Rise (15 page)

I got out and walked back to the other vehicles, and told everyone what I had seen. We were all in agreement that the tanker was a priority. It would make life a
lot
easier if we didn’t keep needing to scavenge fuel. We looked and listened for a good half hour, and after seeing nothing moving we decided what to do. Jess would stay up on the ridge as our lookout/sniper, and Sanji, Darren and I would walk down towards the tanker. Jay and Amanda would come halfway with us with the Caravan, and then wait there should we need a hasty rescue. That left Sarah, Adam, and Christie up on the hill with Jess to watch the kids and Marty. I had the carbine and my Glock, Sanji was armed with the police shotgun, and Darren had the 30.-06. That left the rest of the guns with Jess and the ‘rescue squad’, whom I hoped we wouldn’t need.

My ankle was doing fine as we headed down the road towards the gas station. We didn’t talk, just used hand signals that Sanji and I had devised, based on his prior military and police work, to communicate. So we went along with me on the left, and Darren in the center. We were spread apart a bit, and we looked around whenever we stopped, just to be safe. As we got to the edge of the gas station lot we could see grass was making inroads, along with weeds in the cracks, and a birds nest was being built above the first gas pump, high up in the canopy. The cab of the tanker truck was shut, and Sanji walked over to it and tried the door. It was locked, and the cab was empty. It looked in decent shape though, no flat tires or leaks, windows all intact. We decided to look around for a key. The service station was locked as well, and nobody appeared to be inside, living or dead. We walked around the back cautiously, and tried the back door. It was locked too, so we returned to the front. There was a thick line of trees out back, so we didn’t think we’d have trouble staying out of sight of whatever was in the area. We decided to look around a bit more for a key hidden outside, and then break in if we couldn’t find one. After five minutes more of turning over rocks and looking on door sills we hadn’t found anything, but Darren beckoned us to a window and we peered in at what he pointed at. A large set of keys was hung on the wall behind the cashiers’ station, with a tag that clearly read ‘Front Door’. We broke in.

We did this with a roll of duct tape and a pry bar. We taped the glass panel on the front door, and then simply bashed it. It came out after three blows, and no glass fell to tinkle on the ground. The sound of the blows was muffled by the tape, and wasn’t that loud. We placed the glass on the ground and walked in through the doorframe. It smelled stale, like it had been locked up for months. We cleared all the rooms first, opening the freezers, bathrooms, employee change room, and office. It was all empty of inhabitants, though there were a few canned goods on the shelves that were probably okay to eat still. Sanji and Darren packed those up and I went to look behind the cashiers counter. I found a set of keys there, hung on a hook. They had a license plate written on a tag, and I was sure it was for the truck outside. We finished packing up the groceries, and took note of about a dozen liter bottles of engine oil as well as several four liter bottles of windscreen cleaner fluid. Mental note; grab all this stuff! Hell, there was a set of yellow jumper cables too. Sold!

We went outside again, and I took the keys around to the driver’s side. They fit the lock, but it wouldn’t turn. I suspected dirt and water had frozen up the lock, so I sent Darren in for some WD-40, and he sprayed a load of it into the key slot. We let it soak for a bit, and then I tried the key again. This time it turned after a second of resistance, and I heard the door lock pop open. Presto, we were in! I turned around to grin at the other two and saw the undead approaching.

There were three of them, and they were thirty feet away, staggering out of the trees. From the angle, nobody up the hill could see them. They started groaning as I brought up the carbine, and Darren and Sanji got out of my way as they saw my expression. One or two we could probably have handled quietly, but these three were too close. They were twenty feet away when I had aim on the lead one, a male about forty-five wearing a business suit. He was covered in blood, but it was old and black on his clothes. I pulled the trigger and three bullets entered his skull. Darren had his rifle up and aimed at the one nearest him, and Sanji was backpedaling to get room to fire when Darren pulled the trigger. His gun just clicked. No explosion of a bullet firing, just a quiet click. He tried to jack the failed round out, and the zombie grabbed the barrel of the gun and pulled it out of his hands. This one was a girl with short hair and a tattoo of a butterfly on her shoulder. She was wearing jeans and a black tank top. She stood there looking at the gun for a second then dropped it. I was already tracking her, and I heard Sanji firing over my shoulder. Darren backed away quickly, and the living dead girl moved to follow him. I fired another three rounds, these hitting her in the neck and shoulder. She fell over sideways, and I spun around to check on Sanji. He was just firing a second shot at the undead grandfather who had tried to eat him, and his shotgun blew the neck out completely. Head and body fell in different directions. I turned back around, and Darren was right there by me. The last zombie was getting up again, and Darren and I backed towards the front of the truck. She followed. Sanji held his fire, since from his angle he’d hit the fuel truck, and that would probably be very bad for all of us. So we all walked back, Darren taking the Glock when I handed it to him, and she followed. When she was clear of the front of the truck I raised the gun to sight again, but Jess beat me to it. There was a sound like distant thunder, but it came just after living dead girl’s head was passed through from left to right by high velocity lead. She crumpled to the pavement, and we all breathed a sigh of relief. I waved at Jess, and Darren went to retrieve his gun. It had misfired a round, and he jacked it out. He kept the Glock, since I told him not to trust the rifle until we checked it out.

Unfortunately, our gunfire had drastically shortened the amount of time we had to salvage things. More walking corpses would no doubt be arriving at any time, drawn by the multiple gunshots. I jumped into the cab and put the key in the starter, and turned. Nothing happened. Sanji told me to get out, and he climbed in. He did something other than just turn the key, and the engine rumbled. He did it again, and it rumbled twice more, then gave a titanic cough of black smoke, and caught! I told Darren to wave down the others, and I headed back in to grab the things I had seen earlier. That was my stupid mistake. I just got to the door when four more of these stinking atrocities came around the corner of the building. Darren shouted a warning at me, and I had to dive away from the first one as its torn fingers flailed at me. The other three were right there, so I rolled away and heard a gunshot. Must have been Darren; it sounded like a Glock. The one nearest me went down, and I got to my feet as fast as I could and ran for the side door of the truck. The Caravan was pulling up, and Darren ran for that as Jay leaned out the window with the other shotgun. He aimed behind me, and I dodged to the left as he fired. I have no idea if he hit anything, I just ran. I jumped up on the side of the truck and hit the panel with my palm. Sanji started the truck rolling, but slowly at first, and the three zombies were reaching for my legs as we rolled past. I grabbed the mirror frame and pulled my legs up, and rode by just over the rotten hands. One went under the back wheels, and I opened the door and climbed in as we pulled onto the road. I looked back and could see the other vehicles moving, and at least another two dozen undead coming out of the trees. Where were they all coming from? It didn’t matter. We left them behind us as we drove away. This was getting familiar. As a bonus, Sanji showed me the display for the tanker’s fuel load. It was full! We had a tanker with 18,000 liters of fuel in it. In my wildest dreams I had not expected this. Things were looking up.

Ah, to be clean again. I haven’t felt this good in weeks! We saw the turn-off for the Miette Hot Springs on the way down out of the Rockies, and decided to take the road up and see if it was still intact. To make a long story short, we arrived at the parking lot in our little convoy and found it utterly empty. The springs themselves fed into a pool located outside, and near to changing rooms and tourist shops meant to gouge as much money out of visiting travelers as possible. The group of us searched the complex, but that didn’t take long. It’s a small area, and there was nobody there at all. The main gates were locked, but that wasn’t much of a problem to people determined to get in. We got in by climbing over the fence and locating a key in the front office.

An hour later we had locked the vehicles, and all of us but Darren and Sarah were relaxing in the hot water of the main pool, shedding weeks’ worth of grime and sweat. After being together so long, none of us were really concerned that nobody had a bathing suit. Looks like modesty is going out the window for now, and we were just so relieved to swim and bathe. Sarah had lost the draw, and Darren had volunteered to stay out with her and keep watch. The pool was covered with a huge net when we arrived, and we rolled it back when we got in, but we’ve replaced it every time we leave, so as little debris gets in it as possible. Drainage appears to be a natural thing here, with no machinery to foul up.

We stayed the night in the tourist cottages just up the hill from the springs, and then the next night, and now we are getting ready to leave in the morning. We’re clean, we washed all our clothing in the side pools, and we’ve managed to find some more food here. Water hasn’t been a problem so far, due to the streams and creeks we’ve passed. Sarah still insists on purifying it, and I agree.

We are going to have to think seriously about raiding a grocery store in a town we pass through, if the risk is worth it, to restock on groceries. With this many people, we only have another week’s worth of food now. That might seem like a lot, but it really isn’t. We’ll be closing on Hinton soon, and the IGA or Safeway or whatever is there will be seeing a visit from us if there’s a chance of doing it safely.

Now I am going to go relax for what time we have left here in this beautiful place. Dinner needs to be made, and then I promised to play with the kids for a while. After that Sarah is going to teach us more about CPR.

This is Sarah. My brother Brian is hurt, and asked me to write this entry for him. I don’t know why though, since nobody will likely ever read it. He’s always saying that we’ll find help, other people, if we look far and hard enough. I think he’s wrong, but I don’t make a point of arguing with him about it.

Anyways, he wants me to write what happened when we reached Hinton. We drove the truck and cars down the hill there, and stopped a little bit back from the town itself. Jessica got her gun and looked through the scope at the town from a hill, and told us that it looked pretty good, but she could see a few of the animated casualties around. She sounded so serious talking about it. Like it was some big commando raid thing or something. I guess that’s why he likes her, she talks so tough all the time.

We (and by that I mean my brother and Jessica) decided that it was safe enough to try to get in and raid a grocery store we could see from the hilltop. I volunteered to stay with the kids again. The closer I get to those animated casualties the more I thought about disease and contamination and infection vectors. This seemed to be okay with Jessica, I think she likes having another grown-up woman to take care of her kid while she’s off with my brother playing soldier.

So my brother, Darren, Jay, and Sanji took a van and left us there on top of the hill, where we could see for a few kilometers in every direction. Jess went with them, leaving the kids and me with Martin, Amanda, and her no good boyfriend Adam. He doesn’t appreciate her at all. Amanda tries to be strong, but underneath it all she’s sad, misses her mom I think.
Anyways, we were up there for a while, and nothing came near us. That night we heard some shooting in the town, and I went to look through the binoculars, but it was too dark to see anything. What were they thinking crawling around down there in that disease trap in the dark anyways? We waited until morning and they didn’t come back, so Christie and I took the truck and drove closer to the town to another spot we’d decided on earlier. From there we watched the town for an hour. We saw plenty of the animated casualties, but not much else moving. Come lunchtime we returned to the others to wait. If they weren’t out of there by nightfall we were to assume they weren’t coming back and leave without them.

In typical male bravado fashion they showed up at the last minute. My brother had fallen down a set of stairs while some of the casualties were chasing him, and broke his left arm above the wrist. They all had to hole up in a business while trying to find a way out. They snuck out yesterday morning at dawn and made it back to the van, which they had stocked with enough groceries to last a while. They came back to us, and I set his wrist correctly (the field dressing Sanji put on was not well done, I think he needs a refresher in bone setting) so it wouldn’t heal crookedly. We drove back to a house we had spotted earlier, and stayed there for the night. Oh God I miss showers. And clean sheets. Sleeping in the vans is driving me nuts.

That’s all I have to write. He’ll write some more when he’s feeling better. Sarah out, 20:18hrs