by Wood, J N
‘I didn’t get lost. I fell over and ran in the wrong direction for a couple of seconds.’
‘That’s probably all it’d take to make someone panic.’
‘Yep, probably,’ I agreed.
It was hard and sweaty work, but we were soon seeing more blue sky at the edge of the trees. We could also hear a quiet hissing.
We stayed as low to the ground as possible, and crept to the edges. Large industrial looking farm buildings sat in the middle of overgrown grass fields.
I looked left and right, using the binoculars. On the other side of the field in front of us, as far as I could see, a mass of zombies pressed against a chain link fence. It didn’t look far from the border wall, still being constructed behind it.
‘We’re not getting through there anytime soon,’ Pete said.
There seemed to be a lot of movement on the Canadian side, but they were being incredibly quiet. Occasionally the sound of the concrete blocks being lowered into place, just about made its way over to us.
Surely it’s not all being done by hand?
‘There are a lot fewer zombies than I was expecting,’ Roy said. ‘I thought these fields would be full of them.’
‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘There’s a fair few by the fence, but maybe only twenty deep.’
‘Hopefully there will be none further along,’ Jack said. ‘There can’t be construction work going on everywhere.’
Ali started to step backwards into the trees. ‘Come on then guys. Let’s go east a couple of miles, see if it’s any better.’
We followed the tree line for as long as we could. It was angled towards the border, so it wasn’t long before we had to head back into the woods to avoid getting too close to the zombies. It did look like the dead were thinning slightly as we moved further east.
Ali was right. A huge amount of woodland had been felled close to the border.
After we must have been walking for an hour, the amount of zombies had been slowly decreasing, and was now at zero. There was no building work going on, and all that stood between us and Canada was a barbed wire topped fence, and heavily armed mask wearing soldiers, stood on the other side. They looked similar to the four soldiers we’d met a few weeks ago from Colorado. Silent jeeps constantly patrolled up and down behind the fence. Large guns were mounted on the back of them.
‘We’re not getting through there anytime soon,’ Pete said, again.
‘There must be shift changes and…other things?’ I said desperately.
We were well within the woods still, hiding behind the trees and bushes. It looked like there was only thirty feet of tree stump filled ground from the edge of the trees to the fence. A soldier was positioned every twenty feet along the fence.
Another jeep silently zipped past.
‘It doesn’t look good,’ Jack said.
‘No you’re right,’ I grudgingly agreed.
‘We need to head back,’ Ali said. ‘We told them we’d only be a couple of hours.’
‘I’ll wait here,’ Pete said. ‘Watch for any weaknesses.’
‘You can’t stay here by yourself,’ Ali told him.
‘I’ll wait with you Pete,’ Roy said. ‘I’ve nothing better to do.’
‘Okay,’ Ali said. ‘Just for a few hours.’
‘How about I come back in four hours?’ I suggested. ‘I’ll swap with one of you?’
Jack looked at his watch. ‘It’s taken an hour and a half to get here. But realistically it should take less than an hour, forty five minutes maybe. We did dither around for a bit.’
‘Dither?’ Pete asked.
‘Not important Pete,’ Jack told him. ‘I’ll come back with you Chris,’ he offered, before turning back to Pete and Roy. ‘Then both of you can head back and get some rest.’
‘Deal,’ Pete agreed.
‘Keep an eye out for us,’ I said, passing the binoculars to Pete. ‘Because we’ll probably not be able to find you.’
Jack looked into the trees behind us, and then to me and Ali. ‘Can either of you guide us back to the house from here? Or do you think it’ll be safer to go back to where we first saw the border?’
We all looked around at our surroundings.
There was no way I could get us back.
‘Back the way we came?’ Ali suggested.
Jack and I agreed, so we started walking along the tree line again.
When we reached the point we’d first stopped to look at the construction going on, there seemed to be a lot of commotion happening on the Canadian side. We could now hear loud machinery, and the hissing’s intensity had definitely gone up a notch or two. The amount of zombies seemed to have increased where the majority of the construction was happening.
I could hear helicopters in the distance, rapidly getting closer.
We watched from the edges of the trees again, not far from where we’d been a few hours previously.
‘Do you think they fly in and shoot the zombies?’ Jack asked.
‘They’ll probably use the helicopters to draw the zombies away from the fence,’ Ali replied.
‘There they are,’ Jack said, pointing to the horizon. ‘Two of them.’
Two large military looking helicopters were flying close to the ground, heading straight for the fence, directly in front of us. They quickly reached the semi constructed wall, but then slowed as they got closer to the fence, hovering above the zombies. The dead creatures were mesmerised and stared upwards. Then the helicopters started flying out over the fields, towards us.
‘Jack, remember that scene from Jurassic Park?’ I asked him.
‘Oh shit yeah,’ he said. ‘They’re flocking this way.’
Ali started to back away. ‘Yeah, let’s go.’
We turned and started to run as fast as was possible in the thick underbrush.
‘Pete and Roy will be okay. Won’t they?’ Ali asked as we ran.
‘There’s no zombies there,’ I said. ‘So no reason for helicopters to go there.’
We ran all the way back to the farmhouse, only stopping to walk when we reached the short lane.
‘The helicopters won’t bring them all the way out here will they?’ Jack asked, sounding out of breath.
‘Dunno,’ I replied. ‘Hopefully not. But it’s not like it’s a huge swarm. They won’t carry the cars off or anything.’
Sandra let us in through the back door. After we’d explained where Pete and Roy were, and that they were hopefully safe, we told everyone to get upstairs. Just in case.
We needn’t have worried. They never got as far as the house. I imagined the majority of them probably got caught up in the woodland. I mentioned this theory to Jack.
‘We’ll have to go back a different way,’ he suggested. ‘It won’t be hard to find a way around them if they’re still stuck in there.’
‘We’ve just got to make sure we don’t go too far east before cutting in,’ I said. ‘Otherwise we’ll never find them two.’
We arranged with Ali and Theo to come and relieve us at ten o’clock, telling them of our plan to go back a different way.
Two hours later, with my bag stocked up with bottled water, energy bars and beef jerky, Jack and I headed back outside. We walked along the road until we reached the sharp bend, and then entered the woods.
It only took us forty minutes to reach the spot we both assumed we’d left Pete and Roy. We of course, couldn’t find them.
‘Pete, Roy,’ Jack hissed.
‘I’m pretty sure they were around here.’ I pointed to a part of the border fence in the distance. ‘We could definitely see that bit of barbed wire. Can you see where it hangs down slightly?’
‘No Pete, you can’t do that,’ Roy’s voice floated towards us from somewhere.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ I said. ‘I can hear them.’ I spun around trying to listen for them again. ‘Roy, Pete.’
‘All we need are some guns,’ Pete said.
‘Fucking hell,’ Jack said. ‘Why can’t they hear us, if we
can hear them?’
‘Jack?’ Roy said. ‘Is that you?’
‘Yes,’ Jack replied. ‘Where the fuck are you?’
The sound of twigs breaking and leaves rustling made us both spin around. Roy’s head and shoulders poked up from within a bush. We walked over to them.
I glanced around us when we reached them. ‘Is this where we left you?’ I asked.
Pete raised his head up. ‘No, but there was more cover here. We’ve been watching for you coming from that way,’ he said, pointing behind him.
‘We had to come back a different way,’ Jack said.
I passed them a bottle of water each and some beef jerky. Jack told them about the helicopters and us running back to the house.
Jack pointed the way we had just walked. ‘If you walk straight that way, you’ll reach open fields. Just turn right and you can’t miss the road that the house is on.’
‘Anything to report?’ I asked.
‘Nope,’ Roy said, passing me the binoculars. ‘Not a dickie bird.’
‘Dickie bird?’ Pete asked.
‘Nothing,’ Roy replied. ‘It means nothing.’
‘The soldiers haven’t moved at all,’ Pete said. ‘And I’ve been to take a leak three times.’
‘Not here I hope?’ Jack asked him.
‘No, I went down there,’ he replied, waving his hand towards somewhere behind us.
‘Is anyone going to come and swap with you?’ Roy asked us.
‘Ali and Theo are coming to do the night shift,’ I replied.
Roy and Pete left to go back to the house. Jack and I tried to get comfortable.
‘Why didn’t we bring some blankets?’ Jack asked.
‘Fuck knows. Hopefully Ali and Theo will bring something to keep them warm tonight.’
‘She’s not stupid,’ Jack said. ‘She’ll bring something.’
‘So what’s the plan?’ I asked him. ‘If we don’t see any way to cross here by the end of the night, we move on to another spot tomorrow?’
‘Sounds about right.’
‘What if we have the virus?’ I asked.
Jack pulled his gaze away from the fence. ‘What do you mean? Where did that come from?’
‘What if we’re carriers, but can’t die of it? And anyone that survived the initial virus is also a carrier? So, if and when we get into Canada, we infect everyone over there?’
He looked back at the fence. ‘Nah, too much of a coincidence that me, you, Beth, and Roy all just happen to have the same something in our D.N.A. that only makes us carriers. And Sarah in fact. She survived the initial outbreak.’
‘Yeah, suppose so,’ I agreed.
Gunfire erupted from our left, making both of us flinch away from it.
‘Jesus Christ,’ I blurted.
The soldiers sprung into action, crouching down onto one knee, and firing their rifles into the woods. The fence started to wobble as the bullets flew through the links, occasionally hitting the metal.
Jack and I both laid as flat as we could manage.
With a loud bang, smoke and bits of earth suddenly exploded into the air, falling to the ground near to the fence. One of the soldiers closest to the explosion was holding his mask, and staggering around in circles. The soldiers on either side of their injured comrade continued firing into the trees to our left.
‘What the fuck is happening?’ Jack asked.
Two of those silent jeeps suddenly appeared, and stopped near to where the injured soldier was now on his knees. The rear guns were quickly aimed into the trees and started firing. More and more soldiers started appearing from right and left.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see more smoke, further to the right of us. I assumed it was from another explosion, but I didn’t think I’d heard anything. The space between the edge of the trees and the fence was slowly filling with black smoke.
I quickly glanced around, trying to find who was doing all this. ‘Can you see anyone Jack? I can’t see a fucking thing.’
‘There,’ Jack said, pointing to people emerging from the trees.
They were running directly into the smoke. One, then two, three, four, and five people disappeared into the blackness.
I looked back to the soldiers. They were still concentrating on firing at whoever was to our left.
‘It’s a distraction,’ Jack said. ‘They’re going over through the smoke.’
‘Mother fuckers,’ I muttered. ‘This is our fucking spot.’
‘Go with them,’ Jack said.
‘You what?’
‘This is your best chance. You need to go now.’ He placed his hand on my shoulder and pushed me away. ‘Seriously, go.’
‘No, I can’t leave you here.’
‘None of us are trying to get back to England. We’re all going to stay in Canada, which isn’t going anywhere. You need to get home.’
‘Are you not gonna go home?’ I asked him.
‘That’s not fucking important right now. You need to fucking go. This could be your only chance.’
I looked towards the smoke.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
I climbed up onto my hands and knees, went to stand up, and then hesitated. I looked back at Jack. He vigorously nodded towards the smoke. I tried to stare into the smoke, to see if those people were succeeding in their mission.
Fuck. I can’t leave Jack and Beth here. I can’t leave any of them here, not knowing their fates.
I sighed, and keeping low behind the bushes, got up onto my feet. ‘Come on Jack, we need to get back. We can’t stay in this spot any longer.’ I picked up my bag, turned and headed back into the woods.
Jack quickly caught me up. ‘Chris, you are a fucking idiot.’
‘Yeah I know.’
Looks like I’m trying to get back to England on my own then.
Once we were well within the safety of the woodland, with our heads still down, I said, ‘So…Jack?’
‘Yes, we’re going to stay in Canada,’ he instantly replied. ‘Sorry, but it’s the safest option for us. You know that.’
‘Yeah I kind of guessed you’d stay. You haven’t really been up for it whenever I’ve mentioned getting back to England somehow.’
‘I’ve got to think about Beth and the baby.’
‘Yeah I know that as well.’
‘We’ll help you get back though. If there’s anything we can do, we’ll do it.’
Chapter 27: Sacrilege
‘There’s no way we’re killing innocent Canadian soldiers,’ Sandra said.
‘No of course we’re not,’ I said. ‘We were just saying we need to do something similar, like create some sort of distraction.’
Roy and Pete shared a glance. Roy very briskly shook his head.
No idea what that was about.
The three kids were playing with something in the kitchen. All of the adults sat on the sofas, or on the floor in the living room. Roy had found a camping stove in the house, and had made us all coffee.
Whatever the kids were playing with, it was noisy. It sounded like they were destroying the place. Sandra didn’t seem to pay it any attention, so I tried not to.
Does she know there are still zombies around here?
Sandra startled me by suddenly shouting, ‘Boys! Quiet.’
We all sat there and listened, as silence descended.
Theo broke the silence, by saying, ‘I’m surprised you didn’t try and go with them.’
Beth very loudly cleared her throat.
‘I didn’t mean Jack,’ Theo said to her. ‘I was only talking to Chris really.’
Jack looked to me, his eyebrows raised.
I returned Jack’s look with a sardonic smile, before turning back to Theo. ‘I didn’t go because I’m a fucking idiot.’
‘Whatever we do,’ Ali said. ‘We can’t do it in that same place. They’ll be ultra vigilant now.’
‘I don’t know,’ Jack said. ‘I’ve been thinking about that. Surely the Canadians will be think
ing that lightning doesn’t strike in the same place twice?’
‘There will probably be some zombies around there now,’ Ali said. ‘After all the noise.’
‘That’s true,’ Jack agreed.
‘Any ideas for the distraction then?’ Sandra asked him. ‘That doesn’t include killing soldiers.’
Jack sat back in his seat. ‘Not yet, no.’
Theo leant forward. ‘What if we make lots of fires along the border? With lots of smoke, and then choose one to use as our cover? Snip snip at the fence. We all sneak through.’
‘What’s to stop them checking every part of the fence where there’s a fire?’ Pete asked him.
‘That’s why we create lots of fires,’ Theo replied. ‘So they don’t have time to check every one.’
‘What’s to stop them only checking the fire we’re going use as cover?’ Pete asked. ‘There’s a lot of luck required.’
‘We wait to see which fires they aren’t checking,’ Theo suggested.
‘That’s a bad idea,’ Pete said.
Theo slumped back in his chair. ‘Better than your idea. Oh yeah, you haven’t had one.’
‘Can we get one of the cars up there?’ Beth asked. ‘Set fire to it maybe, and roll it towards the fence? That would definitely divert their attention.’
‘We can’t really sneak a car up to the parts where there isn’t a proper wall,’ Ali said to her. ‘Not anywhere around here anyway.’
‘What if we make a huge fire?’ Roy suggested. ‘Burn down half the woodland if we have to. We’d have to get masks obviously, the soldiers already have them. And visibility would be terrible, so it’d be a struggle to see where to go, but it would be difficult for everyone, the soldiers included.’
‘If we find some guns,’ Pete quietly said. ‘I don’t mind being the diversion, so you can all get across. I was already thinking about it before Jack and Chris saw those people do it. It worked for them.’
Roy very dramatically looked to the ceiling.
Theo stared at his brother with wide eyes.
‘You can forget that idea straight away,’ Sandra said.
‘Why?’ Pete asked. ‘Afterwards, I’ll go back to that camp we drove by. The one at Sumas. I’ll wait my turn and meet you all in Canada.’
