In Hiding: A Survivors Journal of the Great Outbreak (22 page)

I couldn’t believe it. What a
critical mistake he had made. He could have barricaded the door from the
inside. He didn’t need to shoot at Hal. He must have panicked and by doing that
he destroyed the one thing that could have kept Hal out.

I was amazed by what I was
watching. Hal had been right the entire time. Someone had been inside that
building and even more impressive was that he was the only one who seemed to
have figured it out. I actually thought that maybe I had been justified in
spending all that time watching him.

The man was desperately trying to
hold up the flimsy panel of glass as Hal continued to push forward. The man was
almost using the glass as a shield but I could see that it wasn’t going to hold
for long. The panel of glass was falling apart and despite the man’s best
efforts to keep it up right it collapsed to the ground between them. Even
though Hal had broken fingers and cut up arms he reached out and grabbed one of
the man’s arms. Unfortunately for him it was the arm that was holding the gun.
The man was in serious trouble but I didn’t know what to do.

The man punched Hal in the face
with his free hand but it had little effect. He tried to pull away, he tried to
choke Hal, he tried everything he possibly could to get away. Hal grabbed a
hold of the man’s other arm and pulled him in close, but the man was still able
to avoid Hal’s mouth. Hal was biting at the air around the man’s face and just
then he managed to point the gun at Hal’s midsection and fired off two more
shots. Neither of them had any affect. He tried to spin, he tried to wiggle
free from Hal’s grasp but he was getting nowhere and it was starting to look
like he was getting tired.

He kicked at Hal’s knees, but
wasn’t able to break loose. That was when I realized that I had been so caught
up in watching what was happening that I forgot that I was looking through the
scope of a hunting rifle. It had been in my hands the entire time and as I looked
and saw the expression of terror in the man’s face I knew that I had waited
long enough. Just then the man pulled one of his arms free and again tried
punching his way out. But judging by the weak blows he was delivering to Hal’s
chest I knew that he was out of energy. As he tried to grab Hal by the shirt
and pull him to the ground in a desperate attempt to get away he made a
mistake. His arm was in a bad place right between the two of them and that was
when I watched Hal bite down into the man’s forearm. I had waited too long.

That was when I shot him.

My shot was right on target, the
bullet passed right through his brain. Too late I know but I finally
 
pulled the trigger. I lowered the rifle
and took a deep breath, disgusted with myself and shocked at my lack of
response. I pulled out another cigarette, lit it, took a drag and then raised
the scope back up to my eye to take one last look.

I saw the body on the ground and
Hal knelt over him feasting on the man that I had just shot.

What I did was wrong and I’ll have
to live with it as well as many other things that I have done during this
outbreak. I know if I had shot Hal at any point prior, that man would still be
alive. I won’t try and explain it or justify it because I can’t.

That gunshot didn’t draw the usual
crowd. Only Sandy arrived and she didn’t arrive quickly. She simply asked if I
was okay and didn’t bother with any follow up questions. I guess they had grown
used to the gun going off while I was on watch. I just assumed that nobody cared
anymore but while Sandy and I were up on the roof having a smoke together
Shannon appeared at the top of the ladder and what she told us explained why
nobody seemed to give a damn about the gun shot.

She told us that Adam wanted to
show everybody something and that Cody was bringing Paul up to the roof to
distract him. She told us that we needed to get to the automotive department as
quickly as possible and if we saw Paul not to say anything.

Sandy and I both looked at each
other unsure of what to think. With Paul acting the way he had I didn’t know
what to expect and if Adam was plotting something I really didn’t want any part
of it. Paul might have been acting like a power hungry dictator and even though
I was still worried that he had manipulated me, in a way he was almost like a
friend. One of the very few that I still had left in this world.

Sandy and I climbed down the
ladder and started for the downstairs. We got about halfway down the hallway
when we ran into Paul and Cody. Cody was clever and asked about the gunshot and
why we had left our watch before he arrived. Sandy quickly snapped back that
she wasn’t feeling well and that I was helping her go and get something to help
with her nausea. Cody followed up with a joke about her drinking too much and
it all flowed so naturally that a part of me thought they had actually
rehearsed it. Whether they did or not, Paul seemed to buy it and we moved on
without any other questions in regards to the gunshot or where we were going.

So they continued upstairs and us
downstairs and we arrived at the automotive department just as Shannon had told
us too. We found the rest of the group gathered around the doorway. Standing
around that door brought back terrible memories of the last few times we had
all met outside that garage.

The first thing I noticed was the
look on Adam’s face. He looked like he had seen a ghost. Nobody else knew what
that secretive meeting was about but then he asked if anyone of us had seen the
guns. I quickly realized that I actually hadn’t but to be honest I hadn’t been
looking for them. I mean at that point I had even failed to notice that they
weren’t on the table in the back room anymore. Nobody had actually noticed
except for Adam. So he had started searching for them, believing that Paul had
hidden them somewhere sometime after the confrontation on the roof. It was
while he was searching for the guns that he found something in the garage that
he desperately needed to show us.

He explained that he was searching
through the garage a place he assumed was a reasonably good place to hide
weapons, and while in there he searched through the oil pits. That was where he
found it. We entered the garage and I remember the stench being so overpowering
that I almost got sick. It was like a wall hitting you in the face and it was
putrid. The stink of rotting corpses and lingering gun smoke was the only thing
I could focus on even as Adam started pointing into the closest oil pit. Nobody
understood what he was showing us because all we could see was a mass grave.

That was when Adam reached down
and pushed the legs of a corpse off to the side and showed us a body that
looked somewhat familiar. It was difficult to see what it was we were looking
at because we were looking at the back of a head. That was until Shannon
noticed exactly what it was that Adam had found. When the words came out of her
mouth my jaw dropped and I found myself in a state of disbelief.

It was Anne.

She was lying face down in the oil
pit amongst the many corpses and one of the Zeds had been pulled over top of
half her body in what must have been an attempt to keep her concealed. She had
a large wound on the back of her head, but the dried blood that surrounded it
was closer to human blood then the brownish sludge that seemed to be consistent
with the Zeds. It was at that moment that it all started to sink in, that I
thought I had pieced it all together. I remembered Paul’s strange behavior
after Anne’s disappearance, the bizarre conversation that the two of us had,
and why everything escalated so quickly on that roof with Adam.

Could Paul have really killed
Anne? Adam had drawn a similar conclusion and was a lot quicker to share it
with the others then I was. We had seen him and Anne arguing on several
occasions and the last fight they had was more explosive then they usually
were. It made sense, there was no denying that and it was obvious now that Anne
hadn’t taken her own life. Someone had killed her and then tried to hide her
body. But there were other questions that needed to be answered and Kerri
wasn’t afraid to ask them.

She wanted to know how Adam had
found Anne's body even thought it had been covered up like that. She wanted to
know why it was that he was looking around in the garage, let alone the oil
pits. Whether he was searching for the guns or not why did he wait so long to
tell the rest of us. Why did he take it upon himself to search and why all of
this seemed to implicate Paul so perfectly just after he and Adam had fought.
The fact that the questions were even asked goes to show you the level of trust
that we had with one another. But there was something suspicious about the
whole thing and I could tell that Adam was holding something back or wasn’t
being completely honest about one thing or another.

That was when Adam was forced to
tell us what he had been really looking for in that oil pit. He had originally
started searching for the guns just like he had said, he swore that he was, and
that he hadn’t told anybody because he was waiting for an opportunity to talk
about it with Paul out of earshot. But while in the garage he started thinking
about what would happen if Paul found out about what he knew. He was concerned
that if he couldn’t find the weapons and if Paul still had his handgun that
Paul could do whatever he wanted too and he was worried that he would be number
one on the hit list. That was when he decided to search the pockets of the dead
in the oil pits. He had hoped to find car keys, hopefully keys belonging to a
near bye vehicle.

He was trying to find a way out.
He admitted that he wanted to save himself and that he was thinking about how
he could get to a car and make a break for the coast on his own. I had my
doubts about what Adam was telling us but I also couldn’t really find a reason
for Adam to harm Anne. Truth is the only person that I could actually picture
killing her was Paul. Even though some of what Adam said was a little
questionable there was nothing there that made me think that he was responsible
for her death in anyway.

What I found more troubling was
how quickly we all convicted Paul. We never gave him the benefit of the doubt
that we afforded Adam or would have for Kerri or Shannon or anyone else for
that matter. What followed was a long discussion on what to do about him. He was
the only one with a gun. We assumed that he had hidden the other guns, so he
was the only one who knew where they were. If we confronted him or accused him
directly the outcome was fairly obvious. We needed to lull him into a false
sense of security and when the moment was right we would have to restrain him.
Once we had his gun we could ask him whatever we had too and hopefully get the
answers we needed.

We came up with a simple plan and
a part of me felt like a slime ball for going along with it. But if he really
was responsible for Anne’s death then I guess I really didn’t know Paul as well
as I thought I had. Either way, I went along with it and played my part. We
were all at the front of the store going about our business and pretending that
we were busy listening to the radio when Paul came walking up to us. Derrick
and Sandy were drinking a few beers and sitting in a couple of camping chairs.
They looked like they did on most afternoons while Kerri and I stood by a
couple of cash registers talking about a whole lot of nothing. Derrick offered
me a beer and tossed one over and then followed that up by asking Paul if he
wanted one. Paul agreed and Derrick threw one to him as well.

We all sat there drinking and
talking for what seemed like forever until Paul finally sat down in one of
camping chairs that had conveniently been left empty. The longer we waited the
more awkward the whole situation started to become as if everyone was waiting
for some kind of a cue. I was starting to think that our opportunity would
never come because as relaxed as Paul appeared I could tell that he was still
somewhat guarded.

But as I was turned away talking
to Kerri I heard Derrick shout. That was when I saw Cody crack Paul on the back
of the head with the stock of the hunting rifle that had been left on the roof.
It was the one gun that hadn’t been hidden. Paul’s head snapped forward on
impact and he went unconscious almost immediately. Derrick ran over and grabbed
Paul’s gun from out of the waist of his pants and Adam and Jacob quickly tied
him up with the same rope that had been used to restrain Derrick.

I
didn’t even know that Cody was aware of the plan but I guess he had come up
with his own. Adam had shown him what he had found earlier, Cody had heard
about the missing guns, and it was one of the reasons he decided to help
distract Paul while Adam showed the rest of us. Cody just decided to take it
upon himself to do something about it and I couldn’t argue with it because it
worked. So with Paul tied up and disarmed we started to think about our next
move.

The
discussions turned from what to do with Paul to how to get out of the building.
All of a sudden the movement to leave for the coast was in full swing and I
found myself alone in the fight to stay. But as much I was against leaving and
risking it all for a small chance of finding something special I understood
that there was no stopping the others from going anymore. It was go with them
or stay by myself and believe me when I tell you that I debated it for sometime.