Days With The Undead (Book 1) (20 page)
Once the boats were loaded, they set off, leaving the rest of us to watch our backs and their progress. They made fairly good time crossing but there seemed to be an issue with the door in the hull not wanting to open. We really hoped that it was not going to take too long since no one really knew how much more time we had left to wait. Surely the Undead would be coming into Waskaganish at any moment?
The sound of a motorbike in the distance broke the silence around us. Looking up through the center of the town, we could see it speeding toward us, carrying a pair of young women. They stopped short, maybe twenty-five meters from us and hurriedly got off of the bike.
Looking relieved to see they hadn’t missed the boat, they introduced themselves. Kate and Debra, both from New Brunswick. They let us know that the Undead were maybe thirty minutes outside of town, maybe even less. Not the best of news considering that the ship had hit a bit of a snag.
Ben took Kate and Debra to the shoreline while everyone else went into battle mode. Vehicles were moved and put into fallback lines. All the firearms that we had were checked to make sure that they were loaded and that spare ammunition was handy. Hand to hand combat weapons were collected and distributed, just in case the ammo didn’t last. We were either going to get off this shoreline or we would die trying.
A grinding noise across the water signaled that the door in the hull was finally opening. Thank God! Not a moment too soon. Maybe there would be enough time to get everyone offloaded from the life boats and then get the life boats back to shore. Once the rest of us were on the water, it wouldn’t matter. We would be safe. Ben came back to say that both Debra and Kate had been checked out and were free from infection. Excellent, one more thing we didn’t have to deal with.
It took fifteen long minutes to get all one hundred survivors onto the cruise ship and another ten long minutes for the boats to get back to shore. Our minds were so focused at that point in getting off of land that we all seemed to forget about the real threat.
The Undead.
Within minutes they had worked their way silently through the maze of vehicles and now they were only a few dozen feet from us. There was no way that we could all get into the life boats and get safely into the water now. That was when the panic set in.
Suddenly people were just shooting wildly at them, not lining up shots and wasting ammo. They were also not making sure that no one else was standing in front of them. We lost four living people from friendly fire in the space of a minute and a half.
We all just wanted to scream some sense into these people. Tell them to remember all of the things they had learned along the way. Instead, the three of us just formed a line and started to systematically take the Undead down one by one. Pretty soon, order started to return as the others joined our line.
The shooting must have continued for twenty minutes or more, not continuous of course, but we stood there just taking them out as they kept faltering towards us. Once we were convinced that there was a break in the Undead assault, we put our minds back to getting into the life boats and setting sail.
Everyone had just about made it into the life boats and there was only one that had yet to shove off from shore. A laptop bag hit the floor of the boat with strict instructions that everyone out there has to know. Her final act of saving us all was to push the life boat into the water and wave good-bye.
My name is Max, and this is her story…
Julie grew up in a small town in rural Ontario and had dreams of becoming someone, someday. She studied hard in school and as a result she was one of the youngest women to ever be employed by the Centre of Forensic Sciences as a Pathologist. This was where she met the man of her dreams, a Police Detective by the name of Steve who also just happened to be my brother-in-law. They married within a year after meeting and their life together was idyllic.
Thirty one days ago, the day that Patient Zero came back from the dead, Steve was dispatched along with all other police personnel to try to help detain the growing number of Undead in the city. As a result, he was attacked and bitten. His commanding officer sent him home for the day before they had a real understanding of what they were up against. This was where he ended up dying and as the infected tend to do, he came back to Unlife.
Unknowingly, Julie had returned from a morgue full of restrained Undead corpses to a house containing a single unrestrained Undead Steve. She had no weapon to protect herself and no warning that he was even there.
We found her later that day, sitting in her living room next to Steve’s body, the bar from a towel rack through where his left eye socket should have been. She was a mess but she was alive. We got her changed and set off on the journey you’ve all been reading about. You all know the kind of woman that she is.
Well, that she
was
.
Once we got to Waskaganish, everyone seemed to accept instantly that she was in charge. Whether or not she realized it, people instinctively followed her.
In the end, we all should have been more careful. We should have watched more closely. Had we paid more attention she would have still been here with us. She was attacked from behind, a member of the Undead army sinking its teeth into her shoulder.
Julie had been infected and there was nothing that we could do. She took her gun and tossed her laptop to me as she made me promise to tell you all what happened.
She saved us all and we all want you to remember her.
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Look out for Book Two of ‘Days With The Undead’ coming early 2013.
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