That was when the soldiers opened fire. That was brutal in itself, but the most horrifying thing was the footage that followed. The bullets didn’t seem to stop them. Some of the infected fell to the ground as the bullets hit them, but then they got back to their feet and just kept walking towards the soldiers. It looked like the shots had no affect on them whatsoever. The news feed ended abruptly at that point. Apparently the networks felt what followed was too violent to show on television. I can’t imagine what was worse then what we had already seen. That footage was broadcast across the country and what followed could only be described as total chaos.
It was about that time when I first heard the term Zed used to describe the infected. The term had originated on the Internet as a way to generalize those who had succumbed to the virus. I guess it was short for zombie and it was mainly used by those of us that could see the similarities between the infected and the zombies of movies and books. Besides, using the word zombie was pretty much taboo at that point. Anytime anyone used the zombie word in relation to the virus they were immediately ridiculed for it. It seemed like everyone wanted to ignore the glaring similarities. Maybe they weren’t zombies, but they were pretty damn close if you ask me.
Anyway, after what transpired in Columbia, panic started to rip through society, as people grew more and more afraid of the virus. There were a lot of accidental shootings in those days. Not only did people have to fear the Zeds, but the people who might mistake them for one. Walking around at night became so dangerous, my city and many others put a strict curfew in place. Everyone had to be home before dark or face possible jail time or fines. But the shootings just didn’t happen at night and not all of them were simply a case of misidentification. Things had started to fall apart.
It didn’t take me long to realize that the virus wasn’t the only thing to be worried about. I knew that I had to protect myself from other people and what they might do. Panic was starting to set in and I needed to be vigilant. People were capable of strange things when they were scared. So I started barricading my door each night before I went to bed. I would push my couch in front of my door and I slept with a baseball bat next to my nightstand. It wasn’t just to protect myself from Zeds. One of my biggest fears was the increase in break-ins and that someone would steal my flat screen television, my laptop, my tablet and all the things I cared so much about. The police were too busy with the outbreak to handle things like theft and there were plenty of people out there who knew it.
Then just when things didn’t seem like they could get any worse, the economy went into the toilet. I mean obviously there were more important things to worry about at the time. But that came with serious consequences.
People around the world were starting to see that the situation wasn’t going to be resolved anytime soon. Some pulled their money out of the banks, the stock market started to collapse, and the price of goods started to rise. People were hoarding supplies and rarely leaving their homes. Most businesses suffered as employees just stopped showing up for work. Some stores and businesses just shut their doors and hoped to ride out the storm.
Some stores did stay open however. They made a killing jacking up prices and gouging customers on basic supplies. I know it was illegal, but who was really going to stop them. There were bigger issues to deal with.
With everything progressively getting worse the governments of North America mutually closed their borders. Many countries across Europe had already issued travel bans and closed airports. Limiting travel was one-way most governments believed they could stop the spread of infection. But travelers weren’t the only things blocked from crossing borders. Trade had pretty much stopped altogether. That meant that certain products and resources were no longer being exported or imported. Prices on things like fuel spiked as the supply slowed and the demand grew.
I remember watching plenty of stories on the news about people attacking gas station attendants and grocery clerks, outraged by prices or not having what they needed. It was ugly to say the very least. Luckily I never really saw too much of that kind of stuff in my neighborhood. By the time things like that started to happen around here it was already too late.
It was becoming obvious to me that we were on the verge of disaster. But watching it all unfold on television is one thing. It really hit me when the unthinkable finally happened. It was the moment the outbreak became all too real for me.
I was out on the balcony of my third floor condo sometime just around midnight. I was having a real hard time sleeping with everything that was going on. Every loud noise, every footstep in the hallway gave me an uneasy feeling that someone or something was just outside my door. My imagination would run wild throughout the night with the possible terrors that could be just outside my walls.
Well that night I saw a Zed in person for the first time and to be honest they were even more terrifying then the television made them out to be. I could see him standing below just across the street. With the curfew in place there was nobody else out on the roads. He just stood there, perfectly still, looking out at nothing with a blank look on his face. His clothes were ripped and his face a mess, he just stood there and it sent a shiver down my spine.
I didn’t move. I remember trying not to make a sound. Then for no reason that I could see he started walking down the street. His movements were unnatural and clumsy as he slowly moved away. He seemed to ignore all the buildings as if they didn’t even exist. I never moved. I just watched him as he stumbled down the road and didn’t go back inside until I was sure he was long gone. I never went to sleep that night and in the morning the local media reported several incidents had taken place all across the city.
People woke up in the middle of the night to find Zeds roaming around their back yard. There were reports of Zeds pounding on doors and windows of homes trying to get inside. The police and the Army responded to multiple emergency calls to find terrified families barricaded inside their homes. If the windows or doors didn’t hold, well neighbors mostly reported those stories.
In the days that followed, most people stayed inside, huddled around their television afraid to leave the safety of their homes. The accidental shootings had started to happen in my city. Close to my home. Close to my work. People were scared and didn’t know what to do. Mistrust grew between neighbors and friends, we watched everyone closely for signs that they had become infected. That they were going to turn into a mindless cannibal and come after us in the middle of the night.
You could feel it in the air. Every time I heard the sirens of emergency vehicles I froze for a moment and wondered what was happening. Every so often I heard gunshots in the middle of the afternoon. Sometimes it felt like they had come from just a few blocks away. Everything just felt different, like at any moment the levy would give way and the outbreak would spill out and consume us all.
Things in my region were growing worse by the day. But the news that was coming out of some of the major cities was down right disturbing. Cities like New York, Baltimore and Boston seemed to be on the brink. They had seen a steady rise in attacks and the cities were basically on lockdown. In some instances evacuations were already underway and one astonishing scene that I remember watching was the military in a full on fight to protect the residents as they fled. I watched it all with amazement, shocked by what was happening. But I found it difficult to worry about the people in those cities because I knew that it would only be a matter of time before the worst of it all made its way to where I was.
More and more I saw the police out on the streets. The National Guard and the Army were driving around neighborhoods. Buildings and sometimes there were entire city blocks being quarantined. It had reached the point where I knew I needed to do something but I just didn’t know what. I had no idea how to plan for something like this. I thought about buying a gun, I thought about leaving town. I just didn’t know where I could go.
The next day a man was attacked by a group of Zeds only three blocks away from my condo. They
never reported if the man survived or not. That was when I knew it was time to start planning my exit strategy.
That day turned out to be my last day at work. Well, it was the last day I decided to show up anyway. I could tell that the worst was coming and it was coming soon. When I arrived at work that day most of the staff had either called in or just hadn’t shown up at all. It really made me question why the hell I was still going to the office with everything that was going on in the world.
I spent most of that morning in the break room watching the news. It was probably sometime shortly after lunch when the local news put a crawl along the bottom of their broadcast listing different safe zones and shelters that had been set up by authorities. There were dozens of places all across the city and they suggested that anyone who did not feel safe in their homes should grab what they could carry and immediately make their way to the nearest one. That was enough for me. I decided to go home.
That drive home was when knew that I needed to get out of town and fast. Police cars and military vehicles were everywhere. People were all over the sidewalks and there were more cars on the road then I had ever seen before. Every car seemed to be loaded up with people and luggage. They were all headed to shelters or on their way out of town to stay with family in other parts of the country. I guess they had all seen the same thing I had and drawn the same conclusion.
That evening as I was watching my neighbors pack up their van to make their way to the nearest shelter I finally came up with my own plan. My theory was that if this virus was spreading as rapidly as it seemed, the last place I wanted to be was trapped in a shelter with a bunch of strangers. I envisioned those places being like one of those refugee camps I had seen in war torn countries where the people were tightly packed together in unsanitary conditions. That wasn’t where I wanted to be. I had thought of a better place.
It was a pretty simple plan and I actually thought it had a chance of working. I couldn’t go and stay with my parents in Grand Rapids, Michigan where they still lived. I didn’t want to be in any city until this outbreak passed. But my Uncle still owned a cottage up in the northern part of the state. It was out of the way from most major cities and was relatively isolated. It would be the perfect place to hold up in for a while until the government sorted this whole thing out.
I tried to call my parents and tell them where I was going and that they should meet me there. There was no answer at their house and they weren’t answering their cell phones. I couldn’t reach them no matter how many times I tried that night. I guess I convinced myself that they had already left for one of those shelters or that they had found some place safe of their own. I don’t think I realized how bad things had become.
So I barricaded my door one last night and tried to get some sleep. When I woke up I packed up my SUV and hit the road. But before I could make the long drive to Northern Michigan I was going to have to stop and pick up a few supplies.
DAY ONE
I call this day the first day of the outbreak. But it wasn’t. I guess I refer to it as that because it was the day in which my personal nightmare began. Either way, as of that morning there was chaos throughout most major cities east of the Mississippi River. The American people had responded with mass panic. It seemed like overnight the virus was everywhere, terrorizing neighborhoods and city centers across the eastern part of the country. It was also the morning I was putting my plan into action. I was going to the store to get the supplies I needed before I got on the highway.
Now I had seen footage of disasters on television before. But what I saw that morning was nothing like that. It was like every wildfire, riot, and mass evacuation I had ever seen all rolled into one. The roads were a total disaster. Cars were lined up and down every road. Well every road that was still open because huge areas of the city were on lockdown. There were checkpoints set up and roadblocks all across the city. It was almost impossible to get anywhere that morning.
I debated even stopping at the store. With traffic as bad as it was my first priority was to just get to the highway and out of the gridlock. People were everywhere and I mean everywhere. Huge crowds of people were walking along the sidewalk trying to get to the shelters. Police officers were trying to guide traffic to the best of their abilities but there were too few of them to handle the incredible amount of people on the move. The evacuation was in full swing.
It didn’t help matters that huge areas of the city were shut down by the National Guard as they tried to block off buildings, roads, and city blocks that had been overrun by the Zeds. The sad part is, that the traffic wasn’t the worst part of that morning.
My usually quiet little city had been turned into a war zone. Black smoke was rising into the sky as fires burned in the distance. People were fighting in the streets as they tried to push there way through the crowds. Horns were constantly honking, people were shouting and most troubling was that I could hear the sound of machine gun fire in the distance as it echoed through the streets. While sitting in my car, trapped in traffic I realized just how close I was to the danger.
I could see two police officers trying to move traffic along not too far ahead of me. I was also able to see the woman who came walking out of an alleyway long before the two officers did. She was infected, there was no doubt about that. Her left leg dragged behind her as she stumbled along. Her skin had a grayish tint to it and her awkward movements looked almost unnatural. But it was her eyes that really stood out to me. I will always remember that look in her eyes. There was nothing human about them and they never strayed from that officer that was busy to realize she was even there.
The cop eventually saw her. He yelled for her to stop several times but she didn’t listen, Zeds don’t listen. He pleaded with her again and again but she just kept walking right towards him.
The people on the sidewalks started to run.
Another officer nearby drew his weapon and pointed it at the woman. He looked scared as he yelled for her to stop. When she didn’t listen he fired his gun and hit her right in the left thigh. I don’t think she even flinched as the bullet entered her leg. He fired another shot into her chest and it knocked her off balance.
Cars around me started trying to push there way through the logjam or drove up and onto the sidewalks to get away. The officer the woman was headed for drew his gun and fired three rounds into her chest. The impact knocked her to the ground. But to my amazement that woman didn’t stay down for long and she was back up and on her feet again and slowly making her way for the same cop. I couldn’t believe what I was watching. I just looked on in disbelief as the wounded woman continued on her way.
Finally, the officer fired one more shot. That time he targeted her head at close range. I saw the back of her head open up as the bullet passed through and she quickly collapsed to the ground.
To say that I was in shock after seeing that might be a bit of an understatement. I had just watched a woman get gunned down right in front of me. Yet as horrifying as that was, it was her look, her actions and the fact that those bullets had almost no effect on her that had me frozen in my car just starring at her corpse. Seeing it on the Internet and hearing about it on the news is one thing. Witnessing it first hand is another.
The last thing I remember after that was feeling something pound on the back part of my vehicle. I don’t know if it was the car behind me or another person. For all I know it could have been one of them. I didn’t look and I didn’t hang around long enough to find out. I pulled onto the sidewalk and drove until I reached a parking lot where I was able to cut across and over to one of the side roads. As I drove away I remember hearing more screaming and several more gunshots.
There were signs of trouble everywhere that I looked. I saw a young man run out of the front door of a small corner store holding his arm. I could see the blood on his shirt as he ran past my driver’s side window. He never stopped. He just kept running down the street until he was long out of view.
I saw people everywhere. They
were running in all directions. I saw buildings on fire. I saw things that I thought I would never see in my life and I had seriously started to doubt that I was going to make it to the highway.
I remember turning on the radio hoping for a traffic report that could tell me about any roads that weren’t backed up or blocked by the authorities. Hoping for something. Anything. One way out of town that wasn’t total gridlock.
However, there was nothing on the radio that morning. Nothing except the emergency broadcast system. You know the one that they always run a test for in the middle of your favorite song. Well it wasn’t just a test anymore. Every time it came to an end it was followed by a series of instructions.
PLEASE REMAIN INDOORS. IF YOU DO NOT FEEL SAFE OR ARE UNABLE TO REMAIN IN YOUR HOME, PLEASE PROCEED TO ONE OF THE FOLLOWING LOCATIONS.
What followed was a list of several places in town. The community center, a bunch of churches, two of the high school gymnasiums, along with several other buildings that had been converted into safe areas for people to go too. I can still hear that voice reading those directions in my head. But I ignored them. I had a plan and I was going to stick to it.
In Hiding: A Survivors Journal of the Great Outbreak Page 2