In Hiding: A Survivors Journal of the Great Outbreak

by Michael Elliott

  I can’t even remember how long it took but finally the traffic started to move and I knew of a store that was nearby. It wasn’t my first choice but it was going to have to do. The world around me seemed to be in a state of utter chaos. People running up and down the streets, the honking horns, the screams. None of it seemed like it could really be happening. It all seemed like a nightmare. The last terrible image I remember seeing before pulling into the store’s parking lot was a group of people hunched over what looked like a young man lying on the sidewalk. I turned my head away from that gruesome scene and kept on driving.

  Eventually I made it to the store and pulled into the mostly empty parking lot. I could see a few cars scattered across the enormous lot and I remember for reasons unknown to me, I parked pretty far away from the front entrance. I stepped outside of my vehicle and lit up a cigarette just relieved that I had finally made it. I looked around and could see people running from something on the far side of the street. I couldn’t see what they were running from but it wasn’t hard to figure out.

  I started walking towards the store realizing that I should have parked closer to the building. As I looked around I could see that there were a few people in the distance walking in my direction. I started to walk a little faster. I looked back once more and could see that there was a man just on the other side of my vehicle. That was when I broke into a jog and hurried to the front doors.

  The thought had never crossed my mind until that very moment. That was when I realized that with everything going on there was a chance that the store could have been closed. Luckily for me it wasn’t.

  I actually remember breathing a sigh of relief when the automatic doors opened for me. I paused for a second and looked around before stepping inside. I can tell you that I was actually scared as I walked through the first set of doors. I didn’t know exactly what to expect. But as I prepared myself to pass through the second set of doors I could see that there was a small group of customers and what looked like several employees huddled together at the front of the store.

  You see when people stopped showing up for work in those early days of the outbreak companies that stayed open were offering incentives to get anyone to work. After all, the business was there, especially if the store sold the supplies that people desperately needed. Some stores offered double time or banked vacation. They offered bonuses and other incentives to keep people working. So I wasn’t shocked to see a few employees in the building, especially if the company’s incentives were good enough.

  When I walked through the second set of doors the first thing I saw was a man pointing a gun at me. I was defiantly lucky, he looked scared and it was becoming common for people to shoot first and ask questions later in those days. Funny thing is I was fully expecting to see my life flash before my eyes. But as it turns out the only thing that happened was I raised my hands in the air and asked if the store was still open.

  The man kept his gun pointed in my direction and shouted all kinds of obscenities at me while the others in the group tried to calm him down. Finally when the man did lower his gun I made my way over to join them at the front. The first thing I learned was that the store wasn’t technically open for business but the employees that had shown up that morning were still a bit confused by everything that was going on. None of the managers had shown up and with the chaos outside none of them knew what to do.

  Apparently, most of the employees of the store had stopped showing up over the last few days and these employees were willing to work and take advantage of those offered incentives. They mostly showed up for work because they were young and didn’t grasp the gravity of the situation or they were desperately in need of the extra money.

  However, that day there were only a few of them who actually made it to the store. The customers that were there had either stopped in for supplies or were on the road and pulled in because of how bad things had become. I stood there quietly and listened to everything they had to say.

  Apparently before I had arrived there had been several customers who had simply grabbed what they needed and ran. I guess looter is a better term for them then customer. Those who remained were still trying to figure out a way to pay for what they needed or were too afraid to go back outside. Better people I guess. I won’t lie, I actually thought about grabbing what I needed and getting the hell out of there while they sat around and discussed what to do next. But before I could decide if I was capable of that, I heard a scream.

  A young woman who was standing directly across from me in our little circle let out a blood-curdling scream. She looked terrified and when I turned around to look at the front doors I could see what had her so afraid.

  There was an elderly man who was walking towards the outside set of front doors. His entire mid-section looked like it had been torn apart by wild animals. His intestines and organs seemed ready to burst through the gapping wounds in his stomach as he shuffled forward. There was no logical reason why he would still be alive let alone walking.

  His face lacked any color except for a hint of grey, his mouth hung open, and his eyes were fixated on us as he moved closer to the doors. He moved slowly, but he kept a steady pace despite the fact that his feet were basically dragging along the pavement. He made sounds like nothing I had ever heard before. Sounds I couldn’t even describe. They didn’t sound human and I guess that’s probably the best way to describe it.

  The group started to panic. I don’t think that anyone of us had any idea of what to do. If I hadn’t been so scared I probably would have run away. Instead I froze. But there was one member of the group who decided to take action. A young man, probably twenty-two or twenty-three, who looked like he had played sports for most of his young life. He decided to do something. Cody was his name and he moved quickly like only invincible youth can. He started sprinting towards the front entrance to try and close the doors before the man got there.

  Problem is that Cody arrived at the doors at the same time as the infected old man. He desperately tried to pull them closed before the man could push his way inside But the automatic opening system had already reacted to the presence of the Zed on the other side and as Cody tried to grab a hold of the doors and pull them shut, the old man’s eyes locked on to him and in a split second he had his arms around Cody’s shoulders. I am still not sure how exactly it all happened, but I remember seeing Cody fall to the ground and the old man was suddenly on top of him.

  Some of the other employees scrambled to turn off the system that controlled the automatic doors. While they worked on that, a few of the others raced over to try and help Cody escape from underneath the infected monster that was trying to kill him. I didn’t move. I was frozen in place. Everything was moving in slow motion for me at that point. Call it fear. Call it whatever you want but I couldn’t move. I can’t even remember how long it took me to snap out of it.

  I do remember that the man had Cody pinned to the ground. I can still see him biting at the air, getting closer and closer to Cody’s face. The one good thing was that Cody had a hold of the old Zeds neck and was managing to keep his mouth at a safe distance. Two of the other employees arrived on the scene and started trying to pull the old man off of him. One of them grabbed the back of the man’s shirt while the other grabbed him by his shoulders and they both tried to pull him away.

  It happened fast, the shirt ripped and one of the employees who had gone over to help went flying backwards and slammed onto the ground. Just as that happened, the other employee lost his focus for only a brief second and while he watched his co-worker fall back onto the pavement his hand slipped off the old man’s shoulder and it dropped right in front of his face.

  The old Zed’s eyes shifted from Cody to the hand in front of his face. His head turned quicker then his rigid body looked like it could and he bit down on the young man’s hand. As it all happened I remember everything having an artificial feel about it. It didn’t seem real. I was in some kind of haze as I watched it all unfold right in fron
t of me. That was until I felt someone shaking me by my shoulders. It was another one of the customers who was trying to get me to go over and help.

  He was right in my face. Shouting about helping them, saying we had to do something. It was the same man who only moments before had been pointing a loaded weapon at me. That was when I finally snapped out of it. Things went back to real time and together, we both started running to the aid of strangers. I am not sure that either one of us were sure what we would do when we got there. But luckily for me he got there before I did.

  Cody was still on the ground fighting off the infected old man. The other two employees were both lying on the ground. One was holding his hand trying to stop the bleeding. The other was trying to get up after banging his head on the ground. The customer running with me, the man who had the gun, well that was Paul. He delivered a swift kick right to the head of the old man, knocking him off of Cody and allowing us to complete the rescue.

  The last thing I remember was helping Cody up off of the ground, while a few of the others grabbed our wounded and we all pulled back inside the store before the old Zed was able to get back onto his feet. I didn’t take a long look, but I could see that there were other people closing in on the front doors and just by the way they moved, I could tell that they weren’t coming to help us.

  Once we were all safely back inside the store and had safely closed and locked the doors we all took a few steps back and watched in silence as the old man got back onto his feet and started moving towards the door again.

  A few of the others tried to help the young man who had just been bit by the Zed. I would come to learn his name was Bruce. We didn’t know at the time what being bit meant for Bruce. There were a ton of rumors floating around of how the virus was spread. We were however smart enough to realize that getting bit by someone who was obviously infected wasn’t a good thing. But we didn’t know the full extent of what it meant for Bruce or for us at the time.

  There were six of us at that point and we were all busy watching that zombie like old man pound on the shatterproof glass. Even more terrifying was that he wasn’t alone anymore. There were three others that had joined him at the front doors and they were all pounding widely on the front doors.

  Under normal circumstances we would have called an ambulance or drove Bruce to the hospital. Under normal circumstances we would have called the police to come and save us from the monsters outside. But those weren’t normal circumstances. None of our cell phones were working. No signal, busy signals, you name it. Besides I doubted that an ambulance would have come even if we had managed to get through. My guess was that they were pretty damn busy that morning. Hell, even if an ambulance had been dispatched, getting through traffic would have been near impossible, which also ruled out anyone of us driving him to the hospital. That and the fact that none of us were eager to go back outside with those things out there.

  I remember through all of the chaos Paul shouting for Cody to get on the PA and tell anyone that was left in the store to meet us at the front of the building. He wanted everyone to be together. Safety in numbers I guess. But before Cody even had a chance to make it to one of the phones, others had already started to arrive. There weren’t many of them, but they came and they came quickly. They were running and it was obvious that they were running from something. They were all screaming about something getting inside, they were screaming about some of them being in the store.

  Their arrival had brought the groups number up to twelve. Every one of us absolutely horrified and every one of us scared. Those first moments when we were all together, well it’s hard to describe how critical they were for us. We were all divided on what to do next and those decisions we made would come with consequences. Some of us just wanted to run for our cars and try and get away, but in all honesty we felt trapped. There were Zeds at the front doors and we had just learned that there were some of them inside the building with us. None of us knew where to go or what to do.

  There was yelling, there was name-calling, there was panic, and then there was Paul. When we were scared, when we were all so terrified, he remained calm. He tried to talk some sense into us. Sure we didn’t want to hear it, but he talked us into staying together. I have to say that he probably stopped us all from rushing off and doing something stupid.

  None of us were ready for this. Outside of a few of those bunker nuts that I used to think were crazy, nobody was prepared for anything like this. I don’t think that there was a person out there who knew what to do in a situation like this. It wasn’t like there was a guidebook for surviving this type of thing. Everything we had been taught in school, everything we knew about medical science had told us that this was impossible. Zombies were a thing of fiction and fantasy. They weren’t something we needed to be afraid of in the real world. We were confused, we were scared, and we felt like there was no way out.

  Our arguments were interrupted when we heard a loud noise that sounded unnatural. At first we had thought it had come from the infected old man or his newly found friends outside. However, once we heard it again we were quick to realize that it had come from somewhere inside the building.

  I remember Paul raising his pistol and scanning our surroundings for a target. We couldn’t pin point exactly where the sound was coming from. We heard it again, that time much louder then the others, and there was little doubt that it was closer that time and it sounded like it was closing in on us.

  We learned from two of the employees who had just joined us that the receiving doors had been left open. They were waiting for a delivery from one of the local vendors who usually arrived around that time in the morning. We guessed that was how they were getting inside the store. When the two employees saw a few of the Zeds come wandering through the back doors they ran. Mistakes like that were what got people killed in those early days. So now with the doors open, there was no telling how many of them could have walked right into the store while we had been up there talking.

  With the front doors blocked, and without knowing how many of those things were inside with us, we decided to hide.

  It’s hard to describe exactly what was going through our minds at that very moment. We couldn’t exactly see what was happening outside. All that I knew for sure was that there was a growing number of Zeds at the front doors and an undetermined number of them coming in through the back door. I felt surrounded and I could tell that most of the others felt the same way. Hiding probably wasn’t the best choice, but it seemed like the only option at the time.

  All of a sudden I remember we were all running towards the back end of the store. At the time I couldn’t understand why we were running towards the area we figured the sounds were coming from but whoever was leading us knew where they were going, so I followed. We ran through the store until we ploughed through the swinging doors at the back that said employees only and entered the store’s stock room. I was still just following.

  I heard another loud sound, that time I could tell it had come from somewhere close. We continued running through the back room, past freezer doors and caged in areas that held tobacco and alcohol. We ran past racks of clothing and shelves that contained everything from bike helmets to televisions and before I knew it we were running up a flight of stairs. The man behind me was pushing at my back trying to make me run faster. We were so tightly packed together as we hurried up those stairs that I couldn’t move any faster even though I desperately wanted too.

  When we reached the top of the stairs we went through a door that led to a long hallway. That hallway had several doors on each side of it, but we blew right past them on our way to a door at the end of the hall. When I got there I saw Paul holding the door open, waiving everyone inside with his gun in his hand.

  Once inside I realized that I had been led to an employee break room. There were tables and lockers, a microwave, a sink, and a pair of bathrooms. The walls were covered with notifications and safety posters just like you would picture most break rooms. Once we we
re all inside, we barricaded the door by moving a few of the lockers in front of it. We laid them on their side and piled them up four high. We were trapped. But at least we were safe for the time being.

  I saw one of the girls grab a first aid kit off of the wall. She immediately tried to clean and bandage Bruce’s wounded hand. Her name was Kerri. I had no interest in being near the blood and the virus that young man had most likely been exposed too. But she didn’t think twice about it. I had to give her credit, she was a lot braver then I was.

  Instead of helping, I just stood around and listened to the discussions taking place about what our next move should be. In all honesty I was just happy to be safe for the moment, but Paul was quick to tell the others and me why staying where we were was a bad idea.

  First of all, Paul made it pretty clear to all of us that we didn’t have enough food or water to hold up in that break room for any real length of time. Secondly, Paul reminded us that the receiving doors had been left open. If we stayed upstairs for too long, there was no telling how many of those things could find their way inside. At that point we knew if we didn’t do something quick, there was a good chance we could end up trapped in that break room until we all died of starvation.