“But do we need all of that?” Evelyn shot back. “No, we don’t, we can get by without it.”
Evelyn turned to Xander. “Please forget it. Let’s just stay in here. It’s safe, it’s warm, and we’ve got all we really need.”
“No, we don’t. Think of all the food that has spoiled since the power went out. If we had had a working generator, we could have saved it all. And while we may not need it now, what happens when the canned food runs low? Or when it gets really cold? Do you think those little space heaters are going to keep us warm? Once the really cold weather hits, it’s going to be like living in a refrigerator. This building needs electricity for the interior to stay warm. That means gas, and lots of it. Then we have to go outside anyways. I say let’s do it now before other raiders think to do it. If we wait, we risk losing it all.”
The shouting rose to crescendo and half a dozen side arguments broke out. Finally, Steve raised his arms and motioned for everyone to calm down.
When people had stopped shouting, Steve said, “There’s only one way to solve this problem, the committee will have to vote on it.”
“Fine, just do it in the open, so all of us can see what’s going on,” Diane said, and many people nodded in agreement.
“Fair enough, Xander, how do you vote?”
“In favour of going outside for supplies,” he said.
“Jessica?” Steve asked.
“You know damned well how I’m voting,” she fumed.
“And?” Steve said.
“Against,” she said through clenched teeth.
“My vote is in favour of going outside, the caveat being we wait another full day. If the weather warms up, we don’t go. If it stays cold, then we go. Sound like a fair compromise?” Steve said to the group.
“Not really,” Janice grumbled.
“Yeah, looks like Donald was right. The committee was stacked and you got to do what you wanted anyways, Steve,” Evelyn said bitterly.
The group broke up and people wandered off.
Xander reached out to Evelyn and tried to soothe her, but when he put his hand on her shoulder, she coldly turned and said, “Don’t you dare. I wanted to say something last time you guys went outside, but no one spoke up, so I kept it to myself. I took care of you after you went outside last time, but if you get hurt this time, you’re on your own.”
Evelyn stalked off in a huff.
“Well, that could have turned out better,” Steve said.
“I’d love to sit in here and do nothing, but I’m not interested in freezing to death when winter hits,” Xander replied.
“Well, let’s get planning,” Steve said.
Chapter 29
October 16th
Over the past two days, people had tried to convince Steve and Xander to change their minds about going outside, but they were insistent and kept right on planning.
They made sure all the firearms were cleaned, put fresh batteries in the walkie-talkies, gathered tools to break into Home Depot with, and collected several dozen flashlights for use inside the big box store.
Finally, when everyone was ready, Donald and Fred went up to the roof, armed with the best rifles they had, ones that Donald had taken from the Canadian Tire, while Steve, Xander, Jack, and Gary prepared to go outside. Xander had the shotgun he had liberated from the dead raiders out front, Steve had Xander’s pistol, and Jack had Xander’s AR-7. Gary was armed with a mini-crossbow. All of them also had some sort of melee weapon, like a crowbar or a baseball bat.
“Everyone ready?” Steve asked over the walkie-talkie.
“Ready up here,” Fred replied.
“How’s the outside looking?” Xander asked.
“Nothing out there but a bunch of zombiesicles!” Donald said, laughing.
“Still time to change your mind, Xander,” Steve said, grinning.
“Never, let’s go!”
They opened the door and slipped outside.
They carefully made their way across the parking lot, doing their best to avoid the bigger snowdrifts. They walked down the service road on the west end of the building, emerging near the contractor’s entrance. The parking lot was deserted and the building appeared untouched. They had to walk another fifty feet to the main entrance because the contractor’s entrance didn’t have a window.
Using a crowbar, Xander smashed a window, spider-webbing it. He hit it several times until it popped loose, then he pulled on the edge and, with the help of Gary and Jack, ripped it out of the window entirely. He crawled in the window and dropped to the ground.
Steve, Gary, and Jack followed him in.
“It looks clear, but let’s be careful,” Xander said.
“Hells yeah,” Jack replied.
They walked a few feet past the tills. There was little light from the front windows here, and though this Home Depot had skylights, it appeared that many were covered in snow. Everyone pulled out a flashlight and snapped it on. Gary went a step further and pulled out five huge flashlights, turned them on and then stood them up on the floor, creating a well-lit area.
“Let’s go make sure we have an escape route,” Steve said.
They walked back to the contractor’s entrance and forced the door open.
“Great, go grab your pickup truck, Jack, we’ll wait,” Steve said.
Jack turned and walked back down the alley towards the Costco.
“Heads up, Jack is on his way back for his truck,” Steve said into his walkie-talkie.
“Gotcha. It’s still all clear out here,” Donald replied.
After a few minutes, Jack’s truck roared around the corner and then backed into the bay.
“All right, time to go shopping. Let’s grab a couple carts and get everything we need. Stay in contact and don’t take any chances. If you see a zombie, shout it out, and we get the hell out of here,” Steve said.
Gary set a flashlight at the end of each aisle and turned them on, providing even more light in the store. The far reaches of the store were still shrouded in darkness, but the front half of the store was as well lit as possible.
Everyone nodded and then went back to the entrance and got a pair of carts. Steve headed off with Gary, while Jack and Xander paired up. Each pair had a list of items to get to save time.
They whooped and hollered as they went, making lots of noise. Xander thought that if a zombie was lurking inside and not frozen, it would be attracted to the noise and then dealt with. In the end, in it was an unnecessary precaution, as the building was totally deserted.
Xander and Jack went into the plumbing section and found a pair of hand pumps, then picked up ducting in the next aisle over, and topped off their cart with a dozen propane tanks from the rack outside. Steve and Gary went to the lumber section and filled the cart with lumber in all sorts of sizes and lengths. They filled up the truck and headed back to Costco. Fred opened the bay door and Steve, Xander, and Jack hurriedly unloaded the pickup truck. Then they went back to Home Depot and filled the truck with huge packages of insulation, more propane tanks, and still more lumber.
They kept it up all day long, looting the Home Depot for everything and anything that they thought they might need. By day’s end, it looked to Xander that they had taken one of almost everything inside Home Depot, except perhaps from the expensive home renovation section.
Looking at the massive haul, Xander knew it would take days, or even weeks to install everything and get everything just right. But when they did, they would have a very comfortable and secure place to ride out the winter.
Emboldened by their success, Xander led another group outside the next day, only this time they went to the gas station across the street and siphoned gas from the station’s pumps, filling all the jerry cans they had. Upon their return, they fired up a pair of generators and sat back to enjoy the warmth blasting from the building’s heaters.
Chapter 30
October 24th
The cold snap that had frozen the infected had finally dissipated th
e day before. The sun was shining and the snow was beginning to melt. Down below, the infected were beginning to stir from their frozen coma. Their movements were still slow and jerky, but Xander could see that the warmer weather was awakening them once again.
Xander stood on the roof of the Costco. They had spent much of the past week renovating the interior. The ability to run the generators had been a godsend during the cold snap because the temperature dropped below minus twenty Celsius a few nights, and without Costco’s heaters running, they probably would have frozen to death. The naysayers had grudgingly admitted that Xander and Steve were right, and many had come to see the trip to Home Depot as about more than just luxuries. Evelyn still pouted about it now and then, but seemed to accept it.
Given the cold snap and its huge dump of snow, as well as the general lack of activity in the area around the Costco, Xander had thought society had totally collapsed. So when a column of soldiers appeared out of the cold and snow, he was shocked. A half dozen LAVs and several Bison APCs crawled up the street, moving very slowly. Two E-LAVs drove abreast, plowing the snow out of the way of the convoy, while loud music was blaring from speakers mounted on them externally. As they neared an apartment building, a several dozen zombies appeared and shambled towards the convoy.
The convoy stopped and four APCs with small square turrets pulled out in front and formed a skirmish line. Xander had seen LAVs in parades and at special events, but he had never seen anything like these. The turrets rotated towards the oncoming zombies and opened fire. The machine guns spit high caliber death at the infected and tore them to pieces. When the zombies got to within twenty metres, firing ports on the left side of each APC snapped open and rifle barrels appeared. The troops began firing carefully and methodically. One by one the zombies fell. More and more zombies appeared and the troops continued to slaughter them. After about fifteen minutes, the zombies were all dead and not one had gotten closer than twenty feet to the convoy.
Xander whooped and shouted and waved his arms.
The turret on one of the Coyotes slowly swiveled towards the Costco.
Xander stared at the cannon pointed in his direction and swallowed nervously.
The vehicles turned towards the Costco and drove over a small hill and crushed a pair of small saplings, originally planted to decorate the area surrounding the power centre. Their diesel engines roared and black smoke belched out of the exhaust as the APCs moved in his direction.
The convoy pulled up to the front of the Costco.
“Wow! Great to see you guys!” Xander yelled down from the roof. “What are you doing out here?”
“Pacification patrol, we send out patrols everyday to find supplies and kill off more of these bastards,” the soldier on top of the APC shouted back.
“Give me a minute and I’ll come down there,” Xander yelled.
Xander flew down the ladder and yelled, “The army is here! The army is here!”
Everyone started cheering and laughing.
“Oh my god, we’re saved!” Diane said.
“I need a volunteer or two to go outside with me. Who’s willing?” Xander asked.
“I’ll go,” Jack said, followed quickly by a murmur of assent from Steve.
“Diane, get up on the roof and keep an eye out for zombies. Fred, you stay by the door and be ready to let us back in, just in case.”
Xander, Jack, and Steve walked to the side door and opened it. They looked around cautiously and headed outside. From the roof, the APCs looked like toys, but they still dwarfed all three men. They sat roughly ten feet high and rode on eight huge wheels. The soldier Xander had been talking to climbed down to talk.
“Hi, I’m Lieutenant Hopkins,” he said.
They introduced themselves.
“So how many of you guys are there?” Steve asked.
“Most of the brigade is still here. 2nd Battalion was in Manitoba and they’re helping out in Winnipeg. All told, there are about six thousand or so of us, plus lots of civilians,” Hopkins stated. “Are you three all by yourself in there?”
“No, there’s about twenty of us in here. We came here right in the beginning and barricaded ourselves in when this mess started,” Xander replied.
“If you want to be evac’ed, you’ll have to wait. We can probably send a few trucks here to get you back to the base,” Hopkins said.
“I take it from that wreckage that you have weapons in there,” Hopkins continued, pointing to the burnt out cars.
“We’ve got a couple of hunting rifles and some ammo, but not much else,” Xander answered. “Can you spare some?”
“Sorry, I’m not authorized to give weapons to civilians, and I bet you don’t need any food or water, do you?” Hopkins said.
“Nope, but we’ve got a goodwill package for you guys if you want it,” Steve said.
“Sure,” came a hesitant response.
Steve walked back into the building and came back a few minutes later with a shopping cart full of goodies – boxes of Oreo cookies, tubs of gummy bears, bags of dried fruit and cans of Coke. Xander had to help him push it through the snow towards the troops.
“Here you go!” Steve said.
“Wow, I can’t remember the last time I had an Oreo!” Hopkins said. He tore open a package and stuffed a couple in his mouth. He washed them down with a Coke. After he swallowed, he whistled and shouted, “Men, gets your asses over here!”
Nearby troops walked over and helped themselves to cookies.
“There’s plenty more inside, so tell your men to feel free to come and get some,” Steve said.
“That’s very generous, I’ll let them know before we leave,” Hopkins replied.
“As I said, we can’t take you back now, but another patrol will swing by in a couple of days and evac you out of here. We’ve got a pretty good set-up on the base right now,” Hopkins said.
“So we came through pretty well, then?” Xander inquired.
“Nope, pretty much everything except Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, and Regina is gone. The only place in the East that’s safe at all is Prince Edward Island – everything else is pretty much gone. Vancouver was swamped by thousands, maybe millions of infected that moved north from Seattle. Last I heard, they were on the verge of wiping out Kamloops. There’s another massive group of infected moving towards Winnipeg from the Twin Cities.”
October 25th
After Dan’s performance over the past week and a half, he had turned many soldiers’ opinions of the EPS back to the positive column. That change of opinion led to more EPS officers volunteering to assist the military, and so far, they received nothing but positive results, as soldiers were suddenly aware of the high levels of professionalism EPS officers had. Using his encyclopedic knowledge of city geography, he had led units to several grocery stores and warehouses unknown to military personnel, allowing the base to actually stockpile a small surplus of food and medical supplies.
Today, he was babysitting a platoon of near rookies, tasked to evacuate some survivors from a Costco in the suburb of Clareview. It looked to be an easy mission because several pacification patrols had already swept through the area, and as a result, aerial patrols showed little infected activity in the area.
Dan participated in the planning of the mission and selected what he thought would be a route with few, if any, obstacles. As the platoon neared the Costco, he was proved correct yet again.
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By chance, Xander was sitting on the Costco roof in the cool fall air when he spotted another convoy of military vehicles – a couple APCs at both ends, with several army trucks and a pair of semi trucks sandwiched in between. The convoy stopped on the 50th Street overpass, while the lead APC pulled out in front and roared down into the intersection. It stopped and once again loud music began to blare from its speakers. A handful of infected appeared and began moving towards the APC. The turret on top opened fire and made mincemeat of the infected, while troops inside began firing systematically and w
iped out any that got close.
The massive APC sat there for a full five minutes after that, still blaring music, almost daring infected to show themselves.
Finally, satisfied the area was clear, the rest of the convoy started up and together pulled into the Costco parking lot. The army vehicles pulled up in front of the building and the troops in the APCs disembarked and fanned out to create a secure perimeter, while the two semi trucks began backing into the loading dock.
After the gunfire ended, Xander keyed his walkie-talkie. “The Army’s back, and it looks like they’re here to take us out of this dreary place.”
Jessica, who happened to be in the office at the time, went out into the common area and told everyone. Xander could hear the cheering from the roof, even though he was far from the ladder.
Steve, who happened to be at the loading dock, told everyone inside to get ready to leave and then went to the northside exit. They had all packed up their meager belongings and had been ready to leave for more than a day now, and the past twenty-four hours had been tense, with everyone on edge about when the army would return.
Xander signaled to the troops below. “We’re all ready to go!” he shouted.
The trooper on top of the APC waved back and pointed to an officer walking towards the building.
Xander then ran to the ladder and raced down, then over to the north emergency exit, where he met Steve. As a precaution, they had dismantled the deadfall poised above it the night before, carefully removing bits and pieces one at a time.
Steve opened the door and waited for one of the APCs to pull up. An officer and several soldiers dismounted and walked to Steve.
“Hi, I’m Lieutenant Miller. We’re here to evacuate everyone. We also want to load up as much food from inside as possible,” he said, gesturing to the two semi trucks in the convoy.
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