Days With The Undead (Book 1) (6 page)

Given the situation and how hard I know it is for you all to make that choice to leave, I’m going to tell you about Max today. If this doesn’t convince you to get up and move south, there is no hope for you…

Max served in the Canadian Military from the time that he was old enough to enlist. He was never what you would call book smart, but he had the intelligence of a strategist and it served him well in Afghanistan. His skill with firearms made him a natural choice to be trained as a sniper. On assignment he was able to filter through the information he was being fed and assess the situation as it unfolded in front of him.

There were times that he went against orders but it always turned out that he made the correct choice. Most men would have been court-marshaled for such a disregard of the chain of command, but even his superiors began to trust his instincts in the field. It didn’t allow him to rise through the ranks, but he was happy to know that the lives that he took had little collateral damage.

Shortly after enlisting he married his high school sweetheart Melinda. The two were the perfect pair in public - always kind and loving to each other. Many of the other military wives looked to Max and wondered why their husbands couldn’t be more like him. He did anything for Melinda and vice versa. They wanted badly to start a family and while they tried to have children it just wasn’t in the cards for them. After repeated tests and specialists, it was determined that both of them were less than fertile.

It was a huge blow to the two of them but it seemed to affect Melinda more. Even though they both had a measure of responsibility, Melinda squarely took the blame upon herself. She spiraled into depression and there was nothing that Max could do to snap her out of it. With Max still on the active duty roister, they couldn’t adopt. It made getting out an important step for Max. He just wanted her to be happy. To smile again.

So he put in for early retirement and when it came through, December 23rd was Max’s last day overseas. He was coming home to spend Christmas with his wife after his final tour. He was excited to be able to spend time with her and to start the adoption process in the New Year. This time that would be spent between them was much needed as he had felt the strain that serving in the military had put on their relationship.

He was somewhere over the Atlantic when the accident occurred.

Melinda had been out at the mall finishing her Christmas shopping. As she was walking to her car through the parking lot, she was struck by an SUV. The Sport Utility Vehicle choose to flee the scene and as a result Melinda wasn’t found until another shopper noticed her crumpled body where it had landed between two parked cars, shopping bags still clenched tightly in her fists. While she survived, she never regained consciousness.

Max was told of the accident the moment that he landed. He was devastated. After he landed, he did nothing but sit next to her bedside and pray that she would return to him. It was very sad to go and visit Melinda, to witness what her condition was doing him.

The accident with Melinda hit us all hard. Steve, my husband, was her brother and I had always regarded Melinda as the sister I never had. It was heartbreaking to watch as the days turned to weeks, then months. We tried to remain optimistic but we all knew that hope was waning. It was even more difficult to understand and cope with because the police had no leads on who had done this to her.

Max moved Melinda home on May 15th and hired in-home care to look after all of her needs. The hope was that familiar surroundings might trigger something, helping her to break out of her own mind. It was a horrible time for the whole family. None of us really knew what to do or what to say to him. All we could do was pray and hope for the best.

Then came May 29th. That just might have been the hardest day of Max’s life. He knew that he couldn’t take her with him in her current condition. It was going to be rough enough for the rest of us on foot. Melinda needed the constant flow of oxygen from the ventilator in order to survive. But he also knew that if he left her like she was, it was only a matter of time before the Undead found her. And that thought chilled him to the bone.

We waited while Max made his decision; saw him agonizing over it for hours. Long hours while the city filled with the Undead. You could feel him willing her to wake up but we all knew that wasn’t going to happen.

In the end, he decided that the best course of action was to let her die peacefully by disconnecting her ventilator. He would then keep vigil on the chance that she returned. No one thought that would be the case, as she hadn’t come into contact with anyone infected but we just didn’t know for sure. It was something he did alone, choosing to say his final goodbye in private.

Our only answer to his vigil over her body was the single retort from his gun and the gut wrenching sobs from the other end of the house.

Within minutes he was out, composed and shatteringly vacant. Then we were gone. The moment not forgotten but strangely beyond us at this point.

A few days ago, Max quietly told me that he hadn’t waited for Melinda to die. He said that he couldn’t bear watching her body struggle as it asphyxiated. We had all assumed that she had come back, had become one of the Undead, but that wasn’t the case. And I’m not surprised that he shared his secret with me. I know the pain he had felt in that moment. Shooting someone you love is… difficult.

So please do not wait until it’s too late. Give yourself the chance to survive.

Day 9:

Making our way further south has been fairly easy the past day or so. Keeping ahead of the Undead has been easy as well. I don’t think we’ve even seen one since crossing the channel between Lake Huron and Lake St. Clair. Despite our lack of seeing the Undead, we know they are behind us, slowly making their way in their never-ending parody of a putrefied parade.

We’ve managed to make good time, skirting around the highly urban areas in Michigan State; trying to evade as much notice as possible. We are finally starting to see some movement of people but it’s nothing like what we witnessed coming out of Toronto and the surrounding suburbs.

We’ve been talking a lot about the mass exodus of Toronto in the past twelve hours. Talking about how we haven’t seen hardly a soul make it as far as we have. Wondering what route others may have taken. Then it occurs to you, did some just stop, thinking that they had gone far enough? Did others just give up moving forward and allow themselves to be absorbed into the masses of the Undead?

It’s heart wrenching to think that people could just lie down to accept a fate worse than death like that but in the face of something so pervasively evil who could blame them?

We decided we should attempt to make better time. There was just no way that we were going to get through the continental United States without some form of transportation, so we ‘borrowed’ a 4×4 truck from a long-term parking facility and hoped it would help get us as far south as possible. We figured that travelling in the truck would make us less conspicuous and a lot more protected against the Undead and the possibility of piracy.

It also gave us the huge advantage of moving at night, something we’d been unable to do on foot, so long as the roads remained clear ahead of us. Did I mention we might even be able to sleep a little more soundly? Sleep was something in short supply with us and being able to sleep two at a time in a protected space was like giving candy to a bunch of kids. It was like we’d won the lottery.

We were trying to figure out who would get the first sleep shift when Ben noticed something odd off to the west in a field next to the road. A few sheep were acting strangely and pressing themselves so forcefully up against their fencing that it looked like they were going to break through it.

Bob pulled the truck over as both Ben and I got out our binoculars and focused in on the sheep, noting the heavy breathing and panicked looks on their normally vacant faces. Movement caught my eye just to the left and I noticed that the rest of the field appeared to be littered with gory carcasses.

My first thought was of a predator like a coyote but the longer I stared the more my mind began to focus on the real culprit. My blood ran cold as I reached out and touched Ben’s arm. His only words were “My God…” The last few sheep were gone in mere minutes, consumed by the voracious appetites of the swarm of chipmunks.

Undead
fucking
chipmunks.

Forget the cute little furry friends you talk to in your backyard; these were die-hard, eat the flesh right off your bones critters. Once done with the sheep, the swarming mass of them started to head in our direction.

Bob put the car back into gear as Max and I made sure that all the vents and windows in the truck were closed tightly. The swarm moved quickly, much faster than any ‘human’ Undead we’d ever seen. They broke out onto the road behind us keeping a fairly good pace, Bob only being able to go so fast on the broken dirt road. Up ahead we could see a stop sign, a level meeting of two roads and we could see for a few kilometers in each direction. It was a safe bet that we would be able to run the stop sign and not risk being overrun by them.

In the distance coming from the west I noticed a yellow school bus approaching the intersection. Focusing through my binoculars I could see the open windows with the small hands hanging out to feel the wind. See the innocent, joyful faces of the children probably on their way home from school.

Hastily judging speed and distance, it was obvious that the bus was going to get to the intersection prior to our truck. Looking behind us I could see that the swarm was gaining ground on us with each passing moment.

We had a decision to make: blow through the stop sign and hope for the best, sacrificing those innocent kids to the horde, or slow down and let the mass of rodents overtake us, hoping that the school bus was not going to turn in our direction at the intersection.

There really was no discussion.

We all knew what we had to do.

While we all wanted to survive, to outlast the infection, we knew that we could not sacrifice a bus load of innocent children to do so. We had the means to possibly fight our way out of an encounter with the Undead chipmunks, but we knew that those children did not.

Our collective mind made up, Bob started to slow the truck down by applying the brake. Through the back window I could see the ravenous horde getting closer. It was a stunningly terrifying sight to see the solid, teeming mass of bloodied fur almost float toward us.

And then, we were still, the car having come to a complete stop.

We all unsheathed our hunting knives, getting ready for the moment that we would have to fight. Knowing in our minds that one bite would be enough to infect us.

Enough to turn one of us into one of them.

Within a few seconds, we could hear the sounds of tiny nails on the car, not unlike the sound of nails on a chalkboard. It started to get darker in the car as the swarm covered us. Through the windows you could see their little undead faces pressed up hard against the glass. Their beady little white eyes boring into you. It was truly terrifying, those moments where we stared into the faces of hell.

And then as quickly as they were upon us, they moved on. Bob had left the motor running on the truck effectively sealing off most of the engine cavity from them. That was probably what saved us, to be perfectly honest.

Or perhaps it was the fact that the bus had stopped just to the east of the intersection in order to let a little girl with blonde pigtails disembark.

The horde in its entirety was now moving toward that school bus and that little girl. All we could do was watch in absolute horror as the young girl noticed the swarm coming toward her. For a moment she was still, but then she realized what was coming at her was not a good thing. We watched those little pigtails flying out behind her as her too-big backpack shifted on her back as she ran. Ran for her young life.

The mass of undead chipmunks split. Some chased the girl, and the others aimed for the bus loaded with prey. The young girl was knocked down by the force of them climbing on her small frame; her terrified screams a warning signal to the driver of the bus who stopped to see what had happened.

Each of us willed the bus to start moving again but we knew that they were all going to die; the bus with all of its open windows became a feeding ground for them. The sound was terrible, heartbreaking, and sickening. Not wanting to watch any further, Bob accelerated hard and blew through the intersection.

We just drove. Further and further away. The sounds of the day relentlessly haunting us.

We had no idea that the infection could jump species. It was something that we had never even considered. How do you protect yourself against an Undead animal world? The discovery terrified us to the core of our very beings.

The game definitely changed at that point. It’s time for everyone to wake up and get moving before it’s too late. There will be no sleep for us again tonight. Not with this hanging over our heads.

Please pray for survival…

Day 10:

Reports have flooded the local affiliate news station about a bus of school children that had been attacked by some unknown assailant and had turned around to commit acts of unspeakable violence themselves. No one seems to have heard of the situation just to the north of them so no one is making any kind of connection.

I find it very odd that the news of the Undead has not reached this far south. Could the people of the United States be even more clueless than those in Canada in this instance?

The local communities are understandably shocked and horrified by what they assume is senseless violence. There are clips of concerned citizens all over the Internet lamenting the degree of violence and their concern for their own children.

No seems to know or understand what it was that committed the acts of atrocity and all of the authorities commented on the extreme mutilated states of the bodies that are continuing to walk around. They cannot believe that anything could survive such violence.