“I don’t think anyone is upset by your actions Xander, I think some here might be jealous of the light duty you had though,” Mack said quietly.
“Is that what’s bothering you Jack? Do you still have a bug up your ass about me getting a physical from Corporal Yang? Really?”
Jack just glared at him.
“Well, Jack, it’s time to either put up or shut up. Either fucking say something or do something that shows the rest of us you’re willing to stop being a fuck up and step up as a leader, and I’m more than willing to step aside.”
Jack glared at him for a long time, then stalked off towards the mess hall.
Xander turned to the rest of the section, “Look guys, I’m not trying to be your boss, I’m just trying to get through training the same as you. I hadn’t realized my attitude might be a problem, but if it is, I apologize. That was never my intention.”
The section said nothing for a few seconds, then Thomas said, “Gotcha!” while the other recruits started laughing.
“Fucking assholes!” Xander said. “Can we go get some fucking lunch already?”
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Xander and the rest of the platoon were sitting in a classroom for once, learning some medieval military history and combat tactics from an officer Xander had never seen before.
“Sir, why do we go through the illusion of calling them infected? Why not just call them zombies like everyone else?” a soldier in the back asked.
“Members of the Canadian Forces call them infected to reflect that they were once citizens just like you or me. Calling them ghouls, zombies, undead, etcetera dehumanizes and demonizes the enemy. In the long run, all that does is dehumanize us too. While we must win this fight, we must never forget that they were once people,” Captain Malbeuf replied.
“Sorry, sir, but that sounds more than a little politically correct – isn’t life more Darwinian now? You know, survival of the fittest and all that?” the trooper retorted.
“Yes, but mere survival is not enough. We will do whatever it takes to survive and rebuild civilization, and that includes keeping our humanity and our souls intact. If members of the 3rd Canadian Mechanized Brigade had wanted to just become petty warlords, there is no organization that could have stopped it from happening. By the end of September, law enforcement organizations and local governments had pretty much collapsed. Our chain of command is based out of CFB North Bay, and had we wanted to just ignore them, there is next to nothing they could have done to stop us. Satisfied?”
The soldier nodded.
“Okay, now let’s get back to learning about the Saxon shield wall. It was employed to allow troops to advance in the face of missile troops such as archers. As such, they also used shields for overhead protection. Given that the infected are not capable of using tools, there is no need to do the same. Instead, your training will focus on providing protection from the attacks the infected are capable of. Right now, most of your training is focused on teaching small unit tactics, in assault groups and fireteams. That training will be necessary for use in clearing out buildings and tight spaces. However, such formations will not be effective in open spaces, where your unit may encounter large numbers of infected. To counter that, your training will expand to include larger formations of shield walls, including both platoon and company sized units. These maneuvers are complicated and will require extensive drilling to get them down pat. Until your commanders are confident of your abilities, should your unit encounter large numbers of infected, it is expected you’ll retreat and let conventional units engage them at distance.”
Chapter 24
November 15th
Premier Brad Charchuk looked at the computer screen showing the dwindling resources at his disposal. When the crisis started, there had been over twenty thousand civil servants in the province to call on to help deal with the pandemic. As time wore on, more and more employees either stopping coming into work or succumbed to the infection. Now nearly two months after it had begun, he was down to about one hundred dedicated employees, mostly those who happened to reside in or near the County of Paintearth, where his farm and current base of operations was.
When he and the two surviving Cabinet members fled Edmonton, he had made sure to evacuate not only their own families, but also the families of his bodyguards and the Sheriffs who had helped them survive the ordeal at the Bowker building. At the suggestion of his Municipal Affairs minister, they had also stopped at the Provincial Operations Centre and ordered them to go mobile, getting staff into a pair of specially equipped semi-tractor units designed for mobile crisis response. That had added several hours to their evacuation, as the Op Centre was in the northwest part of the city, and his farm lay to the southeast.
Those trailers now sat parked on his farm, a few hundred metres from his home, solar panels oriented southwards for maximum gain, with a pair of large antennas ready to broadcast instructions to personnel across the province. Most of the time, the command trailers were minimally staffed, because fewer and fewer groups were reporting in from around the province. A handful of RVs were parked close to the command trailers, providing accommodations for the staff inside. Security wasn’t really an issue, as the infection hadn’t spread as quickly in lesser populated rural areas the way it had in larger, denser urban centres. Most cases of infection were from people fleeing the cities, and they were pragmatically dealt with as they appeared.
His staff was in contact with what was left of the federal government too. It appeared that most of the politicians and bureaucrats had succumbed to the pandemic, although some of the Cabinet, including the Deputy Prime Minister, was holed up in a bunker in northern Ontario, trying to coordinate what resources the federal government had left. He had been told in no uncertain terms that the pandemic was a federal crisis and while his support was more than welcome, his input was not. This infuriated him even more than it had before the pandemic.
How does somebody in a bunker two thousand kilometres away know what was necessary on the ground here in Alberta? Brad wondered.
The fact that they were his ideological opponents made the rebuke sting even more.
I have to find a way to get control of the situation, and that starts with the troops at CFB Edmonton.
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“Okay, so where do we stand?” The President of the United States of America asked.
The assembled group sitting around the table was an august one and included representatives from military, scientific and health communities as well as a sprinkling of political officials from a variety of governmental levels.
Until now, nobody had ever figured why the plague happened. The religious blamed it on Satan and said that ‘end of days’ had begun. They waited and waited for a rapture that never occurred. Conspiracy theorists blamed it on ISIS or Al Qaeda or some other terrorist organization releasing a biological weapon. The Luddites blamed it on stem cell research and nanotechnology. One respected and well-known epidemiologist from the UK had thought it was a new disease which inhibited the brain from absorbing serotonin, which in turn caused the behaviour of the Infected, but could not explain the lack of vital signs in those infected.
Eventually, a team of CDC scientists had finally found and isolated the pathogen. It turned out that it had been a heavily modified strain of rabies, genetically modified with several strains of other rare contagions that when coupled together, created the most deadly and contagious disease in mankind’s history.
“We’re no farther ahead than we were last month, Mr. President,” Doctor Bhatia, the head of Infectious Diseases said.
“Why is that, doctor? You’ve had almost three months with every resource we could muster to find a cure for this disease,” the President snapped.
“Because Mr. President, this is a virus, not bacteria. Antibiotics and other measures do not work on it,” Dr. Bhatia replied. “Mr. President, do you know how many viruses modern medicine could cure before this happened”
“I have no idea, Dr.
Bhatia.”
“None. Not a single one. Modern medicine, despite its many achievements, had very little success in dealing with viruses. In most cases, medical practice was to deal with the side effects, by prescribing analgesics for relief of pain and fevers.”
“What about vaccinations, like with the flu?” Someone else asked.
“Every attempt to develop a vaccine has met with failure,” Dr. Bhatia replied, shaking his head. “We’ve tried injecting dead virus into a few volunteers, but in every case, they became infected and had to be put down.”
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“Barnes, Xander Barnes?” a Corporal shouted at mail call.
“Here,” Xander said, raising his hand.
“Enjoy,” the Corporal said as he handed over a letter. “Martin?” he shouted, moving off.
Xander walked back to his bed and opened the letter. Unlike the past couple, this wasn’t from Jared. He read it quickly and his brow furrowed and his face darkened, then he shouted, “That bitch! That fucking bitch!”
“What’s wrong?” Thomas asked after wandering over.
“That fucking bitch Dear Johned me!”
“Huh?” Thomas said.
“The woman I came here with. Evelyn called me when this all began and spent the last two months with me. Then, just like that, it’s over,” Xander said, snapping his fingers.
“She say why?”
“Some bullshit about meeting someone else,” Xander replied. “She’s probably banging some officer. Knowing her, she’s was doing it before I came here. Fucking little cunt, she’s such a user.”
“Got a picture?” Thomas asked.
“Yeah,” Xander mumbled, finding one on his phone. One of the few perks of being a recruit was access to power, assuming you could find a charging cable for your phone, which Xander had acquired just the other day in a poker game.
“Sweet…did you at least get a chance to tap that ass?” Thomas asked.
“Oh hell ya, almost every day and twice on Sunday. I’ll say this, she was a sweet little fuck. She did everything…and I do mean everything!”
Thomas howled and raised his hand, “High five man!”
Xander high-fived him, then sighed, “My sister warned me about her but I didn’t listen. I should have left her in that shithole by the stadium! She still wants to be friends…” Xander said.
“Of course she does! Women like her always say that, it allows them to have their cake and eat it too,” Thomas said.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Xander replied.
“What they mean is that they still want to hang out with you and go to movies and dinner and shit, but then they go home and fuck someone else. And they get away with it because men are stupid and think of it as friends with benefits, while they are really in the fucking friend zone. Any guy who falls for that shit is dumber than a sack of fucking hammers!” Thomas said angrily.
“Sounds like someone’s been burned!”
“Fuck yeah, but it won’t happen again. You know what they say, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me!” Thomas said.
“Sounds like a recipe for loneliness,” Xander said.
“More like a way not to get burned,” Thomas said. “There may not be many single chicks on this base, but I’d rather ‘take care of business’ personally than have some bitch screw me over like that.”
“Yeah, well take care of your fucking business somewhere else,” Xander replied. After looking at the letter again, he muttered, “Fucking bitch!”
Chapter 25
November 16th
“Barnes, your turn!” Corporal Crozier barked.
The platoon had practiced the shield wall all morning and was learning something new this afternoon – how to effectively use ranged weapons. A salvage patrol had recovered several dozen crossbows in a sporting goods warehouse, and it was time to see if any of the recruits had any ability to use the weapons effectively.
Barnes stepped forward onto the firing range and picked up the crossbow. He aimed at the human-sized target and fired. His first two bolts flew forward and missed the target, one of which ricocheted off the sand berm at the end of the range.
“Barnes! Stock in tight, aim, then squeeze!” Corporal Crozier reminded him.
Xander reloaded and took his time before firing again. This time, the bolt thudded into the chest of the target.
“Aim higher Barnes,” Corporal Crozier said. “If you can’t hit them in the head, it’s a goddamned waste of time!”
Xander reloaded and fired again, striking the target in the chest again.
He reloaded and fired a fifth time, and his bolt struck the target in the groin.
“Jesus Barnes!” Jack shouted. “You’re trying to kill the bastards, not give them a vasectomy!”
The rest of the section laughed.
“Okay, Skinner, it’s your turn! Barnes, take a seat!” Corporal Crozier ordered as he recorded Xander’s score on a clipboard.
“Looks like you’re shit out of luck Barnes!” Jack guffawed. Jack had done pretty well with the crossbow, hitting the target all five times, including twice in the head.
“Corporal Crozier, what’s the point of this?” Xander asked.
“Standard infantry sections in the Canadian Army include two C-9 light machineguns for fire support. These ranged weapons will function in the same fashion, providing each section with additional firepower,” Corporal Crozier replied.
“Wouldn’t it be better to provide us with pistols or shotguns or some other short range firearm?”
“Of course it would Barnes, but those are in short supply and proper firearms training takes much longer. Now shut up and let the others focus.”
Everyone in the platoon got twenty-five shots to test their proficiency on the crossbow, with the best scores getting assigned a crossbow. That honour went to Frank and Jack, while Xander’s score was the second lowest in the section, and in the bottom ten in the platoon.
Jack bragged when he was handed the crossbow, “Don’t worry guys, I got your back!”
“That doesn’t inspire any confidence whatsoever,” Xander mumbled to Thomas.
“No, it doesn’t,” Thomas replied, then shrugged. “It’s too bad, you would have looked badass with that crossbow.”
“I suppose, but then I’d have to lug that thing and those bolts all over the place. I’ve got enough shit to carry as it is.”
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Capital Region Doppler Radar Centre
Officially listed as a weather station, the Doppler radar station located west of Edmonton near the bedroom community of Stony Plain was in reality Communications Security Establishment Post #19. It had originally been built to provide better warning in the aftermath of the devastating 1987 tornado that had ripped through Edmonton, killing twenty-eight people. However, shortly after its opening, operators started hearing strange foreign language communication over the radio equipment. Due to some atmospheric quirk, radio signals from Asia reflected here and provided plenty of electronic intelligence from the China’s People’s Liberation Army units located on their northern border. A new wing was hastily built and the meteorologists and other Environment Canada staff were moved there, allowing the intelligence agents from the Communications Security Establishment to monitor Chinese Army deployments and exercises.
The Communications Security Establishment (CSE) had been Canada’s equivalent to the National Security Agency and spent a lot of time listening to electronic intelligence from around the world. Before the crisis started, the analysts who worked here gathered intel and fed it into the Echelon system, a US-UK-Canadian-Australian intelligence unit that sorted other countries airwaves for anything of value; troop deployments and exercises and even less well known, economic information. Echelon had been rumoured to have been instrumental in a variety of contracts being awarded to American companies over European ones, and that had led to friction with both Germany and France.
While the West had complain
ed vociferously of Chinese attempts at industrial espionage, Echelon had provided a veritable wealth of information that let member nations gain the upper hand in dozens of multi-lateral negotiations and trade deals.
Like most of the world, Echelon was a thing of the past. After the Prime Minister’s announcement following the breakdown of order in Toronto, the meteorologists and other Environment Canada staff had simply stopped coming to work. That wasn’t the case for Anthony Mitchell or the handful of other CSE employees – they had been tasked with listening to chatter to see if it was an act of war or terrorist attack. Mitchell had worked here for several years before the world went to hell in a hand basket. Born and raised in Hamilton, he had lost most of his extended family in the first few days of the crisis. He had even heard his sister and her family dying while he had been talking to her on the phone. Only his wife and seven year old daughter had survived, and then only because he convinced them to load the car with food and race to the radar centre. Seconds after they arrived, he padlocked the gate to the complex, then blocked it with his pick-up. Most of his colleagues had done the same, although a pair had insisted on leaving and heading back home to places back east.
I won’t be seeing either of those two ever again, Anthony thought. Talk about a fool’s errand, heading back east was a suicide mission, especially with Toronto and Montreal succumbing so fast.
Despite working long hours and monitoring millions of cell phones calls, analyzing millions of social media posts, and scanning hundreds of internet chat rooms and forums for information, they had discovered no proof that the pandemic was an attack or act of war.
Now, Anthony and his colleagues spent most of their time listening for survivors around the world. Every once and a while, they would locate a military unit or a band of survivors with a ham radio, but most days, it was nothing but static filling the airwaves. They had occasional contact with CFB Edmonton, but it was mostly for meteorological reports on the weather.
Zombie Night In Canada (Book 2): 2nd Period Page 21
