"That's a very pessimistic way of looking at things," Tanya frowned. "Think of it like this - if there are survivors in Weyburn, and we take a different route, those survivors will have a dramatically lower chance of survival. They might even die. Do you want that on your conscience?"
"The same could be said of us going through Weyburn. If there are survivors in Stoughton and we take another route, their chance of survival is dramatically lower, and they might die. It's a toss-up."
"I think we should pray for guidance," Tanya's voice quivered as she spoke. Tears were welling up in the corners of her eyes as she realized that wherever they went, carnage was sure to have already arrived.
"Or we could spend our time doing something useful," Jeremy said bitterly, "like getting out of here. Look, there's our way out."
He pointed up ahead, where an end to the chasm that they were traversing was indeed in sight. It narrowed over the course of several dozen meters until it would only accommodate a single person, and sloped gently upwards. It met ground level at the corner of the town's only shopping mall; it appeared as if the quake that had created the chasm had also torn the corner of one of the largest sections of the mall, a large grocery store that had once served the entire town. The slope of the chasm's edge led directly up and inside the store, and there was no apparent way to circumnavigate the building. Jeremy grimaced - making his way through any sort of enclosed space was exactly what he'd been hoping to avoid.
“Looks like we don't have any choice," Chris said. "Up and in. Maybe it'll be quieter in there than everywhere else."
"That doesn't seem likely," Jeremy replied. "But you're right - unless we want to spend hours trying to scale the walls of this damn hole, and that's as likely to draw attention to ourselves as making our way through there. All we can do is be quick and quiet - and don't stop for anything."
Both boys looked at Tanya, but she could only shrug in resigned agreement. The weight of being the potential saviour of her fellow man was not proving easy to accept. Resigned to their fate, Chris took the lead and slowly and carefully ascended through the shattered floor of the grocery store. Tanya followed right behind him, and Jeremy took up the rear. Both Chris and Jeremy drew their pistols as they ascended through the floor, keeping the weapons trained on the space beyond.
The slope which they ascended rose into what had once been a baked goods aisle; shelves and loaves of bread were scattered all over. The fluorescent lights above their head were continually flickering and strobing as they desperately attempted to maintain their lighting in the face of what Jeremy could only assume was extensive damage to the electrical systems in the store. Although he comforted himself with the assumption that the flickering lights were a result of entirely natural damage from the quake, the strobing effect did nothing at all to calm his fears about what dangers the store might hold. When Jeremy finally pulled himself entirely into the store and rose to his feet, the group stood in silence for what felt like an eternity. Nothing could be seen from their vantage point aside from overturned shelves, and large racks of foodstuffs which obscured any further insight into what lay beyond. Nothing could be heard except for the unpredictable chittering of the flickering fluorescent overhead.
Jeremy cautiously stepped forward, skirting around the upturned shelves and brushing aside loaves of bread with his foot. He tried to move silently, fearing what might be hiding in the depths of the store. Chris and Tanya followed directly behind him, mimicking his every step. It seemed to take an eternity to cover the twenty feet from where they had ascended into the building to the nearest upright shelf. Edging his way along it to the end of the shelf, Jeremy risked a brief peek around the corner. The flickering and buzzing of the fluorescent lights created a strobing effect that briefly illuminated the long stretch of the meat section. A short, fat zombie stood over one of the refrigeration shelves, holding a large cut of red meat which it bit into and tore a large chunk from. The creature chewed once, spat the meat out, and tore another chunk from the hunk of meat in its hands. Startled, Jeremy leaped back. His left foot landed on a bag of bread and slipped. In an effort to keep himself from falling over, his arms flailed outward and grabbed on to the first thing they found - in this case, it just happened to be Chris' arm. Jeremy's vision blurred and faded away as his pulse pounded in his ears, and the world faded to darkness.
A terrifying vision filled Jeremy's consciousness as his perspective rapidly shifted, moving out of his body with terrific speed. He saw himself grasping desperately to Chris' arm, trying not to fall or make any news that might alert the nearby zombie to his presence. His field of vision expanded to a 360 degree view of the entire grocery store, swooping past the meat-eating zombie and down a maze of aisles, past empty checkout lanes and into the mall beyond. Although there was only a single zombie to be seen in the grocery store, he saw dozens of them slowly shambling through the wide central corridor of the mall. All were covered in blood and dishevelled, but obviously very recently dead. As his consciousness swooped through the corridor and back towards the grocery store, he realized that this crowd was composed of citizens of the city, obviously struck unaware by an attack, probably at the same time as the school had been.
Many of the mangled walking corpses that he saw were recognizable as students at his school; it was no great mystery to anyone that the mall was a common place for students ducking out of classes to hide out. Given how small Estevan was, and how utterly devoid it was of anything resembling culture or entertainment, the default behaviour of most citizens seemed to fall back into the comfortable habits of mindless consumption. It was no small irony that their overreliance upon that mindless consumption had doomed them to a potential eternity engaged in more mindless consumption – to be sure, the exchange of violence for human flesh might seem different on the surface from the exchange of money for goods and services, but the behaviour, the mindless need for ever-increasing quantities of stuff, was always the same. The difference between most of the glassy-eyed mindless shamblers in the corridors now compared to the same glassy-eyed mindless shamblers in the corridors last week was merely in the state of their clothing and pulse. It was with a deep-seated dread that Jeremy realized that the one whose position in the world had changed most was him – no longer part of that mass of humanity, mindlessly mobbing entertainment venues and shops, he had now become a product of his very own, a tasty meat-snack which the zombies would eagerly seek out and consume with the same mindless abandon which they had destroyed each other.
Jeremy's consciousness snapped back into his body with enough physical force to knock himself backwards; even with Chris holding on to his arm, he tripped and fell backwards. As he landed on his back, his foot kicked out and knocked over a can of soup from the shelf. It fell to the floor with a clank that seemed as loud as a gunshot. He cursed under his breath as he scrambled to his feet, but it was too late - the telltale groan and shuffling footsteps from beyond the end of the aisle were unmistakable signs that his clumsiness had been heard. He outstretched his left hand and pointed at the can, focusing on it with the intent of lifting it into the air. It seemed fitting that he use the same instrument that had revealed his presence to end the unlife of the zombie that was stalking towards them. However, he found for the first time since they had begun their fight against the zombies that his mental prowess failed him; the can did not budge a single inch. He shook his head and tried to clear his mind, focusing on the can again. His concentration was in vain, however, and the can remained in place.
While Jeremy was trying to recover and turn foodstuffs into improvised weaponry, Chris looked around the corner, still having no idea of the danger that lay beyond it. As his head poked out to see what could be coming, he discovered too late that his curiosity should have been tempered by caution. The zombie, now nearly around the corner, slammed its fists mindlessly into Chris' head. It groaned as Chris reeled from the force of the blow, dropping his gun in the process. The fat zombie managed to wrap its fingers around
a lock of Chris' hair and pulled him in close towards its wide open mouth and red-stained teeth. It bit down with enough force to crush and tear apart the skull of the teenager, unleashing a spray of blood that spattered onto Jeremy's back, and Tanya's shirt. She screamed and clawed at the shelf beside her, trying to get her hands on anything solid enough to throw at the creature. When she finally had grasped a tin of soup from the shelf, the zombie had already torn through Chris' skull and was reaching inside with grubby and ragged fingers, tearing out pieces of brain tissue and stuffing them greedily into its mouth. Its appetite was so voracious that it bit off the tip of one of its own fingers as it chomped on the grey tissue that it fed itself. Tanya flung the can at the creature with all her might; the force of the impact tore through flesh and bone, opening up a soup can-sized hole in the zombie's neck. Vertebrae snapped, and the creature's head flopped towards the ground, attached only by thin slivers of decaying skin on either side of the gaping hole. This skin proved insufficient for supporting the weight of the creature's head under the momentum of the falling head, and the skin tore apart, causing the head to drop unceremoniously to the ground. Both Chris's body and the remnants of the zombie's body fell on top of the head in a sloppy dog-pile of blood, viscera, and decaying flesh.
"Damnit," Jeremy muttered, witnessing the last of the carnage as he finally realized what was happening and turned his attention away from his attempts to exert his mental power over the fallen can. Finally remembering the weapon at his side, he lifted it to the ready. "We've got to move, now."
“It just..." Tanya seemed at a loss for words. "It came out of nowhere."
"Yes," Jeremy said, his pitch rising in panic, "and there are more of them that are going to have heard that commotion and be coming our way. Lots more."
"How do you know?" The shock of the situation finally seemed to have set in for Tanya, and she didn't seem as if she was quite sure whether he should believe Jeremy or not.
"I'll explain later," he said as he gently grasped her forearm and tugged her towards the exit. "For now, we have to move. I don't know what's happening, but I can't seem to actually do anything telekinetically right now, and I happen to know that there are a lot of goddamned zombies in the mall which would be more than happy to catch the two of us in an enclosed space without the chance to defend ourselves."
Both Jeremy and Tanya carefully stepped around Chris' corpse, moving as quickly and quietly as they could towards the exit. They passed through the meat aisle and through the produce section, and the glowing red exit sign was in sight. The grocery store's exit would take them out into the mall corridor, right beside the exit to the mall itself. The entire wall of the grocery store facing the mall entrance was glass, providing what would have been a pleasant view of other shoppers on a normal day. That was not the case as the pair rushed towards the exit, however, as they could see slow-moving shapes shambling through the dimly lit corridor and towards them. Jeremy reached the exit first, barely slowing enough to actually open the door instead of slamming into it, and he held it open as he ushered Tanya through.
Thankfully, he thought, these creatures don't move very quickly. If they were any faster, we'd be dead already.
As they forced their way through the mall exit, they could hear the groaning and shuffling of the undead mere meters behind them. They bolted out into the dazzling daylight in a full sprint to the parking lot. Jeremy's years of sitting in front of a keyboard rather than on a track field caught up to him, and he was forced to slow to a slow trot to catch his breath. He cast a hurried look behind him to ensure that their pursuers were far enough behind that he would not be endangering his own life to catch his breath. His glance satisfied him that only a few of the zombies had even staggered out of the mall's front door, and they were far enough away that they would be unlikely to catch them. The brief exaltation he felt at this realization melted away as his conscious mind finally caught up to his subconscious, and he stopped dead in his tracks and whirled around to look at the zombies again. He pointed his pistol at them and squeezed the trigger. The weapon discharged with a loud pop. Having never fired a pistol before, he was utterly unprepared for the recoil of the weapon’s discharge; that didn’t stop him from pulling the trigger over and over again, firing wildly at the slowly advancing crowd. He saw one of the lead zombies fall to the ground, although he wasn’t sure if it had been killed by a lucky shot, or if it was simply knocked to the ground by the zombies behind it.
He closed his eyes, letting the adrenaline rush take over enough for him to focus on the situation. As he opened his eyes, his heart dropped to the bottom of his chest as he stared aghast at the closest of the creatures. Although covered in blood and dirt with torn clothes, there was no mistaking it for anything other than the reanimated corpse of his own sister. Her neck had been torn open, and bloodied cords of muscle and nerves hung raggedly out of the wound. Blood had spurted forth from the site of the injury to soak her clothing, and her once-vibrant skin was now pale and grey. Her lifeless eyes beheld him merely as prey, with no sign of recognition or love, and certainly none of mercy. Aghast and bewildered, he tried to will his legs into motion, to forcibly propel himself away from the horrid sight, but found that matter could not overcome mind, and the force of his horror held him rooted to the spot. In her eyes – those pallid dry eyes, covered in a thin milky film that did nothing to diminish the hunger coming from deep within – he saw only death; not just her death, but that of his family, his friends, and himself. Those eyes were windows into a cold, soulless future where mankind marched in lockstep with hungers that overrode any trace of humanity that may have remained inside. They spoke of a universe which stood, uncaring, as human civilization ground to a halt and crumbled.
"Come on," he heard Tanya's voice as if it were a recording being played back in slow-motion. A gentle breeze which had been ruffling his hair seemed to pause, as did a plastic grocery bag carried by its current, frozen in midair. Time stopped, but Jeremy's heart beat on, faster and faster as he fought with the realization that for the first time the events of the last several days were truly sinking in. He wanted to bolt, to run as far and as fast as he could, but his feet were frozen to the ground, as unmoving as everything else in that frozen scene. Summoning his final reserves of courage from the very depths of his soul, he realized that he could not leave his sister in such a state, doomed to shamble endlessly until...well, until she stopped, whenever that might be. Although she had died, she was not at rest, and that was a favour within his power to grant. His conscious mind stepped aside, allowing his instincts to run rampant and control his actions.
The air around Jeremy's body crackled and sizzled, and he felt himself hefted up into the air as if by an invisible hand of force. Floating no less than two full stories off the ground, he raised his hands to the sky, then brought them down to point at the mall entrance, as if he was dashing a large object against the pavement below. The deafening roar of thunder accompanied an instantaneous flash of brilliant bluish-white energy from the sky. The bolt of lightning slammed into the pavement, which shattered outward, radiating from the source of the strike into the very foundations of the mall itself.
***
The building shivered and shook, then collapsed into its own footprint, raining down dust and debris upon the parking lot. The detritus crushed the zombies which had made it out of the mall entrance, and mercifully, hid Jeremy's sister from his sight as it did so. As the cacophony echoed and faded, he slowly sunk down to the ground until he was gently deposited upon terra firma once again. As the invisible force which had guided him upwards released its grip upon him, Jeremy's muscles gave way and he lost consciousness.
When the world came back into sight, everything was blurry, indistinct, and painful. Jeremy blinked twice, trying to focus his eyes in the harsh sunlight. Despite the pain, he moved his head from side to side, trying to fixate upon any sort of landmark which might indicate where he was. He only vaguely recollected the incident at the mall, a
nd wasn't entirely sure if it had actually happened or had only been a daydream. Half-expecting the latter but unable to find any kind of useful visual indicators while laying prone, he carefully pushed himself into a sitting position. As his gaze levelled at the area around him, he saw that he was surrounded by row upon row of shiny new cars; a large dealership building stood not far away, built of gleaming glass and steel, somehow seeming both cheerful and imposing at the same time. He held his head and groaned as he rose to his feet. He staggered from side to side as he tried to keep his balance, and was only partially successful; fortunately, the bumper of a large SUV broke his fall and held him mostly upright.
"Shhhh," Tanya's voice echoed from inside the SUV. "I don't think there are any of those things around here, but we shouldn't draw more attention to ourselves. I don't want a repeat of the mall incident happening here."
"So it wasn't just a dream, eh?" Although disappointed, Jeremy was not surprised. The ephemeral memory which circled through his mind of the events at the mall seemed much too surreal to have been anything but reality, given the events of the last several days.
"That depends," Tanya's voice said, and Jeremy heard a hint of a smile even though his companion was nowhere to be seen. "Were you dreaming that you were on a tropical island, surrounded by scantily-clad busty women?"
"Nothing as pleasant as that," Jeremy said with a forced chuckle. "Although if that's what you're interested in, I'm sure we could find you something a little more revealing to wear."
"Don't push your luck," she said, in a tone that Jeremy would normally ascribe to flirtatiousness if it weren't for the circumstances.
"Where are you?" He walked around to the open driver's side door, carefully supporting himself with one hand on the hood of the vehicle. He could see her legs dangling out underneath the bottom of the door, and as he closed in, he could see her laying on the driver's side floor, fiddling with a mass of wires above her head. "What are you doing?"
The Dead Rise Page 8
