by Howard, Bill
When I awoke the next morning, I was damp with dew and every joint in my body ached more than I had ever felt. When I opened my eyes, it took a while for my vision to focus, and when it did, and I realized the barrel of an AR-15 assault rifle was only inches from my face. I froze. I turned my head to look at Clive, who was still lying down, but had his hands raised over his head. Half a dozen soldiers surrounded our niche between the fallen logs, all wearing gas masks over their heads. One soldier off to the side was standing over Max, who was lying in the dirt on his side. I could see his ribcage rising and falling, but he was not moving otherwise. One person stepped forward from behind the soldiers, wearing a head to toe white hazard suit, looking at me through the large window of his face shield. He reached out his black rubber-gloved hand to me.
“You’re going to have to come with us Mr. Collins.”
CHAPTER 35: CONTAINMENT
I had seen the inside of the GM Centre in Oshawa before, but that had been for concerts. Alice Cooper. Bob Dylan. It looked different now. The whole building was sectioned off with translucent sheets hanging high from the rafters. Clive and I were in handcuffs, being quite rudely pushed through narrow corridors and into a large opening that housed about a hundred portable cots lining the floor in neat rows. Most of them were occupied. Some people looked fine, lying back in their cots, reading books. Others looked tired, worried, and restless. There were people pacing, sleeping, and yelling. This one room full of people ran the gamut of emotional states. The military members took us from one end of the room to the other, and out through another sheet-covered doorway. We were in some sort of medical room now, with gurneys lining the walls instead of cots. But no one in here looked particularly content. Most looked drugged out of their minds. We were ushered past all the gurneys and into yet another room, this one empty but for a large table with one chair on one side and two on the other. We were sat down in the two chairs. After a moment, I realized the handcuffs were really cutting into my wrists now, but then a man walked into the room. He was dressed in a black pinstripe suit, wore silicone gloves and a face respirator. He sat down across the table from us and stared.
"Well, Mr. Collins, you’ve been having quite the adventure. We heard through our Scarborough Base about your hi-jinks at the Bramford Apartments, and at the Scarborough Town Centre. It seems you are causing quite a disturbance for us, as if we don't have enough to worry about without renegade civilians looting houses and stores."
Frankly, I was dumbfounded. Was all this fuss because I took some supplies during a global-scale viral outbreak? Really? This was what their concern was?
"Listen, I’m just trying to get home to my wife and daughter, that's all. I didn’t take any more than what I needed to survive. And I would appreciate it if you would let me get back to it."
I figured being straightforward was the way to go. The suited man got up from his chair, took a clipboard from a nearby soldier, signed a few pages, handed it back, and turned back towards us.
"There are no exceptions to this quarantine Mr. Collins. I am sorry. Once we have established full containment, we would be more than happy to assist you in reuniting with your family. But for the time being, you will stay here."
With that, the man left the room and two soldiers pulled Clive and me to our feet. We were escorted back to the large room with the cots and dumped on two empty ones they had crammed in to the row. One of the soldiers reached back and removed our handcuffs, and then they both walked away. I glanced around the room again; all the exits were guarded by fully armed military personnel. I rubbed my bruised wrists and turned to Clive.
"What are we supposed to do now? I can't just stay here."
A woman sitting on the cot beside Clive's leaned in to us.
"There's no way out of here, unless you're dead. Trust me, people have tried. We have people dying here every day, heart attacks, strokes, medical conditions they don't have meds for, the flu. Hell, there have even been two murders."
I chimed in before she could continue. "Thanks for that. You’re really keeping my spirits up."
With that, she shot me a foul look, then returned to her cot. Clive gave me a bit of a disapproving look as well, but I was pissed off. I didn’t get through everything that happened in the past few days just to end up here. I stretched back on my cot and set my mind to it. I had to get out of here, one way or another.
That night, after Clive and I ate a mediocre dinner served up by the makeshift military-run kitchen, I was still intent on my plan to get off the base. A few soldiers came into the room and marched to a cot not far from us, uncovering the man who had been sleeping there. They leaned over him for a few moments, mumbling to each other. Another set of soldiers came in the room wheeling a gurney and stopped beside the same cot. The man I had thought was sleeping was rolled into a black plastic body bag on the gurney, zipped up, and wheeled out of the room. No doubt he was destined for the morgue and a nice ride out of this place the next morning.
I slept lightly that night, trying to keep one ear open for the sounds of the guards. When I heard one of the roving soldiers walk by my cot, I started to cough. The soldier stopped and looked over. She couldn't have been more than twenty years old, and she swung her rifle in my direction. I sat up in bed and gave my best hacking cough, keeping it up until she stepped closer to me.
"What's going on here? Are you okay?"
I looked her in the eyes and hoped she took notice of the subtle red coloring I had made from my dinner and applied to under my eyes.
"I don't feel well, my stomach …" I wheezed convincingly.
"Get up, come with me." She ordered.
I got up and stayed hunched over, looking as sickly as I could. I walked in front of the soldier as she marched me to the infirmary, which I had noticed earlier was located right next to the access door to the furnace rooms and the temporary morgue. She sat me on a gurney and told me she would get a medic to look me over. As she walked into the next room where the medical staff slept, I got up and moved to the morgue access door, trying it. It didn’t budge, which was expected, but it didn’t mean I had to be happy about it. I got back on the cot just as a medic came in from the sealed off sleeping quarters. The medic was male, about five foot eight and fully geared up in the usual white containment suit. I slumped into the pillow and feigned sleep. The medic walked up to me, asking me if I was awake, to which I did not respond. He took my temperature and listened to my chest, then turned back to the soldier.
"No fever, but it looks like he passed out. He doesn't look too good though. Leave him be, and I'll check on him again in the morning."
And with that, the medic went back to the sleeping quarters and the soldier went back to her rounds. After a few moments of listening intently, I opened my eyes and sat up. The room had about a dozen people on gurneys, all asleep, the only sounds breaking through the silence that of the respirators and heart monitors. I swung my feet off the makeshift bed and moved towards the room entrance. There was a small desk; I assume it was for whoever looks after the room usually, but there was no one at it now. I looked in the three small drawers, but found no keys. I silently crept over to the entrance of the sleeping quarters and peered through the small window in the airlock door. The small room held four people from what I could see; three were asleep, and the medic who looked at me sat on the edge of his bed with a glass of water. He set it down beside the bed and lied back, staring at the ceiling. My eyes searched the room, looking for keys, but all I could see were small footlockers by each bed, and a coat rack with assorted scrubs and lab coats hung on it. I heard footsteps behind me and I spun around and ducked. I scurried across the room back to the other door, hunching beside it. The footsteps came closer; they were heavy boot steps. The female soldier stepped back through the doorway and right past me, slowly but uniformly striding into the room. As she past me, I scooted to my left and out of her line of sight, hiding behind the desk. As I contorted myself into the small space under the desk, my head
bumped into something hard and jagged. I reached above my head and felt a cold metal thing on the underside of the desktop. I cranked my head sideways to see a 9mm Beretta handgun strapped to the desk. I carefully popped the clasp on the mounted holster and slid the gun out of the leather holder and into my palm. I stopped and listened for the boots, but I didn’t hear anything. I inched out of the crawlspace and poked my head out to survey the room. The soldier was standing at the end of the cot that was mine, and then she turned around and started looking around the room. I ducked my head back under the desk and listened again as her footsteps slowly came back in my direction and stopped very close to the desk. I angled my head out again and she was standing right in front of me facing the opposite direction. I slid my body out from under the desk, trying desperately to not make a noise. Luckily the sounds of the medical equipment made enough noise to cover any sound I made and within seconds I was standing directly behind her. I pressed the gun barrel into the small of her back.
"Don't move please. Hold your rifle out to your left side."
She did so and I removed her sidearm from the nylon holster riding on her hip. I took the rifle as well and laid it on the desktop. I leaned in a little and whispered into her ear.
"I am so sorry about this."
I struck her hard on the back of the head with the butt of the Beretta, and she went down like a sack of laundry. I wasn't sure if that was going to work as well as it does in the movies, but there it was, success.
I gathered up some cloth bandages and tied her arms and legs, then dragged her behind the desk. I emptied her guns and left them on the floor as well, then searched her fatigues for keys. I found a ring of keys in a small pocket on her belt. Staying as quiet as I could considering my adrenaline levels, I made my way back to the morgue door, and tried a few keys until one made the small click I needed to hear. I moved through the door, shutting it behind me, and made my way down the stairs into the dark basement. It didn’t take long to find the morgue; they had converted a large refrigerated walk-in that was probably meant for storing concession food. I opened the door and entered the cold room, where there were three gurneys with black body bags upon them. I went back out and looked around the basement for the things I would need to make my plan work. I found the medical log for the morgue and carefully changed the number of bodies from three to four, then found an extra black body bag stored away in a cupboard. I grabbed one of the many extra gurneys, wheeled it into the walk-in, shut the door, and zipped myself in for a cold night’s sleep.
The next morning, the soldier in charge at the GM Centre questioned Clive as soon as they discovered I was missing. They found the soldier I had tied up and questioned her as well, but she said she didn’t see anything. When they asked Clive, he stated that I had a plan to escape the base, and that my plan was to get keys, find an exit, and get as far away from here as I could. After the rehearsing we had done the previous day, he was very convincing. And people don’t tend to doubt a priest. There was a small group of soldiers dispatched to look for me, but they found nothing. I had successfully escaped right under their noses it seemed.
While all this was going on, I was still in a body bag freezing my ass off. But eventually, I could feel my gurney being moved and various staff at the base talking to each other about my escape. Then I felt some jostling and heard some loud bangs, and finally the sound of a truck engine turning over. It felt like an eternity that I was shifting around in that bag, but in reality it was about thirty minutes. The next thing I heard was the squealing of the brakes and the engine being shut off. The back roll-up door was opened and I could hear the other bags being dragged off the truck. Then I felt mine being tugged at and dragged, followed by a bit of a fall and a hard thud as I hit the ground. I reached up to the small opening I had left in the bag and unzipped the bag far enough for me to look outside. The sunlight stung my eyes, but as they recovered, I saw an overweight man in beige coveralls dragging one of the body bags. He turned away from me and I took the chance and quickly unzipped the bag further. As I was pulling my arms out of it, the man turned back around. Judging from the look on his face, not many of the corpses in the bags he hauled got back up. He went white as a sheet and raised his hands in protest.
"No, no. Leave me alone!" he cried.
I started to talk, but he was really panicking and kept walking backwards. He was walking to the edge of whatever he was dropping the bags off of.
"No wait, I'm fine, just …" I pleaded.
He took one more step back and his heel slipped right off the dirt edge and he fell backwards, hands wildly flailing into the air trying to grasp anything. He fell out of my sight in a flash and was gone. I pulled my legs out of the bag and walked to the edge where he had fallen. I looked down into a massive pit that had been dug out of the earth. It was filled with hundreds upon hundreds of black body bags, all piled on top of each other. Some were still sealed up, just looking like piles of garbage bags, other were torn open, bodies half spilling out. Some had fallen right out of their bags, or had been ripped open by animals, their tattered corpses scattered in pieces all over their neighboring bodies. The driver of the truck lay on top of them, his head sitting at an unnatural angle to his body. There were faces of all types in the pit; men, women, kids. All colors and creeds. I didn’t want to look at them anymore, yet I was drawn to them, beckoned by their lonely stares. I felt something cold on my cheek and wiped it away with my hand. I was crying. This was the first time I had really understood the loss that was taking place, the devastation that this outbreak was causing to my world. I cast one last look into the pile and turned away; wishing Father Clive was there with me. That was the first time I had thought of him as 'Father'. As I was walking back to the truck, something heavy weighed on me. I stopped. Something was drawing me back to the pit, but I didn’t know what. I couldn’t look again; it was too terrible. I walked a few more steps and felt it again, stronger. I turned around and stared at the edge of dirt surrounding the pit. The feeling was agonizing, colossal. I hesitantly walked back to the pit again and stood at the edge. I scanned the bodies, not knowing why I was subjecting myself to this again knowing the pain it caused me. I was standing on the edge of this horrendous pit of death and human destruction, looking over all these lost souls and not knowing why; wanting to leave and fighting the urge to stay. As I forced myself to turn back and leave again, my eyes caught sight of something right below me. I looked down to the edge of the pit, right up against the dirt wall ten feet below me. Pressed up against the rocks was a body half out of its bag, laid out on its back staring into the sky, into my eyes. My body collapsed and my soul screamed for mercy. It was my heart, my daughter, my Jordan.
* * *
Titles from:
BOOKS of the DEAD
BEST NEW ZOMBIE TALES (Vol. 1)
BEST NEW ZOMBIE TALES (Vol. 2)
BEST NEW ZOMBIE TALES (Vol. 3)
BEST NEW ZOMBIE TALES TRILOGY
BEST NEW WEREWOLF TALES (VOL. 1)
BEST NEW VAMPIRE TALES (Vol. 1)
CLASSIC VAMPIRE TALES
GARY BRANDNER - THE HOWLING
GARY BRANDNER - THE HOWLING II
GARY BRANDNER - THE HOWLING III
GARY BRANDNER - THE HOWLING TRILOGY
JAMES ROY DALEY - INTO HELL
JAMES ROY DALEY - TERROR TOWN
JAMES ROY DALEY - 13 DROPS OF BLOOD
JAMES ROY DALEY - THE DEAD PARADE
JAMES ROY DALEY - ZOMBIE KONG
JOHN F.D. TAFF - LITTLE DEATHS
JOHN L. FRENCH – PARADISE DENIED
MATT HULTS - ANYTHING CAN BE DANGEROUS
TONIA BROWN - BADASS ZOMBIE ROAD TRIP
MATT HULTS - HUSK
TIM LEBBON - BERSERK
PAUL KANE - PAIN CAGES
ZOMBIE KONG ANTHOLOGY
* * *
Thank you for reading!
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 33: TOOLS OF THE TRADE
CHAPTER 34: GOD BL
ESS THE CHILDREN AND THE BEASTS
CHAPTER 35: CONTAINMENT
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 33: TOOLS OF THE TRADE
CHAPTER 34: GOD BLESS THE CHILDREN AND THE BEASTS
CHAPTER 35: CONTAINMENT
