Rise Read online

  We finally made it out of the city by about 10:15 that morning. Traffic was heavy but moving. I guess a lot of people had the idea to bug out. We headed northwest on the highway until we found a turn-off south towards the Trans-Canada, and I tried that. Heading towards the mountains sounded good at the time. We drove south until the Trans-Canada Highway sign said to turn west, and I followed that into steady traffic. There must have been thousands of people fleeing the city now, but still there were cars heading towards the populated areas.

  After a while we made it to Canmore, a large town just inside the mountains on the way to Banff National Park. The town looked alright, it was quiet, but there wasn't a gas station open. I guess the staff decided not to show up that day. We pulled into a gas station just off the highway, since Sarah had to use a bathroom and I needed some air and a walk around to let the adrenaline clear out of my system. Plenty of cars were heading through town so I wasn't worried. Sarah walked towards the back of the station, and I got out and walked around. I was looking at the line of cars passing when I heard Sarah scream. I ran towards the bathroom, and Sarah came out followed by a bloody woman. The other woman was about thirty, I guess, wearing jeans and a black tank top, and covered head to toe in gore. She had a huge gash in her neck, and her hands were cut and I could see bone through the skin in places. She had a bloody mark on her arm, and a fair bit of tissue was missing.

  I shouted to Sarah to ‘watch out!’.

  She was nearly on top of Sarah when I tackled her, and we landed hard on the concrete. She immediately tried to bite me, but I managed to get my hand under her chin and push her head to the side, a wrestling move I learned in judo class a few years ago. Her skin was cold! She wasn't any stronger than a normal person, for which I am thankful. I managed to pin her arms, but she was still trying to bite me, and it was a struggle for several seconds to keep my neck away from her teeth until Sarah came back with the bat I had forgotten to take from the truck. Sarah's not a petite woman; she works out and she plays softball, and she works as a paramedic. One swing of the bat broke the woman's neck and threw her away from me. I got up and was shocked to see that the woman was still trying to move. Sarah and I approached cautiously, once it was clear the woman couldn't reach us. Her broken neck took care of that, but her head was still trying to snap at us. I remembered what the radio announcer had said about destroying the brain to kill the infected persons, but neither Sarah nor I could do it. We just got back in the Explorer and drove off to the west along the highway.

  We left the town behind and within a few kilometers we passed the park gates for Banff National Park without stopping. There were no staff at the park gates, and we cruised on with the many other cars and trucks. We passed a few vehicles on the highway that had run out of gas or had mechanical problems. The drivers and passengers were trying to flag down help, but no one stopped. I didn’t stop.

  Later we came to a rest stop about 40 km past Banff. I wanted to look at the tire, see if it could be fixed. It could be, if we could get to a shop. The temperature is alright for now, but it won't stay this warm forever. We stopped here for lunch and decided to stay until morning; it's off the road and can't be seen from the highway. There are several other cars here, a few families and a road crew, about 14 people including us. No one has a weapon other than a few baseball bats, some knives, and a fire-axe the road crew carried in their truck. We're hoping to last the night without being found, and then carry on in the morning. The line of cars on the highway continues, endlessly.

  May 23

  We made it to Jasper, but the town had been overrun by the living dead. We stopped on the highway just short of town and took a good look. There were three other cars and a truck with us. We could see a large group of the dead in front of a store, trying to force their way in. There were about fifty of them, bloody and horrible looking. How did this virus get here ahead of us? We could only assume there were living survivors inside the store. A few of the dead noticed us and turned towards us, gurgling and moaning. They started to almost run down the road, a sort of limping, shuffling jog, so we got back in the Explorer and backed away. The other vehicles fled ahead of us, passing still more cars coming north from Calgary or Canmore, and I turned around and drove us back to an exit road I had seen earlier, and took it. We ended up here, at this house about 6 km from the highway, well back in the woods. There's no one here, but the door was open when we drove up. It's a 2-story cabin and

  May 24, about noon

  I was interrupted yesterday while updating this file. What I can only assume was the original owner of the house we are now in returned and broke the window on the front door while I was typing on my laptop. He looked about 50, and was fit, wearing a light coat over a sweater and expensive pants. His stomach was opened up and his internal organs were mostly missing. A huge amount of blood had washed his legs, and he was definitely dead. The smell alone was so bad I gagged and nearly heaved my dinner all over the floor. I grabbed the bat and ran towards him while Sarah grabbed a knife from the kitchen. His dead arms flailed towards me, and I watched in nauseous horror as he fell over the broken glass from the window. He started to get up immediately, and with Sarah yelling at me I smacked him hard on the back of the head with the bat. He went down, and then tried to get up again. I swung again, harder this time, and heard a wet smack. The side of his head caved in, and a little blood splattered about. He didn't move again after that. I stepped over the body and looked outside, but I didn't see any more walking dead. We dragged the corpse outside and dumped him in the back of the garage.

  I have repaired the window as well as I can. Found some tools and a few nails in the garage, as well as some plywood, but the big find was a rifle and some bullets. It's a .22, I think, and there are about 100 bullets for it. Lever action. Must have been the old guy's hunting rifle or for scaring off cats or something. Both Sarah and I feel better now that we found it.

  May 26

  We’ve spent the last while watching TV. The electricity is still on, amazingly, and there are a few satellite channels running. There's a CNN feed from Baltimore. A local station in Calgary is showing live camera shots from around the city with a live voice-over from a couple of reporters, saying they'll hold on as long as they can and keep reporting the situation. Mostly they just give commentary on what's shown on the camera. I swear at one point Steven Tyler from Aerosmith walked by the camera, as dead as the several hundred other zombies on the screen. The shot was from 8th Avenue Mall, which looked to be home now only to wreckage and dead things. Another view is from a street level camera in a window, I think in Kensington. The dead are shuffling by there too, but a police car is parked outside on the street right in front of the camera, and I can see a shotgun in the car. It might as well be on the moon.

  The CNN feed I mentioned earlier is a source of good information. Apparently the CDC has identified the virus and is trying to produce an immunization program. Most of the major cities in the US and Canada have suffered major outbreaks, with the notable exception of Boulder. Apparently they had a small outbreak there, but it was contained quickly. There have been no transmissions from Seattle, Vancouver, Los Angeles, or New York in the last 24 hours. No phone or cell calls, no internet, nothing. CNN reports that the US President is alive in an undisclosed location and is trying to get things in order. No word about our Prime Minister. The last thing we watched before we shut it off for a while was footage from Toronto, showing about a hundred zombies straining to get into a pet store. There were about a dozen survivors inside and they had barricaded the entrance with anything they could find. The video was uploaded to CNN a few minutes before they thought the barrier was about to fail. All the survivors, including a few children, the teenage-looking staff, and a few adults, were arming themselves with whatever they could find. Sarah asked me to shut it off then. I happily did.

  Taking stock here, we have discovered several weeks’ worth of food, mostly frozen or canned, and a generator in the garage that looks
in good repair. There is no sign of further weapons, other than a fire-axe I found by the woodpile outside. There is no car either. I searched the body of the old man and found car keys. But there was no car outside, which is curious. We also set about reinforcing the windows and doors with plywood. We might be here a while, and if we get any more undead visitors I want to be prepared.

  May 31, on the road

  I haven't had a chance to update until now, mainly because I didn't think it was safe to until we reached somewhere secure. There are three of us now. Darren is 15, and is a smart kid who showed up at the cabin we were in at about 4 a.m. on the 27th. He was driving a totally trashed Honda Civic, and he stopped right outside the front door and tried to get in. We had heard him coming (Sarah has been a real light sleeper since this started) and when he stepped up on the front porch I opened the door and pointed the gun at him. He just about shit his pants when he saw the gun barrel in his face, and started babbling about not shooting him and that they were right behind him. I grabbed his arm and dragged him inside. Once I had the door secure again we killed the lights and I looked out the windows into the darkness. Sarah took the kid into the kitchen, shushing him several times, while I tried to get my eyes readjusted to the darkness.

  At first I didn't see anything, but after about ten minutes I finally did. Sure enough, the kid had somehow led a small group of shambling dead things right to us. I wasn't totally sure in the dark, but it looked like about 5 or 6 of them. They were back by the main road that led to the cabin, and were walking unsteadily towards us.

  I had no idea what to do. Sarah and I had talked about it, and decided that if it came to it, we would try not to use the gun for fear that the noise would attract other undead. We saw a report on CNN that they were attracted to the sight and sound of living humans, so we went up the stairs and stayed quiet.

  Darren told us he had been traveling with his family when the dead had risen, and they had hidden in a hotel in Edmonton while the chaos took that city as well. Finally they had realised that they were going to be trapped if they stayed, and took their car and tried to flee. Only Darren made it out. His parents and brother were killed by those things a day before he showed up with us. He's kind of in shock, Sarah says, and she's doing her best to look after him.

  We got no sleep that night, and by morning there were ten of them outside, walking back and forth, thumping on the walls, or investigating the garage. One of them spotted me looking through a crack in the plywood and got really excited, trying to pull the plywood down. His expression didn’t change, but his activity level went way up. We had a few scary minutes, but the plywood held, and the dead dumbass went back to stalking the porch.

  We could smell them too. The stench of decay was so strong it made us choke.

  By the evening there were 15, and we started to get the idea that bugging out would be a great idea. I came up with a plan, but we waited until morning again to implement it. We slept in shifts, with either myself or Sarah always awake and holding the gun. We packed all the food and water we could, plus some flares, extra clothes, and things like knives and the fire-axe, into some backpacks and set them by the front door. Then I went upstairs to the back porch, a good ten feet above the ground there, and opened the door and started hollering. Sure enough, those dumb dead things came around to see what the problem was. As soon as they saw me they all let up this god-awful noise. And the smell! I gagged, and had to retreat inside for a moment. When I went back out they were all still moaning and waving arms at me, but I was safe well above them. Sarah called saying that they were all away from the cars out front now. I counted seventeen of them.

  I ran back down, and as soon as they heard me coming, Sarah and Darren opened the door and grabbed gear. We all three ran out to the Explorer and got in, throwing the packs in back. By the time the undead realised we were outside I had the engine going and was backing away down the drive. As I turned around in the yard one of them came around the corner of the house and started to half-run after us. It was the fastest I had seen one move so far, but it was nowhere near quick enough to catch us. We drove back to the main highway.

  We headed south again, away from Jasper. My plan was to make it to the Trans-Canada Highway and go farther into the mountains. We didn't see anything but the odd abandoned car and some mountain goats for a while. It was eerie, but we made good time. The endless parade of vehicles seemed to have vanished. When we got to the Lake Louise turnoff there was a convoy of half a dozen cars and trucks about to head the way we had just come from. We stopped and talked to them, and we traded news. They had come from Calgary, and were the last living things to leave the city, as far as they knew. The place was littered with the walking dead now, they told us. We told them about Jasper being overrun. Sarah, Darren, and I talked it over, and we decided we would continue with our plan. We left the convoy still talking about what they were going to do, and headed for the Trans Canada. We stopped by another Explorer, abandoned on the road, and I siphoned the tank out into ours, and got more than half a tank worth that way. Sarah didn't even blink at the long rubber hose I kept in the back of the truck.

  We got to Field in British Colombia, and stopped at a rest stop. We're still here now. We pulled off the road a bit and parked the car behind a garage. The whole town is empty. We haven't seen or heard anything moving around since we got here, and we haven't been brave enough to go exploring. Darren is creeped out, and Sarah wants to raid the clinics here before we leave. It's amazing how something as simple as the dead returning to life can completely turn a normally law abiding paramedic such as her into a B&E artist! Enough for now, we have to decide what to do.

  June 3, Field BC

  We broke into a doctor's office yesterday, and Sarah pointed out the important things to take. We stocked up on bandages, suture kits, and a few insulin shots (just in case), plus plenty of things that I just had no idea what they were for. All three of us were quiet and spooked, and we all agreed it felt like we were being watched, though we still haven't seen anyone around town. We also went over to a grocery store, and pretty much cleaned out as much in the way of canned goods as we could find. It wasn't much. The place was nearly empty when we went in.

  We've decided to leave Field as soon as I am done this entry. We find it just too creepy here, and want to move on.

  While we were here we turned on a TV in the clinic, and caught the last CNN transmission out of New York. A reporter there had retreated to the roof of one of the buildings with a camera, and was aiming it around the city. Smoke was visible from several places, and a fire was burning at street level right below the tower she was in. She then reported that the CDC had sent a report about how fast the infection had spread. Within two weeks it was worldwide. It also worked quickly. A person contracting the virus could expect to die within 24 hours, following a series of flu and stroke-like symptoms. Within 20 minutes the body re-animates, and the new zombie immediately attempts to kill and devour the first living human it sees. The zombies are pretty stupid, exhibiting no problem-solving ability, and appear to have bad balance, poor sense of smell, and the IQ of a drowned cat. The reporter then told the audience she herself had been bitten, showed us the wound on her arm (it looked terrible…bits of flesh were missing), and reported that her symptoms were about on par with a very bad cold. She announced her intention to jump off the building, hoping that her fall would kill her and that her body would not reanimate due to sufficient injury from the impact with the ground. We watched in horrified fascination as she aimed the camera down at the street below, where thousands of the walking dead were milling about. The camera stayed that way for a few minutes while the reporter said her goodbyes, then it went black. A CNN logo screen came on, and we shut the TV off.

  Time to go. We have fuelled up the truck, but I noticed it has a small oil leak. We may have to get a new car eventually. We are going to head towards Golden.

  June 6

  Golden was weird, but not because of the undead. To g
et there on the Trans-Canada Highway you have to drive down a long wandering road that loses hundreds of feet of elevation. To the north is a sheer cliff face, and to the south a precipitous drop, with the road clinging to the narrow space between. All the way down there are signs warning of falling rocks, and plenty of evidence that rocks do indeed fall on a regular basis, cleared away by highway crews before they become a problem. The liberal amount of smallish rocks scattered along the road all the way down told the story of how much importance this task had these days. We drove slowly to the bottom of the slope, and there lay the town ahead of us. When we arrived, a barricade had been placed across the highway, and about a dozen armed police and civilians stopped us. They asked us who we were, where we were going, and if any of us was infected. They were polite, asked if anyone needed medical attention, and then escorted us under guard past the barricade. We were taken to a rest stop/gas station where we were further questioned about what we had seen on the Trans Canada recently. After that we were all escorted back to the truck, through town to the other end of the highway, and out the barricade on the far side. They told us that while Golden was not unfriendly, it was closed. Nobody who didn't already live there was going to be allowed in unless they were injured. And if they were infected they'd be shot on sight.

  After that we drove several more kilometers and then pulled over. On the empty stretch of highway we talked about where we'd go. The Explorer is a gas hog, so we know that won't last forever. We have limited food and water. Our ammunition is low, and we only have one weapon with any kind of range. After talking about it, none of us really had any ideas, but we all agreed we were not going to just give up.