In Hiding: A Survivors Journal of the Great Outbreak (12 page)

What
we couldn’t see until we reached the side ledge was that were still several
Zeds on that side of the building. Anne fired and missed and that was when I
heard a second shot just as I saw one of the Zeds eyes explode. That was when I
noticed Paul had moved along side of the building to help support Anne. The two
of them were firing as fast as they could reload but very few shots were
actually finding their target.

To my surprise the woman stopped
for a brief moment and then she just picked up the child and started to run.
She was moving fast and she ran right past three zombies before they even saw
her and not one of them got a hand on her. I was running along the ledge of the
roof, right along side of her, watching and hoping she would make it. Another
shot and another Zed was down. The weight of the boy had started to slow her
pace from what I could see and another Zed still stood between her and the back
of the building. Another shot, it missed. Then Anne fired and the Zed dropped,
like a puppet that had just had the strings cut.

She finally turned the corner with
the boy still slung over her shoulder. She made a break right for the box truck
that was still parked where it had been days before. The back end of the truck
was facing us and it was parked on a slight angle. She put the boy down on the
ground and covered his mouth again as they started to moved slowly down the
passenger side of the truck to get a view of the back doors.

Paul fired a bullet straight down
at one of the Zeds that had been blocking the receiving doors. I saw the top of
its skull explode as I looked down. There were still several of them in front
of the doors and Paul and Anne started firing randomly into the crowd trying to
make a path for the poor woman and child. That was about the time when we
realized that we had never come up with a signal to let the others know when to
open the doors. If they opened them too soon or too late it could lead to
disaster.

Shannon took off down the ladder
trying to tell them to hold off until they were given a sign. That sign was
when Ray would run down the stairs shouting to open the doors. He left down the
ladder and waited for our signal to start running to the back doors. I stood
there and watched, waiting for the woman to make her move.

I could see that a few of the Zeds
that had been following her were starting to come around the corner. She
couldn’t wait too much longer and Paul and Anne were struggling to clear the Zeds
from just outside the door. We were running out of time. I looked down to see
two more Zeds collapse to the ground as Anne and Paul continued to fire. Then I
looked back to see the woman and the look on her face told me exactly what she
was going to do. I still remember that look. She was going to go for it.

She grabbed the boy’s hand and
took a step away from the side of the truck and prepared to run right for the
doors. Just as I got ready to yell to Ray to tell them to open the doors I saw
the boy fall flat on his stomach. He started to scream and cry and I thought
that he had simply tripped. That was until I saw the arm reaching out from
underneath the truck that had a hold of his leg.

The boy kept trying to crawl away
but he was dragging what looked like a rotting torso behind him. That was when
I noticed that the torso was what was left of that poor truck driver and he had
a firm grip on the boy’s ankle. The woman grabbed the boy’s arm and tried to
pull him to safety but the thing just wouldn’t let go. The screaming was
attracting plenty of attention and some of the zombies that had been near the
doors had found something far more interesting then what was inside the
building.

They were all closing in and that
was when I noticed that Anne and Paul had stopped firing. They were both
starring down the riflescope trying to get a clear shot at the Zed that had a
hold of the boy. The woman finally let go of the boy’s arms and then ran to
where the driver was and started to stomp on his arm. I couldn’t look away. I
didn’t even look as Paul starting shooting again or even glance over at what he
was shooting at.

While
Paul was shooting he starting yelling something at Anne, but she was busy
complaining about how she couldn’t get a clear shot. After the woman stomped on
the Zeds arm several times he finally let go and the woman reached down and
picked the boy back up onto his feet. She grabbed him by the arm and then she
started to back away from the Zed that was still crawling after them. Then I
heard the scream.

That
was what Paul had been shouting about. It was what he was shooting at. Two sets
of arms wrapped around the woman’s body almost simultaneously. I watched in
horror as one Zed bit down into her shoulder and the other drove his teeth into
her arm. Blood poured out of the wounds all the while the boy just stood there
watching.

Anne fired a shot at one of the
Zeds but it struck it in the shoulder and had little effect. More and more of
them started to pile onto the woman as she slowly dropped to the ground. She
quickly vanished out of sight underneath a growing pile of zombies that
reminded me of vultures on a carcass. But the worst part of the whole thing was
that she continued to scream for much longer then I hoped she would.

Paul
and Anne both fired shots into the pile but that was pointless. Then just as we
all realized that we had been too caught up in watching what was happening to
that poor woman we saw a Zed dressed in a beat up suit grab a hold of the boy.
I was so terrified that I couldn’t even yell out even though I desperately
wanted too. I just froze and watched in shock as that zombie drove his teeth
deep into the young boy’s neck. So much blood poured out so quickly that the
boy didn’t even have time to cry out. That was when I heard the last shot
fired.

That
shot had found its target. The head of the young boy snapped back as the bullet
passed through his brain. He fell to the ground and then vanished underneath a
pile of Zeds just as that woman had. She had stopped screaming. I was still
just watching.

Paul
had fired that shot. The look on his face told me that. I understood why he had
done what he had and trust me everyone else understood as well. He spared that
boy from being eaten alive. He spared him from coming back as one of them. But
the reasons don’t make it any easier to see or to live with.

Paul
dropped his rifle on the ground and shook his head in disbelief. It was Anne
who walked over and gave him a hug. He took it really hard, but I think he knew
deep down it was the right thing to do. It must have been extremely difficult
to pull that trigger. I can’t imagine what was running through his mind when he
finally decided that it was what needed to be done.

I
watched in silence as more and more Zeds tried to push there way through the
pile to get at the bodies that were buried beneath. That was when I saw the
receiving doors open and Cody and Trevor emerge shocked to see what was going
on. Sandy yelled down to them to get back inside and lock the doors. They never
said a word as they retreated back into the store.

The
rest of that night was incredibly quiet. Kerri and I explained to those who had
been downstairs what had happened. I could see that Ray was getting choked up
as we described what had happened to that little boy. It was just as hard to
talk about it, as it was to witness. Anne led a few of the others in prayer,
and well Paul had vanished somewhere probably to be alone. I couldn’t blame him
because I wanted to be alone as well.

I
spent the rest of that night on the roof with a bottle of whiskey and my
thoughts. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to sleep anyway, but I figured if I
could drink enough there was at least a chance I might pass out. It wasn’t the
best idea but sleep was sleep. It wasn’t just what I had seen that afternoon.
It was the fact that I had just seen first hand how hard it was to survive out
there. We hadn’t seen another person for days and then finally when we did see
other survivors they were ripped apart right before our eyes. My hope was
dwindling and I had started to realize that my family was most likely dead at
that point.

I
was hoping that the booze would dull my thoughts and maybe wipe away the
memories of everything I had seen that day. Deep down I knew it wouldn’t work.
It would never work. Another night of terrible memories was inevitable. Another
day of this nightmare was all but guaranteed.

The
morning of the fifth day was much like the mornings that had preceded it. I was
hung over and spent most of the morning in a fog trying to decipher what had
been a bad dream and what was simply an awful memory. I would have loved to
spend the entire day in bed, my old bed, not the pile of blankets and pillows I
had on the break room floor. But I knew trying to sleep was futile. Paul and
Anne were busy trying to get everyone back to work and re-focused on moving
supplies to the roof. However, it didn’t go very well. That was because pretty
much everybody was exhausted and feeling sluggish. I have to admit that doing
any form of manual labor that morning wasn’t anywhere close to being at the top
of my list of things to do.

But after a long night too think
about what had happened and what little part I played in in it, I did decide
that there was something that I needed too do. I wanted Anne to teach me how to
shoot.

I
don’t have children. I never really wanted them to be honest. But what had
happened to that child had really stuck with me. Not being able to help in any
tangible way had left me feeling worthless and I never wanted to feel that way
again.

I
would never know if that was his mother or just someone who had found him in
the streets and decided to look after him. But it had me thinking about my
family, about my mother and how scared she must be for her children. Not
knowing where they were or if they were still alive. I guess that was if she
was still alive. I don’t know if not knowing was any better or any worse. I
still had hope they were alive and safe somewhere. But the odds were that they
were all dead and well, I don’t like to think about it.

It
was almost impossible and still is too some degree to comprehend that your
entire world was gone. To believe that everyone you ever knew was dead or a
monster was enough to make you give up and quit fighting to survive. On the
other hand it was just as dangerous to hold out hope that they were all alive
somewhere out there. I felt that line of thinking was only setting myself up
for unbearable disappointment. But worst of all, the thing that hurt the most was
the guilt.

Like so many others I had a hard
time understanding why I was so lucky, why I had made it when so many others
hadn’t. Guilt was the worst of it all. It wore me down and made it near
impossible to focus on anything else. The only thing I could do, well at least
what I tried to do, was bury it deep down inside and try to move past it.
Luckily for me that was something I was good at.

However,
a few of the others didn’t share my gift for burying their emotions. They were
upset, angry, and depressed and worst of all they wanted to talk about it. That
was the last thing I needed that day, or any of the days for that matter. I
didn’t understand how sitting around discussing just how bad everything had
become or how doomed we all were, was productive in anyway.

So
I tried to keep my opinions to myself and just sat back and shut up. I listened
to everyone share his or her ideas as to what had gone wrong and who was at
fault. I still think that trying to blame a disaster of this magnitude on one
thing is irresponsible. There had to have been multiple failures for things to
get as bad as they were. It wasn’t like one thing happened and all of a sudden
the world was like it is today. I am sure that there was plenty of blame to go
around and that most of the failings probably happened long before we ended up
here.

I
mean when you look at what was happening early on when nobody was sure exactly
what we were dealing with and people were unsure of what to do. If the world
would have just taken the situation more a little more serious in the early
weeks and months maybe this all could have been prevented. I mean you would
think someone, somewhere along the line would have been able to understand how
this spread and how to stop it. I know ignorance and denial helped it spread
and I know that trying to treat the infected instead of eliminating them played
a large part, but I still couldn’t understand how we let this happen.

The
one thing, I mean the one thing that really bothered me. The biggest thing that
I never fully understood was how it spread so fast considering the infected ate
their victims. I mean the cannibalistic nature of the virus alone should have
slowed the spread. I always wondered why most victims didn’t simply become
meals instead of reanimating and adding to the infected ranks. Maybe at a
certain point the infection spread through the body and the flesh became too
contaminated for even the Zeds to eat. I noticed that they never ate their own.
I still don’t have answers. It’s all just an opinion and I can’t really prove
any of it. But opinions and ideas are all I really have left anymore.

But
the more everyone talked about the virus the more I realized how little we
really knew. How it started was the greatest mystery of all and from everything
we had seen and heard on the news there appeared to be no evidence of how this
whole thing began. But because there were no real answers we were left to fill
in the void of information with our imaginations. Each person had their own
idea of where it had come from and some of those ideas were more reasonable
then others. Strange bacteria from a meteorite, terrorism, government
experiments gone terribly wrong. I doubted that any of those theories were
right. I mean Trevor actually believed that some extremist group had released
some chemical into the world’s water supply. I didn’t know how to tell him what
was wrong with that so I just let it go.

A
select few in my group actually believed that it was God punishing the world
for all of its sins. I didn’t touch that one with a ten-foot pole because there
was no need to get into that debate. Cody spent way too much time trying to
convince me that it was a new weapon created by the Air Force that had been
released by mistake. I still don’t know what caused it and I’ll probably never
know, but the only thing I did know was that something had made the impossible
become possible and I only hoped that smarter people then me were working on
fixing it.

Out
of all our pointless discussions the only good that came of it was a decision
to keep someone on the roof at all times. Kind of like a watch, where we would
all take shifts staying on the roof and keeping an eye on our immediate
surroundings. We needed to keep a look out for other survivors who might come
around or even in the slight chance that a rescue helicopter or something flew
overhead.

Other
then that we wasted most of the time arguing over how we could get others into
the store if it ever came down to it. We debated if it was even worth letting
others in if they managed to stumble upon the store. Trevor was against it and
he made a few valid points. It was very dangerous opening any of the doors to
get someone inside. We had been lucky so far and Trevor thought that opening
the doors for anyone was extremely risky. I didn’t join in that debate either.
I didn’t think it was worth fighting over something that didn’t seem very
likely to happen anyway.

When
all of the conversations wrapped up, the time came when Anne finally agreed to
teach me how to shoot. However, I wasn’t the only one who was looking for a
lesson. Cody and Kerri had also expressed an interest in learning how to shoot
as well. I guess they must have felt as useless as I had during that ordeal. So
while Paul and Adam assembled a barbeque at one end of the roof, the four of us
started our training at the other.

We
were careful not to waste too many bullets on practice because we had used a
good chunk of our supply the day before. I thought we still had plenty, but
Anne told me we would need every last bullet if we ever had to fight our way
out of here. I believed her.

Anne
made the decision to use real targets for our training. The Zeds. It was a far
cry from the woman who thought they were just sick and could be saved once a
cure was found. What a difference a few days had made. But she had shifted her
line of thinking, and I truly beleive it had a lot to do with seeing what they
did to that child. They were monsters now and they had lost their right to
exist in her world.

She
walked us through everything, from how to hold the rifle to how to load it. She
showed us all the little details that people like me didn’t know about. I have
too say,
 
I was pretty impressed at
how well Anne handled various weapons. I had no idea that she had hunted with
her father and brothers and that she knew how to use almost any type of gun or
knife, and how to use them well. I just hoped that I could learn a thing or two
from her.

 
We took turns while Anne gave us
instructions the entire time. After each shot there was a long teaching period
before we took our next turn. By the end Cody and Kerri had improved and I was
still for lack of a better word, terrible. I was able to hit the four Zeds that
I had targeted, but I was never able to hit them exactly where I was trying
too. But at the very least I had grown more comfortable handling the rifle.

When
the lesson was finished, I remember walking along the ledge of the roof,
looking around for nothing in particular. What was around us was so amazing and
so unbelievable that sometimes I couldn’t help but just look out in disbelief.
But as we walked around the back ledge of the building Anne saw something on
the ground below. It would just be another terrible image that would forever be
burned into my memory and haunt my nightmares.

Anne
pointed down at the pavement and showed us something that I can only describe
as disturbing. I saw what she was looking at almost immediately but I still
wasn’t sure exactly what it was at first. Then it hit me, and it felt like
something had kicked me right in the stomach. What we were looking at was the
woman from the day before, well at least what was left of her. Most of her
midsection was missing. Both of her legs were nothing but bone and a small
amount of tissue and muscle that seemed to be holding them together. Her head
and most of her arms seemed to be in tact and worst of all her head appeared to
still be moving.

Her
head rocked back and forth as if she was looking around for something. I could
tell that her eyes were open and her arms seemed to jerk around as she tried to
reach out. I really hope that Zeds don’t feel pain. I hope that there was
nothing left of her mind, nothing left of the woman she once was. I really hope
that she wasn’t looking around for that child. What a miserable thing to happen
to a person.

I
could see Kerri eyes were starting to water as she looked down. Anne had seen
enough and she took the rifle off of her shoulder and took aim below. She lined
up the woman’s head in her sights, said a short prayer and then squeezed the
trigger. The shot was on point. It hit the woman directly in the forehead and
with that the moving stopped. It was for the best but the death and gruesome
violence was becoming just too much. I had seen things that would ruin the rest
of my natural life.

Anne wasn’t finished after that.
She raised the rifle again and pointed into the crowd of Zeds that were still
gathered at the back of the store. She scoured the crowd of former teachers,
doctors, soldiers, mothers and fathers and chose a target. She picked out a man
who looked like he had once been a construction worker of some kind whose
entire shirt was covered in blood. She needed something to pay for what she had
just seen and that Zed ended up being it. She fired and I watched as his head
snapped back and he dropped to the ground. Then she shouldered the rifle and
walked away.

After
seeing what had happened to that woman we all came to an agreement. We were all
scared that something like that could happen to us. Lying on the ground,
missing half of our body, still alive in a way yet not quite dead. I didn’t
want to end up like that and it was pretty obvious that the others felt the
same way. So we made a pact that afternoon that if anyone of us became infected
the others would put him or her out of their misery. We decided that there
would be no more voting, no more trying to save someone, no more waiting for a
cure. It was kill or be killed and it was better to be dead then like that
woman down there.

It
wasn’t my turn to be on watch until the following morning so I decided to try
and go to bed early that night. Between the lack of sleep and the drinking I
felt exhausted and I had hopes of getting my first full nights sleep since the
outbreak had started. But as per usual I woke up in the middle of night.

When
I woke up there was nobody else around which was strange because they were
usually spread out across the break room sleeping in their usual spots, but I
was alone. I walked around the upstairs and then went down into the back room
but still couldn’t find anyone. I started walking across the sales floor
calling out for the others but nobody was responding. It was when I got to the
front doors that I finally found where they had all gone.

Every
one of them was standing there covered in blood. Grey skin, sunken eyes,
missing limbs it was apparent they were infected and they weren’t alone. There
were hundreds of them all across the front of the store and they were all
looking at me. Suddenly I was running trying to get away, but everywhere I
turned there were more of them. I darted through the doors and into the back
room desperately trying to get back upstairs.