Zombie Night In Canada (Book 2): 2nd Period

by Friesen, Jamie

  “Okay Hall, we need to head north on 17th street NE – that’s a left on the road ahead,” Dan said.

  The G-Wagen slowed and Hall made the turn. He had barely finished when dozens of infected appeared out of nowhere, erupting from the trees and ditches lining the road.

  “Contact Left! Contact right! Contact centre! Fuck, contact everywhere,” Hall shouted and opened fire.

  “Barker, back it up and let that E-LAV take point!” Dan shouted over the gunfire.

  Barker jammed on the brakes and threw it in reverse. Fists thumped off the windows and sides of the vehicle.

  “Shit!” Barker yelled as the E-LAV filled up his rearview mirror and blocked his path down the road.

  Barker slammed on the brakes again and cranked the wheel hard, yelling, “Hold on!”

  He gunned the engine and the G-Wagen flew off the road and into the wheat field located next to it. Hall swiveled the C-9 and fired madly at anything that moved.

  “I can’t see shit!” Barker shouted.

  “Turn left again,” Hall shouted back, in between bursts of fire.

  Barker turned left and drove blindly through the tall wheat and grimaced as bodies flew left and right as he barreled through them like a bull in a china shop. One particularly corpulent zombie bounced off the hood and spider-webbed the windshield, blinding his vision.

  “Don’t stop for anything,” Dan shouted, grasping the handhold above the door so hard his knuckles quickly turned white.

  Five seconds later, the G-Wagen hit a rut and flipped, cart wheeling in the wheat.

  Chapter 2

  October 26th

  Unlike most major cities around the globe, Edmonton had come through the apocalypse in relatively good shape. Sure, several hundred thousand were apparently dead – or undead, depending on your point of view – but thousands more had been saved and efforts were being made to retake the city and liberate those still trapped within it confines. Thousands more had fled northwards and westwards to escape the undead.

  In the end, the only thing that prevented Edmonton from suffering the same fate as London, Los Angeles or Lima was a cold snap that lasted more than a week. Instead of the seasonal temperatures of plus ten Celsius, the thermometer plunged almost twenty degrees to a chilly minus eight degrees for more than a week, with nightly lows of averaging minus fourteen. With wind chill, it occasionally hit minus 20 Celsius. That drop in temperature slowed the spread of infection, as it hampered the movement of the infected dramatically, in some cases turning them into undead popsicles. That gave the military, police and other emergency services a much-needed respite from the horrors they had faced on a daily basis. In areas where the infected had gathered openly, in many cases they had frozen solid and not been able to move at all. That had allowed many trapped in homes and businesses the opportunity to flee the horror for outlying communities.

  The cold front had affected most of the Prairies, covering them with frigid Arctic air. The high-pressure system shoved aside the jet stream and pushed it as far south as Denver and as far east as Winnipeg and Fargo. Under the blanket of freezing air, and in many cases, blizzard-like conditions, police and military forces had taken advantage of the break and mopped up frozen corpses wherever and whenever they could. Where they couldn’t, they had hunkered down and waited behind fortifications that grew stronger by the day.

  By the time the mercury rose and the snow melted, the hordes of infected in many parts of the region had been reduced to a far more manageable number, and the process of locating survivors and finding supplies continued with less risk than previously.

  --------

  Xander was still fucking bored out of his mind. The laptop had had some movies, but you could only sit on your ass for so long before it went numb.

  After watching a couple of movies, Xander hit a playlist on the laptop and, wanting to stay in shape, did a round of push-ups, crunches and jumping jacks in his tiny cell.

  When he had still been inside the Costco, he had made a point of jogging laps inside the building. Not knowing how long each lap was, he just ran until he was tired, then walked a couple more laps to cool off. Sometimes he would finish off with some weightlifting.

  Instead, he did sets of twenty-five jumping jacks, mixed with sets of ten push-ups and ten crunches. It didn’t give him the runner’s high he had had inside the Costco, but it still left him sweaty and panting when he was finished.

  To cool off, he jogged on the spot for a couple of songs.

  Damn, that burned off less than an hour, he thought to himself. What the hell do I do now?

  He was just about to open up the laptop and watch another movie or something, when Private Davis appeared pushing a cart.

  “Here’s lunch!” he said.

  “Yippee fucking hooray,” Xander groused as he took the tray. There wasn’t a ton of food on the tray – certainly not compared to the food he’d enjoyed inside Costco, but at least it looked edible.

  “Can I trade in this laptop for something else? There was sweet fuck all on it.”

  “I can look, but I think pretty much everything got scooped up by everyone who came in here yesterday,” Private Davis replied. “I’ll be back in half an hour or so, once I’ve handed out everyone’s lunch.”

  “Thanks,” Xander muttered looking at the shit-on-a-shingle, watered down juice and a fruit cup on the tray.

  Private Davis came back about an hour later, pushing a nearly empty cart.

  “I looked high and low and all I could find was this Xbox 360 and monitor. I offered it to the kids, but they didn’t like the game selection. Some shit about having played them already. It’s yours if you want it,” he offered.

  “Thanks, do you want the laptop back?”

  “No, keep it for now. But if someone else asks to swap, I’ll come back and get from you. Deal?”

  Private Davis squeezed the Xbox 360 and then the flat screen monitor through the narrow opening his lunch tray had been passed through. Then he passed Xander a small box with a few different games inside.

  “Sure,” Xander replied as he took everything.

  “Oh, you’ll also need an extension cord, there aren’t any outlets in the cells,” Private Davis said, taking one off the cart and pushing the female end through the bars.

  As Private Davis left, Xander excitedly began to set everything up. He scanned the box with games inside and one title in particular jumped out at him.

  He grinned evilly and said, “Oh, I am so playing this one first!”

  --------

  As soon as the G-Wagen came to a rest, Dan was moving. The vehicle lay on its side, with Hall just inches above the cold ground.

  He looked at Barker, who was groggy and had blood pouring down his forehead, but seemed fine otherwise. Then Dan unbuckled himself, making sure not to fall on Private Hall.

  “Barker, get your ass moving!” he shouted, then grabbed his rifle.

  Dan opened his door and lifted himself out of the jeep. He surveyed the area and saw infected moving towards them slowly, cutting tracks in the tall wheat. He looked down at Private Hall. Miraculously, he was okay too and trying to extricate himself from the cupola where his machinegun was.

  “Make sure you bring that C-9 Private!” Dan ordered.

  “I’m working on it,” Barker grunted.

  Dan lifted his rifle to his shoulder and began firing aimed bursts at the incoming infected. Blood and brain matter splattered the wheat as Dan’s rounds struck home. Racing north from 195th avenue, a Coyote was plowing through the wheat to rescue them – they just had to last another thirty seconds and everything would be fine.

  Barker was the next one out of G-Wagen and he began firing, but most of his rounds went wide or impacted in non-vital areas on the infected.

  “I can’t see for shit!” Barker shouted as he wiped the blood out of his eyes.

  Suddenly, Hall’s C-9 opened up, taking out a couple more infected. Still, more and more were streaming in from nearly every di
rection and Dan began to wonder if this was the end.

  Then without warning, the Coyote’s heavy machinegun opened fire and mowed down large numbers of infected. Its rounds slammed home, knocking them off their feet and ripping off limbs. The damage was often so complete that it took them a minute or longer to regain their footing and continue their advance. Seconds later, the Bushmaster 25mm automatic cannon opened fire and infected began to literally disintegrate as the huge rounds tore them apart.

  “That’s our opening! Let’s go!” Dan ordered. He waved at the commander of the vehicle and then led Hall and Barker in a foot race across the field.

  Occasionally, one of them would turn and fire a burst at the infected, but for the most part, they just ran full out. When they got close, the Coyote stopped, allowing all three to climb on top. As soon as they had a handhold, the Coyote reversed direction and got the hell out of dodge.

  Two minutes later, they were well removed from the battlefield and the Coyote slowed to a stop. In the distance, they could hear the column of APCs fighting infected near 742 Signals Squadron.

  “Can you let us in?” Dan asked.

  “Sorry, can’t. You were in close proximity to the infected and he’s bleeding like a stuck pig,” the vehicle commander replied.

  “Oh come on,” Private Hall said. “You know very well that they never got within twenty metres of us.”

  “Be that as it may, that’s SOP from now on. Don’t worry, I’m dropping you with the medics and they’ll clear you pretty quick, after they check for bites and what not.”

  “Well that blows,” Private Barker muttered.

  “Quit bitching. I spent five fucking days in that prison, this is peanuts by comparison,” Dan replied.

  The Coyote rumbled back towards the base, where a medic station had been set up inside of the Moat.

  As they crossed Highway 15, they saw scores of infected streaming out of the Sikh Temple, engaged by the rearguard of the column now trying to relieve 742 Signals Squadron. Consisting of only a pair of Bison APCs armed with a heavy machinegun each, they didn’t appear to have the firepower necessary to deal with the large numbers of infected bearing down on them.

  “Shit!” the vehicle commander cursed. “We have to help out or we’re all going to get cut off from the base!”

  He turned to his passengers, “Get behind the turret, it’s about to get loud!”

  All three scrambled to comply, and as soon as they were out of the way, the cannon opened fire, spewing death and raining destruction on the infected. Firing ports below flipped open and rifles poked out and opened fire as the infected drew closer. A second later, the vehicle commander’s heavy machinegun began taking its toll on the infected too. Simpson, Hall and Barker all added their fire to the mix and hot lead tore into the advancing horde, shredding the corpses staggering towards them.

  The infected fell like wheat before a scythe under the murderous fire, and the three vehicle’s combined firepower was enough – just – to halt the infected from cutting off the rest of the troops still engaged at 742 Signals Squadron.

  Chapter 3

  October 27th

  A phone buzzed on his desk and General Raine answered it.

  “General, Captain Malbeuf is here to see you,” his assistant said pleasantly.

  “Send him in please Ellen.”

  The door opened and a tall, lanky officer walked in. He strode forward and snapped to attention, “General, reporting as requested.”

  “At ease Captain. I heard through the grapevine about your unique set of armour – care to tell me a little about it?”

  “Well General, it covers my neck down to my thighs and out to my hands. I made it myself from fourteen gauge fence wire. I’ve worn it on missions outside the wire for safety reasons – there is simply no way an infected person can bite through it.”

  “How hard is it to make?”

  “On the whole, it was very easy. I think it took me a couple hours a day over about two months to assemble. The process is tedious but time-consuming General. If I just sat in my office and worked on it full time, I could probably turn out a set of armour every week or so. Colonel Burkhart mentioned you wanted a demonstration how to make chain mail, so I brought along some materials. May I?”

  “Go ahead Captain.”

  Captain Malbeuf dug into his pockets and pulled out a foot long spring, a pocket-sized set of bolt cutters and a pair of pliers and put them down on the chair.

  “It’s a very simple process General. You make this spring by winding fourteen gauge fence wire around a fifteen millmetre wide dowel. You can do it manually, but I find using a drill makes it much faster. Then you take out bolt cutters and cut off rings.”

  He snapped off five rings and put down the bolt cutters.

  “As you can see, each ring is open because of the bolt cutters. So you close four of them with pliers like this and drop them on all onto a fifth ring. Then you close that ring too and you have the basic building block of chain mail, which is known as four in one. That’s because each ring is connected to four others. Then you make more of these sets and connect them together using another ring like this.”

  Captain Malbeuf pulled a few sets of pre-made four in one out of another pocket and joined them together using more rings. In a few minutes, he had enough to wrap around his wrist. He closed it off and handed it to General Raine, who slipped it onto his wrist.

  “Very impressive Captain. What would you need to make sets for every soldier on the base?”

  “We would need to make a few sets of dies to make rings and a lot of fence wire – and I do mean a lot. My set needed a couple hundred metres of fourteen gauge wire. I have a set of dies at my home in Morinville which I could get very easily. I’m sure the guys in the machine shop could easily turn out more once they saw it. The fence wire is a little harder to get. Hardware stores typically carry it, but most only carry small packages of fifteen metres or so of it. Lowes on Manning Drive carried fifty pound spools of it. If not, there are a fair amount of hardware stores nearby – one on 97th street and the Home Depots in Skyview and Clareview, which is next to the Costco we secured last week. Even Canadian Tire stores usually carried packs of it. A friend told me that Phoenix Fence in the west end of the city also carried giant industrial-sized spools of it too, but I can’t confirm that as I never bought it there.”

  “As for fabrication, well, the process lends itself to mass-production and is simple but very time-consuming. Depending on the urgency, you’d need a lot of people working on it, somewhere between a few hundred to a couple thousand people working on it to turn out enough suits for everyone here in a couple weeks. As people got more used to the process, it would speed up and we could make them even faster. ”

  “How strong is it, Captain?”

  Captain Malbeuf tugged on the bracelet, “As you can see, it’s quite strong, and most people would have trouble pulling the links apart. Historically, the links on chain mail was welded or in some cases, riveted together. However, while even stronger, that would be much more time intensive. Royal Mail actually uses two sets of four in one to make it even stronger, but that would literally double the amount of time and resources necessary to fabricate this. That’s why I would suggest using butted links like these.”

  “What about weight and mobility? Does your suit restrict your movement or weigh you down?”

  “My finished suit weights about twenty pounds, give or take, so it’s not much more than a set of body armour. The suit only restricts motion if it’s made too tight. I would suggest making it one or even two sizes larger than normal so that troops can wear their clothing underneath to prevent chafing.”

  “Okay Captain, after this meeting, I want you to take a section back to Morinville to secure any and all materials needed in your possession for the production of chain mail suits. I’m also going to put you on the working group that is in charge of producing it. This is a top priority from this moment on. Dismissed!”


  --------

  In every direction Xander looked, zombies were coming at him. He snapped open his .38 revolver and checked how many bullets he had left – four. Not nearly enough, there were at least a dozen zombies bearing down on him.

  He raised the gun and fired.

  Boom. One down.

  He shifted slightly and fired again. Another one down.

  He aimed and fired again, taking out another zombie. He fired off his last round in haste and hit the zombie in the shoulder, only knocking it off its feet.

  He cursed.

  Now or never, Xander thought and charged through the small gap created by his gunfire. Rotting limbs reached for him but he evaded their grasp.

  By the time the last zombie he had shot got back on its feet, Xander was twenty feet away, running hard in the other direction and away from the rest of the undead that had had him surrounded just seconds ago.

  He slowed his pace and began digging more bullets out of his pocket. Once he was fifty feet away, he stopped and started reloading his pistol, emptying the spent casings onto the street and then jamming in fresh rounds as quickly as he could.

  He looked up and saw the undead were closing on him, so he took off again. More zombies began to appear on both sides of the street, spilling out of derelict buildings and vehicles. He kept up his pace and only slowed once he was a dozen blocks away. As he slowed, he surveyed his surroundings and began looking for a place to rest and hide, if only for a few minutes.

  He saw a small building off to his left and studied it. All the ground level windows were boarded up and the door was blocked by an abandoned car. If he could find his way inside, it might provide him the safety he needed right now.

  He jumped on the roof of the car and tried climbing the side of the building to one of the second floor windows. He pulled himself up onto a ledge and shimmied towards a window. He tried opening it with his hand, but from his perch, he could not get the leverage necessary to force it open. He hesitated, then stood up and kicked the window hard. It broke and shards of glass fell to the street, shattering as they hit.