So while they fought downstairs the three of us hung out on the roof. We shared a few drinks and tried to avoid talking about anything too serious. I pointed out the abandoned military vehicles I had seen out there but I don’t think they found it as interesting as I had. Cody showed Kerri and I a few of the buildings that he believed to be occupied and that he had been watching for several days. He had been writing down little things that he had seen and was convinced they were signs that people were still alive in those buildings. He compared his notes with things he had seen in previous days and looked for any changes.
It made me feel better about myself knowing I wasn’t the only one who was using their time on watch for something that was a little strange. Then again, watching buildings for a few days and beginning to think that they were occupied is far less concerning then watching a zombie and beginning to believe that he was somehow smarter then all the rest. However, the small details that Cody had recorded didn’t exactly build his case that other survivors were hiding out in there. Instead it looked like he was creating something out of nothing and being hopeful instead of realistic.
Seeing a bed sheet hanging on a balcony for two days then when it disappears on the third day doesn’t mean someone brought it back inside. The obvious answer was that it simply flew away. But I never told him that. I just agreed with him and tried to act impressed. I never brought up Hal, not once and when Kerri laughed at Cody and his theories I knew keeping the whole Hal thing hidden was the right thing to do.
Cody laughed it all off and we continued to keep our conversations light that evening. I think that deep down that the three of us knew what was coming. We could see that our group was coming to a crossroads. The longer we stayed in the building the greater the chance of something terrible happening and if we left in a desperate attempt to get to the coast chances were that something terrible was going to happen. The question was which coarse of action was the least dangerous.
So for the rest of that night the three of us didn’t talk about what we should do or how we should do it. We didn’t talk about what we had lost and how it had happened. We drank and we laughed until Shannon came up to take her turn on watch. That was when I noticed that it was pretty late and decided to go to bed. Kerri went downstairs first and Cody decided to stay up on the roof with Shannon so she didn’t have to be alone. I stumbled to the break room to try and sleep and face the nightmares for another night.
DAY ELEVEN
It was starting to feel like we were on a deserted island. A group of survivors trying to make the best of a bad situation, isolated, and surrounded by a vast sea of death and danger. Yet for some reason there was a faction within our group that wanted to build a raft and try for civilization. If we left for the coast I viewed our chances of survival as about the same as jumping on a leaky raft and drifting at sea hoping to be found by some passing cruise ship. But around that time I was still keeping my opinions to myself. The mood was already tense and the arguments had grown more heated and I felt it was for the best if I just stayed out of it. Especially since I was still trying to reestablish trust with most of the others.
That isolated feeling that I had wasn’t just limited to my surroundings and the situation at hand. Within the group I had started to feel as if I was on the outside looking in. I couldn’t be sure why, especially since Kerri and Paul and even Cody were still treating me as they always had. Sure after I had fired those shots on the roof I could sense that most of the others were concerned about what I might do next and were watching me a little more closely. Maybe it was just how I was feeling and the way I perceived my relationships with the others. It was hard to tell anymore what was what. I can admit that my cognitive skills weren’t exactly operating at their peak and I was struggling to focus. But I had a feeling that from the group’s perspective I was on the outs and even thought I preferred to just go off somewhere and be alone, I knew that I couldn’t.
To our surprise the emergency lighting had remained on throughout the night and into the morning. I chose to make my rounds and engage some of the others as I tried to fake my way back into their good graces. I helped Paul reload all of our weapons and take inventory of the ammunition that we had left. After what had happened in that garage we were running low, and Paul wanted to make sure that every gun was loaded and ready to go in case of another emergency.
He was having a hard time with the growing division amongst the others in the store. He like myself couldn’t understand why so many in the group wanted out as badly as they did. He also knew that moral was down after losing Tanya and he was racking his brain trying to find something to help lift everyone’s spirits. He was trying so hard to hold everything together but I don’t think he could see that he was fighting a losing battle.
Aside from taking inventory of ammo and guns I think I was trying to take an inventory of everyone’s mental state that morning as well. Moving from person to person trying to get a gauge on what they were thinking or how they were doing. It varied from person to person with Trevor at one end of the spectrum acting like he had mentally checked out to Kerri who was still optimistic that rescue would eventually come. Sandy had been drinking more then I had and that’s saying something because I had been drinking a lot. Ray, well he was no longer the Ray I had known those first few days.
The Ray I had known had deteriorated into a complete stranger and had become a shell of his former self. He looked as if he had aged dramatically in a very short period of time and looked to be exhausted or drained. Anne who had been playing the role of mother in our group had stopped teaching me how to shoot, stopped looking out for others, and had become the leader of the movement to leave the store. Her and Paul were fighting more then ever and she had stopped trying to hide her distain for him.
I still had the feeling that Jacob and Amy felt like outsiders and despite our best efforts to make them feel welcome I am sure they were having a hard time with the person they knew best being tied up and held in the entertainment department.
Adam was still quiet as he always had been and then there was Trevor who had never been the same since he had driven that axe through Bruce’s skull. He was distant and had a cold look in his eye. Sometimes I could hear him mumbling to himself and he was coming across as very standoffish. I just kept my distance from him most of the time, it just seemed like it was easier then trying to understand what he was going through.
After I made my rounds I spent most of that day watching Hal. There wasn’t much new happening there, he was still working away at those boards trying to get to that door. I was mostly feeling lethargic that day and even watching Hal didn’t interest me as much as it usually did. I was having a hard time caring about anything really and even though I knew that I wasn’t in a good place there really wasn’t much I could do about it.
I just kept volunteering to take other people’s turn on watch and nobody seemed to mind. I just hid from everything up on the roof watching Hal and hoping to snap out of whatever it was I was in. That was until Paul approached me and asked to talk in private. The first thought that crossed my mind was that I had freaked out the others by staying on the roof by myself too long and Paul was coming to check in on me. But what he was there to talk to me about, well it wasn’t exactly about what I expected it to be.
He told me that he didn’t care about how I had shot the rifle from the roof. He told me that he understood it or least he understood the lie I had told him. It was his initial question that had me puzzled and made me rethink my decision to avoid all the conversations that had been taking place inside by hiding on the roof.
He asked if I was with him. He asked if I agreed with his stance that staying in the store was best for everyone and if I was willing to support him if he needed me too. I knew then and there that my answer was going to have great bearing on our relationship going forward.
Now if I had been caught off guard by his initial question I was blown away by what he followed up with. He wanted to know if I
had heard about any of the others hinting at making a break for it. He told me about how he had heard rumblings that a group within the group had been planning an exit without him and a few of the others.
I assured him that I hadn’t heard anything like that, all the while trying to process what that new information meant for me. That was when I told him that if some group had been planning anything, that I wasn’t included which in a way gave me more reason to side with him. All of a sudden my fears about being excluded were looking me right in the face. Would the others just up and leave and abandon Paul and myself here to just ride out the outbreak or was Paul just spreading that rumor to make taking his side more appealing then being left behind.
I told Paul how I wanted to stay and how I thought that leaving was an unnecessary risk. I reaffirmed to him how I hadn’t heard anything and that I believed we had it good inside the store and that we were safe. I was telling him the truth. That was how I felt and I hadn’t heard of any plans to leave. So when he asked me to keep my eyes and ears open and to report back to him with any new information I nodded in agreement.
That conversation had me concerned. Had I pulled away too far and had my actions made me a pariah? I was very worried about what Paul had told me and although I debated the validity of what he was saying, I still needed to consider that it was true. If Paul had been honest with me then that meant that people were planning on leaving me behind and if they were willing to do that then I highly doubted that they were going to consider my safety during the process. If he had been lying to me then that meant that he was up to something and chances were that it wasn’t going to be anything good.
I thought about who could be spear heading such a plot and who was going along with it. Were Paul and I the only two being left out of it, the only two that were going to be left behind? The first person that came to mind was Anne. I knew that she wanted to leave and had been fighting with Paul about it for days. I also knew that she would have no reservations about leaving Paul behind, but I was almost taken a back that she would consider not including me. Then I started to wonder if I was being left out because I was so close to Paul. Maybe they thought I couldn’t be trusted with the information or that I would tell him about any plans they might have shared with me.
I decided to try and get some answers from the two people who I thought I could trust and who I figured wouldn’t lie to me about such a thing. I also knew that Anne was close with both of them. After all, she had worked with Kerri and Cody before this and all three of them had remained close during the whole ordeal. If she were behind any kind of plan she would have surely involved them right from the beginning. I only hoped that I was right about them and that they trusted me enough to tell me about it.
I approached them carefully trying to show them that I trusted them and doubted that they would plan such a thing and not include me. They swore up and down they hadn’t heard anything of the sorts and assured me that if such a plan were going around they would have most certainly told me about it. I should have trusted them, but Paul had gotten inside my head and I walked away doubting them and questioning if they were planning not only to leave me, but something even worse.
The worst part of it was that I could almost piece it together it my head. Days before they kept asking me my opinion about leaving the store and wanted to know if I was willing to help come up with an actual plan to get to the coast. But the night before on the roof they never brought it up again, they actually went out of their way to avoid it. I just thought that they were doing it because we were all tired of talking about it and hearing the fighting. But I had begun to convince myself that I had misread the whole situation. I started to believe that they didn’t bring it up because I was out of the plan at that point.
Paul had planted the seed and now I doubted everything that anyone told me up to and including the two people I thought that I could always trust no matter what. I had grown paranoid and starting questioning everything I had done and every conversation that I had been involved in. It was the last thing that I needed given the circumstances.
So aside from having an imaginary zombie friend, I was exhausted, and a loner, I had grown paranoid. I wasn’t exactly trending in a great direction but I wasn’t ready to just sit back and let something happen. I knew I needed to find an answer one way or another and I decided the next person I was going to check with was Shannon. She had always come across as an honest person and I figured since I had saved her in that bathroom that she wouldn’t leave me behind. So I asked her and once again I got nothing. She too, just like Cody and Kerri swore that she hadn’t heard anything and a part of me truly believed her.
So I was getting nowhere asking and I had started questioning whether Paul had just lied to me. Maybe his plan all along was to start the rumor, have me spread it through the group and get everyone asking questions. With so much paranoia and distrust infecting the group he could just step up and play leader again and assure that we would stay and that nobody would be left behind. I really hoped that I hadn’t been that stupid. I thought I was smarter then that, to become a pawn in Paul’s game. But then again, maybe he wasn’t using me and there was a chance that he really believed that something was going on and trusted me enough to bring it up. Then maybe everyone else was just lying to me and he was the only one that I could actually trust. My head felt like it was going to explode.
You wouldn’t believe the time I spent trying to get to the bottom of what was going on. I came up with a new plan and tried to figure out who would have told Paul such a thing. It could have been Ray or Trevor or even Adam. I questioned if Adam had been Paul’s eyes and ears the entire time listening to what everyone had to say and saying very little himself. There was a chance that Jacob and Amy were behind the rumors. I am sure that they would have wanted out, especially with Derrick in the position he was in. I was going crazy just trying to put it all together.
I spoke with Ray and again got nothing. He was suffering from some kind of depression or anxiety and I highly doubted that he was involved in anything. I tried with Amy and still I was getting nowhere. I spoke to Jacob and realized that even if he wanted to leave with Amy and Derrick he had no reason to bring any of us with them.
The strangest part of the whole thing was that I didn’t even want to leave in the first place. I see that now as I reflect on it. But at that point in time I couldn’t see that. If some of the others wanted to take their chances out there and leave me here to survive in the safety of the store I really shouldn’t have cared as much as I did. In fact, it would have left more supplies for me and there would have been fewer arguments to deal with. But I don’t think that it was being left behind that bothered me the most. I think I just felt that if I was out of the loop on something as big as that, there was no telling what other decisions I was being left out on.
Also, if they didn’t care enough to ask me to go with them, would they really care if they let Zeds into the store as they left? Leaving me and whoever else was left behind to fight them off. That was probably what scared me the most.
I was torn apart and desperate for answers. The one thing I knew was that I needed to be vigilant and more careful then I had been. As much as I hated being like that and thinking like that, my mistrust was about to put me face to face with something terrible and more evil then simply being left behind. What was about to happen would be the beginning of a series of events that would expose everyone’s true intentions and the lengths that some were willing to go to in order to survive.
It all started sometime in the late afternoon. Cody was on watch and Sandy was taking a nap in the break room but the rest of us were in the entertainment department listening to the radio. That was when the emergency lights went out and in an instant the store went into total darkness.
Paul took the lead once again and handed out flashlights to every one of us and directed us to go and turn on the lanterns that we had positioned in various areas of the store. He assigned each area to a singl
e person and told everyone to meet back once the lanterns were on. Nobody said a word or complained. We all just left and went to do what we had to do. I walked to the grocery department and turned on the three lanterns that I was responsible for and headed back to the meeting point.
I waited for everyone to return but as I saw Anne, Adam, Ray, Jacob and Amy all come back I started to wonder what was taking Kerri so long. I knew she was supposed to go and take care of the lanterns upstairs and that it would have taken her longer then the others but still something just felt wrong.
I told Paul that I was going to go and tell Cody that the power was out and have a quick cigarette. He didn’t object. So I walked through the store and noticed that the lanterns were doing a reasonable job of keeping the place well lit. I still had my flashlight on because I just felt a little safer with it on. I wasn’t scared of the dark, but I was suspicious of the dark corners considering what was going on all around us. I had seen some terrible things and my imagination would run wild with what was just around the corner or hidden in the darkness. I made my way through the back room and up the stairs to find the entire level was pitch black.
In Hiding: A Survivors Journal of the Great Outbreak Page 17
