by Gareth Wood
“Score one for us,” Eric said. “Whoever this guy was, he stocked up nicely.”
“She, you mean,” Sanji said, holding up one of the magazines. It was a Marie Claire, dated a few years ago. “There are a bunch of these. This and the tampons makes me think whoever lived here was a woman.”
“I wonder where she is now,” I said, “because this place has been empty for a long time, judging by the dust.”
“Maybe she made it to Cold Lake?” Jess offered.
“Maybe.”
We looked around some more to make a list of everything here, and to decide what to do with it.
We all went outside so we could fill Darren in on what was going on. “Okay,” I said to everyone, “Sanji and Jess and I will go and get the flatbed and our vehicles and bring them here. We’ll load everything we can and then head back to the house tomorrow. We’ll spend the night inside here. Good for everyone?”
There was a chorus of yeses, and Sanji and my wife and I started walking the few blocks back to the flatbed. It was a cool but sunny afternoon, with high broken clouds, and I enjoyed the sunlight on my face as we walked through the ruins.
The wolves were back, sniffing around the truck and our vehicles, but they all ran off when they caught our scent. They loped away, watching us come, keeping enough distance for them to feel safe.
We drove the vehicles back and parked them, then spent the rest of the afternoon loading the flatbed with everything we could. Since it was all in plastic tubs it made it much easier to load and tie down, so it took us only a few hours. We traded guard duty during this task, so that we would not be caught unawares.
Once the labour was finished we retreated inside and closed the door. We started a fire in the stove and cooked some dinner, a thick bean and vegetable stew. The small room heated up nicely and the warmth even made the store area comfortable, empty now of all the supplies. We bedded down in the small stock room, on the floor in the warmth of the stove, and I fell asleep with a full belly, my arm slung over my wife.
* * *
The following morning was colder, and there was frost on everything when we went outside. No snow yet, but it was coming eventually. We ate a small hot breakfast of oatmeal and precious coffee, and then put out the fire and left. We chained the door, but left the wire off.
The drive back to the house was marked by the sighting of a herd of deer that fled as soon as they saw us, and the appearance of a large male moose that stood in the road looking at us as we approached. I had heard that moose were stupid, and this one proved it. It just stood there as we drove up, looking at us with big brown eyes. He must have weighed over half a ton, and his antlers were huge. As we stopped a dozen meters away he lifted his head up and made a deep grunting sound several times. His head turned towards the truck, and he started walking towards it, hooves clopping on the pavement.
Sanji hit the horn for a few seconds, blaring loudly, and the moose jumped a foot in the air and lowered its head.
“Oh shit, it’s going to charge the flatbed,” Darren said from beside me. That was in fact what happened. The moose jumped forward and slammed its head into the front of the truck, antlers making a large scrape in the paint. The entire flatbed shook with the impact. Sanji hit the horn again and the moose backed up, shaking its head. Just as I was sure it was going to charge again it turned and trotted north towards the trees, snorting. We all watched it go.
* * *
On the morning of September 14th we had a large final meal at the house, and packed up to leave. We took all the tools we could load from the barn, and a lot of the food from the house, repacking the tubs with as much as we could. I was still frustrated by not finding Chris. Salvage teams suffer casualties. We know it when we sign on to one, that there is a terrible risk involved in going out into the world and acquiring the needed food and supplies for a town full of people. Knowing the risks, however, didn’t make this any easier when it was someone on my own crew.
I walked outside into bright sunshine and climbed into the lead Explorer. Sanji was going to drive the flatbed, and Eric was riding with him. Darren and Jess were bringing the other Explorer, so I was the only one riding alone. I checked the gas, walked around the vehicle to look at the tires and brake lights, and then climbed back in. The others performed similar tasks, and then we got underway. We left the house partially stocked and secure, with the key on the front door taped into an envelope. Any survivors who came along to use this place would find it hospitable, I hoped.
I had wanted to bring along the horse. Riding horses were valuable, and bringing him back to Cold Lake would have been worth the effort, but we hadn’t found a horse trailer to haul him along in. Eric had suggested that we let him go, hoping that he would survive in the area until another salvage team came by to retrieve him, so on the 13th we opened the gates to the yard, and tied them open so he would be able to get out. We made sure there was plenty of water in the trough and lots of feed left in bales in the barn. The horse was still in the yard in the morning, but would surely go out to forage on its own eventually. Nevertheless, we noted the location on our maps, and I made a note to send a team up here with a horse trailer in the next few days if one was available.
We got going, and soon we were driving towards the rising sun, which blazed down on a world where the living dead outnumbered the surviving people by something like seventy-five thousand to one. That number had been thrown around the town of Cold Lake for a while now, attributed to a scientist who came up with the number through means that might have involved voodoo or astrology, for all I knew. Still, it was a frightening number. It implied that there could be less than eighty thousand living human beings on Earth today. If that is true then we have a significant portion of them at Cold Lake.
Driving alone gave me the opportunity to think and reflect. For a while, I brooded about leaving before we had found Chris. Despite the near certainty that he was dead by now, I had the feeling that he wasn’t. It really felt like I was abandoning him. I tried to come up with scenarios that would explain his disappearing act, but anything I could imagine always seemed to end in the tearing of flesh and horrible screams. I gave it up after a while, and concentrated on driving. We had a long way to go and too many chances for disaster to overtake us.
Slave Lake was just as dead and abandoned heading east as it had been when we passed it going west. There were several dozen undead on the highway and in the surrounding ditches and fields when we went through, and even more in the parking lot of a donut shop just south of the single intersection that had a traffic light. We avoided the zombies, slowing down to move around them as well as we could. In the rear-view mirror, I saw several zombies bounce off the flatbed, but we deliberately tried to not run them over. They made an awful mess, and a broken bone might puncture a tire. That had actually happened to me once, and I had no desire to repeat the experience.
To pass the time I put some music in the CD player, and hummed along to Def Leppard for a while. We passed into open highway again, and continued southeast.
* * *
We left our supplies in Athabasca. We arrived there on the 27th, and went through medical checks at the blockade. I turned in our report to the Army office, told them about the horse and where he was, and we drove the flatbed through town to the supply warehouse with an escort of six armed men. I spoke to one of them during the drive, and he told me that they hadn’t had any new survivors turn up here for months. Expeditions sent out to find food and supplies were reporting finding large numbers of the undead everywhere, but no living communities. As far as we could tell, apart from a few groups in the south that we were in contact with sporadically, our little belt of surviving towns along the roughly east-west highways between Athabasca and Cold Lake was the only area in Alberta that had managed to hold on this long. Even that wasn’t all good news, I learned. The towns of Rich Lake and Atmore had been abandoned after outbreaks had occurred there. The survivors of those horror-filled nights had been move
d to Cold Lake, and the towns were empty now, except for small outposts whose sole purpose was to keep the roads open.
The current guard, a man named Barry, was a farmer in his fifties, and was armed with a shotgun. He held it casually, but he had a hard look in his eyes. He was glad to see the supplies we had delivered, but even I could see that it wouldn’t be enough to last the winter. Other teams were out looking for more supplies, but the ever present swarms of the undead made it unbelievably dangerous sometimes. Two teams that had been sent south this month had failed to return. We had lost one member of our team, a fact I was dwelling on with mixed guilt and frustration. I was sure now that Chris was dead, but the fact that we never found his body was going to give me nightmares for weeks.
We spent a few days in Athabasca, getting checked over, reloading supplies, and giving reports to various people. At noon on the 30th we left to head back to Cold Lake. It was a quiet trip, and we spoke very little to each other. We were all still feeling Chris’ absence, and wondering what had happened with him. Jess and I sat in the back of one of the Explorers and held hands while Darren drove. She had a faraway look in her eyes, and didn’t speak much. About four-thirty in the afternoon, just as we were turning through the last curve in the road before we hit Cold Lake’s first barricade, she turned to me and whispered, “I think I might be pregnant.”
My brain shut off. I just stared at her. She looked back at me, and finally said, “Well?”
“How can you be pregnant?” I asked her through the fog that seemed to be creeping into my vision.
“I imagine it happened in the usual way, Brian.”
“But…we used precautions…” I said rather lamely.
“They don’t always work. You know that.”
“But… I…” Yeah, I was really dealing with this well.
Jessica was becoming annoyed with me; I could see it in her expression.
“Well,” she said, “how do you feel about this?”
I didn’t know. I was stunned. Me, a father? And more importantly, in this world? What chance did a baby have? How would we support a child? Wait a second, Jess already had Michael. He was doing fine, staying with my sister Sarah while we were out searching for supplies. I realised that Jess was staring at me. I hadn’t answered her. I’d been staring into space. What must she be thinking about me right now?
“I…I don’t know. I mean, how do you feel about it?”
“Well, obviously it’s going to be dangerous, but I won’t be the first woman to have a baby since the dead rose up.” She was right. Cold Lake had actually had several dozen babies come along in the last year and a half. “But I wasn’t asking about the risks. I want to know how you think this will affect us. I feel good about it. I love you and I think you’ll be a great father. I just want to be sure you feel okay about this too.”
“I’m sorry, Jess, this just kind of took me by surprise,” I said, and took her hand, gathering myself.
“Of course I love you too. I think bringing a child into this world, especially now, is going to be risky, but it’s something I’m willing to try.”
I leaned over and kissed her, and for the rest of the trip we talked about plans. I tried to sound reassuring and calm, but in reality I was terrified. Not just for Jess, or myself, or our team, but for this baby. Potential baby. She stressed that she might be pregnant. She’d have to see a doctor here to be sure. If it was true though…suddenly I had a lot more to concentrate on that just our own survival.
We arrived at the house a while later, and had a joyful homecoming, though it was tempered by the loss of Chris. Michael ran outside when he heard the Explorers pull up, and jumped into Jess’ arms and then mine. Sarah came out with Megan and hugged us all. We retired inside, and told her the story of our travels. Once we were done with that, we shared with everyone the news of Jess’ potential pregnancy. There were guarded congratulations, and Michael got very excited about maybe having a little brother or sister.
After dinner, Sarah told us the news from Cold Lake.
“While you were gone there was a small outbreak here,” she said. “We lost six people. A worker died when he fell off a roof he was helping to repair. He rose a few minutes later as his co-workers were trying to revive him, and bit three of them. One was injured so severely that he died a few minutes later and rose as well. These two undead killed another two people before the town patrol arrived to destroy them.” The injured had been mercifully euthanized.
There was also news from other parts of the world. As hearing news from the outside was becoming rarer, it was important news. In the southern parts of North America, down around northern California, a radio signal was sent from a group of survivors three days ago, a distress call that they managed to bounce off a satellite. It was intended for US authorities, but nobody picked it up down there. Cold Lake got it, and there was a news release from the CO about it. There are about a hundred survivors in a farm community there, and they are slowly being encroached on by the undead. A rescue mission is not being considered due to the distance and lack of staging areas between there and here. Cold Lake has been in touch with them, but that’s all that is known.
Also, there has been no contact with anyone to the east in a while. If our government still stands we don’t know about it.
Eric and I went to see the Nakao family. We knocked on their door and waited. A few moments later an elderly Japanese man came to the door. His eyes were red, and he looked exhausted. This was Chris’ father, a man I had met once before, and knew only by his surname.
“Yes?” he asked us sadly.
Chris’ family had been told that he was presumed dead, but they had not been given details. I was here with Eric to tell them what I could.
“Mr. Nakao, do you remember me? I’m Brian, I run the Salvage Team that Chris was assigned to.”
“I do. Come in.”
He showed us to the living room, and we sat on a sofa. His wife, a grey-haired Scots lady with a silver crucifix hanging on a chain around her neck, made some tea and brought it in. We sipped politely, and Mr. Nakao waited for us to speak. The obvious pain in his eyes was terrible to witness.
Mrs. Nakao sat next to her husband and poured herself a cup with shaking hands, the only sign I saw that she was upset.
“Mr. and Mrs. Nakao, first let me tell you how badly I feel that we couldn’t help Chris. He was on my team, and I was responsible for him. I am so sorry.”
“Can you tell us what happened? The military only said that he was killed,” Mr. Nakao said.
I explained how Chris had gone missing, and that we had searched for him. I told them about the trailer, searching the area, and finally having no choice left but to leave.
“Are you sure you looked everywhere?” Mrs. Nakao asked me, desperate for any hope that he might still be alive.
“Ma’am,” Eric said, “we searched every building within a kilometer, walked through every field near the site, and searched the forest surrounding the house. I’m sorry, but there was no sign of your son.”
“If he was alive we would have found him, I assure you,” I told her. The look in her eyes told me she didn’t believe me. That was fine. If she needed to blame someone I was willing to be that person.
After that there was really nothing left to say. We told them we would be at the memorial for Chris, and then made our exit. As we left Mr. Nakao shook our hands.
Eric and I started to walk back to my home, each of us silent as I brooded over losing a team member and silently wondering if we had done enough.
“You want a drink?” Eric asked suddenly.
“Hell, yes.”
“Let’s go to my place. I have a bottle of Grey Goose left.”
We changed course and went to Eric’s small apartment in a three-storey walk-up building. In this town that was a skyscraper. His apartment was a single bedroom with a small kitchen and bathroom. He didn’t bother turning on the lights, since the electricity was turned off until darkness fell. H
e also didn’t remove his coat. It was chilly inside, since there was no heat until the electricity was turned on.
He got two glasses and a small bottle of vodka, and poured us each a few fingers.
“To Chris!” We drank. He poured some more, and we sat and talked.
“You alright?” he asked me.
“I will be. I’m just pissed off at myself for not finding him.”
He shrugged. “You know we all looked hard for him. You were right when you told his mom that if he’d been alive we’d have found him.”
I just drank my vodka. It left a nice warmth in my belly, and I realised I needed lunch. Eric had not finished, though.
“You can’t save everyone, Brian. It’s good that you try, but you have to remember that if you let it become a personal failure every time someone dies, you’ll go crazy.”
“I can’t not try to save people,” I said.
“That’s because you’re a decent man, Brian. You are the kind of person we need running these teams. It would be dangerous to let some callous asshole be in charge, because you’d never know when they’d decide to cut their losses and take off on their own. With you, since you’re trying so hard to save everyone, we know you’ll get the job done.”
“I changed my mind,” I said.
“What?”
“I changed my mind about leaving,” I said. “I was going to take Jess and the kids and Sarah, and head out somewhere and see if we could make a go on our own. I was even going to ask you to come along.”
“Why’d you change your mind?”
It was my turn to shrug. “Nowhere is really safe now, only safer. It’s all relative, I think. This town is safer than being on the road, and the road is safer than being in an unsecured town, which is safer than being within sight of a big city. This place really is our best chance.”
