid Arctic air fed it, the Arctic high spread south of 60 and out onto the Prairies. Its huge size and strength smashed into the jet stream and pushed it as far south as the Arizona-Colorado border, sending temperatures plunging everywhere its glacial fingers reached. In some places, it dropped more than thirty degrees, from seasonal norms to minus fifteen below zero Celsius, and as cold as minus twenty once the wind chill was factored in. Edmonton’s average daily high in early fall was between plus ten and plus fifteen Celsius, yet within less than twenty-four hours, the temperature plunged to an icy minus ten degrees.

  Air from the northern Pacific followed the jet stream along the Rockies and moved across southern Alaska into parts of northern British Columbia. The mixture of frigid cold air and warm, moist Pacific air meant snow fell in prodigious amounts across the Rockies. Up to sixty centimetres fell in some towns, sealing them off from the rest of the country. However, north and east of the jet stream, a bone-chilling cold set in, killing vegetables in gardens, grain waiting to be harvested and stripping the still green leaves from trees prematurely.

  The drop in temperature slowed the spread of infection, as well as hampered the movement of the infected dramatically, giving the military, police and other emergency services a much-needed respite from the horrors they had faced on a daily basis since the beginning of the pandemic. Under the blanket of freezing Arctic air, military and police units took advantage of the break and mopped up frozen corpses everywhere they could. Even though the cold snap only lasted a few days in some places, it allowed them a chance to repair defences, search for survivors and find extra supplies.

  Unfortunately, in many places, it was too late to save most people. And sadly for most people in North America, the frosty temperatures never reached them and the infection spread across the continent largely unchecked, where it grew like a cancerous tumor spreading throughout the body.

  ---------

  The men at CFB Edmonton were both upset and ecstatic at the snow and freezing cold which descended on them from out of nowhere.

  As the temperature dropped overnight, each man on the fence line had to fall out to retrieve winter gear. Even in heavy winter gear, they shivered in the frigid conditions, made worse by the biting wind which snapped at them and froze exposed skin quickly. The temporary shelters that had been set up weeks ago provided shelter from the wind, but not the cold. Portable heaters provided some warmth, but nothing like what those inside buildings with furnaces enjoyed. Still, the troops endured and soldiered on.

  General Raines and his staff, however, were ecstatic to see the effects of the cold on the infected. The few dozen infected wandering in the trenches below slowed down and eventually stop moving altogether due to the bitter cold. As soon as he was satisfied that the weather had dealt with the infected, he began a full scale mobilization and sent every available soldier and armoured vehicle into the city to secure extra food and other necessities, as well as inspect schools and other major buildings where it appeared survivors might be ensconced.

  ---------

  It had been more than a week since the power went off for good when the temperature dropped without warning and it started to snow. The wind howled in out of the west, creating huge snowdrifts. In reality, the snow was a blessing because it blanketed the area and erased the horrors of the day before. Both Todd’s mangled corpse and the charred cars and bodies in the middle of the parking lot were soon covered in virginal white.

  More infected had arrived after the battle yesterday, and they were out there shuffling around, but they were even slower than they usually were. When Katie came up to the roof and tried tormenting them with our car alarms, it took them much longer than normal to get to the car, not the usual minute or two. Nobody thought much of the day’s events, except Steve who spoke to Xander in hushed tones about it.

  “Maybe they’re freezing solid, just like anything else out in that brutal cold.”

  “It’s possible. Even if they are dead, it would stand to reason that if they stand still long enough, they would freeze solid,” Xander replied.

  Xander woke up early the next morning and even though it wasn’t his turn to go up on the roof, he went up anyways. He nodded at Jack, who nodded back.

  “What are you doing up here so early? You’re not on duty for another six hours,” Jack said.

  “Just curious to see what’s going on out here,” Xander replied.

  Xander was stunned by what he saw.

  The parking lot was covered in several inches of snow, and the dozens of zombies had turned into snow covered statues overnight. He grabbed puck and threw one at a zombie maybe twenty feet away. It hit the zombie right in the head and bounced off. The zombie didn’t even flinch.

  Xander climbed back down into the Costco and woke up Steve.

  “Looks like you were right. They seem to be frozen solid out there,” Xander told him.

  Steve nodded and said, “That’s good, then we can head out and see what kind of supplies we can find nearby. We could always use some more weapons, and some wood from Home Depot over there would give us more fuel to cook with and stay warm.”

  “Not so fast,” Xander replied. “Just because one doesn’t move, doesn’t mean they’re all frozen. Besides, who knows how many more are out there. There’s an awful lot of apartments and condos nearby. I say we wait another day or so.”

  “That’s fine by me, I just don’t want to freeze to death waiting for them to freeze to death,” Steve said.

  They waited another full day just to be sure.

  When Xander and Steve went outside, it was anti-climatic. The zombies were all frozen solid and couldn’t move at all. The parking lot was eerie covered in a blanket of fresh snow and filled with dozens of frozen corpses. The only sound was their boots crunching in the fresh snow as they walked.

  Steve and Xander approached the burnt out cars with extreme caution. The cars were all write-offs, and most of the weapons were damaged beyond repair, but they did find a shotgun in working condition, along with a few boxes of ammunition.

&nbs
p; As they were leaving, Xander bent down to examine one of the dead cops. He brushed aside the snow and murmured, “I thought so.”

  “What,” Steve asked, turning towards Xander.

  Xander walked over and checked out the other bodies. “I thought it was fishy how they just shot Todd without warning. Look at this guy’s uniform. He’s wearing a cop’s jacket, but he’s also got running shoes and black pants on. Same with most of these other pricks. These weren’t cops, these were marauders plain and simple.”

  Steve spat on the corpse. “Fuckers!”

  Chapter 28

  October 14th

  An argument was brewing inside Costco, and it was split down gender and age lines.

  The men, all of them young, wanted to head out on a salvage mission to the Home Depot next door.

  The women and everyone over forty, was dead set against anyone going outside, no matter how safe it looked at the moment.

  “Look, think of how much those pallets helped us. Home Depot has got all sorts of stuff we could use – propane tanks for the BBQ, lumber, insulation, you name it. We could really use a lot of stuff to fix this place up so we aren’t freezing our asses off all the time,” Xander argued.

  Jack, Gary, and Steve nodded vigorously in agreement. Donald even nodded in assent.

  “And look at what happened the last time we went outside. You almost got killed and we still didn’t get everything we needed,” Evelyn replied. “If I have any say in the matter, we aren’t going outside until winter sets in and all these motherfuckers are frozen solid.”

  “We have no idea if Mom and Dad are alive, Xander. Why take such a big risk? Can’t we wait a few months until winter sets in for good?” Diane pleaded.

  “Think if we could get a pump and get some gas from the gas station across the street. We could fire up those generators in the hardware section and run all sorts of things, appliances, heaters, TVs, all sorts of things that would make our lives much more comfortable,” Steve countered.