In Hiding: A Survivors Journal of the Great Outbreak (20 page)

I was torn apart and desperate for
answers. The one thing I knew was that I needed to be vigilant and more careful
then I had been. As much as I hated being like that and thinking like that, my
mistrust was about to put me face to face with something terrible and more evil
then simply being left behind. What was about to happen would be the beginning
of a series of events that would expose everyone’s true intentions and the
lengths that some were willing to go to in order to survive.

It all started sometime in the
late afternoon. Cody was on watch and Sandy was taking a nap in the break room
but the rest of us were in the entertainment department listening to the radio.
That was when the emergency lights went out and in an instant the store went
into total darkness.

Paul took the lead once again and
handed out flashlights to every one of us and directed us to go and turn on the
lanterns that we had positioned in various areas of the store. He assigned each
area to a single person and told everyone to meet back once the lanterns were
on. Nobody said a word or complained. We all just left and went to do what we
had to do. I walked to the grocery department and turned on the three lanterns
that I was responsible for and headed back to the meeting point.

I waited for everyone to return
but as I saw Anne, Adam, Ray, Jacob and Amy all come back I started to wonder
what was taking Kerri so long. I knew she was supposed to go and take care of
the lanterns upstairs and that it would have taken her longer then the others
but still something just felt wrong.

I told Paul that I was going to go
and tell Cody that the power was out and have a quick cigarette. He didn’t
object. So I walked through the store and noticed that the lanterns were doing
a reasonable job of keeping the place well lit. I still had my flashlight on
because I just felt a little safer with it on. I wasn’t scared of the dark, but
I was suspicious of the dark corners considering what was going on all around
us. I had seen some terrible things and my imagination would run wild with what
was just around the corner or hidden in the darkness. I made my way through the
back room and up the stairs to find the entire level was pitch black.

My first instinct was that Kerri
had gone to the roof to tell Cody what had happened and hadn’t gotten around to
turning on the lanterns. But I just had a bad feeling. I didn’t know what it
was other then just something that didn’t sit right with me. I moved a little
slower and confirmed that not one of the lanterns had been turned on. I shined
my flashlight into every corner as I made my way down the hallway trying my
best not to make a sound. I can’t remember why I didn’t yell out for her or
anyone else for that matter but I do remember being scared that one of those
things might have found a way inside.

I knew that wasn’t likely but
again my overactive imagination in the dark had me at least concerned about the
possibility. Then as I made my way closer to the end of the hallway I heard it.

At first it was faint but as I
kept moving closer to one of the office doors it became more apparent as to
what I was hearing. It sounded like a struggle of some kind. I could hear
objects being knocked around and then what sounded like a person trying to say
something. I stood outside the door and I can admit that I hesitated for a
second before I opened the door. I thought about ignoring what ever it was.
Especially if there was a Zed trapped inside of there. But my distrust of
everything and my concern for what might have happened to Kerri forced me to
take action. So I pushed the door open.

At first I saw nothing. The room
was dark.
 
Only thing I saw was a
flashlight illuminating a portion
 
of the floor as it rolled back and forth on the ground. That was until I
panned my flashlight over to where the desk should have been and found the
cause of all the noise. It was Kerri.

My flashlight caught her eyes just
enough to see the terror in them. She had a cut across her forehead and even
though she was still conscious I could tell that she was hurt. That was when
she managed to whimper out an almost inaudible plea for help. That was when my
eyes focused on what was attacking her.

Trevor had her pinned to the top
of the desk, fighting her, trying to subdue her. He looked up at me and I could
see the malice and the hate in his eyes. He wasn’t infected, he wasn’t a Zed,
he was something much worse.

I don’t remember who moved first
but I do remember feeling all the rage, all the anger inside of me boil over
and I could feel my face getting warmer and focus getting sharper. I felt the
adrenaline rushing through me as all of those feelings that I had been holding
inside of me exploded in one single moment. I charged at Trevor and swung my
flashlight at his face. It was one of those heavy-duty metal flashlights, not
one of the cheap plastic ones so I knew it had to hurt when I hit him. Not that
it mattered. I would have used anything at that point to do what was necessary.

My first swing caught him in the
cheek and he fell to the ground while holding his face. I moved quickly to get
on top of him and hit him again, but that time I got him in the nose and
judging by the way it exploded I knew it was broken. Blood was all over his
face and he kept reaching his hands out to either protect himself or to beg me
to stop. But I swung again before he had any chance to regroup and fight back. He
had one hand trying to block my attack, while the other was reaching up and
holding the front of my shirt. I struck him again without hesitation.

The last thing I remember was
sitting on top of his chest, pinning him to the ground while he desperately tried
to fight me off. He was still dazed and struggling as I brought the flashlight
down for a fourth time. Then things go black and I can’t remember what happened
between then and when I snapped out of it and found myself still sitting on top
of him, his face destroyed, and Kerri with her hands on my shoulders telling me
that it was over. She was telling me that he was dead.

I had killed him. I don’t regret
it and I am not sure if I am supposed too. As unsure of the way I was supposed
to feel now I was even more confused then. I just sat there on his lifeless
body looking down at what was left of Trevor’s face and trying to understand
what had just happened and what would happen next. Kerri was crying
uncontrollably as she tried to tell me what had happened. She only managed to
fit a few select words in between breaths but I was able to piece it together
from what I had seen and what she was able to tell me. He had tried to rape
her.

We stayed inside the room for a
while after that giving Kerri and I both a chance to gather ourselves. She
explained to me how he had managed to get her into the office and how he pushed
her in there and slammed her head off the desk. She kept fighting. She never
stopped fighting and thankfully I had intervened before he was able to hurt her
any further. Despite having just seen me brutally murder him right in front of
her, she thanked me. I think that what I had done to Trevor may have been
brutal, but in her mind I guess it was justifiable. Maybe in her eyes I wasn’t
the worst monster in that room that day.

We just stayed in that room, both
of us on our knees holding each other as I tried to console her. I was covered
in blood and barely able to speak. She still cried and I never tried to stop
her. It must have been a terrifying experience for her. So I let her get it all
out and waited for the others who would eventually come looking for us. Thing
was I wasn’t sure what to tell them or how to explain it.

That was when we both made a
decision that seemed to make sense at the time but to this day I can’t fully
understand. We decided to lie. Maybe it was because Kerri was worried that the
others would think less of her for getting caught in such a position, maybe I
did it because most of the others were already concerned that I was loosing it
and had followed that up by murdering Trevor. I don’t know our reasons exactly,
but we chose to tell them that Trevor must had been bitten or exposed to the
virus in the garage and had turned while Kerri and him were upstairs.

She would tell them that he passed
out once they were upstairs and that she couldn’t revive him and when he woke
up he was a Zed. She would say that she cut her head on the desk when she tried
to get away and that I arrived just in time to save her. That was the only part
of the story that was actually true.

Eventually it was Paul who found
us. He came looking when he realized that Kerri and Trevor had been gone far
too long and started to worry that something had gone wrong. I don’t think he
ever expected to find what he did when he opened that office door. He looked at
me first and then over to Kerri and I could tell that he was trying to process
what he was looking at. He looked down at what was left of Trevor and then
surprised me by asking if we were okay.

We told our lie. We told him every
little detail that we had worked out and I think that he believed us or at
least realized that we weren’t the bad guys in that room. He called for Anne
and Shannon to come upstairs to help Kerri and clean up the cut on her
forehead. She sold them on the story as well and made me out to be more of a
hero then I deserved to be. They all thanked me and told me how great of a
thing I had done and I hated to hear it. But I went along with it and played
the part.

The three women walked downstairs
and Paul and I followed. He wanted me to go and clean myself up especially
since he thought it was zombie blood that I was covered in. So I did. I went
and grabbed some new clothes and washed myself off. But instead of meeting up
with the others I went back up to the roof and relieved Cody from his turn on
watch. I didn’t tell him anything I would let the others do that for me. I just
needed a minute or two alone before I had to deal with what I knew would
inevitably come.

At least I managed to smoke a
cigarette before the rest of the group arrived on the roof wanting to thank me,
wanting to praise me. I couldn’t be angry with them, they were just looking for
heroes at that point, they were just looking for something good to hold onto. A
part of me wanted to call them all out. I felt they were just being fake,
polite and positive to my face yet they were willing to leave me behind as they
made their escape. I mean if they thought I was so great then why was I just a
pawn in one of their games? But I didn’t. I just smiled and told them all that
Kerri was the real hero.

Truth is that she was. She fought
so hard even in the worst of circumstances and despite all of the terrible
things she had seen and been through she still found the will to keep fighting.
Whether it was self-preservation, determination or just a will that refused to
break, she had shown more bravery in that then anything that I had ever done.

Once the initial celebratory
thanks and praise finished the questions came and I knew that they eventually
would. Amy was interested in a couple of details but it didn’t matter. Maybe
the only good thing about our lie was just how simple it was. Really it was
just the truth with only one major alteration. Instead of an attempted rape we
just turned that into a Zed attack. So no matter what detail people seemed
interested in Kerri had an answer for them, and if I didn’t know how to answer
a particular question I just blamed it on blacking out during the struggle. I
still don’t know why we lied, but we both knew that there would be no turning
back at that point.

After what felt like hours of
conversation the others called it a night and left me to be alone on the roof.
Well I thought I would be alone until Kerri turned around once she reached the
ladder and walked back over to me. She didn’t want to go to bed she didn’t
think that she would be able to sleep after what had happened. I think her
trust in everyone had faded just a little and perhaps she thought if she could
trust anyone fully that person would be me. So we stayed on the roof for hours
talking and trying to forget. Then she decided that she needed some rest and
headed for the ladder. She turned around and thanked me again and then went
downstairs to try and sleep.

As soon as she left I grabbed the
binoculars and found Hal. Quietly I asked him if I had gone too far or if I had
done the right thing. I asked if there had been another way or something else
that I could have done to stop him without killing him. I never actually expected
a response but I guess at that point in time I just needed to ask somebody.

I watched him work away on those
boards and he seemed to be getting closer to pushing through. I knew soon
enough he would make his way through the barrier and get inside that store. I
would have stayed up all night watching him if Ray hadn’t arrived and told me
that he would take a turn on watch and that I needed to get some rest. He put
his hand on my shoulder and told me that I had done well. He told me that the
world needed people like me and that humanity was going to make it through
this. He told me that in the end that we would prevail.

Little did I know that those would
be the last words that Ray and I would ever share.

As you make your way through life
it is inevitable that you will lose some of those closest to you. It’s just the
way it is. Friends and family members will disappear from our lives as the
clock continues to move forward, faster and faster until we inevitably expire.
Since the outbreak entire families had been lost. Some unfortunate people had
lost every person they had ever known in an incredibly short period of time.
It’s never easy and with all the changes we had seen in the world that was one
thing that remained the same.

Some people hang onto a hope that
there is an afterlife and that the people they loved are safe somewhere, that
eventually they will meet them again in a place that they can’t possibly
comprehend. Maybe it brings them comfort. But I always believed that people
believed in such things not for themselves, but for the people they lost. It
may just be the one thing that is truly unselfish in people or something that
is entirely selfish. I don’t claim to have any answers because I don’t think
that anybody does. I just know that as a person that had never really had any
faith or had ever been overly religious, I was starting to search for some kind
of comfort, some glimmer of hope, as I tried to cope with the losses that I
continued to suffer.

When I woke up that morning
nothing had changed. I was still tired, still not sleeping and I am sure any
one who reads this is getting tired of hearing about it. It was the first
morning since we had lost power entirely and that meant that the coffee maker
wouldn’t work. I am not sure why, but I found that incredibly depressing.
Without coffee I figured I would follow my routine anyway and head to the roof
for a cigarette and check on Hal. Besides Ray had been on watch since he took
over for me and I figured I would let him go and catch up on some rest.

When I got up there I found it a
little surprising that Ray was nowhere to be found. I was surprised but I
didn’t think it was to out of the ordinary. For all I knew he had left his
watch early and went to get some sleep. At the very least I assumed he was
downstairs listening to the radio. So I went to see if I could find him. I
checked all the usual places, then the washrooms, and then walked around the
sales floor searching for him. After a few minutes of looking and coming up
empty I decided to bring his absence to the attention of the others.

So we set out and searched the
entire store from top to bottom and the longer it went on the more concerned I
became. I was puzzled. I knew he had to be in the store somewhere. I couldn’t
imagine any possible scenario where he managed to leave the building by
himself. We searched for about forty-five minutes to an hour before we finally
found him.

Anne called us all up to the roof
and brought us over to the ledge at the western side of the building. That was
when she pointed down to the pavement. There were about twenty Zeds gathered
together, fighting and pushing their way past one another to get to something
that was on the ground. If they were feeding that meant that it had to be a
fresh body, and if we couldn’t find Ray anywhere in the store, well we made the
connection.

We watched the Zeds for a while
until we were finally able to see through the crowd and make out what it was
that they were feasting on. First we saw what was left of the clothes and then
we finally got a look at the person’s face and with that it was no longer just
an assumption. Of course that would only be the beginning. There were so may
questions that needed answering. But judging from where the body was located
and the position of his legs and his left arm we believed that he had jumped at
some point in the middle of the night.

If Ray had decided to take his own
life and we would never now that for sure, I still couldn’t understand why he
chose to jump. The building wasn’t that high and there was no way that it would
guarantee death on impact. If he survived the jump it would mean something that
I just didn’t want to imagine for Ray. Aside from why he chose to do what we
all believed he did, there was the other question of why? I know that there was
a part of me that wondered if someone here would eventually do something like
that. With things as bad as they were I actually thought it would only be a
matter of time before somebody tried something like that.

I just never thought it would be
Ray. Losing him hurt. It hurt me more then the others and I would later realize
just how important of a person he was to the group and more specifically to me.
Sometimes you don’t realize that a person is the glue that holds everything
together until their gone and then you see it all start to fall apart. Your
world changes and there’s no going back to the way things were and sometimes
that hurts more then the loss itself.

I had seen the changes in Ray. I
had witnessed his declining mental state and the shift in his demeanor but I
still never believed that he would take his own life. I hoped that it wasn’t
something that I had said or something that I had done that was responsible for
his decision. I was horrified at the idea that when I asked him about planning
to leave and not taking me with him that it hurt him deeply or that he believed
that he was being left out as well and couldn’t take it. I could never be sure
but I really hope that our conversation didn’t have anything to do with his
decision. I regretted not doing more. I should have tried something, anything,
to help him get through whatever it was that he was going through. It was more
guilt to add to the growing pile.

I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t
believe that Ray would do such a thing. To Anne it didn’t make sense either and
I could see her point. But to be honest, nothing made sense anymore. She
started throwing around accusations and of course she started with Paul. When
he didn’t respond, she moved onto Derrick who wasn’t even on the roof with us
because he was still tied up downstairs. That was when I knew she wasn’t making
sense.

She accused Jacob and Amy next and
then she looked at Kerri and I and asked if Ray had turned as well and if we
had to kill him just like Trevor. My response was only two words but Kerri
needed to be held back from punching her in the face. Anne was breaking down
and somewhere in between her wild accusations she collapsed to her knees and
started to cry.

We had lost so many people in such
a short period of time and at first I thought that was responsible for Anne’s
breakdown. But as I listened to her cry I was quick to learn that Anne had
finally realized that if we couldn’t make it in what I would consider a pretty
safe environment, that her family that was still out there was most likely
dead. Ray’s death was apparently the trigger that caused her breakdown. We let
her cry and although I forgave her, I couldn’t speak for some of the others.

What followed was a quick funeral
service for both Ray and Trevor. Kerri and I both had a hard time when Anne
chose to say a few nice words about Trevor. But I couldn’t blame her, for all
she knew Trevor had turned into a Zed after heroically fighting to protect the
garage. So neither one of us said a word, we just let it go and tried to focus
on remembering Ray.

The rest of that day was difficult
for me. I tried to remember all of the conversations that Ray and I had shared
about politics and history and his opinions on the greatest disaster that the
human race had ever known. He was my friend. I knew that the group would miss
his logic and his common sense approach to solving our problems. But I knew I
would miss him most because I always trusted him.

I was angry, I was depressed and I
all I wanted to do was be alone. But Kerri had been pretty much attached to me
since Trevor had attacked her and as much as it might have frustrated me I
would have never said anything to her. I just couldn’t do that to her after
what she had gone through. In a way I understood it and for me it was nice to
have someone else that I could trust completely. Especially with all the possible
plotting and scheming going around.

I even used the opportunity to ask
her again about such plots or if she had heard anything making its way around
the group. Once again she denied hearing anything or knowing anything and that
time I really believed her. I should have just let it go. If I had been
thinking clearly I would have at least entertained the possibility that there
was nothing sinister behind what Paul had told me. He might have just heard
something and asked me about it. Chances were that there was no plot or plan to
leave and that the stress was just getting to some of the others including
myself.

But there was a part of me that
just couldn’t let it go. I wasn’t going to rest until I had answers. I couldn’t
just ignore the possibility that someone was using me or planning on abandoning
me here, even if I had no interest in leaving. That was the point when I
realized that the one person who could shed some light on this whole thing was
still sitting downstairs tied up in the entertainment department. If I could
get information out of anyone I though Derrick would be that person. Besides I
had something to offer him that I thought would be at least enticing enough to
get an honest answer out of him.

I was going to promise him his
freedom in exchange for whatever information he was willing to share. My guess
was that if Jacob and Amy were planning anything surely he would have been
involved and maybe he could tell me who else they had been talking too. So I
waited until Jacob and Amy left Derrick’s side and Kerri and I moved in and sat
down beside him.

I started by asking him why he
never tried to escape or why he never fought or complained about being tied up.
I mean he was a big guy and could have overpowered pretty much anyone of us if
he really wanted too. I was trying to establish a dialogue before I started
making any offers. But there was a part of me that really wanted to know why it
seemed like he was okay with being a prisoner. He answered me quickly and
honestly.

He understood what he had done was
wrong. His breakdown had put us all in danger and worst of all, it cost Tanya
her life. He knew there would be repercussions and felt he deserved to be
restrained. He knew we did what he had to do and assumed that once we saw that
he was no longer a threat that we would release him. But he wanted to earn that
trust back and he knew that it would take time.

That was the point in the
conversation that I realized that leveraging his freedom for information was
the wrong way to approach it. He wanted us to trust him again before we let him
go and with that I actually believed that he would offer up any information he
had without being promised anything in return. So I decided to just ask him
point blank. Unfortunately he didn’t have any answers, he hadn’t heard anything
of the sorts and despite Amy and Jacob wanting to leave, they wanted everyone
to go together. They understood the dangers out there and believed that we
would all have to work together to even stand a chance out there.

 
I believed what Derrick was saying, but
my heart dropped with what he had to say next. He looked at both of us and told
me that he knew what had happened with Trevor. My facial expression probably
confirmed the fact that I had been lying, but I tried to deny it all the same.
But he knew that Trevor hadn’t turned, he told me he had seen the blood on my
shirt when I walked by him to grab some clean clothes. Derrick had killed his
fair share of Zeds and he knew what the aftermath of that looked like. The
blood on my shirt didn’t look the same. The color was different and it didn’t
look as thick or sludge like as Zed blood usually did. I couldn’t believe that
I hadn’t thought about that and I was more surprised that nobody else had
caught on to it.

The two of us were terrified that
Derrick was going to tell the others. We couldn’t tell the truth after we had
lied. It would have made the two of look far guiltier then we already did. If
Derrick told the others about our lie there was no telling what would happen to
Kerri and I. People were already on edge and if they believed that we had
murdered Trevor in cold blood there was no telling what they would do to us. I
regretted our lie from the moment we decided to go with it and all of a sudden
there was a chance it was going to come back to haunt us.

But as it turns out Derrick would
be full of surprises. Our secret was safe with him or at least that was what he
promised us. He didn’t tell the others and somehow he had even pieced together
what had really happened. Derrick told us how he had seen the look in Trevor’s
eyes the days leading up to the attack and thought that something was wrong
with him. Once he heard Paul shouting about Kerri and Trevor not making it back
after turning on the lanterns he actually feared the worst. Then he looked at
me and told me that I had done what I needed to do.

That was when I untied Derrick.
Now it wasn’t because I wanted to buy his silence or to gain favor with him so
that he wouldn’t talk. It was because Derrick didn’t deserve to be a prisoner
any longer. He had paid for his crime and as far as I could tell he might have
been thinking more clearly then any of the rest of us.

He was hesitant at first. He
didn’t like the idea of being release without the consent of the entire group
but I assured him that it would be all right and that I could justify it to the
others if need be. Trust me, once they found out they weren’t happy. Paul was
outraged at first, but I told him how our numbers were down and that we needed
everyone available in case of another emergency. I sold him on how Derrick was
more useful to us free and moving around then tied up in a chair.