In the end, only the profligate consumption of ammunition and desperate use of precious fuel had saved the thousands of people at Canadian Forces Base Edmonton.
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The first thing Xander had done after those yahoos had tried to break in to Costco was go online and look for some ideas on how to defend such a large building with so few people. The Internet was spotty, with dozens of his favourites haunts displaying 404 errors, but Google was still up and running. That helped him to find a couple of good ideas, but despite the veritable riches of goods inside Costco, he still didn’t have everything he needed to implement all of them. So he approached Steve about going outside.
“Look, if you want me to set this up, at least one of us needs to go outside.” Xander protested.
“Who are you going to send? I can’t think of anyone who wants to go out there. I realize there’s no infected out there right now, but who knows?” Steve replied.
“Fine, I’ll go if no one else will. I just want someone reliable on the roof to watch my back.”
“Who would that be?” Steve asked.
“How about Fred? Or even yourself?”
“Do we really need to do all this?” Steve asked, pointing at Xander’s notes.
“I think so. Remember when Donald and Diane showed up and they told us about getting those rifles from Canadian Tire? I bet there aren’t many stores around here that haven’t already suffered the same fate. Frankly, we were pretty naïve to think no one else would be interested in this place. Think about it, we’re sitting on top of a mountain of food, camping supplies, tools, batteries, and all sorts of other shit that would come in real handy if you expect this to last more than a week or two. Imagine if those guys were survivalists or had more than just a hunting rifle and a couple of pistols.”
“Okay, okay, you’ve convinced me. I’ll watch your back while you go out there. What do you need specifically?”
“For now, I just need one or two of the jerry cans of gas from my truck. I think the rest of the stuff we can get from inside here,” Xander replied.
Xander and Steve walked to the loading dock, where Steve grabbed one of the hunting rifles Donald had purloined from Canadian Tire.
“Who’s up there now?” Xander asked.
“Donald is, I think,” Steve said.
“Oh yeah, I want you up there, too. He’s probably reading or fucking around with his iPod. Don’t shoot unless you absolutely have to, okay.”
“Okay.” Steve began climbing up to the roof while Xander got ready to go outside. Fred stood at the door with another rifle.
“Gimme two minutes, then go for it,” Steve said, pausing, then he turned around on the ladder and kept climbing.
He got to the roof, and for once, Donald was taking his job seriously and scanning the area around the Costco with binoculars.
“Will wonders never cease,” Steve muttered and walked over to him. He tapped Donald on the shoulder and Donald swung around quickly, leveling his rifle at Steve.
Just as quickly, he dropped the barrel down and said, “Fuck, man, don’t sneak up on me on that! I almost shot you.”
“Well, you shouldn’t be listening to your damned iPod so loud. I could hear it from twenty feet away.”
“Yes, boss,” Donald replied, rolling his eyes.
“Just pay attention, okay?”
Steve walked over to the edge of building and keyed his walkie talkie. “I’m ready.”
Down below, Xander checked his pistol, making sure it was loaded and the safety was off. He paused, taking deep breaths and psyching himself up to go outside. After hearing Steve, he looked at Fred and nodded.
Xander pushed the door open and the wind blasted him in his face.
“Brrr,” he said aloud, shuddering. I guess fall is coming early this year, Xander thought to himself. He brought his pistol up and ran to his truck. When he got within fifteen feet, he hit the keyless entry and popped the rear hatch. He slowed as he neared his truck, scanning the immediate area. Satisfied, he dropped down and looked under the truck, too. He then took the last few steps to the truck and lifted the blankets covering the jerry cans and grabbed two of them, stuffing his pistol in his jacket pocket. Then he dropped the hatch and locked the truck. The alarm beeped. Normally, Xander didn’t even notice the sound, but in the dead quiet this afternoon, it sounded like a church bell going off.
“Fuck!”
He ran back to the building as quickly as possible, lugging both jerry cans. In the distance, he could hear growling. He glanced to his right and the sound grew louder, and then an infected man came around the corner of the building.
Steve started to aim the rifle and Xander waved at him not to shoot. Xander easily won the foot race and pounded on the door. Fred opened it and Xander ran inside. He dropped the jerry cans and grabbed a snow shovel near the door.
“Cover me!” he said to Fred and ran back outside. Fred followed him outside cautiously, lifting the rifle to his shoulder.
Xander ran to the infected and swung the shovel. It bounced off its arm and clanged on the ground. He stepped back and swung again, this time connecting with the infected man’s head. It caved in and the infected man crumpled to the ground without another sound. Xander ran back inside and slammed the door shut.
“Whew.”
“You’re frickin’ crazy, man,” Fred said.
“Frickin?” Xander replied, chuckling. “I haven’t heard that word in years!”
“Hey, when you have kids, you learn to watch your tongue or your wife bitches you out,” Fred retorted with a grin.
“Touché.”
Steve came down the ladder. “So you got everything you need?” he said.
“Yeah, we should be good, now I just need some help in getting it all ready.”
“There are plenty of idle people around, that shouldn’t be hard to find.”
Xander and Fred wandered off, while Steve turned to go back to the office.
About an hour later, Gary radioed Steve. “Hey, Steve, Donald wants you up on the roof!”
“What the fuck does he want?” Steve muttered. He keyed his radio. “All right, tell him I’ll be there in awhile.”
Half an hour later, Steve grabbed his jacket, and walked over to the loading dock, then climbed up the ladder and out onto the roof. A brisk wind from the west cut into him and he shivered. Damn, it’s starting to get cold already, he thought.
Steve walked over to where Donald was standing, on the north side of the building, staring into a pair of binoculars.
“What do you want?” Steve asked.
“What do you make of that?” Donald asked, letting the binoculars drop to his chest and pointing at a huge plume of smoke north of the city.
“Fuck if I know, a house fire maybe?”
“That’s one helluva a big house fire,” Donald retorted.
“Okay, maybe a block of houses is on fire or something. It’s not like the fire department is going to put out any fires nowadays.”
“I don’t think so. Look at how dark it is. It’s something else. The base maybe?” Donald said, adding, “I could have sworn I heard shooting, too, but it’s stopped now.”
“No, I think the base is farther west than that,” Steve replied. “Whatever, it’s not like any of us is going to drive over there and find out, right? So who cares?”
“Hey, I’m just trying to help out. I thought you might be interested, that’s all,” Donald shot back. “Sorry for interrupting your stupid fucking paperwork,” Donald continued, rolling his eyes.
Steve went back down inside and muttered under his breath, “That guy is such an idiot.”
Chapter 15
September 26th
After Dan and Ed had returned to the police station, they and most of the officers who had gone to the west end with them went to grab a bite to eat, take a shit, and try and get some sleep, not necessarily in that order.
A few hours later, Dan woke up sort of refreshed and wandered over to the office
they were using as a command post.
“What’s on the schedule today? Same old, same old?”
“Actually, I don’t think any of us are going anywhere for the time being,” Lieutenant Lee answered. “There’s a dozen or more infected outside and more showing up every minute.”
Dan looked at one of the security monitors and sure enough, a small crowd of infected had appeared at the front door of the station. In the distance, more could be seen staggering in ones and twos towards the station. So far, the reinforced doors were holding, but if the crowd got too big, the station would be breached.
“I’ve got half a dozen guys out there right now, barricading all the entrances and exits. The front door looks pretty solid, but we’re going to have to man it 24/7 just in case. Why don’t you go make sure the cars in the loading dock are loaded to the gills with weapons and ammo, as well as some food and water, just in case we have to bug out of here in a hurry,” Lee said.
“Sure thing,” Dan answered. “Why don’t we make a break for it now, when there’s only a handful? If the numbers swell too large, we’ll never make it out of here.”
“I’ve thought about that too, and in an hour or so, we’ll all get together and decide,” Lee responded. “But for now…”
“Gotcha, I’ll get right on it.”
Dan went and woke up Ed and they worked nonstop for two hours loading the vehicles with all they could hold. After that, they went up to the office and Lee had just sent people off to gather everyone to discuss the situation.
After everyone in the station had shown up, Lee started.
“Look, here’s the situation. There’s a couple of dozen infected outside right now, trying to get in. We have only two options: stay here, hunker down, and hold the fort, hoping to draw infected away from civvies, or to make a break for it and set up shop somewhere else. Now, although I’m in command, I think this is something that needs discussion and a vote by all of us.” Lee paused. “I think we should stay and hold the fort. The longer we stay here, the more time it allows Edmontonians a chance to get out of this madhouse. We can take them out as they appear and if need be, request help from the other divisions if it gets really bad outside. I’ll open the floor to discussion.”
“Why should we stick out our necks any longer for the city? The mayor and his flunkies already abandoned it, so why can’t we?” Constable Robertson said from the back of the room.
“That’s just a rumour,” someone replied.
“Bullshit!” Robertson shot back. “You know as well as I do that the mayor has run off because he’s a fucking little weasel. First he wouldn’t let us defend ourselves properly, then he bitched that we were taking too many casualties trying to maintain the quarantine zones. He’s a goddamned career politician who will say or do anything to save his ass. If he didn’t go to the base like we heard from West Division, then he’s hiding out in his mansion in Glenora. I, for one, don’t see any reason to stay if our superiors didn’t. My vote is for evacuation.”
Dan countered, “Do you want more people to suffer the way Ed and I have? I know I don’t. I’m willing to stay and fight.” He looked over at Ed who nodded in silent agreement.
The debate lasted another ten minutes, but most of the officers agreed that they should stay. Robertson and the others who wanted to leave were offered a vehicle and weapons, but they all grudgingly acceded to the wishes of the majority.
“Okay, now that that is decided, we need a group to go outside and eliminate those out there right now,” Lee said.
Dan and Ed volunteered, as did a pair of other officers. They geared up and went to a side door. They steeled themselves and then stepped out. A torrent of bullets and shotgun blasts quickly wiped out every single infected outside the station. As the four men went back into the building, moans and growls sounded in the distance.
“I don’t think it will be that easy next time,” Ed said over his shoulder to the others just before the emergency door slammed shut.
Within an hour, there were more infected outside than ever, and their numbers continued to grow. Only two of the next squad of officers that went outside returned unharmed. An hour after that, not one survived. That ended their attempts to stem the infected swelling outside the station. It also effectively ended plans to abandon the station and retreat somewhere else outside the city limits.
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It was already dark outside as the Prime Minister rubbed his eyes and tried to focus on the report in front of him. A half-eaten dinner and cup of cold coffee sat on his desk, brushed aside seconds after the report had been delivered to him by an aide. It detailed the epidemic sweeping the nation and included rough casualty numbers, economic losses, rates of infection, quarantine zones, and all sorts of other figures. He had hardly slept in the week since he had declared a state of emergency nationwide.
Initially, Parliament had united and parties had set aside long standing political differences to try and deal with the crisis, but as the crisis had dragged on, political rivalries had boiled to the surface and were now threatening to tear it apart. The Bloc Quebecois were insisting on a guarantee that at least one third of all government contracts for supplies – civilian or military – went to companies based in Quebec. Meanwhile, the leader of the NDP was adamant that police officers and members of the Canadian Forces show more restraint when dealing with infected, in effect demanding constitutional rights for those infected. Finally, the Conservative Party was demanding the opposite, that more forceful action be taken and harsher treatment of infected be used, up to and including bombing areas where large concentrations of infected had gotten out of quarantine.
The Liberal Party had a slim majority in Parliament, and so technically they could ignore the wishes of the other parties for anything that wasn’t voted on in Parliament, however with the other three parties scoring political points on the Liberals every chance they got, he had been forced to hold a number of votes on issues he hadn’t really wanted to. And now that he had created a shadow government consisting of the Deputy PM and several deputy Cabinet ministers at Canadian Forces Base North Bay, he needed support from at least one other party to win votes on budget items and critical measures.
He hated the thought of going cap in hand to one of the other parties, but there really was no way around it. Now which one, he mused to himself.
He was still thinking when one of his aides ran into the room and, out of breath, squeaked out, “Sir, we have to leave.”
He glanced up and looked at his disheveled aide. He wore a rumpled and sweat-stained suit, and the PM wondered, when was the last time his aide had gone home?
“Why do we have to leave? There’s an emergency session about to start in Parliament.”
“It’s the infected, sir, they’ve broken past the barricades outside and are closing on the building,” his aide replied.
“How is that possible? We have two full companies of troops out there!” He glanced out his office window, but the PMO was on the backside of the building, facing the river, and he couldn’t see the barricades. What he could see was the helicopter he used every day to travel back and forth between Parliament and CFB Petawawa warming up its engines and crew scrambling around outside.
“I don’t know, sir, I was just told on the phone to ready you for evacuation.”
He turned on his closed circuit TV, which normally displayed the House of Commons chamber. Inside the chamber, it was utter and complete pandemonium. MPs were rushing for the exits while infected harried them, biting and tearing at all they could reach. As he watched, several members of Parliament were pulled down to the ground, disappearing in a crowd of infected. The Sergeant-at-Arms and his aides guarded one set of doors and were allowing other members of Parliament to escape. The Sergeant-at-Arms said something the Prime Minister couldn’t hear and the doors behind him were slammed shut. A second later, the camera feed mercifully cut out.
The doors burst open and his four man security detail came in, and the
senior man, a white-haired officer with a handlebar moustache said, “Sir, it’s time to go!”
“But, Stewart, there’s still so much to do!” the PM resisted.
“Sir, you can’t do it if you’re dead,” Stewart replied.
Stewart and his team were all police officers in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and each had years of experience guarding VIPs. They were almost invisible when it came to public events, but over the past two years, the Prime Minister had gotten to know each member of his detail quite well.
The Prime Minister relented and let out a deep sigh. Then he strode out of the room, with his detail providing a protective cordon around him. The outer office was a madhouse, with people screaming orders at each other about what to take and what to leave behind.
“Leave it all,” the Prime Minister brusquely. “Nothing here is worth your lives. Get out while you can!” Then he turned and left.
His detail hustled him down the hallway and then out a back stairwell. As they stumbled down the stairs, he heard a dull roar and the fire door above them opened. Infected spilled into the stairwell and the screams of his staff being attacked followed them. In a matter of seconds, the screams were finished and all the Prime Minister could hear were the growls of the infected padding after them.
Two RCMP officers turned at the landing and began firing at the mass of infected following them. Their MP-5s barked and short bursts of lead tore into the infected, and they tumbled down, one after the other. The pile of infected grew until the officers’ magazines were empty. Then the torrent of infected surged again. One of the officers was slow to move and was dragged down screaming, torn apart by dozens of infected, while the other slid back and continued firing.
Then the door at the bottom of the stairs opened and the Prime Minister was shoved down the tunnel that it led into by Stewart. Another officer dropped back to join the other officer at the door, firing into the infected. There was nothing to block the door with, so they stepped back a few metres and waited nervously.
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