Rise (Book 3): Dead Inside

by Gareth Wood

  "Where's he headed? Do you see him?"

  "No," Robyn said, "but he can't have gone far yet." She glanced at Shakey. His face looked peaceful, but the exit wound was ugly. The bullet had destroyed his brain stem and blown through. There would be no obscene resurrection for Shakey, and for that alone Robyn was happy for him. It was the best she could hope for.

  The numbers of the undead continued to diminish as they pushed north along Vedder Road, but they both knew it was only because the city proper was still ahead of them. The residential bulk of Chilliwack lay mainly north of the Trans-Canada highway, separated by small areas of farmland. Once they entered the streets the numbers of the undead would jump again. They followed anyway.

  The road curved to the right and then straightened again, and Robyn saw the fleeing white vehicle ahead of them. The truck was spraying sparks as the damaged wheel rolled along the road surface on its rim. The tire was long gone, shredded and left behind in black chunks on the pavement. She pressed her foot down, hoping to catch up. Corrone turned right onto another street. Even he wasn't crazy enough to go any deeper into this city, she realised.

  "Can you call this in? We should let the Sheriff's office know what's going on."

  "Right," Amanda said, reaching for the handset. "Mission, this is Amanda Martin, come in."

  A few seconds later the radio hissed and popped with static, and then a voice came on. It was not the same voice as the last time they had spoken to the Sheriff's office. It was a voice speaking through physical pain, one they had heard before.

  "Amanda, this is Sheriff Reilly. Good to hear from you. Please give us an update, over."

  Amanda looked at Robyn, resolve and dismay both evident on her face. They both knew how close Sheriff Reilly had been to Shakey. Amanda looked like she wished she were elsewhere.

  "Uh, Sheriff, we caught up to Corrone just outside of Chilliwack, westbound. He ran this way, for some reason. I managed to blow out one of his tires, but he returned fire." She paused, then plunged onward. "I'm sorry, Sheriff, but Shakey's dead. Corrone shot him. Over."

  There was no reply for half a minute, and when it came it was plain that the Sheriff was in deeper pain than just from his injuries.

  "That's just one more on the tally that this son of a bitch will answer for. Listen, you need to know this. Corrone has been up to this for years. We got some new information from John Marks. He brought in some files from Maple Ridge, where Corrone used to live. His first victim was his sister, Lindsay, it looks like. He was suspected but never charged. Over."

  "Let me guess what she looked like? Black hair, tall and thin? Over."

  "Affirmative. Just like all the women we found in his basement. What do you want to do? Chilliwack is a hot zone, so if you want to break off, it's your call. Over."

  The two women looked at each other over Shakey's corpse, their eyes meeting and coming to agreement.

  "Yeah?" Amanda asked.

  "Let's do it," Robyn said firmly.

  "Sheriff, we're going after him. We still have him in sight. He turned down Airport Road, and we're about to do the same. One way or another this fucker is going down. Over."

  "Too fucking right," Robyn muttered. She turned, following the truck ahead of them, watching it weave and dodge through the slightly thicker crowds. The number of undead around them had risen again into the dozens. More of them had to be pushed aside as they travelled farther.

  The Sheriff came back on the CB. "Help is on the way. We've advised the response team of your location. Keep us posted if anything changes, and we'll direct them to you. Figure thirty minutes for them to get there. Over."

  "Will do," Amanda said. "We heard Corrone shot you too, Sheriff. You alright? Over."

  "Bulletproof vest caught most of it. Doc says I have three broken ribs. Breathing is no fun, but I'll live. Thanks for asking. Over."

  They pulled away from the many undead, and entered a clear zone along the road. They accelerated to catch Corrone, but he'd taken advantage of the clear roads as well, and had sped ahead. They followed as fast as Robyn was willing to push it.

  "There!" Robyn cried, pointing to where the Essential Supplies truck was pulling into the small airport parking lot, and stopped beside the terminal building. They saw the door open and a figure stepped out and ran to the entrance of the terminal, vanishing inside.

  "Shit! He had to go to the airport. I hate airports!" Amanda hissed. She lifted the handset again. "Sheriff, we're at the Chilliwack Airport. Corrone has gone inside, and we're going after him. Tell the response team where we are, and we'll be in touch soon. Over and out."

  INTERLUDE SIX

  MacInnes Field, University of British Colombia, November 9, 2004

  Robyn hacked at the zombie that was reaching for her, the heavy machete breaking open the dead thing’s skull like an egg, spilling its brains out in a splatter. The dead man fell away from her, only to be replaced by another. She stabbed at its eyes, breaking one open with a pop of decaying vitreous fluid. It ignored the wound and reached for her with grey hands, pawing at her clothes. She lifted a foot and kicked it in the chest, toppling it backward over the corpse of the first one she had killed. It sprawled on the muddy floor, and the man beside her, Paul something, swung his hammer into its face three times, finally killing it. Blood pooled around its head as she caught her breath.

  "Thanks," Robyn gasped.

  "Yeah," he replied, waving it away. There were more of the undead coming inside, and no time to talk.

  Less than an hour before, around dawn, Robyn had been shaken awake by Todd. Someone had heard screaming beyond the fences, and Todd and several others were going to investigate. Robyn had brought her little pistol with its two bullets, and they had found a pack of zombies feeding on what remained of Dr. Girenko, just outside the open gate. Many other undead were pushing their way inside, and since then it had been one fight after another, with the UBC survivors steadily losing ground as more and more of them were killed.

  A ragged line of the last fourteen defenders had formed inside the Aquatic Center. The undead kept coming, no matter how many the exhausted survivors killed. Robyn, armed with her machete and the pistol, stood and waited for the dead to come to her, knowing she might very soon die herself. With a moment to rest, however, she immediately wondered what Dr. Girenko had been doing outside. Trying to escape? Committing suicide? Or something else? She dismissed these thoughts as the undead closed on her, and lifted her machete with burning arms to swing at them again.

  In Robyn's mind an image was forming of the larger scope of the battle. In her estimation there were two hundred of the undead inside the fences now, a number insurmountable for the few of them left to fight. But in all of her runs outside for supplies she had only ever counted a few hundred of the undead scattered around the campus. The UBC grounds might be nearly empty.

  "Todd!" she called.

  "What?" came the reply, from where he fought as well, only a few steps away.

  "We have to fall back! We can't—" she broke off to trip a dead woman and then smash the machete down, severing the spine of the zombie. "We can't hold them!"

  "No, we have to hold!" Blood had splashed up his shirt in a fan pattern, and onto his neck as well. He struck out with his spear, a piece of stainless steel he had sharpened crudely and secured to a wooden pole. It punched into an undead eye socket with ease, dropping the thing before it got too close.

  Robyn stepped back just as Steve, who had worked so hard to install showers and get them up and running, was dragged down by three zombies. His screams were silenced when Robyn drew the handgun and shot him through the temple.

  I'm so sorry, Steve, she thought. Part of her wanted to run away screaming, but where was there to go?

  Wait. The beach, there was a chance there.

  "We can't hold, there are too many! But I have a plan!" she yelled, and waved everyone back. Not everyone was able to disengage and retreat, and Robyn was horrified to see Leigh, an Irish exchange
student, have her eyes punctured by the dead fingers of a large zombie. The thing grabbed Leigh and pulled her toward its open maw, then bit off her cheek. Leigh was pulled down into the waiting hands of five of the reeking undead, and torn apart before Robyn's eyes.

  Now they were twelve.

  The fighting broke down into one-on-one combat, with the survivors losing all control of the situation. Robyn watched the tipping point pass, and knew that the only chance any of them had to live was to get out now.

  "Everyone out the back!" she called. "Head out the back gate!"

  They all turned to flee, Robyn among them, when she heard a cry from behind her. Turning to look she saw Todd fighting with two of the things, one hanging onto his muscular arm with bony claws digging into his flesh, and the other latched onto his shoulder. As she watched, it bit down, tearing away flesh and releasing a great spray of blood.

  "Todd! No!"

  "Just go!" he shouted to her, then fell back screaming when two more of the undead grabbed him. Robyn used her last bullet then, ending his pain with a shot between his eyes. Five of the dead came for her as she tucked the empty gun back into her pants, and she fled down the hall, sprinting to catch up with the others. She could see Zoey and Mohammad waiting for her at the back door, urging her to hurry. Needing no further motivation than seeing her friends killed, Robyn poured it on. She ran up and Mohammad caught her to stop her from hitting the brick wall behind him.

  "Where are the others?" There should have been eight more of the surviving students and faculty here.

  "They went already. We waited for you," Zoey said. The girl was younger than Robyn, and was wearing pyjamas. She'd been roused from sleep to the fight, and had had no time to change. Now her only clothes were bloodstained terry cloth with blue dinosaurs all over them. Zoey held a heavy mallet, though, and knew how to kill with it.

  "But, they don't know where to go! I never told them!"

  Suddenly Mohammad pushed them both out the door, crying "Go now! Now!" Robyn had only a moment to look back, and saw the hallway filled with the hungry undead, coming for them all with blank eyes and clutching hands. They were very close.

  The three scrambled outside into daylight. Mohammad slammed the door, but they had no way to lock it from outside. Of the other eight, there was no sign. They had vanished as surely as a drop of water into a lake. It had stopped raining, and the clouds were breaking up. Robyn stared at the blue sky overhead and had to blink as the brightness nearly blinded her. After so long under clouds, the open sky was beautiful to see.

  She snapped back to reality when she heard thumping from the door into the Aquatic Center. It wouldn't stay shut long. One of the undead would press its body on the crash bar and then the lot of them would spill outside.

  "Which way?" Zoey asked Robyn, and Robyn could see that she was trying hard not to panic.

  "The beach. On my last trip out for supplies," she said, leading the way down the alleyway between the two buildings, "I saw a yacht that had washed up on the sand." Beaches surrounded the UBC peninsula on three sides. The most famous was the 'clothing optional' Wreck Beach, south of the grounds, and that was where Robyn began to lead them.

  "What good is a yacht?" Mohammad asked. He clutched a wooden handled shovel, bloody with remains of the dead, and wore a blood-spattered t-shirt and track pants. He was a chemist, with thick black eyebrows and a warm smile. "Especially a beached yacht."

  Robyn led them down a pathway, heading for the empty streets. She'd been right, nearly all of the undead had gone inside the fence. The grounds were almost entirely empty. Only a few stragglers remained, and she knew how to avoid them.

  "It has a lifeboat," she told them. "With oars." She ducked behind a dumpster and motioned for quiet, waiting while a pair of undead wandered by. Once they were gone the trio again crept out of hiding and made their way south.

  "Where will we go?" Mohammad asked. It was a good question.

  "I think upriver. Follow the Fraser as far as we can. Maybe there's something out there, some community that survived?" She didn't know where they would go. If they made it to the rowboat, they could decide then. Anywhere was better than here, though. Anywhere at all. She led them, all three covered in the blood of the undead, tired, sore, and exhausted, away from MacInnes Field. None of them looked back.

  CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

  Chilliwack Airport Ruins, September 12, 2013

  Amanda

  The first thing I noticed when I jumped out of the truck was the smell. Chilliwack had been overrun by the undead for a long time, and the sick-sweet smell of decay was a lot stronger here than in Mission or anywhere up in the mountains. It meant there were dead fuckers around that I would get to kill, but I doubted I had enough ammo to even make a dent in the swarm closing in on us.

  The parking lot was a D-shaped loop connected to the main road in two places. It passed directly in front of the terminal, and that's where Corrone had abandoned his truck with all of his carefully hoarded booty. There were the remains of a good twenty cars and trucks in the parking lot, all rust and dust and flat tires. At the moment, the parking lot was nearly empty of the undead, but the sizable horde following us down the road would be here in minutes. I wanted Corrone dead before they arrived, so I could leave him for them as a present.

  Corrone had fled into the terminal, armed and probably pissed off that his escape plan had gone awry. He'd try to ambush us as soon as possible and steal our truck, either killing us or leaving us for the undead. It was what I would do. There wasn't much time before the dead arrived and trapped all of us, so we had to get this done fast.

  I reached into the bed of the truck and opened Feynman's travel cage. She sniffed me, licked my fingers once, and crawled out. She knew. God. Poor thing. She could probably smell Shakey's blood on me. Poor Shakey. At least it was fast. He never knew what happened.

  "Come on, Feynman," I called and the dog jumped out of the truck bed. She sniffed around sadly as I grabbed my bow and quiver. If I could get a shot at Corrone I could end this quietly, and stealth might be the thing to save our asses right now. Shooting glove on, then strap on the bracer. Quiver over my head and tied. Bow strung. I was ready.

  Still, as Robyn came around the front and approached the door with her rifle out and ready, I made sure I had my revolver and all the ammo I could carry. If this took too long it could go south on us, and then it'd be a full-on war with the zombies. Thirty minutes, roughly, until the response team got here. I had a feeling this would all be resolved before they arrived, but there was no way on Earth I was leaving here without knowing that Corrone was dead.

  The terminal was two floors, which seemed big for a small scale operation like this, until you realised the top floor acted as the control tower. The ground floor was a reddish-brown brickwork, large tinted black windows and solidly built. The second floor, perhaps an addition after the fact, was all black steel and floor to ceiling tinted glass for as much visibility as possible. As far as I could see all the glass was intact on both floors. We walked up to the sliding doors and shoved them open, and they squealed on rusty rails. Feynman darted inside, the black dog soon lost in the gloom, and I drew an arrow to my cheek and led the way in with the arrow ready to fly. Robyn followed, pulling the doors as far closed as she could behind us.

  Someone had tried to hole up here, once upon a time. The rows of seats from the waiting area, tables from the airport coffee shop, and plywood sheets had all been nailed and screwed into a barrier just a little way from the door. It had been breached, and the three skeletal bodies lying in front of it all showed head wounds. A section of plywood had been torn down, and unbroken darkness was all I could see beyond it. The stench of death was everywhere, both outside and from beyond the hole. Feynman had already jumped through, and I approached expecting to hear gunshots at any second. Nothing happened, and I could hear the dog on the other side, sniffing around. If nothing was attacking her, maybe Corrone had moved on already? I hoped not. He had a date
with this arrow, and I didn't want him to miss it.

  "Here goes nothing," I said, and let my bow string down. I climbed through the hole and ducked down, drawing the arrow to my cheek again. Feynman emerged from the darkness and sniffed at me as my eyes slowly got used to the lack of light. Details emerged from the gloom, and I realised I was crouching among old bodies. There were easily ten people here, but they didn't move. Most had been torn apart, all the meat eaten from the bones.

  I had to let the string down again, as the weight of holding the bow at full draw became too much. I left the arrow nocked, and held the string loosely on my fingertips.

  Robyn climbed through, stopped to look around. She crept to the right as I went left, and we circled the room, heading for the back. Feynman stayed at my side the entire time, and my heart broke for her. The dog exuded such a sadness that I felt tears forming in my eyes, and I shook them away. I could not afford to be distracted right now, no matter how much I was going to miss the old man. We crossed the floor, passing seats, empty luggage bags, bodies, ticket counters, and Feynman stopped and snarled quietly, her hackles raised, staring into the gloom. She started to creep forward, fixated on something I couldn't see. I followed the dog, moving as quietly as I could. There was a door ahead, with a sign on it. It was too dark to read, all I could see was the outline. I moved to the door and stopped, listening. Something was moving around behind the door. It sounded like… cardboard? Cardboard boxes being moved around.

  "What is it?" Robyn had come up beside me, rifle held ready. Her face was framed in black hair, so it looked like it was floating in the darkness.

  "Doorway, and he's moving boxes around, I think." I spoke quietly, lower than a whisper.