by Gareth Wood
UBC Students Union building, July 15, 2004
"I'm going, and you can't stop me!"
Robyn stalked toward the doors of the Student Union building lobby, her long black hair bouncing in a cloud around her head.
"Jesus, Robyn, I'm not trying to stop you! I just want you to wait a minute so I can go with you!" Todd Larson followed along in Robyn's wake. He coughed as he reached out to touch her shoulder, and she spun at his contact.
"No! I'm going alone. You're sick and you need to be here, you know that!" She hitched her backpack up higher, tugged her ball cap down a bit, and turned back to the doors. Todd grabbed her wrist, gently. She stopped, looked up at him. He pulled his hand up to his mouth, overtaken by a coughing fit.
"Todd, we're starving. I'm the only one who isn't sick, so I'm the only one who can go get us some food. We've been over this."
"But it's too dangerous out there. You won't make it ten feet."
She eyed him with a look her mother would have been proud of. "It was you that showed us all how to kill them, remember?"
Todd coughed again. It didn't sound quite as wet and horrible as it had for the last several days.
"Please, Robyn, I don't know what I'll do if you get hurt," Todd said, and Robyn knew he'd given up on convincing her to stay or to let him come with her. He knew his health was an issue just as she did. Still, it was sweet of him to try.
"I'll be careful," she said, and kissed his cheek. "Go back to bed, Todd." His fever was down, she noticed. Then she turned and walked away, outside into the open space where the constant rain fell gently today. She walked along the concrete sidewalk that bordered the Field, going south toward the Aquatic Centre and beyond that to the War Memorial Gym. These three buildings and the Student Recreation Centre were the four structures that they had finished clearing out last month. They now had a wall of chain link, overturned cars, and salvaged building materials that closed the gaps between structures. The fence along the North Bus Loop, to the east of MacInnes Field, was a long construction barricade placed there by workers before the dead rose. The bus loop had been undergoing maintenance at the time, and the fence was supposed to keep students away from the construction. With the addition of some plywood sheets, concrete and lengths of 2x4 wooden boards, the fence was strong enough to hold out the undead. At least, it had been strong enough so far.
People were sick inside the safe area. They needed supplies, and Robyn was the logical choice, at least to her mind, to go out and get them. She was going to take her machete with her, and wore dark clothes that fit closely, leaving nothing for the dead to grasp onto. She had talked to Todd about this last night without bringing it up to all the others. She knew they'd talk it to death. She didn't want to debate when there was medicine and food only a few blocks away. If she was quick and quiet she thought she could make it without attracting any attention.
"It doesn't matter if I'm afraid, because I am," she'd told Todd last night in bed, "but we need the medicine. Too many people are sick, including you."
Todd and the rest of the other thirty survivors had a lingering cough and mild fever. It didn't appear to be pneumonia, but it also wasn't going away, and no one had much in the way of antibiotics left at all. A few people were bedridden with the fever, but most were able to function.
She waved at the few people standing outside, huddled under a canopy, miserably passing one of the last few cigarettes between them. She didn't envy them the withdrawal once the cancer sticks were all gone. The smoke wasn't doing any good for the coughing either.
She hurried into the War Memorial Gym as the light dimmed. It was close to sunset outside, and it would be best to go out scavenging for supplies at night, she thought. The dead appeared to have terrible vision, so it should be easier to sneak past them in the dark. Inside she crossed the floor to the back door. It was locked but not guarded. The door was solid metal, and secured with a thick drop down bar. She pressed her eye to the spy hole in the middle of the door, and there was enough light to see that there were none of the undead right outside the door. Her hand went to the bar, then stopped.
"Come on," she whispered to herself, "don't chicken out now."
The truth was, she was terrified. Yes, she knew how to kill the dead things, Todd had shown her that. And yes, they were slow and uncoordinated, with terrible perceptions. But there were so many of them, and one bite or scratch was all it took to kill you. Not to mention the very idea of dead people getting up and walking around was so utterly preposterous to begin with.
Her hands were shaking. She clenched her fists, the short cut nails digging into her palms, and breathed in a measured pattern until she felt calm again. Robyn nervously pulled her ball cap down once more, lifted a bandanna up to cover her nose and mouth, then looked through the spy hole again. It was still clear.
"Okay," she said," let's do this." She pulled the bar up and swung the door open. She stepped outside and pulled the door shut, then tested the latch to make sure she could get back in. She could. Without giving herself time to think about it too deeply Robyn crouched behind an abandoned Mazda 3 and looked around. To her left the parking lot behind the Gym stretched toward the Administration Building, a structure the survivors had not tried to clear, and to her right the four lanes of University Boulevard ran across the campus. There were a dozen of the undead in sight, but none of them appeared to have noticed her. Some of them wandered aimlessly, walking along like drunks. Others stood where they were, not moving at all except to look at things.
That's the trick, she thought, stay quiet and unnoticed.
Robyn risked quick looks over the rusty hood of the car, looking for cover and a safe route south. Her first destination was the ambulance station, a little over half a kilometer away. There should be all kinds of medical supplies there, things they desperately needed. If she made it there and found supplies she would cross Westbrook Mall and head east into the residences, in search of food. Her stomach rumbled at the thought of food, reminding her she hadn't eaten yet today, and wouldn't if she didn't find something soon. At least there was plenty of water.
She remained still and waited while the rain continued and the light failed. She watched the undead nearby to see what they would do as the light grew dimmer. A few of them kept up their wandering, slowly walking between buildings or vehicles, around trees, or into each other. When they did that they both recoiled without appearing to notice, and went on their way.
She spotted her route. Across to the next car, around it, and past the bike rack. None of them should see her.
She stayed crouched, and hurried across the open pavement between the Mazda and the next car. Working her way around it, Robyn came face to face with a corpse. A real corpse, not the reanimated kind. The driver of the green Civic she was crouched next to had been pulled out of his vehicle and devoured. His bones and clothes and bits of his flesh were scattered next to the open car door. He was mostly skeletal, but the stench was overpowering this close. Robyn was glad her stomach was empty, or she might have thrown up. She skirted the remains and headed for the bike rack, her feet splashing in puddles.
Now the hard part, she thought. It was a straight and empty run across the lanes of University Boulevard to the corner of Westbrook Mall, where the Coffeehouse occupied the corner retail space of the Strangway Building. There was no cover until she reached the Coffeehouse, but it was dark and raining and most of the undead were looking in other directions. And she had her machete if things went bad. She took a shallow breath and ran for it. Feeling totally exposed crossing the street, Robyn was relieved when she reached the Strangway Building without incident. She stepped under the awning out of the rain and put her back to the glass of the Coffeehouse, looking back the way she had come. One of the undead had noticed something, and was walking toward where she had been, by the bike stand.
It looked like she had made it.
The impact of something fairly heavy against the glass she was leaning on made her jump. Adr
enaline coursed and she tripped and fell when she turned, landing on her side. She gasped for air as her lungs emptied, and scraped her hands on the pavement. In the window one of the undead was clawing at the glass of the Coffeehouse. This one looked like a barista, still dressed in the apron and uniform of a Coffeehouse employee. His clothes were covered in an impressive amount of dried blood, and the gaping wound where his shoulder and neck met indicated how he had died. He wore a blood encrusted name-tag that was illegible now.
Don't panic, he's locked inside, Robyn thought, her eyes flickering to the front doors. Which stood open. Shit!
Standing was painful, but it felt as if only her hands had been damaged. They were scraped and raw, but still perfectly functional. She stood, pulling the machete out, and looked into the dark Coffeehouse. It looked like just the one undead was inside, but there might be food in there.
"I can do this," Robyn whispered to herself, her nervousness intense, "it's just the one."
She walked to the open doors and stepped inside. The lone undead staggered toward her between the small tables and comfortable chairs, arms reaching for living tissue. Robyn felt the fear surge, but just as she had done a month ago on MacInnes Field she fought it down and remembered that she knew how to kill these things. Individually, they were not much of a threat. It was only in groups that they were really dangerous. Still, it would never do to underestimate them. Now that she could see him a little better it was clear that he had been inside since reanimating. His flesh wasn't as rotten as the ones that stayed outside, and his clothes, though bloody, were in better condition.
She waited until he was only a few feet away, then raised her machete high overhead in both hands. As the dead barista reached for her she swung down as hard as she could, the end of the heavy blade impacting the skull on the crown of his head. The blade sunk in several inches, and the undead thing dropped like a rock. Surprisingly little blood had splattered from the blow, mostly a thick goop that looked black in the darkness. Nothing else moved in the Coffeehouse.
Once her hands stopped shaking Robyn retrieved her blade from the skull, wiped it on a cloth she found on a table, and closed the doors.
CHAPTER SIX
Mission Safe Zone, September 6, 2013
Amanda
I rode over to the Wall after archery practice. First I went home to drop off my bow and quiver of arrows, and grabbed my binoculars. My handgun hadn't left my side yet today, and it would stay strapped to my hip until I went to bed tonight.
The Wall, capitalised like that, is really a whole bunch of different structures that collectively serve to keep the undead out, and us in. It varies from a four meter tall brick and concrete barrier across a number of alleyways, to the low walls of chain link fence and corrugated steel sheets that block the bridge across the Fraser River on the old Abbotsford-Mission Highway. Given a number of factors, like how many undead can get at a given section of the Wall at one time, how often the gate in a particular section is used, and how close to a Council member’s home it is, the number of guards varies quite a bit.
The Wall also doesn't completely enclose the Safe Zone. It's common knowledge that the Wall only wraps around Mission from the northwest to the east, looping south over the bridge to a foothold in the farmland there and cutting us off from the ruins of Abbotsford nicely. This drives the more paranoid among the fine citizenry here nuts, and about twice a year since I arrived someone comes to a monthly public Council meeting and has a spectacular meltdown about the Wall not being complete. This can be very amusing to those of us who make it our business to go out and deal with the undead. If you understand how they hunt, and how utterly stupid they actually are, you also understand that the Wall is perfectly safe as it is.
It's not amusing at all when the person doing the ranting has just lost a loved one to a zombie attack, and feels that the Council isn't doing enough to keep people safe. Those ones are impossible to find any humour in.
I parked my bike near the western gate on 7th Avenue, at the intersection of Hurd Street. This was previously a residential area, all beige houses and condominiums that looked alike and showed that developers here in BC had as minimal imagination as real estate developers anywhere. In the years since the dead rose the barrier here had been built up and extended across the road to include a second gate, a small tower added, and a solid entry built that swung up and out on a chain pulley. The road behind the gate was kept clear and anything as large as a school bus could fit inside the killing ground. This was sort of like an airlock. If the undead managed to get inside the outer gate they could be shot or incinerated before they could get through the inner gate.
It was here that I usually came to volunteer my time as a guard on my days off from salvaging. It isn't the most glamorous thing I could have been doing, but it's absolutely essential. Everyone able-bodied is expected to volunteer some time as a guard. A small core group makes up the permanent Guard, those people whose entire job it is to watch the Wall, repair it and protect it, and keep us all safe inside. Others come and go, doing the boring and often tedious job of watching the streets for activity or incoming salvagers.
I went inside, glad to get out of the sun. It can be hard to be a fair skinned former Goth in this climate, and the lack of sunblock means I burn easily. Keeping my skin melanoma free is a full time task. Three men and one woman were sitting around a folding plastic table, the surface discoloured with old cigarette burns, coffee rings, and food stains. A pile of paperwork littered the tabletop, and they were all sorting through it with less than enthusiastic expressions.
"Hey, Claire," I said, addressing the woman, a sensible shoes type with her hair pulled back tightly. She was one of the permanent Guard, dressed much like a salvager, in a combination of military surplus and civilian clothes.
"Volunteering?" she asked, flipping pages into different piles.
"Uh huh," I said. She looked up briefly, and nodded at the clipboard hanging on the wall nearby.
"Sign in and grab a rifle. There's a new guy on the tower. Andy. You mind heading up there?"
"No problem," I said, scrawling my name on the list, and the time I came in. I took a rifle out of the lock-up, a box of .308 rounds, and checked the weapon over carefully before loading it. Back outside I climbed the ladder to the top of the tower.
A light brown hand reached down to help me up the last few rungs, and I was so surprised by this that I just stared at him for a moment. He was a middle aged man with tattoos of sailing ships on his forearms, slowly fading with the years. His hair used to be black, but was greying and thin now. He was skinny in the way a lot of people are now, lean and hungry looking. It comes from hard work and not quite enough to eat. His hand was still out there, so I took it and he pulled me up.
"Thanks," I said. "I'm Amanda."
"Andy Rogers," he said.
"Claire said you were new. Where from?" I took my rifle over to the parapet and looked out across the former park on the other side of the street. A block away was the first row of empty houses, some of them partially dismantled. No undead were in sight at the moment.
"Seattle, about a week ago," he said.
I was shocked. That was a long way south, these days. He might have quite a story to tell.
"How about you?" he added.
"Prince George, up in northern BC. But I came through Cold Lake and Calgary on the way here. Been here a few years."
We both took up binoculars and scanned the streets north and south. Nothing moved in the heat except a few birds. There was a faint hint of corruption on the breeze, however. Something dead was definitely nearby.
The best part of this particular job was that you could wait for them to come to you, which they inevitably would. This wasn't the gate that saw the most action; that was the one farther south, on the highway near the hospital. This gate saw a steady number of the undead, one, two, or three at a time, sometimes hours apart and sometimes days, but rarely a larger number than that. The big groups tended
to come down the Lougheed Highway straight into the Wall where it crossed Hurd Street. The larger swarms milled around together, but luckily for us they stayed that way. Only once since I'd been here had a swarm bigger than several dozen come near the Wall on this side, and it had been chopped up into little groups and eliminated with no loss of life.
I talked to Andy on and off for some time, just shooting the shit. He was nice. A bit too old and a bit too married for my tastes, but nice. He never stared or mentioned my burns, which I appreciated. He'd come up from the Seattle community with his wife, taking a boat along the coast to Vancouver, and heading up the Fraser from there. When I asked why he'd left the group in Seattle he just shrugged. His eyes got the haunted look I've seen far too many times. I didn't push it. My own eyes have that same look some of the time. I'd let him keep his demons inside, just like I kept mine.
There was a gunshot, close and loud, from the streets beyond the Wall. We both instantly turned to see what was happening. Through binoculars I could see a group of dead nudists several streets away, clearly on the track of someone, though I hadn't noticed anyone running past.
"How many do you count?" I asked. I had a number already, but wanted confirmation.
"Not sure," Andy replied. "Thirty or more, I think."
“Yeah, that's what I thought.” I walked back to the ladder and called down.
"Large group, two blocks west. They're onto someone, but I didn't see anyone moving around."
Another gunshot sounded from the streets behind me. It sounded like a rifle. Specifically a civilian hunting rifle. Claire came to stand at the bottom of the ladder.
"Which way are they headed?" she called to me.
"South. There's more than thirty of them."
Claire trotted away, calling loudly for a response team to form. A pickup truck was standing by, and men and women were running to get into it, hopefully to rescue whomever it was that was shooting out there. More citizens were coming from nearby homes to man the Wall in case this all went to hell. Children were being scooped off the streets by parents, houses being closed up, the shutters latched over windows and doors firmly locked. It was all familiar response, no one was panicking. We'd been living with this shit for nine years, and knew what might happen. I looked at Andy, but he waved me on, turning back to look out over the streets again, rifle in his hands. I climbed down the ladder as fast as I could. I wanted to be on that truck.
