Rise (12 page)

Jess called down that we had contact with them, and then returned to her scope. I was watching as Country Fan handed the Goth Girl the binoculars, and she waved when she saw us too, and then started jumping about and laughing. Country Fan said something to her and started towards the access hatch, and climbed down while Goth Girl kept waving and smiling. A few minutes later people started climbing onto the roof, and Country Fan had a whiteboard and a few markers with him. Within a minute there were seven people on the roof, three women and four men. They all looked excited to see us, and waved and laughed. Country Fan wrote something on the sign and held it up. I couldn’t make it out, but Jess could. It said “We are happy to see you!” He held it there until we waved again, then took it down and wrote “One flash = YES, Two flashes = NO”, and I flashed once to show I understood. He then wrote “Are there only two of you?”

NO.

“
How many are you?” I flashed five times. There was some discussion as Goth Girl relayed my answer.

“Do you have vehicles?” YES.

“Do you have a CB radio?” YES. They had a radio! This would make things so much easier. “Channel 5 in 5 minutes? Can we talk?” YES.

We rushed down, calling to Sarah to get on Channel Five right away. She ran for the van and turned the radio on, and Darren grabbed Michael and brought him along too. Jess and I made it there in a few minutes, and as we arrived we heard a man saying hello.

We talked to them for about fifteen minutes. There were seven of them, and they’d been inside the store for forty-three days. They had all ended up there at roughly the same time, and two armoured car guards had blocked the doors before a crowd of a few hundred zombies had arrived. They were Marty (whom I called Country Fan earlier) and his daughter Amanda (aka Goth Girl. Guess that makes Marty older than I thought at first), her boyfriend Adam and his cousin Christie, a little girl named Megan (about 8, and no one knew where her parents were), and Jay and Sanji Singh, brothers from Vancouver. Marty was the oldest one there. There had been nine of them, but the two armoured car security guards had left to try to find help fifteen days ago, and hadn’t been seen since. They had a rifle and a handgun, several baseball bats, and a machete between them, and that was it. The vehicles outside were all either broken down or out of gas or surrounded by walking dead, so were useless. They had plenty of food and water, and up until eight days ago the power had been on so they’d had perishables (wisely eating them first). They were secure inside, but knew they couldn’t last there, and the sheer weight of the undead would find a way in eventually. We introduced ourselves, told our story briefly, and told them our plan to get them out. There were risks involved, and getting enough transportation for all of us was going to be problematic. Sure, there were tons of cars around, but finding gas and keys and equipment was going to be a major undertaking for us. They said they could hold out long enough to let us do that, and we agreed that the situation they were in was bad. We signed off with the promise to start looking for vehicles to carry everyone, and to explore the route through the storm sewers. They would prepare a grocery list we called in, and we’d try to get as much food and supplies out as we could. Each person would carry a pack with as much dehydrated or packaged foods as they could, and we’d assume only one trip, one way. After we got to the vehicles we’d try to get as much distance between us and the swarm as we could. We could decide where to go after we had them all out.

After we signed off, we all talked about the chances we had of pulling this off. We all wanted to try, since this was the first group of any size any of us had seen since the convoy went by in Rogers Pass. That seems like ages ago now. We have all decided to get some sleep now, and we’ll start looking for vehicles in the morning. I have first watch.

I dreamed last night that I was running through fields of waist-high grass and thistles, and that I was being chased. I knew in the dream that if I stopped and turned around
they
would get me. I was terrified, even though it was a bright sunny day, with fluffy clouds and a bright blue sky. I had this feeling that behind me there were storm clouds, just waiting to wash over me, and in the shadow of those clouds were thousands and thousands of the walking dead. I was having trouble breathing, and I could hear a rumbling, like distant thunder, that came and went like a tide rolling in and out. I woke up with Jess snoring beside me, Sparkle purring on my chest, and bright sunlight streaming onto my face.

God, I
hate
dreams like that…

We got up late, Jess and I, and found everyone else awake and waiting for us. After a quick breakfast and a wash we went looking for new cars or trucks to salvage. The first five we thought might be good turned out either to not start, or have hidden problems like flat tires or no fuel. The sixth, a Dodge Caravan, started easily and had ¾ of a tank in it. We went through it and stripped out the junk we didn’t need, and Sarah took the driver’s seat with Darren along to ride shotgun. We wanted another one just to be safe, so we kept looking. By afternoon we found a Ford F350 that turned over on the second try, had ¼ of a tank of gas, and a box of ammo in the glove box that fits the hunting rifle, so we have another 50 rounds for the 30.-06, for a total of about 285. If I could find some more ammo for this Glock I’d be really happy. I’m down to 4 rounds.

We drove back to the house we had been at before, slow and careful. Jess drove the Odyssey, I drove the F350, and Sarah took the Caravan. We were spread kind of thin between three vehicles, but we were going to be leaving two of them at a storm sewer exit. We had a late lunch, and then we siphoned the tanks of the farm truck outside into the F350, and I used the last of the case of motor oil we had to change the oil on the Caravan and Ford. The Bronco we salvaged the other day was leaking transmission fluid all over the place this morning, so we drained its tank and left it, moving the supplies from it to the other vehicles. Looking around this farm, Darren found a generator in a shed, and several lanterns in the barn. The generator would make too much noise to use, but the lanterns could come in handy.

We are all going to go and scout out the storm sewer entrances to the south of the complex. It could take a while since we have to go around the swarm and find a safe place to operate from. We are likely going to do the same as last time, but Jess and I will go in daylight this time, and hopefully not be out overnight again.

The storm sewers may pose a few problems. Access will be the biggest one, and then we have to deal with claustrophobia. We parked the van yesterday in a residential area of spread out houses and fields, where some construction appeared to have been going on before the start of this nightmare. We chose this area specifically because the houses were probably uninhabited at the time, it was fairly close to the shops without being in sight of the horde, and the storm sewer was unburied. We managed to avoid the few walking dead we saw on the way here, but had a scary moment once we arrived. The area wasn’t entirely abandoned. We parked behind a construction trailer sitting in an overgrown field, next to a large pile of concrete pipes (presumably the pieces of the sewer) and as we were getting out we saw something move near the pipe sections. Sarah and I cautiously went to check it out, and we found a re-animated construction worker pinned beneath one of the sections. He was wearing a safety vest, and a hardhat lay nearby. A section had fallen loose and crushed his legs, so he couldn’t move, and he had several old bite marks on his arms and neck. He was flailing at us and moving his mouth, but there was no way he could reach us. From the look of the weeds and debris, he had been here since this started, about two months or so. Sarah went back to the van for the fire axe, and handed it to me. I slung the carbine and stepped closer to this unfortunate, so I was standing just out of reach of his arms. He was lifting his torso off the ground with one arm, and reaching to me with the other. I lifted the axe and brought the blade down on the top of the skull hard, and that was that. I cleaned the axe with some water and bleach while the others checked the area, and then we got down to business.

The sewer access here was blocked by a safety gate designed to keep animals and small kids out of it while it was being laid in. There was a padlock on it, and rather than search for keys we used a pry bar to snap it off. The sewer pipe had maybe an inch of water in it, and the pipe itself was about four feet across on the inside, so it would be dark and cramped and wet in there. We had the maps of the mall area, and the sewer grid was shown on one page. It appeared that this area we were in was connected, but there were several turns and rises between here and there. Darren and I took some flashlights and went in a ways. It was blacker than night in there, rocks of various sizes were littering the floor, and we could hear a faint trickle of water, but other than that it seemed doable. We got to the first turn and found the first problem. There was a pile of tree limbs blocking the way we needed to go. If it was too deep, it would be impossible to clear out. After poking and prodding the pile for a while we got a few branches out, but the great mass was stuck. We went back and told Sarah what we’d found, and decided on a plan of action. After a quick lunch I took the axe, a larger flashlight and spare batteries, and returned with Sarah this time. It took an hour of hard work in the dark, hacking the branches and mud apart, until between us we finally cleared the blockage. When it finally came loose a lot of water rushed out with it, and we both got soaked to the skin very quickly. We left it to drain, and went out the way we had come in to dry off.

After we went outside, we told the others what we’d found, and got changed into dry clothing. We spent a little while talking to Marty on the radio, getting things ready on his end. His group was preparing to travel, sorting what they’d bring and leave behind. There were quite a lot of useful things in there, so the list of potential supplies had grown quickly. We had to get it pared down again or nobody would be able to move. Preserved and dried foods were top on the list, along with water, first aid supplies, personal hygiene items, spare batteries and clothing. I asked Marty to bring along a few boxes of condoms too, and I think I did it with a straight face.

By that time it was mid-afternoon. We decided on one more trip into the sewer to plot the route. This time it was Darren and I again. We brought along the Glock, carbine, and 30-.06, backpacks with extra flashlights and batteries, a short rope and gloves, and the fire axe. We each took a large water bottle and some food, but were not planning to be in there too late. We set off around 4:30 and made good time for the first hour or so. We passed manhole covers, and took the opportunity to stand upright again for a few seconds each time. The water level was lower now, only a few inches, but it was a constant stream. Often we had to step around boulders, clumps of tree branches, and once a dead dog, though I have no idea how it could have gotten down there. We pulled the dog carcass to a manhole, since it was wider there, and stuffed it to the side. When we paused for a breather around 5:45 at another manhole ladder, we could hear the moans and croaks of the undead above us. We must have been nearby to the complex. We had to actually climb up some of the ladders, only a few feet each time, but it added up. Darren and I stood there looking at each other in the dim light of a flashlight, listening to the sounds, and then quietly we turned into the passage and kept going.

Another twenty minutes brought us to the end. We’d had a really easy time of it so far, and I was relieved. There was a ladder leading up, and according to the prints it should have led us directly into the mechanical room of the complex. We looked up, and there was daylight coming in from around the hatch, a thin line of bright sky. That wasn’t right. It should have been indoors. I climbed up cautiously, and could see though a small gap at one edge of the cover that it was outside. From underneath, it was a large hinged cover that rested on a metal framework in the concrete. I could actually see outside, but the view was not so good. All I could see was a grey metal pipe, a concrete wall, and the edge of a chain link fence off to the right. I could hear the swarm well enough though, and smell them, even if I couldn’t see them. I climbed back down as quietly as I could and told Darren what I had found. This was going to be harder than we had first thought.

We discussed it and decided to make our way back to the construction end of the sewer, and the ladies were very relieved when we emerged, filthy and wet, from the pipe. That was around 7:15, and we had a dinner and decided to move into one of the more completed houses for shelter. We were just doing that when we heard and saw more aircraft go over. They were again quite high up, and when we looked we could see it was a Hercules or something that size, plus two more fighter escorts. The new thing was that they were
going the other way this time,
back the way they had come from when we had saw them go over days ago. We watched until they were out of sight and earshot, then went and cleared the house. It was utterly empty, and we all bedded down on sleeping bags and blankets in the main room. I took first watch.

This morning we called Marty and talked about what we saw yesterday. He sent Adam and Sanji to have a look over the edge at the back and see if they could find what I had described. They did. There was good news and bad news. The good news was that they could see the cover plate out the back of the building, surrounded by a fence and undisturbed, and he thought they had the padlock key. The bad news was that the fifteen feet between the back door of the store and the gate on the fence was home to about thirty or forty of the zombies, and several hundred more were within easy pursuit distance if someone came out that way. My guess was that the plans had changed between this version of the prints and what had been built. Those fifteen feet might as well have been fifteen kilometers.