Rise (22 page)

Weather is decidedly cold and wet lately too. I mentioned this before. Sporadic rain, air so damned cold you can see your breath when you get up in the morning and brief flashes of warm sunlight in the daytime. I have a real bad feeling about winter, though a Corporal I was talking to earlier says they expect the zombies will freeze solid once it gets cold enough to snow. That would make it really easy to dispose of a bunch of them, so I hope it happens. Snow would make it hard to find them, though.

Looks like we’ll be getting out of here in a few more days. The tents are almost full now; I think there are three hundred or so of us here. Sarah says she might stay here to help out, and the Major said that she’d be welcome and a room in a house in town would be found for her if she chose to stay. Jay will be going along to Cold Lake. They have a dentist here, and one there, but apparently want more for the base. Lots more survivors there, I guess. I’ll be operating out of Cold Lake, and Jess will want to go there to see that Michael and Megan get into the school where Phillipa will be teaching. Christie has decided she’ll go to Cold Lake and see if the Air Force wants her. She says she doesn’t want to be Army, she’s seen enough undead close up. Adam and Amanda are both staying here to help out with the incoming survivors. Apparently Adam has some electrical training, and they need tradesmen here to help build the winter shelters. Amanda has volunteered to help in the hospital, and the Major has found them a place in town. Darren is coming to Cold Lake and is still pressing me to let him be one of the crew I am putting together. He’s making more sense too. Janice has talked to a counselor here, and is going to talk to a psychologist who’s survived in Cold Lake. She seems a bit better, I think, but Phillipa and Jess seem really worried about her. Sanji has joined up, and apparently has been made an officer. Past experience, I suppose, or his former rank when he was in the military years ago. I plan to talk to the Major to have him be our military liaison, since I know and trust him.

A man from town came into the tent camp earlier and asked for me. He said he was the priest at the local Roman Catholic Church, and would Jess and I like to be married there? I realised I have
no idea
if Jess is even religious. We talked about it, and she said she actually is a Catholic, though she hasn’t practiced in years. I am Anglican, but similarly I haven’t practiced in ages. So we agreed to the wedding being at the church. Maybe it’ll be good luck? We get married in three days. Shit, I need a suit!

Tomorrow Jess and I are getting married. Wow. I am really drunk right now. This is the first time I have drunk any booze (beers don’t count) since the stupid dead people got up and tried to eat me. Eat me! Ha! Stupid dead fuckers.

Sarah, lovely Sarah, came in and said to me “Hey, let’s get you plastered!” So we went to the bar in town and everyone is so great there, giving me drinks and there are pretzels too. Where did they get pretzels? So I came back and now I have to drink some water or I’ll wish I was dead tomorrow. Jess is pretty drunk right now too, but Christy is watching the kiddies, God she’s got a tongue in my ear! Stop that youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu, oh wait….

I shouldn’t update when I’m drunk. I left the laptop on, and drained the battery down to nothing. I didn’t have a chance to recharge it until late yesterday. I need to look around for either a spare, or a laptop with two or three batteries.

After the ceremony on the 9th the whole town turned out for a feast. There’s no other word. It turned into a huge party.

The ceremony itself… Jess looked fantastic. She and Sarah and Christy and Amanda and a few women I didn’t know disappeared the morning of the 9th before I was even fully awake. That made it simple for me to go to get ready. I found a tuxedo! There’s a rental place in town, but they didn’t charge me anything since nobody had any money. I just had to promise to find the guy something useful on a salvage mission at some point. I asked what ‘useful’ meant, and he said, “Oh you know, a supply of paper, or a laptop or PDA in working order.”

Darren found me in town that morning and hustled me back to get changed. We went to the church after I shaved and showered, and I dressed there. At noon the whole thing started, and I found myself in a tux, standing at the head of the aisle waiting for Jess. Darren had gotten two rings for us, after finding out our sizes, from a jewelry store in town that had no owner. The owner had died in the initial uprising, and got killed again a few days later when some fool opened up the store and he was in there waiting to feed. The police had closed the store, but the Major got permission from the local cops to let Darren get us a couple of rings. I hadn’t seen them yet.

We had a full house well before the event began. My sister and the ladies showed up in varied but very nice dresses, and Darren was at my side. The priest, Father Harrison, signaled to the organist and suddenly there was wedding march music playing. I don’t remember it at all, because Jess walked in at that point. I have
no idea
where she got that dress, but she looked absolutely beautiful in it. Sparkling white, little bits of lace on it in strategic places, and her hair was done up the nicest I have ever seen it, drawn off her face and pinned up. She looked hot! Suddenly I found myself remembering the night before, and I think I turned red. She sure gets frisky when she’s drunk.

Anyways, she walked, and suddenly we were facing the priest and saying “I do,” and then people were cheering and it was time for the feast. It was such a blur; I don’t even remember most of it until the gifts. Oh, and the rings are nice! They are gold bands with three small diamonds each in them. Very tasteful.

We moved over to a hall in the community center, and the speeches began. The Major toasted us and said a short few words, and Sarah and Darren did too, and then Amanda got up and thanked us for saving her and all the others from Prince George. People actually applauded, to my horror.

We got presents. I won’t go into details; I’ll just say they are a nice selection of paramilitary survival gear, handy household objects, and other useful things. The rest of the night was a nice supper of fresh chicken, farm eggs, salad (oh how I’ve missed fresh vegetables), and baked potatoes. This was followed by the best fruit pies I have ever had, and lots of coffee. Glorious coffee!

They cleared the tables after that, and we ended up dancing. I can’t dance, and Jess realised that pretty quickly. I gave it the old college try though.

I guess the point is that for a while we were able to forget about the undead. Life just seemed normal for a little while, and that was nice. The next day after the wedding we just lay around in bed until Michael and Megan jumped on us and woke us up. It seems we’ve sort of unofficially adopted Megan. I’ve gone from a bachelor to a husband and parent of two overnight. It’s worrying, but I like it so far, and I have gotten to know Megan and Michael pretty well over the months. This really isn’t that big of a change, it’s the same sort of thing that we had been doing since we all met up. Yesterday they packed us all up (everyone in the tent area) and moved us either into town or to Cold Lake. So for now it’s goodbye to Amanda and Adam, as well as Sarah, who’s staying here with them in a house in town. Darren, Jay, Christie, and Sanji are coming to Cold Lake, along with Phillipa and Janice. Jess and I, and the two children are going to Cold Lake, but I know that I will be assembling a team pretty quickly after that, and heading south for some salvage orders. The Major thinks that we’ll be heading for Red Deer or Calgary before the snow flies, but after it snows we’ll likely be going to Edmonton for some “extensive salvage operations”, as he puts it. Gee, I can’t wait.

So we drove through the countryside, a convoy of civilian and military vehicles about 40 cars long. We actually passed oncoming traffic, and saw signs of human habitation in the houses and farms we passed. People waved at us, and we waved back. Everyone we saw, and I do mean everyone, was armed and traveling in groups. If they were sixteen or older, they had a gun. Mostly it was hunting rifles, but a fair number of pistols were in evidence as well. So much for Canada being not so much of a gun-nut culture as the USA. The towns we passed were inhabited and heavily defended, most with walls hastily built around them, or fences of barbed wire and chain link. Only once did we see undead, and that was in a field near the town of Rich Lake. Three of them were walking towards a pick-up truck, and they were shot down one by one before they even got close to it. There were snipers in the truck, and about a dozen men with guns all ready to deal with the corpses. They all turned and waved as we passed.

We arrived in the town of Cold Lake around 3 p.m., and were met by military and civilian officials. All of us were assigned housing inside the fenced town. It was protected on all sides by two rows of chain-link fences and sentry towers that I doubt had been there two months ago. What brush there was had been cleared away from the fences for almost 500 feet. Again all of us had to go through medical checks, and this took until well after dark. Waiting and listening to the soldiers and medics talk, I learned a lot. Asking questions taught me even more. Cold Lake is now a military encampment, not just the base but the town itself. They lost a lot of people in the initial outbreak, nearly a third of the civilians and a hundred of the soldiers, but they managed to clear the town and surrounding areas. There is now a clear zone five kilometers wide along the highway to Athabasca, wider in some places. The area between the towns of Iron River and Cold Lake, and south to Bonnyville (where they dropped the F.A.E.) is completely cleared of undead, and is checked constantly. The military has gone east as far as Beacon Hill, Saskatchewan, and north to Fort McMurray, west to Whitecourt and Slave Lake, and as far south as Stettler. None of those areas are cleared of the undead, but whenever survivors are discovered they are rescued and returned here. There haven’t been many. One of the soldiers was convinced that there were a lot more survivors out there, hiding and waiting to see if the undead would eventually just rot away. So far they haven’t.

Eventually we were all cleared as healthy and uninfected, and given our house assignment. It was a house that had been empty for a while. I was told the former occupants had been killed when the undead rose, and the house was taken by the military as emergency housing. Now they were turning it over to us for the duration. Many other empty houses were being assigned as well. The population of the town was filling up again, and now was just over thirteen thousand. So now we are getting settled in and I have gone around and checked the fences, bars on all the windows, and made sure the doors are reinforced and solid. We also planned emergency escape routes, got a set of bug-out bags ready and set them in a central location, and made sure we had a full tank of gas in the Cherokee. Jess and I have set aside an upstairs room as a weapons room, and the children are under orders not to go in there unless we are attacked by the undead. There are about a hundred things I want to do to this place to make it more secure. It’s not that I think the town will be overrun by zombies… it’s just that I
expect
the town to be overrun by zombies. And we want a way out of here if that happens. It’s not paranoia when they really are out to eat you.

Questions plague me, constantly turning over and over in my mind. Why haven’t they rotted away to nothing? What makes them rise from death? Why do they eat the living but not each other? The virus theory seems to have been disproved. Early reports from the CDC back in May seemed to lead people to think that a virus from Africa was behind this, but now the people here are not sure what the reason is. There’s a minister preaching that God has damned us for our sins, there’s a biologist at the base who claims that there’s a genetic reason behind all this, and there’s a couple of conspiracy theorists who claim to have proof that it was aliens. And that’s just what I’ve heard people in town talking about in the last few days. Who knows what the real reasons for this apocalypse are?

A military officer came to see me, a Captain Couper. He wanted to talk about my crew, even though I haven’t put it together yet. He had some suggestions of people I might want to talk to, and had a military liaison in mind as well. I don’t get Sanji, unfortunately. He’s going to be on some extended training session. Speaking of training, before I go out on the first run, they want us (‘us’ being all the civilian volunteers for this sort of thing) to go through a three week orientation and training school to teach us how not to shoot each other, basic tactics and survival skills, radio operations, motorcycle riding, and stuff like that. I think it’s a great idea, and I wish I’d had it before this crap all began. I think I’ve got the ‘not shooting each other’ part down, but it’d be nice if everyone who goes out there with me has it too.

So Darren and I start on tomorrow on this program. Yes, Darren finally wore me down, and I actually think he’ll be good at this. If he’s going to be doing this scavenger bit, I want him with me. Jess is pretty cool with the idea of Darren going out with us, since she knows how he thinks and acts. I wish Jess were able to come too, but she has Michael and now Megan to raise and feed and care for. But damn it, she’s the best shot I have ever seen. Having her there as a sniper backup has always made me feel a lot safer.

There’s a difference between the townsfolk who lived through the disaster, and those who came later as survivors. The survivors from outside, who’ve dealt with the undead on a daily basis, take this shit a lot more seriously. It has been noticed that they fortify the places they live in a
lot
more than the townsfolk, and most have the ‘thousand yard stare’ when they first arrive. Apparently even Jess and I have it.