In Hiding: A Survivors Journal of the Great Outbreak

by Michael Elliott

  The sun was shinning bright that morning. I looked out into the streets and saw that there were more Zeds out there then the day before. They were spread out across the parking lot with the exception of a large group that had gathered around the front doors. I remember looking out at the far end of the parking lot where the store’s gas station was and thinking about getting away. I thought if I could make it to my car with a gun and some supplies I could get to that station, fill up, and try and find some open road somewhere. I thought if I got lucky, I might even make it to my parent’s cottage after all.

  But honestly I was too afraid. Scott had tried something similar only days before when there were fewer Zeds out there. I had seen what had happened to him. I could have tried for it, but if I failed I knew that the others might be voting on what to do with me the next morning. So I just stayed on the roof until Adam came and told me that it was time.

  We all ended up sitting around a table in the break room. The mood was tense as everyone waited quietly to place his or her vote. The only thing that was said before we started was when Ray asked if everyone agreed that the outcome of the vote would be final. So everyone nodded in agreement that they would accept the final decision no matter how it turned out. We were each given a small piece of paper and something to write with. The instructions were very simple. Just write down either “For” or “Against” and place it in the empty coffee tin.

  I don’t know why but I hesitated before I wrote down my vote. Even though I knew what I was going to do, I still had a hard time putting pen to paper. There was something very final about writing it down and when I looked around the table to my surprise none of the others had written down their vote either. It was Paul and Anne who put their vote in the tin first. Then Kerri followed and then everyone else slowly started filling the tin with their decisions.

  Once everyone was finished Ray grabbed the container and brought it to the front of the room. He pulled each paper out of the tin and showed the room as he read it allowed. He kept count after he read each one. The first vote was ‘against” and for a minute I thought maybe Anne was able to convince some of the others to change their mind. But as Ray read off seven consecutive votes of “For” I knew that we had it.

  In the end only Anne and Kerri voted against Paul. I was stunned in a way that it had been so few. I looked around the room and saw Anne had her face buried in her hands and Kerri was fighting back tears while the rest of us sat there in complete silence. Maybe it was the reality of what we had just decided to do that kept everyone quiet, but in all honesty I think it was because of the little tidbit that hadn’t been discussed yet. Who was going to do it?

  It didn’t take Paul long to volunteer. He had led the cause and he felt that he should be the one to pull the trigger. At first I was glad to be off the hook, but there was a part of me that remembered Paul freezing up the last time he came face to face with one of them. I was starting to wonder if he really was going to be able to do what needed to be done.

  The other thing was that he was going to need help. For safety reasons we couldn’t let him do it alone. If something went wrong, one slip up, or if there was more Zeds then just Scott hiding in that garage, Paul was going to need back up. So Cody and Trevor volunteered to help him first and then for reasons I can’t remember I did the same.

  The next thing I knew the four of us started for the downstairs while the others stayed upstairs just in case something went terribly wrong. Although we didn’t fight it when Shannon asked if she could go and check on Bruce. We just told her to stay on the other side of the cage door and avoid close contact with him, you know just in case.

  Cody and I each grabbed a baseball bat, while Trevor opted to bring a fire axe he had found. Paul of course brought his handgun and if all went according to plan he would be the only one who would have to use his weapon. I was going to open the door while Cody and Trevor stayed hidden on both sides of the open doorway to keep Scott contained. Paul would stand about ten feet back and fire the fatal shot once he drew Scott out of the garage. At least that was how it was supposed to work anyway.

  We stood outside the garage door for a few minutes going over the plan again and again to make sure that everyone of us knew what we were supposed to do. Once we were ready to go I stood with my back against the door with my hand on the handle. I could hear the terrible noises that Scott was making on the other side of the door. His face was still pressed up against the window and even though I knew he couldn’t break through, I still felt a little uneasy about the proximity of his mouth and the back of my head.

  Paul double-checked his pistol to make sure that everything was as it should be. I looked at him and then over to the other two waiting for a signal to open the door. I took a deep breath and as quickly as I could I turned the handle and pulled it open as far as I could.

  I could hear Scott as he started to make his way out of the garage. I heard Trevor shout something that I can’t recall and then I heard the gunshot much sooner then I was expecting. Paul had fired a bullet right into Scott’s chest that had knocked him to the ground. He didn’t appear to be moving at all, in fact we actually thought that we had killed him. We were just beginning to discuss what to do with the body when I saw the arms reach out and grab a hold of Trevor’s wrists. Scott was back on his feet and he had a hold of Trevor.

  He had a firm grip on both of Trevor’s arms and he had them both pinned to the side of his body. That was when I saw Cody raise the bat high above his head and bring it down with incredible force into Scott’s right arm. The bones cracked like a tree branch and Scott’s arm went limp giving Trevor an opportunity to pull away. Cody took another swing, driving the barrel of the bat into Scott’s shoulder sending him spinning away from us.

  Paul stepped forward and fired another shot at him while he was getting up off the ground. He barely flinched as the bullet entered his shoulder. He was coming back for us and Paul was visibly shaken. I was starting to worry that he was going to freeze up again. But instead he fired a third shot into Scott’s stomach and nothing happened. He started to panic. His next three shots missed entirely and he was forced to reload. We needed to buy him some time.

  Trevor charged at Scott and swung his axe directly into his right kneecap. The impact of the blow brought Scott down to the ground as his leg gave way from underneath him. But Scott pushed himself back up onto one knee and that was when I stepped up and took a swing with the bat. I struck him right in the jaw and it sent him flying back onto the ground. His jaw clearly shattered on impact, yet he still kept trying to get back up, trying to kill us.

  Trevor stepped on one of his arms and I stepped firmly down on his other. We had him pinned to the ground as Paul approached with his gun, now fully loaded and ready to fire. He stood over Scott and took aim again, that time he was aiming right for his head. Paul said something under his breath and squeezed the trigger. The gun fired and in an instant there was a bullet-sized hole right above Scott’s left eye. The blood that oozed out of the wound was darker then any blood I had ever seen. It was almost brownish in color and looked thicker then it should have been. After that he stopped trying to get up. I swear we still waited a few minutes just to make sure and I remember Trevor telling all of us that we did what needed to be done as we stood there.

  It didn’t take long before a few of the others arrived. Adam and Ray had heard all of the gunshots and wanted to make sure that everything was all right. They had completely ignored our request to stay upstairs. But I really didn’t care, I was just grateful it was all over.

  Cody wanted to hold a small funeral service for him which we all agreed would be a good idea. But first we needed to find a place to dispose of his infected body. That was until we heard Kerri come running out to meet us screaming about how Bruce had stopped breathing.

  We all raced to the back room to find Shannon and Sandy inside the cage trying to revive Bruce. A crowd had formed around the entrance of the area and they were all watching as Sha
nnon tried to get Bruce’s heart beating again. Paul pushed his way through the crowd. He put his hand on her shoulder and asked her to back away. Shannon stood up with a confused look on her face, but she never said a word.

  That was when Paul stepped forward, stood over Bruce’s body on the floor and pulled out his pistol. He pointed it right for Bruce’s head and began to whisper something under his breath just like he had before. The one thing we had learned from everything was that a bullet to the brain seemed to be the one thing that made these things stay dead. I guess we should have acknowledged that they were more like zombies earlier then we did. Kill the brain and kill them.

  As Paul prepared to fire his shot the screaming began. The others were pleading for him to stop and show some compassion. He kept trying to tell them to stay back while he did what he needed to do. He never took his eyes off of Bruce and that was why he never saw Anne coming up from behind him. She physically tried to grab the gun out of his hands and she wasn’t going to give up easily. Paul tried to keep the gun pointed at Bruce but Anne was making it increasingly difficult. That was when he pushed her away with one of his arms sending her falling back into the cage. He hadn’t pushed her that hard, but she lost her footing and it ending up looking a lot more violent then it actually was.

  That was when it all went to hell. After seeing that, Ray and Adam charged over and grabbed a hold of Paul. As they were wrestling Paul dropped the gun on the floor. Cody was trying to help Paul, yelling out to everyone what had happened downstairs and explain to them why he was doing what he was doing. But nobody was listening. Ray may have already understood that, but he was trying to subdue Paul after what he believed to be an act of aggression against a woman. Kerri was trying to yell something over to me, but I couldn’t hear her over all the shouting.

  The pushing and yelling continued until I heard Shannon scream. That was when everyone shut up. Bruce had started to move again. He was shaking violently on the ground almost as if he was having a seizure. Shannon thought he had regained consciousness and that his convulsions were a just a sign of him waking up. She tried to rush to his side but before she got too close Cody grabbed a hold of her by the waist and pulled her back.

  Paul was frantically searching along the floor for the gun but was struggling to see through the maze of legs. He was down on his hands and his knees shouting for everyone to help him find it. I could see Bruce was no longer shaking. He was starting to lift himself slowly off the floor. I started searching, trying to help Paul find the gun before it was too late.

  That was when I saw Trevor push his way through the crowd still holding that fire axe in his hands. I could still see Scott’s blood on the blade as he made his way past me. He moved in close and without hesitation he brought the axe down into the top of Bruce’s skull. Then just for good measure he did it once more. I didn’t know what to make of it at first. As he pulled the axe out of Bruce’s head there was very little doubt that he was dead. That was when Trevor turned around and glared at every one of us with an incredibly intense look in his eyes.

  He told us that there was no more room for hesitation and that anything that could take three bullets to the chest and keep coming wasn’t human anymore and never would be again. It had become us or them from that point on and there was no saving them, there was no cure and whether it used to be a friend or it was a complete stranger, man or woman, Zed was Zed and they were dangerous. The fact of the matter was that he was right.

  I had only known Trevor for a few days at that point and my initial impression had me convinced that he didn’t have that in him. But then I really didn’t know any of these people all that well. A few simple introductions and a couple of quick conversations wasn’t enough for me to know who these people really were or what they were capable of. I know one thing however. Trevor was never really the same after that day, none of us really were. We all needed to re-evaluate who we were and what we were willing to do if we were going to survive the outbreak.

  It seemed like it took us hours to pull ourselves together and thankfully we did because we still had work to do. We had another body to dispose of and several others we had neglected to do anything with. Letting infected corpses rot away inside the building with us wasn’t the smartest thing to do. We needed to find a safe place to get rid of them and we really needed to do it sooner rather then later.

  Luckily for us the newly opened garage would provide us with exactly what we needed. Now like I said it was an older building in desperate need of a renovation and the garage was no different. Inside there were two long narrow pits that were used for oil changes. There were no lifts lucky for us because those oil pits became the perfect place to dump those bodies.

  So we wrapped Bruce and Scott’s bodies up in blankets and moved them into the garage and dropped them into the pits. Some of the others uttered a few prayers. Some said their quick goodbyes, while I just stood there in silence out of respect. Once everyone felt like the appropriate amount of time had passed, we went to work cleaning up the other dead bodies. We wore gloves and covered our mouths and noses with rags as we washed down every inch of the floor where the bodies had been left. We dumped them into what was quickly becoming a mass grave and left the garage.

  That afternoon things were mostly quiet. Ray watched the news. Anne and Kerri spent their time with Tanya and Shannon sharing some of their favorite stories about their old co-workers. Sandy went off somewhere to read, while Trevor and Paul sat around playing cards. I sat up alone on the roof with a half case of beer and my cigarettes trying to convince myself that all of this wasn’t really happening.

  I think I probably drank those first two beers in record time. Watching it all happen on the news was one thing. Actually living through it and actually having to do some of the things I never imagined I would have too do was another. I had a hard time wrapping my head around the whole situation. I forget how long I was up there for but it was probably sometime just before it got dark when I heard people coming up behind me.

  It was Kerri, Anne and Tanya. They didn’t understand that all I wanted was to be left alone, but I couldn’t tell them that, not then. They only wanted to talk to someone about what had happened and for some reason I was the one they decided to talk too.

  At first, I sat there in silence listening to them discuss what they thought was going on. It was apparent that they were upset with how everything had happened and they wanted to know if I felt it really needed to be done. I wanted to say what I had to say in a way that wouldn’t upset them any further. I knew that I needed to approach that situation with a delicate touch. But once I started talking it was like I couldn’t stop. I told them everything, about how Scott just kept coming for us, how despite bullet wounds and taking an axe to the knee that he just kept coming. I told them how he was no different then any of the monsters out in that parking lot and that I had no doubt that it needed to be done.

  I also tried to explain to Anne that as bad as it looked in that cage, Paul only did what he did because he was trying to protect Shannon and everybody else. They listened to what I had to say and the conversation remained civil the entire time. Actually once I was finished we spent another few hours up on the roof talking about a lot of other things. We discussed the outbreak and told stories about our families and friends. Looking back we always talked about them in the past tense like we just assumed that they were already gone.

  We talked about what had been on the news and how the vast majority of the eastern United States was in a similar situation to ours. From Maine down to Florida it was all the same. Cities had been overrun by Zeds or had been turned into war zones. They told me about members of the military staying behind with pockets of survivors as their units pulled out. They were going to try and help them hold out against impossible odds until rescue became possible. Now that was heroism. Most of those men and woman decided to stay and help knowing that rescue wasn’t coming anytime soon.

  That made me appreciate what we had just a li
ttle bit more. It could have been so much worse. Some of those groups managed to get out word to the media, I am not sure how they did it but they did it. They would plead for help, food, water, rescue, anything really. God only knows what was happening to the vast majority of the survivors out there who we couldn’t hear from.

  I mean this store was still reasonably well stocked. How fast the outbreak hit our area was actually a blessing in disguise. Most people were too busy evacuating and racing to shelters so we never really saw the mass riots or looting like we had seen in other parts of the country. There were always so many reporters out in those areas. I guess it was just a little safer then sending them into cities like ours.

  It had been another long day and I was extremely tired. But before I went to try and get some sleep I decided to clean myself up a little. I went into the washroom and washed my face and then changed into some clean close I found in the men’s department. As I was headed to the back room I saw that everyone was in the entertainment department watching the news with Ray. They were all quiet when I arrived and once I saw what they were watching I realized why.

  That night they were trying to complete the evacuation of Chicago. The footage we were watching was coming from a helicopter looking down on the streets of the downtown area of the city. What we were looking at was absolutely incredible. The streets were flooded with people. Well, some of them were still people.