In Hiding: A Survivors Journal of the Great Outbreak

by Michael Elliott

  I saw Kerri holding her ears sitting on the ground. The woman from the bathroom stall was trying to get me to focus on the Zed in front of us but I was too busy trying to pull myself together.

  I felt a hand grab a hold of my shoe. It wasn’t a strong hold, so I pulled my foot away with little effort. I slid back against the wall closest to me and tried to get myself back on my feet. He reached out again and grabbed my shoe once more so I took aim with the shotgun again. Before I squeezed the trigger I realized that another gunshot in there could blow out my eardrums. Besides, my shoulder was in such pain it was hard to hold the gun properly anyway.

  His grip tightened on my left shoe so I kicked him in the face as hard as I could with my other foot. Nothing. He kept coming. I kicked again and again but it wasn’t enough to stop him. I stood up tall and brought the stock of the gun down hard into the back of his skull. He stopped crawling. Then he reached out again slowly and I brought the gun down again. I hit him harder that time. Then before I gave him a chance to move again I hit him for a third time. Then a fourth and a fifth and when I finally stopped hitting him, I knew that there was no way that Zed was going to move again. He didn’t.

  It took us a while to get out of that washroom. I stood over the corpse of that man for a few moments unsure of what I had just done. Kerri and the woman from the stall were both in rough shape after everything that had happened. We could barely hear each other speak and I remember just trying to process what had taken place. I know one thing for sure, what happened in that washroom that day, well it changed me in a way that I really can’t describe.

  The woman in the washroom with Kerri and I, well that was Shannon. She was older then I was, my first guess was that she was in her late thirties. She was blonde, wore glasses and to be honest she reminded me of one of my old grade school teachers. The redness that surrounded her eyes told me she had been crying and crying a lot.

  When we exited the washroom we came face to face with Paul and Anne pointing their guns down the hallway at as. They had heard the gun shot, they made sure that everyone had made it back to the meeting point in the sporting goods department and then raced over to check on us when they realized that we hadn’t returned.

  Later Anne would tell me I looked like I was in shock when she first saw me step out into that hallway. I don’t remember it, but she told me that I kept asking what I had done over and over again. She told me that I eventually snapped out of it but according to her I was a mess when they first found us. The first days were the worst for that. There was just so much confusion.

  We told Paul and Anne about everything that had happened. Then Shannon introduced herself and told us how she ended up where she did. Apparently, she had been in the store trying to get survival supplies when she heard the commotion at the front of the building. She hid from us, trying to avoid any trouble unsure of what was happening. She was trying to sneak to the back corner until she was cut off by that Zed who was now dead on the bathroom floor. She ran away and found herself trapped down the hallway where the washrooms were. She tried to hide in the washroom but the door didn’t have a lock.

  She tried holding the door closed as the Zed pushed his way inside. He eventually overpowered her and she ran to the one place she thought she could hide. One of the bathroom stalls. She locked the door and leaned as hard as she could into the door with her back while pushing with her legs on the toilet. She didn’t even know how long she had been there. I still can’t imagine how she did it.

  We discussed why the Zed never tried to go under the stall door on the way back to our meeting point. We also learned that the rest of the store was empty. All of the other groups had been far luckier then we had been. Kerri told Anne about Scott’s car and what we had seen. I could see the concern in her face as she heard the news.

  When we arrived back and met the others Shannon, Kerri and I had to retell our story to the rest of the group. We also saw that Bruce had taken a turn for worse. He had developed a strong fever and had been growing faint while we were away. Sandy was in a panic because she had no idea what to do for him. Ray was busy trying to calm her down and get a few of the others to go out and find anything they could to help.

  We all scattered around the different departments trying to find something that could help Bruce. We grabbed bags of frozen vegetables for cold compress, we tried painkillers and we gave him bottles of water. Nothing seemed to be bringing his fever down. It was while we were trying to help Bruce that we heard what sounded like multiple explosions outside. I mean it sounded like the fourth of July out there. Cody and Adam ran over to the front doors trying to get a look at what had happened.

  They came back and told us that they couldn’t see anything through the growing wall of zombies that had gathered at the doors. I felt helpless not knowing what was going on around us I mean we actually believed that we were hearing the military coming to our rescue at that point. Some of the others were trying to find another way of seeing what was going on but nobody could think of anything.

  That was until Cody told us about the rooftop. Once and a while he and some of his buddies would drink up there when their shift was over. He knew where the key was to unlock the hatch. He ran and grabbed it and then led us to the upstairs. He brought us to the break room and opened a door that looked like it belonged to an electrical room. Inside that room there was a ladder that led us to the roof of the building.

  Once up there we all walked together to the front ledge of the roof and looked out at the streets below. The view of the world around me had changed dramatically since the last time I had seen it. There were pillars of black smoke rising into the sky from almost every corner of the city. I saw a group of military helicopters fly overhead at incredible speeds. The road at the far end of the parking lot was littered with vehicles and almost every one of them appeared to be abandoned. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at.

  Just then a series of small explosions ripped through a city block not to far from where we were. I assumed that was what we had been hearing from inside. There were people scattered all across the parking lot. Well, not people like me. They were all zombie-like in their movements and seemed to be walking around as if they were lost. Some of them were moving to join the others at the store’s front doors. But most of the others just wandered around aimlessly searching for god knows what.

  Every so often I could see a car trying to drive down one of the side roads around all of the newly formed obstacles that seemed to block every street. I could hear the odd horn, I could still make out gunshots in the distance and I could see the fires burning. It was a disaster.

  I hadn’t even noticed that Trevor had left us on our way to the roof. That was probably why he scared the hell out of me when he came running up behind us. Trevor had gone to grab snack food and drinks for all of us. Most of us hadn’t eaten that day or even had anything to drink. We were too busy surviving to realize that we were all starving. Luckily, Trevor remembered and brought up a wide variety of snacks, bottled water, beer, wine and juice. I lit up a cigarette and grabbed a beer and watched the sun set on a city that had become almost unrecognizable.

  DAY TWO

  If I had to describe that first night in the store the only word that comes to mind is terrible. Not the most vivid description I know. But it truly is the only word that comes to mind. Most of us stayed up well into the morning hours watching the indescribable destruction going on around us. When I finally did try and get some sleep in the break room I found it almost impossible to shut off my mind. I was constantly jolted out of any light sleep I managed to fall into by the slightest sound. Every time I closed my eyes I saw horrible images flashing through my mind constantly reminding me of the awful things I had seen on that first day.

  I wasn’t the only one in the group who couldn’t sleep. With the quiet of the night came time to think about everything that had happened. Trying to understand how something so unbelievable could take place was enough to keep you awake in
itself. But the thought of the family members and friends that we had left out there and what might have happened to them was crushing. I could hear some of the others in the room trying to muffle the sound of their crying throughout the night. At one point Adam woke up screaming in terror and everyone jumped to his or her feet.

  When the morning finally did come I remember hoping that it was all just a nightmare and that I was home in my bed and the world was as it should be. It wasn’t but at least with the daylight came a very small sense of security. Most of the others were still trying to rest in the break room around the time I got up and started moving around. I walked down the stairs to explore the sales floor mostly out of curiosity. Even thought I knew the doors were all locked and that the store was empty I still had a hard time feeling safe as I roamed the aisles of the store.

  I don’t remember what exactly I was looking for that morning but in my search I eventually found Ray sitting in the entertainment department in a camping chair watching the national news. The national news channels were the only real source we had for information. Our local news had gone off the air as of that morning. However, the national news was gathering reports from everywhere and even broadcasting local correspondents who were still sending in information. I guess some of those reporters were trying to hit it big by reporting from the front lines of the greatest disaster that the world had ever known. That national news channel kept us updated throughout those early days in the outbreak and Ray was hooked. He was a well-educated man and he found the entire situation fascinating.

  That morning the two of us were watching television together and we learned that the outbreak had hit almost every major city across the United States. The East Coast had been the hardest hit in this country. Europe, Asia, Africa, almost everywhere in the world had been reporting outbreaks of the virus. Major cities across the globe had been overrun with things that closely resembled zombies and the high population density of those cities was only helping the virus spread.

  Reports stated that a large percentage of the police force across the country had abandoned their stations and were leaving to be with their families and who could really blame them. That morning one of the reporters had implied that New York City was almost lost. Sure there were still small groups of survivors spread out across the city, but the military had been forced to pull out. The outbreak had become so bad they simply couldn’t contain it any longer.

  Apparently, they had too pull out of several major cities in the Northeastern United States that morning. New York, Boston, Baltimore were all overrun and the military was in a full retreat south to D.C. to meet up with other units protecting the capital. From the footage we saw it looked like some units were still holding out strong in certain areas of the country, but the Zed outbreak had spread America’s forces thin. There was no front line to hold, the front line was everywhere. There was no way to just pound the enemy into submission because Zeds didn’t surrender.

  In the days leading up to the outbreak we had all seen the use of riot police and non-lethal weapons to try and contain the infected. What we were watching that morning was a complete shift in operational procedure from the military and authorities. It had become shoot to kill. They were trying to stop the spread of the outbreak by any means necessary.

  But there was another threat that was starting to make an appearance throughout the Midwest. The Great Outbreak had hit the eastern part of the country hard and fast but it was slowly making its way west. The people in its path had begun rioting and looting and those cities became just as dangerous as the ones that had been overrun with Zeds. As Ray and I watch some of those reports we discovered that they were just as hard to watch as the horrors of the outbreak itself.

  When it came to actual information on the virus there was still very little coming out. However there were plenty of instructions and discouraging news about what was happening across the country. They told us that here was no cure, the infected were dangerous, and the virus was spreading rapidly. They were instructing people in highly dangerous areas to stay indoors or get to one of those secure shelters that had been set up. Major highways had turned into parking lots as people fled major cities and they had become terribly dangerous places. Thing is the Zeds weren’t the only thing to be afraid of on the highways.

  Looking back I have to admit that we were very lucky to have some of the luxuries we did. Having power for as long as we did, the food and water, and especially access to television. The news fully covered the outbreak in those early days when we were still lucky enough to have electricity. I guess if the news was still on the air it felt like things weren’t completely lost yet. It was something that felt familiar and I would like to think that it was a big help for those of us lucky enough to watch it.

  That morning I found it very difficult to get going. I was exhausted from lack of sleep and my body felt stiff and ached from falling on that bathroom floor the day before. The severity of the crisis was setting in all over again and a part of me just wanted to go curl up somewhere, close my eyes and hope to ride it out.

  But instead I forced myself to get up and move around. I checked the front doors to see if just maybe the situation outside had improved. What I found was that the number of Zeds that were trying to force their way through the front doors had grown by the dozens. I still have no idea what led them to us. Maybe they could hear all the noise we had been making. Maybe they just knew we were inside but there was really no way of knowing for sure.

  After seeing just how bad it was at the front I went and checked on Bruce to see if his condition had improved at all. He seemed to be feeling a little better but he was still nowhere near healthy. As it turns out, that second day would be an incredible test of his and our mental strength. The first day had caught us all by surprise and in order to survive we made critical decisions and we made them quickly. The second day provided us some time to reflect on those decisions and the reality that we were stuck was starting to sink in for some of the others. We had left a lot of people out there in the middle of this disaster and now with nothing but free time to think about it, some of the others were starting to realize that we might never see those people again.

  Ray had his wife somewhere out there. They were both retired and the two of them never had any children. His wife was down in North Carolina visiting her sister when all of this began and he hadn’t been able to contact her since. Ray had been shopping for supplies to make the road trip south to look for her when he became trapped in here with us.

  Tanya had her mother. She had lost her father a few years back and after that the two of them had grown extremely close. She had a few friends and co-workers she had left out there, but it was her mother who she worried about the most.

  Anne had left her husband and two children out there in all of this. Anne held out hope that her husband would have brought the children out to the country where her father lived with her brother. She thought there was a good chance they would be safer out there. I hoped they had made it as well.

  Cody was younger. He like Kerri had left their parents and siblings to survive outside without anyway of knowing where they were. Trevor who was similar in age to the two of them had left behind his wife and two young children. One five and the other two, he had married young and had children even younger. He had worked at the store ever since.

  Adam was always a mystery to me. He rarely spoke, especially about himself. Guessing by his age I assumed his parents were still alive. Either way, we had all left our loved ones out there when we made the decision to stay. As much as some of the others spoke about wanting to go home, I don’t think that any one of us had the nerve to go through with it. Maybe we were just afraid of the monsters outside. Maybe we were all just scared of what we might find if we actually made it there.

  Shannon wasn’t married. She spoke about a long-term boyfriend who she didn’t seem too overly concerned about. But when she talked about her parents I could tell just how worried she was about their
safety. Paul never really spoke about any family or friends. I guess he didn’t feel it was necessary to share that information and Bruce, well he never really had a chance to talk about the people he had on the outside.

  Those discussions about our loved ones started that morning and that was when Paul decided it was important that we didn’t sit around feeling sorry for ourselves. We couldn’t afford to just dwell on things we had no control over. There were plenty of reports of suicides before the outbreak became official. Some people believed that the world was coming to an end or thought it would be better to go out on their own terms rather then face the possibility of becoming one of those things. Some of those people just couldn’t live with the terrible decisions that the outbreak forced us to make.

  So in an early attempt to curb that line of thinking, Paul decided that we needed to keep ourselves busy. So we started counting supplies, securing that door or blocking that door. Don’t get me wrong, all of those things needed to be done anyway. But most of the time we seemed to be doing things just to keep our minds occupied. That was one of the reasons we started the daily sweeps of the building on day two.