In Hiding: A Survivors Journal of the Great Outbreak

by Michael Elliott

  I watched two more Zeds fall right into the oil pits as others pushed them from behind trying to get inside. The large crowd was being funneled through the opening and they were starting to trip over one another and knocking each other to the floor. Four more were heading in my direction and I raised my gun to take a shot. That was when I saw the one closest to me head jerk back as a bullet passed through it. I guessed the shot had come from Anne. It dropped to the ground. I took a step forward raised my shotgun and blasted the next closest Zed in the face. Its lifeless body collapsed to the ground and as I looked up I saw another zombie reaching out for me.

  Before I had a chance to fire again, I saw the bullet enter its left eye socket just as I heard the shot. Anne had fired again and with that there was only one left in front of me. I drove the stock of the gun into its face pushing it back just far enough that I could take aim and fire. The shot hit it in the left shoulder and it spun around to the ground and it landed on its knees leaning against the wall. I took the stock of the gun and with everything I had I drove it into its temple and crushed it’s head between the stock and the wall. Its head didn’t explode and there was no blood. It just stopped moving at that point.

  I felt something grab the back of my shirt. I swung around and almost clocked Tanya with my gun. With all of the screaming and gunshots I hadn’t heard her sneak up behind me. She was holding a handgun, Paul’s handgun. The two of us started pushing forward along the wall desperately trying to get to the button that would close the open door.

  Then Tanya screamed. The Zed whose head I had smashed against the wall was moving again and it had grabbed her by the ankle. She calmed herself and fired the handgun. Blood spattered that time as the bullet entered its brain from such close range. We moved on.

  I looked across the garage and saw Trevor driving the axe into another Zed’s face. Anne shot the one directly behind it and it dropped to the ground. There were far more zombies on that side of the garage because that was the door that was open. But there were more that were making there way up the middle between the two oil pits and a few more that were headed for Tanya and me.

  I watched two Zeds walking up the middle instantly get turned into corpses as Paul and Derrick opened fire. Cody and Jacob were both swinging their bats overhead into a group of about five Zeds and I could see that they were in trouble. I tried to yell for Paul to do something, then to Anne, then to Derrick but nobody could hear me. That was when I saw Trevor push the zombie closest to him into that crowd and three of them fell to the ground. With two swings of the axe two more were dead and Cody and Jacob used their bats to dispatch the others. They pushed forward towards the crowd and towards the door.

  Tanya shouted and pointed out a zombie that was moving closer to us. I fired a shot and blew half of the damn things neck away. It fell to the ground but quickly started getting back up to one knee. Two others behind it pushed the woman zombie back to the ground as they stepped over her in order to get to Tanya and I. That was when one of those two took a shotgun blast right in the stomach that hadn’t come from me. It fell to the ground and then just as I raised my shotgun to take out the last one in front of me I heard what sounded like a firework go off in my left ear.

  Tanya had fired her gun, but what she didn’t realize was that she had held the gun too close to my ear. It was that same disorientated feeling that I had in that washroom, and it took me a few seconds just to gather myself only to realize that he had shot that Zed in the shoulder and had accomplished nothing other then damaging my hearing. But there was no time to be angry with her, I regrouped and fired a shot into its chest.

  Now I know that you had to shoot them in the head. But that’s a small target and seeing how I wasn’t the greatest shot in the world and under a ton of stress, I was usually just happy to hit one of them. Besides, the shotgun was forgiving and its stopping power was usually enough to at least knock them to the ground. The more of them on the ground meant more obstacles for the other Zeds who had shown that they weren’t the most co-coordinated of creatures.

  That was when Tanya walked up to that Zed on the ground holding the gun only about two feet away from its head and pulled the trigger. The back of its head spilled out on the garage floor and then she turned to her right and executed another one that was still moving on the ground. I grabbed her shoulder and tried to point out to her where we needed to get too. It was too loud to talk and we needed to get to that button before it was too late to close the door.

  I looked over to check on the progress of the other group on the far side of the garage. They were doing worse then we were. There were about a dozen bodies on the ground and as more and more Zeds pushed their way into the garage they were tripping and falling all over each other. A large group of them had ended up on that side of the garage and were blocking their path. Anne, Paul and Derrick were firing into that crowd, trying to help them get to the door, but there were just too many of them. Cody and Jacob were swinging into the crowd just trying to hold them back. Trevor was driving his axe into the heads of any zombie that was still moving on the floor. I could barely hear Anne and Paul screaming to close the doors while Derrick screamed about getting out of the way.

  Through all of that I could hear Tanya shouting about a Zed that was approaching us, but struggling to get past a body on the floor. It tripped and fell flat on its face but started getting back up immediately. I stepped forward and lined up my shot from only a few feet away. I remember closing my eyes as I pulled the trigger. Its head exploded right in front of me and sprayed blood and chunks of brain matter all over the floor. I turned away from that mess just in time to see the Zed on my left stepping towards me from the middle of the garage. Luckily for me the oil pit was between us and as it stepped forward it fell to the bottom.

  While I was busy watching that I didn’t see the woman in a business suit reaching her arms out for me on my right. I heard Tanya fire her weapon and I saw the impact of the bullet as it hit her in the shoulder. She fired again and missed completely. I froze for that split second and even though I knew I had to do something my body just didn’t move. I thought I was done for.

  That was when I saw her head quickly snap back as the bullet entered her head. The shot had come from Anne. I tried to look back and thank her, but she had already reloading and was trying to find her next target.

  The horde of zombies was tightly packed together on the far side of the garage and right at the opening. The pile of dead on the floor was growing and more and more of them were being funneled to the other side of the garage. The side I was on. I fired a shot into a crowd of about four or five of them with little concern for what I hit. I was just trying to keep them at a distance.

  That was when I heard someone yelling louder then anyone of us. It was Adam, and he had come running into the garage carrying all the ammo he could hold and the last shotgun. He stopped to hand out ammo to Anne and Derrick. He exchanged his fully loaded shotgun with Paul’s and started reloading it with the shells from his pocket. Then I saw him run over to where Tanya and I were and asked what we needed. He helped Tanya reload her weapon and in all honesty I couldn’t remember how many shots I had taken or how many bullets my gun actually held so I waved him off.

  But I realized with the other group stalled on the far side and Adam now with us I knew that we needed to push forward and fast. On my left I saw Derrick moving forward walking right towards the horde as he walked between the two oil pits. As he did that he managed to draw some of the Zeds that were blocking Cody, Trevor and Jacob’s path to the door away from them. A few of the Zeds actually turned to see Derrick and started walking towards him only to step right into the pits and go crashing down to the bottom. It also drew away a few that were blocking our path and they stepped right into the pits trying to reach him, smashing into the sides and unable to grab onto the ledge as they fell in.

  I looked down into the pit closest to me and couldn’t believe what I saw. The Zeds were packed in there tight. The one
s that were still moving were reaching up and their hands and arms just cleared the top of the pit. But they were stumbling over the bodies that were on the bottom. Some of them down there on the ground were still moving and trying to get back to their feet, but had broken arms and legs or worse and were only inhibiting the others from finding their footing.

  Everything was happening so quickly and chaotically that it was almost impossible to keep track of what was going on around me. My head was on a swivel trying to see who was doing what and what was coming from where. But I saw Derrick had pushed forward and almost made it too the door. He had drawn most of the attention to him and that’s when I noticed that we had an opening along our wall.

  We tried to move and we tried to move as quickly as possible. I stepped over one of the dead on the ground, checking to make sure that it was indeed dead and kept on moving forward. That was when I saw two Zeds that were heading our way. I heard the shot and knew that it had come from behind me. It had hit one of them in the hip area causing it to spin around on its way to the ground. When I looked back I could see Adam on the floor holding his shoulder in agony. Without seeing what happened I assumed that it had to be the recoil of the shotgun that was the cause. I checked to make sure that he was okay and checked that he hadn’t been bit.

  So I turned back around and started back for the garage doors. I walked over to the one that Adam had wounded, placed the barrel of the gun against the head of the injured monster and went to pull the trigger and remove its head clean from its shoulders. Nothing happened. That was when I realized that I had run out of ammo. Tanya had seen what happened and stepped in front of me and fired a shot right into its head. I ran back to Adam asking for more bullets and I could see that he was in a fair amount of pain. I dropped my empty gun in front of him and grabbed his shotgun from him and simply gave him a look. He nodded in approval and I ran back to join Tanya.

  She fired a few shots into the group in front of us. One grazed the head of the Zed nearest to us, but it wasn’t enough to keep it down. I took aim with the shotgun and fired blowing away half of its face. That garage had become a war zone. It stunk of death and gun smoke and the walls were covered in blood and guts. Smoke lingered in the air and the terrible sounds of guns and zombies echoed throughout the entire garage. There was yelling, most of which I couldn’t make out due to damage done to my hearing from all the gunshots.

  I had seen Derrick pushing forward towards the door. He was firing into the crowd that had formed just outside of it. He didn’t take much time to line up his shots, not that it mattered there were plenty of targets to choose from. I saw Paul move up behind Trevor and that group to give them some extra firepower as they pushed forward to close the door. Anne was still hanging back and using her hunting rifle to eliminate select targets that posed the greatest threat.

  It was around that time when the few Zeds that were in our way turned their attention to Derrick and started to head in his direction. Anne fired a bullet through the head of the first one and Derrick took out the other. Then in all the chaos I noticed that we had a clear path to one of the switches that controlled the garage doors. Tanya bolted for the button, being careful as she stepped over several bodies on the floor. She pressed the button that closed the door and it started to lower. But just as I started to let out a sigh of relief the door stopped and then retracted back up. Tanya looked shock and hit the button again only to have the same thing happen over and over again.

  It was the pile of dead bodies on the ground that was preventing the door from closing. They were setting off some safety detector that prevented the door from closing on anyone or anything. The barricade of bodies that had at the very least slowed the Zed advance was now preventing us from closing the door. Paul started screaming that we needed to get them out of the way. Well, that was at least what I thought he had screamed. It didn’t matter. I knew I had to do something.

  I ran over and grabbed a hold of one of the many corpses that was underneath the garage door and started to pull it by the shirt. It was disgusting. I quickly let go once I realized what I was touching and the possibility of infection that came with it. That was when I saw a zombie come stumbling through the crowd and reach out for me while I was still bent over debating how to move the body out of the way.

  I panicked and fumbled the shotgun around trying to protect myself. That was when its head exploded right in front of me. Pieces of its head and blood splattered all over my shirt. It makes me sick even today when I think about it. Paul had seen that I was in trouble and turned around just in time to put a bullet in the back of that zombies head.

  So I unbuttoned my shirt as fast as I could and used it as a rag to grab onto the arm of the corpse and started to pull it inside the garage and out of the way. Then I went back and grabbed another, and then another, and then I saw Adam next to me pulling away a few of the bodies as well. He only had one good shoulder and was struggling just to drag the body a few feet. Thing was I had started to pay closer attention to his struggles and not on what I was doing or what was around me. My grip slipped on the body I was pulling and I fell backwards and almost put my hand into the oil pit as I went to steady myself. My hand landed inches away from the out reached arms of the Zeds trapped inside.

  I quickly pulled my hand away and got back to my feet to go and grab another body. I saw Trevor drive his axe into the head of another zombie while Cody fought off two more. Jacob ran over and began helping Adam and I try and clear the base of the garage entrance. There was too much happening to keep track of it all. My focus had to stay on clearing the bodies and not on what everyone else was doing at the time.

  But it was hard to stay focused. The gunshots were coming from every angle and the Zeds at the door seemed to be surrounding the others as they tried to keep them outside. Anne was still shooting from the back wall and as good of a shot as she was, there were still too many of them to put down. I pulled another body back away from the entrance and just as I did that Cody killed another one that took its place on the floor. I could still hear the door rocking above me as it refused to close.

  I ran back to grab another Zed by the pant leg and started to pull. I saw Paul fire a shot into the quad of a nearby zombie and it fell to the ground, tripping several others on its way down. Anne dropped another that had just entered the garage and that meant there was another body that needed to be moved. Derrick fired his shotgun right into the chest of another and it fell back into the crowd knocking a few more of them down. But that was when Derrick started to yell that he was out of bullets. We were losing the battle.

  The bodies were piling up and we were running low on ammo. As quickly as they could eliminate one threat, another seemingly just took its place. I saw Adam had given up on helping me and had moved on to help Tanya find another way of closing the door. I knew I needed to work faster so I ran over and handed Derrick my shotgun and then grabbed a hold of a zombie with each hand and started to pull two at a time. I saw Derrick fire two shots only to realize that he was out of ammo again. Things were going south fast.

  I ran back and grabbed two more and started dragging them away. That was when the one in my right hand started to move. He tried to pull his arm back and began to roll onto his side. That was when he looked up at me. In an instant I let go and continued to pull the other away. Once I had cleared that body I took a few steps back and saw that he was still crawling in my direction. I shouted for someone to help me but they were too busy fighting for their own lives or maybe they never heard me. I started backing away right in-between the two oil pits as it followed. I looked around, hoping to find something that I could use as a weapon. I walked slowly, trying not to slip on the blood-covered floor.

  I could see that it had been shot in the leg and luckily for me that was keeping it on the ground and crawling. I turned and ran for the back wall of the garage, searching for anything that I could use to defend myself. I looked up and down the wall and on the counters. Finally, I saw an old tire iron sit
ting on one of the shelves so I grabbed it ran back to the zombie that was still crawling for me. I smashed the back of its head in with four or five good blows.

  I remember looking up from that and seeing that the others were still fighting just outside the door. Most of them were out of bullets and were using their guns like clubs to fight them off. I charged forward to grab a hold of another body when I saw Derrick reach up and grab what looked like a short rope hanging from the ceiling. That was when it sunk in. He had found a way to manually close the door and he started to pull.

  Trevor moved in front of him to try and protect him as he pulled the door closed. Cody, Jacob and Paul pushed and pushed the horde back, giving it everything they had. They were swinging bats and guns widely into the crowd kicking and pushing as Anne used what bullets she had left to pick off the most dangerous of the Zeds. Tanya ran beside Derrick and opened fire at a couple of zombies that were trying to slip through the crowd and into the garage. I ran up to the where the door was starting to come down and started swinging my tire iron at anything that moved.

  What happened next, well I can’t give all the details because I really didn’t see how the situation took shape. My attention was clearly on getting that door closed and the monsters that were in front of me. That was until I heard Anne shout that she needed help. I turned around to see that a tall, thin, decomposed man in pajamas had a hold of Tanya. She was trying to keep her balance and hold her forearm in his neck at the same time. She was keeping his mouth at a safe distance but he had his arms wrapped firmly around her body.