The idea was to take a walk around the entire inside of the building twice a day. Just to double check that all the doors were still holding and that nothing had found its way inside. That afternoon it was Paul, Cody, Trevor, Adam and myself that went out on our first patrol. Shannon was busy taking care of Bruce while the others were up on the roof looking for any sign of rescue.
During all patrols we only carried the baseball bats with us. Paul was the only one who carried a firearm. He felt it was necessary that at least one of us stay armed especially after what had happened to me in that bathroom. It was for our own safety that we didn’t walk around the store like an armed posse. The thinking was that we were more likely to shoot one of our own by mistake then anything else.
So that day we set out on the same path that we would follow every day after that on the routine sweeps. We walked across the back room and down each wall and through each and every department. We checked every door and we would always finish up at the front doors. Well that day we never made it to the front doors. It was one hell of a first patrol.
You see Paul had this little habit at every door that we checked. He would jiggle the handle just a little before he tested it to see if it was still locked. I don’t know if it was something that he had always done or if he was just checking to see if something would respond to the noise. I never really asked him why he did what he did but that’s beside the point.
During that sweep we found ourselves at the automotive department. There was a door that led to the garage where they performed the oil changes offered by the store. Paul did his little handle thing and at first nothing happened. So he tested the door and to nobodies surprise the door was locked. As Paul turned away and started walking back to where we were standing I saw it.
A face appeared in the window in the middle of the door. I jumped a little when I first saw it but everyone took notice once the banging started. It was obvious that there was a person on the other side of that glass and they were pounding on the door like a maniac. We moved in even closer and once we had a clear view through the glass we quickly discovered that the person had been infected.
We had checked that door the day before. We made sure that it was locked and we never saw anybody inside when we peaked through the window. I couldn’t understand how we could have missed him. His face was pressed firmly against the glass and he was banging his fists on the door desperate to get out or get at us. His face was pale, blood covered his arms and his shirt was ripped pretty bad, unfortunately it was a shirt that looked all too familiar.
In that split second we went from quiet shock to having to restrain Cody from opening the door. He fought frantically, trying to get inside. As strange as it all seemed I couldn’t really blame him. After all, all he wanted to do was help his friend. It just took him some time to understand that the person on the other side of the door wasn’t Scott anymore.
The last time I had seen him he was making a break for his car through the back receiving doors. It was Kerri who had noticed his car out in the parking lot with the driver’s side door open and no sign of him. How he got in that garage we could never know for sure. My guess was that he tried to get in his car and was either overwhelmed by Zeds or had forgotten his keys inside the store. He probably tried to get back inside, but the doors were all blocked by zombies or locked. All except for one, the employee entrance on the far side of the garage, which was the only, door that we hadn’t checked and a door I wouldn’t even know existed until much later.
I could tell just by looking through the window that he had been severely hurt. Judging by the stains on what clothing we could see he had lost a lot of blood. If I had to guess, that was most likely what had caused him to pass out which was probably why he was unable to make any noise or get our attention the night before. By the look of his injuries, the Zeds had gotten to him while he was out there. Again, all of this is just an assumption on my part. We would never know what really happened to him.
It took some time for us to gather everyone outside that door. We knew we had to let the others know what we had found or more like whom we had found. Seeing Scott like that was a terrible sight and a big hit to the moral of the group. However, it did reaffirm that we had made the right decision when we all chose to stay.
His former co-workers had a hard time seeing what he had become. I had only known him for a very short amount of time and I still struggled to see someone who had been a perfectly normal human being the day before in such a state. But once we had everyone together the difficult discussion began of what to do with him. Obviously, the people who used to work with him wanted to help him even though they had no idea how to do it. A few of us however had a different idea of what needed to be done.
He had become one of them, and more importantly he was inside the store with us. Sure he was trapped inside that garage and the door that stood between him and us looked like it was strong enough to keep him in there. But some of the others were starting to ask if we could ever really be truly safe with him inside the building. Once those questions starting being asked, there was no turning back. The cat was out of the bag as they say.
Anne was the first to catch on as to where those questions were leading. So that was when Paul just came out and said exactly what he wanted to do. He wanted to kill him. Anne, Kerri, and Cody lost it at the mere mention of that. Anne called Paul every name in the book including some things that were only reserved for the worst of human beings. I’ll just say that there was more then one regrettable thing said at that moment by both parties.
Tanya tried to bring calm to the situation but it was too late. People were heated and the yelling and name-calling was already out of control. Finally Ray was able to settle things down when he asked if anyone else had a reasonable suggestion with what to do with him. A few suggested just blocking the door and leaving him in there or letting him out and tying him up and finding somewhere else to hold him. Both of those suggestions didn’t fly well with those of us who saw him as a threat.
It was in the middle of that conversation when Ray introduced another issue that I don’t think any of us were prepared for. He asked about Bruce and what we planned on doing with him. Ray had pieced things together and although he couldn’t be certain what he was suggesting was true, he was almost positive about what needed to be done. He started talking about the similarities between Bruce and Scott. The fact that both of them had been injured by the infected and that both of them had been in close proximity to Zeds and that Bruce shouldn’t be in the condition he was in from just a bite to the hand.
Ray had suggested that what had happened to Scott was more then likely going to happen to Bruce. Now Ray never suggested that we do to Bruce what we were debating about doing to Scott. Instead, he had offered a much better idea and it was one that we could all agree on.
We opted to move Bruce into the caged area where the store kept the alcohol and cigarettes under lock and key. We made him comfortable, we gave him blankets, pillows, water and everything we thought he would need to rest and hopefully recover. We never told him why we were doing what we were doing. We lied to him and told him that we thought he had the flu or something and that we couldn’t risk the rest of us getting sick. I don’t know if he ever believed that or if he was just to weak to fight it. But he never fought us once as we moved him into that cage.
I remember grabbing a carton of cigarettes off the shelf just before we slammed the door closed. It sounds cold I know, but I didn’t mean any disrespect by it. I just needed them if I planned on keeping my sanity through this whole ordeal. It’s funny how I can remember the little things like that. Just like I remember feeling like we had condemned a man to his death as we closed that metal door. I watched him for a few minutes as if I was waiting for him to turn into a monster right then and there. It didn’t happen. It also hadn’t solved any of our problems. Sure Bruce was contained just in case Ray’s theory turned out to be true. But we still hadn’t come to a resolution on how t
o handle him if he did turn.
Finally after many more arguments, Tanya presented an idea to the group that everyone could agree upon. We would put it to a vote. It was the only reasonable way that we could resolve the issue. Now I don’t know if it was because we were all emotionally drained or that nobody in the group had any fight left in them at the time, but we decided to postpone the vote until the next morning. The only thing we did decide that evening was that although not everyone was going to agree with the decision, we all needed to learn to live with the result.
Having the vote the next morning gave everyone of us some much needed time to calm down and take some serious time to think about what we were thinking about doing. The fight over this had begun to drive a wedge between us all and if we would have continued down that path we probably would have torn each other part before the sun set that night.
Instead, we all went our separate ways to reflect on the decision at hand. Ray returned to the entertainment department hoping to find some more relevant information on the news, Anne disappeared into the section where the books were sold, and most of the others found their own quiet corner of the store where they could find some peace and quiet to think about what we were about to do. My little place just happened to be the roof.
I stood on the roof looking out into the city. Black smoke still filled the air as buildings burned. The West End, Riverside, Downtown, the fires appeared to be burning everywhere. I could still hear the occasional gun shot in the distance. I chose to ignore the sounds coming from the city because I was too busy thinking about my family and whether or not they were safe. I thought about them and everyone else I knew and where they might be or even what they might be. But mostly I thought about Scott and what we might have to do in the morning.
Trust me when I say that vote wasn’t something that I took lightly. I would like to think that nobody did. We were deciding whether or not to take a life. Even though Scott had turned, there was no going back if we did kill him. We had to weigh the options carefully. What if we did kill him and the next day a cure was found. What if the state he was in was only temporary? That information didn’t exist at the time and as unlikely as it was, we didn’t know. We had to make a decision with the information we had. There was no cure and those infected were extremely dangerous.
I asked myself a wide variety of questions that evening. Would I be able to explain our decision to his parents? What we were voting on doing. What if it all ended tomorrow, would I have been able to look his parents in the eye and tell them I voted the way I did for the reasons I did. I can only imagine how many people were forced to do the unthinkable during this. Sons and daughters forced to make those decisions about their parents and vice versa. Friends and other family members forced into making the hardest decision they would ever have to make in order to survive. It was what the world had turned into.
We already had three dead and two of them had died at my hand. It’s not every day that you kill someone, even if they had turned into something that resembled a zombie. I would eventually get over those feelings, I would have too or I never would have made it. Everyone eventually had to get over it and learn that it was either you or them. That was just how it was.
The reason I went to the roof was to be alone. I wanted to think long and hard about the decision I was about to make and I didn’t want anyone else trying to convince me otherwise and trust me when I tell you that there was plenty of lobbying that went on. Paul and Trevor were pushing their agenda. Anne and Kerri were pushing theirs. They were talking to everyone else, mostly in private trying to persuade them to vote with their side. I heard all about it from some of the others after the fact.
Anne and Kerri were the first to approach me. They tried to plead their case but I quickly told them that I had made my choice. The only thing I didn’t tell them was that I was still working on committing to that choice. There was a part of me that really didn’t want to kill Scott. But with everything that was going on around us, the severity of the situation, and the realization of just how lucky we were to find the safety that we had. I couldn’t risk that. Not for Scott, not for anyone. I explained that to Anne and Kerri as clearly as I could. I tried telling them that they were letting their feelings get in the way and that I agreed with Paul on the matter.
Now neither one of them was happy with me. But they never said anything vulgar or criticized me for my opinion and I respected them for that. There were plenty of other things that I wanted to say, but I didn’t. I realized there was no need to escalate the situation at that time. Everyone was entitled to their own opinion and the best course of action was to let the vote take place and deal with the consequences after the fact.
I knew what I was going to do. I had made up my mind. But there is a small part of me that has always wondered if Anne or Paul were able to convince any of the others to change theirs. I hoped not. I would hope that people would be strong enough in their convictions to make their own decision and stick with it when it came to something so important.
As for the rest of that night, well I figured I could pass some time by trying to get to know some of the others a little better. I will always remember the interesting conversation that I had with Shannon that evening. I was wandering around trying to find something to do when I saw her standing alone looking out the front doors. When I got there she thanked me again for getting her out of that bathroom in one piece. But I was more interested in what she was looking at then hearing her thank me again for what I had done. I found it weird that she was just standing there watching the Zeds pounding on the glass doors and my curiosity got the best of me. That was when I asked her what she was looking at.
To this day I still remember her answer. She told me that she had noticed that they never stopped. The same dozen or so Zeds that were outside the door the day before were still there. Sure others had joined them but they never acknowledged when another one of them joined the crowd. They just kept pounding on the glass, determined to get inside. They never got tired. They never stopped to use the washroom or rest. They would never stop.
She explained how she had been looking into their eyes hoping to see someone looking back at her. She never did. There was nothing looking back at her, nothing human about their eyes and she had given up hope that there was anything left of the people they once were still inside them. There couldn’t be she would tell me.
She pointed out this one woman she had been watching for a while. She probably had a career, friends, and a husband, maybe even children. Shannon and I both watched her for a while. That was when Shannon and I realized that even if she had seen the people who were once so important to her, she would have done exactly what she was doing then. She would have tried to kill them.
The Zeds out there would never stop. They would just keep going, trying to get inside, trying to get us. The man that had attacked her in the bathroom had always puzzled Shannon. He never tried to go underneath the door or even over it. He just kept pounding on that door and he would have never stopped no matter what. We talked about it and tried to understand it for a while. In the end she told me that she was voting with Paul without me even asking. I guess she just felt like she needed to tell me.
I found it surprising because she had been taking care of Bruce and if Ray’s theory had been right, she knew what that meant for him. But she understood that. Whoever those Zeds once were, that was all gone. What was left was a mindless cannibal who showed no sympathy, no remorse and would never stop trying to kill us. I remember walking away believing that everything we had just discussed was right. I found that terrifying. It also meant that killing Scott wasn’t going to end all of our problems. It was more then likely the first of many more that we would encounter.
DAY THREE
The second night inside the store was no better then the first. The conversations went long into the night. People were busy trying to convince others to agree with them, while others were busy trying to get reassurance that what they were
doing was right. But that wasn’t the worst of it. We were also subjected to Bruce’s screams throughout the night and well into the morning. We tried to give him something for the pain, we gave him something to try and help him sleep, but nothing seemed to work. He just kept going on about how it felt like his arm was burning. He told us that his skin felt like it was on fire. His screams of pain seemed to last forever until some point in the early morning hours, he passed out.
If that wasn’t enough, Bruce’s screams weren’t the only thing keeping us awake that night. We were all concerned about the monsters outside and the one that was still lurking around inside. That and what we might have to do to him in the morning. I woke up that morning after only a few hours of sleep, only to realize just how bad I felt. I was exhausted and my entire body felt like shit. I would have given anything for a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. But that wasn’t going to happen, that much I knew.
I wasn’t the only one who was in rough shape. Most of the others were in similar condition and that was probably why we chose to give everyone some time to grab something to eat and gather his or her thoughts before we finally held the vote. We decided on a secret ballot where each person would write their vote on a small piece of paper and place it in an empty coffee tin. But before we started I snuck back up to the roof to have a cigarette or two and finish my instant coffee.
In Hiding: A Survivors Journal of the Great Outbreak Page 7
