Zombie Angst

by Jim Couper

  “Is your wife looking after your child?” Jane asked, slightly disappointed that he was spoken for. Occasionally she glimpsed Sinclair’s soft underside and it made her forget the fruitcake that came in thick slices with a bounty of nuts.

  “No, she’s with my sister in Ottawa. My wife died. We were camping in Quebec and she went for a short hike. Her body was never found. Bears, alien abduction, sasquatch … I’ll never know …” Sinclair bent over, covered his face with both hands apparently ready to break down, then sat upright and concluded his thoughts. “So, you see, our focus is aliens, not motorcycle gangs or disease.” Jane felt a twinge of relief that his wife had exited the picture and then felt guilty for happiness at the expense of another. She wondered why such a sane-sounding, good-looking, quiet-spoken guy had jumped out of his plane without a parachute. Perhaps losing a life-partner did that. She couldn’t know about such things.

  “You never told me you were worried about your job,” Joey cackled.

  “Have you got a partner?” Jane asked Joey, to avoid more intra-office acrimony. She used the word partner cautiously because she had a slight suspicion Joey might travel in both directions.

  “No, I’m alone. Probably gonna stay that way. Haven’t had much man luck.

  They come and go. How about you?”

  “Well, at least, for you, they come. Peachland can be lonely when you’re the female top cop. It’s not easy going to a nightclub with a guy who knows you’re counting his drinks and assessing his ability to drive. A goodnight kiss in lock-up isn’t that romantic.”

  “You’re better off that way. I never know what men are after and if it’s the wrong thing then I’m screwed.” Joey laughed as a horse would laugh if it had a sense of humor.

  Sinclair had nothing to contribute to the line of conversation so brought it back to the subject at hand, the antennae. Jane and Joey sighed with slight disappointment. The chitchat provided relief from the tension that dogged them.

  Following five minutes of discussion, without mention of aliens, a three-stage plan unfolded. Jane would phone the head scientist and demand the antennae be turned off and pointed away from the sky. If he did not agree then Sinclair would make a similar, but more urgent demand. If that also found rejection Joey would send a high-priority note to Colonel Mayhew-Shostakovich explaining why the army must immediately bulldoze the antennae.

  Sinclair and Joey sat in the old office chairs and listened while Jane made her call to the radio observatory. Much to their surprise the chief scientist completely agreed to their simple request. He said the antennae would be pointed east, the direction of least interstellar activity and would be aimed as close to the ground as possible. All electronics would be off within the hour.

  That’s real Canadian efficiency, Jane thought after Donald and Joey departed. A call to Colonel Mayhew went unanswered so she left a message about the big dishes being turned off and aimed east. She called Jesse, whom she hadn’t seen for a day. Usually their paths overlapped several times during routine work hours, but regular schedules had become a fond memory. In times of extra stress, Jane had noted, Jesse enjoyed extra sleep. At his house his landline’s message service clicked in and she left her standard, “Me Jane, you call.” A few minutes later a sleepy voice complied and Jesse said he would be late getting in as he had an appointment with his dental hygienist.

  Here we are in the midst of a national crisis, Jane thought, and the most important thing in his life is getting his teeth cleaned. At least he will look good with his perfect pearls shining as he grins from his coffin. She could hardly believe she had a thing for him a few years back, despite his being her junior by three years and being under her command. Mentally he was her junior by a decade: he often acted like a developmentally challenged teen. Fortunately his denseness prevented him from picking up on her subtle advances and no romance developed.

  In sleepy Peachland, a haven for retirees, the average age reached the stratosphere and most discussions at coffee shops centred on who did the best colonoscopy. Her occasional forays into the dating field gave a temporary spark to men in their 40s and 50s but, after an evening of talking about dental plans, government bonds and pharmaceutical investments, nothing lit her fire. The only spark she thought about fanning belonged to a married man with kids. Such a relationship had the promise of a campfire in a monsoon so she invested her time in corralling villains.

  Jane desperately wanted information about Mayhew and his battle against the forces of evil, or whatever they were. The radio had burbled with hints of a battle, but she had ordered her police off the streets so she received no first-hand reports. None of her RCMP members had been injured or died since the arrival of the army and that gave her some relief.

  Civilians found little in the way of protection from the army. Those of limited IQ − and there were many − insisted on trying to take video of enemy action so they could be first to post zombie clips on YouTube and Facebook. Instead web sites flourished with last words such as Oh my God, Look Out and Oh Shit! Cell phones and cameras, found beside human corpses, contained clear video of the sky with body parts flying through it. A few shaky shots of heads showed horrid mouths dripping with blood and faces that were neither man nor beast.

  Jane took a short drive to the Highway 97 by-pass at the edge of town and stopped where a dozen army men and women in full combat gear hunched behind a barricade of sandbags. Machine gun barrels, mortars, flamethrowers and bazookas stuck out. Traffic passed unchecked at the rate of just a few cars per minute. Even 60% off sales at local stores couldn’t get people out of barricaded homes.

  Despite her flashing lights and announcement of Police over her speaker, a young soldier trained his machine gun on Jane as she exited her squad car. Nervously she glued her hands to her head and shouted that she just wanted to know how things went last night. The soldier slowly lowered his armament and replied that a privacy policy had taken effect. Jane told the soldier that the enemy knew what went on and the only people being kept in the dark were the ones that could offer help. He replied, “Yes ma’am.” The post’s ranking officer replied to her request for information with an equally succinct, “Yes ma’am.”

  In this situation Jesse’s skill exceeded hers by a wide margin: he was a people person who could made a tree talk. She announced her arrival at his house with a brief siren blast and before she knocked on his door it swung open and he appeared to be awake, alert and in uniform. While they drove to a different junction on Highway 97 Jesse made a call to cancel an appointment with a hair stylist. Every lock of his mop of black curls had been perfectly placed to give a look of random messiness. A stylist had already spent hours creating the impression he didn’t care. The curls emphasised the gleaming whiteness of his perfectly aligned teeth and Jane assumed he had just had them cleaned, but she chose not to mention it.

  Despite Jesse’s patter about being from Saskatchewan and wishing he had joined the army rather than the Mounties, a guard at the second army post would say only, “Private First Class Jason Sloan, Beagle Division, Canadian Forces.” Jesse rattled on about sharing information and the private added, “Yes, sir.”

  As he walked back towards Jane waiting in the car Jesse looked at his watch, turned back a few steps and asked, “You got the right time Jay, my watch ain’t workin’.”

  The private responded, “10 past 10, sir.”

  “Thanks, I’m way out. Is that local time or you still on Saskatchewan time?”

  “From Abbotsford, sir. Same time zone.”

  “No way man. I hear prairie twang in your voice. You’re no more from Abbotsford than I’m from Africa.”

  “You’re right. Born in Moose Jaw. Stationed in Abbotsford for special training. It’s that obvious?”

  “What’s obvious is your lack of integrity to your unit. You’ve told me where training facilities are located and if I kept it up you would have told me what kind of training you had. I suggest you report to your superior officer and tell him how you
leaked vital information.”

  As they drove to the next post Jane asked, “Why did you do that? Why couldn’t we just move on?”

  “Because the tight-ass little rat would be patting himself on the back about what a great soldier he was and how he didn’t divulge anything. He wouldn’t have learned anything. Now he’s aware that he’s a sieve. He might smarten up and become a better soldier. Besides, we’re police, we’re on the same side. It annoys me they won’t tell us what’s happening.”

  At the next post Jesse found a sergeant uninformed of the privacy policy, didn’t care or had sense enough to know local police should be informed. He had been in a battle the night before and had just wakened and come on duty. The sergeant dramatically told of a fight on a dock and spared no details about biting ghouls and mysterious swimmers.

  He concluded with, “You might want to talk to a civilian woman who was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. She had a big hole in her gut like nothing I’ve ever seen and she wanted to walk away and go home. Her buddy supposedly swam home across the lake.”

  At the hospital Jane learned the ambulance never arrived and both driver and medic had been found at roadside, unconscious without their patient. Both had puncture wounds in their necks and suffered serious blood loss although there was no sign of bleeding.With all the new info whirling in her head Jane headed back to her Peachland station, stopping once to write a ticket for a driver who didn’t signal a left turn. The driver protested bitterly, “Here we are at the crossroads of civilization and all you do is worry about a turn signal?” Jane walked to her car without comment. Normally she hated stopping drivers, even if it might someday save a life and Jesse knew that.

  “Why did you ticket him?” he insisted before she buckled up.

  “I just wanted to do something normal for a change, something routine. I admit it doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

  “Actually, I understand. My hairdresser appointment would have been something normal: a routine clip. Although, come to think of it, last time I had a trim the routine went out the window. I fell asleep in the chair and woke up with a headache like Elephant Man. For days I was weak and had sores on my neck. Must have caught some kinda bug. Not going back to that place.”

  “Right,” agreed Jane. “Now recap.”

  “Okay. Two civies go for a walk on a dock after curfew, in plainest sight possible. Why? Rhetorical question. Suicidal? As a duo? A tribe of zompires attacks them. Army blows zomps to bits, but they don’t die. Army accidentally shoots both civvies. They don’t die. Zompires attack army and half army gets guts and brains eaten. One civy falls in water and supposedly swims home. In mid-October. Both leave shoes and jackets behind. Did they plan a swim? Rhetorical. Civy woman, full of gaping bullet holes, says she feels fine and wants to go home. Army puts her in ambulance. Ambulance driver and medic wake up later with holes in their necks and civy is gone. Typical day in Peachland?”

  “The whole thing’s incredible.” Jane’s bland, tanned face sported a look of amazement as she pulled into the police parking lot shaking her head. “It’s hard to believe, but we’re under attack by flesh-eating zombies and blood-sucking vampires. Inconceivable! Right off the silver screen. To make things worse the army has taken over and hasn’t done a thing.”

  “So zompires and vambies have control of our town,” Jesse stated excitedly. “They own the night. I hate the smell of zombies in the morning. It’s them, completely unarmed, no weapons whatsoever, against the RCMP and the Canadian army. Guess who is winning?”

  Jesse stepped out of the car first. Meeting Jane at the front bumper, he continued, “We should evacuate every living person in Peachland, contain the enemy with a 10-foot electric fence and then blow them apart with grenades and bombs. Who cares about houses and cars? Level the place. This thing could spread. We don’t know if it’s bacteria or virus or too much use of cell phones.”

  Deciding to enjoy the mild weather for a few minutes, Jane slumped onto a bench in front of the station and told Jesse about Donald and Joey’s theories as well as what she had learned of zombie history.

  He responded, “I guess Jesus was the first zombie. And that Lazarus dude. They rose from the grave.”

  “Don’t go down that road,” Jane quickly warned. “You know I have some religious sensitivity. Besides, they rose to do good, not to eat people.” A man she recognized as a Presbyterian minister strode within hearing distance while Jesse started about Jesus being a zombie. Jane shoved him through the station door while admonishing, “Don’t say that again: not in public. We don’t need the church complaining that police called the son of God a zombie.”

  Before retaliatory words about freedom of expression could leave Jesse’s lips Jane continued. “We have to convince Colonel May to order an evacuation. His headquarters are secret and he hasn’t returned calls. Can you find him?”

  “How much do we have in petty cash?”

  “Close to $50 I think. Why?”

  “I’ll need beer.”

  “What for?”

  “Beer and boobs − that’s what gets men talking.”

  “Then go for beer. I don’t want to have to explain to the board that I used petty cash to buy a push-up bra to squeeze out some cleavage so soldiers would talk to me.”

  After Jesse’s eyes rose from Jane’s two small chest bumps he left the office with $40 and said he would be back within two hours with co-ordinates of the secret location. In 25 minutes he returned. “Just cost four beer. I’ll take the rest home since we can’t keep ‘em here. You’ll never believe where that big brass bastard is headquartered.”

  “On a luxury houseboat?”

  “Better than that: Mission Hill Winery.”

  “Of course,” Jane answered. “Luxury hotel rooms, restaurant, fine wines, great views. We should have known. Let’s go.”

  The winery, looking like a Moorish castle perched atop a mountain, appeared impenetrable. Thick gates that normally opened to a flood of tourists were tight as a wine cask and guarded by six soldiers: a sure indication that more than wine wanted protection.

  “We’re here to see Colonel Mayhew. Tell him it’s RCMP Sergeant Jane Dougherty.” The soldier on guard duty didn’t rush off to get his boss. “I cannot state if there is or is not a Colonel Mayhew at this location at this time or at any location at any time.”

  “If he wasn’t here I don’t think he would have told us to come see him, would he,” Jesse quickly interjected

  “I can’t respond to that, sir. However my assistant here can make some enquiries on your behalf. That will take several minutes. Please move your vehicle to visitor parking.”

  Jesse wheeled into a huge parking lot outside the gates that contained poorly parked Jeeps, troop carriers and two tanks. They walked passed a row of vines, plucked some sour grapes then heard the guard call to them, “Come this way. Colonel Mayhew-Shostakovich will see you in 17 minutes.”

  A small door within the thick oaken gate allowed the two police to enter one at a time. They walked under a stone archway and in the middle of a lush green lawn sat six military trailers. The guard pointed to a stone bench and told them to wait.

  With a wooden walkway erected around the top of the walls and dozens of ladders reaching it, the winery looked like the Texas Alamo right out of the movies. Machine guns had been fitted at all corners and searchlights allowed for night games of football, had anyone been interested. The bell tower sprouted an additional 10 spotlights and a lookout post. Gun barrels of varying sizes pointed towards the lake in readiness for an armada attack.

  “I wonder if they have boiling oil to pour on the insurgents?” Jane asked. A smile passed Jesse's face as she added that no zombies, vampires, tourists, storm troopers or anything else was going to penetrate. “They sure keep the big brass protected.”

  “I think there’s a lesson here,” Jesse said. “Our office needs steel doors, electric fencing and security cameras. Making us safe should be priority one. To hell with the peo
ple we get paid to protect.” A few seconds later Jesse got restless and asked the guard, “What kind of reading material do you have?”

  “Military code-of-conduct book,” the guard shot back. “You want one or two copies?”

  “I was thinking Playboy. One copy: we can share.”

  For a quarter hour Jane and Jesse discussed the zombie-proofness of the winery and how the great oak doors provided a weak point. Gates could be rammed, bombed or burned to gain entry. As they developed a strategy for doing this Colonel Mayhew-Shostakovich exited a trailer, walked over, stuck out his hand and said, “What the muck, how did you find me? Sorry for the language.”

  “Your men told us where to find you,” Jesse shot back as the Colonel led them to director’s chairs set out in the sunny courtyard.

  “So what’s your business?” the Colonel asked, showing no interest in a security leak.

  “Peachland must be evacuated,” Jane told him and suggested it might be prudent to do the same with nearby cities and villages. “The number of people dying escalates every day. Last night at least a dozen died, but since the army now deals with 911 calls I’m out of the loop so there could have been many more.”

  The Colonel told her the overnight death count stood at less than 20.

  Jane retorted, “The entire Valley doesn’t get that many murders in a decade. At the present rate of escalation, daily deaths could reach 100 within a week. Evacuation is the only logical answer.”

  The Colonel calmly replied that shipping out citizens was not something to be taken lightly. He said many would refuse to go. Alternative actions had been taken and seniors’ homes now had ground-level doors reinforced and windows barred. Soldiers stood guard 24 hours a day. Long-term hospital patients had been sent to Kamloops as had the inmates of a nursing home. That was as far as it was going to go. The army would step up protection with reinforcements that would arrive in four hours. Every block would have a battalion of combat troops if that’s what it took.