The night is clear, the moon is full and my senses are alert. I’m the best shot our small group, maybe three dozen or so, has. The only one trained to be patient and choose my shots; from up here there is no rush, no need to panic and waste a round on the snap of twigs or a dog skirting the shadows. Zombies move too slowly to get the shakes over, sure they are a bit quicker when fresh, but as long as I keep my head screwed down tightly to my shoulders, I can unscrew theirs no problem.

It is mid April, all the snow is gone from this southern Canadian town. Weird winter this year, didn’t snow until mid December, froze to minus 30 C for seven weeks, then one day it rained and all the snow melted. February on has been mild but wet. Summer is coming and the others are worried sick.

I came here before the snow fell with Finny; she and have always been together. She keeps me going. She and I tried to tell them that we can tend a large garden in the open square in the centre of this old school. Hell if we are ambitious enough we could fence off the soccer field and try to raise livestock. Shouldn’t be that hard, this is a rural town, small population, the school we have fortified and now live in is on the outskirts of it and we’ve stock piled enough canned and dried food to last another several months.

I shook my head, and sucked back the last of the sugar in the straw. The sour powder hits my tongue and I am jolted back to reality. Always had a vice for pixie sticks, found that they are invaluable when dozing off. I scanned the parking lot in front of me and sighed. A single zombie was slowly lurching its way towards the school. I went prone and lined it up in the reticle of the scope on my C7-A1. In the 4X moonlit zoom, the dead beast turned out to be a female, too decayed for me to recognize, she was naked and walking with an awkward gait due to the lower half of her right femur protruding up out of her thigh and causing the leg to have the stability of Jello. Her breasts were deflated and sagged, her ribs were betraying her decomposition and a few of them on the right side were snapped and had torn through the skin.

I focussed my sight on her head and noticed she was missing the right half of her jaw. I raised an eyebrow and figured she had maybe been hit hard by something on that side. My mind started to wander, what was her story, who had she been before all this shit? Maybe a teacher, maybe a teller at the bank, maybe she was just a tourist or from the- aw fuck it. “Click-Thunk- BANG!”

I love hearing the mechanism engage and the hammer hit the firing pin, milli-seconds before the round explodes out of the chamber and down the barrel. The muzzle flash was a brilliant mix of white, yellow and red. A moment later, ‘shick!’ and the top of her head was ripped apart. I could almost feel the steel round tumbling through the insides of her rotten mind, ripping her useless grey matter to pieces as it turned to shrapnel and left her skull through the back side.

Her body crumpled to the pavement and the moment was lost. Killing is so easy when the victim hasn’t left anything behind. Does anybody still care about them? No. Tomorrow I won’t have to go to her husband and explain, “hey Bob, sorry I blew the shit out of the back of Marys skull last night, just doin’ my job see.”

The ladder from the courtyard to the roof rattled and I heard footsteps in the gravel. “Got another one did ya? Good riddance to the scum I say.” Exhibit A. No one cares. They aren’t even people anymore. Mindless automatons, might as well be robotic dummies used for target practice.

“Anything to keep the hours entertaining Stace.” Stacey was older than me, he was divorced with two kids here at the school with him. She was probably one of them – hell I could have just ended her a moment ago. He was nice enough, balding and didn’t panic much. I think it’s because his kids are still young and still need him to be strong. I can admire that. Times like these, when the shit goes down you can only look out for number one, and who ever is closest. If the shit ever went sour here, I would die trying to get Finny to safety.

“Well, you woke the kids, though I guess by now they understand what just happened.”

“I reckon so,” I glanced east, the sky was getting lighter there, “they need to get up soon anyway.” It was true, the younger ones sleep in too much, I am only twenty but know the value of getting up early, or sometimes not sleeping at all. My mind works best when I don’t sleep, I think the temporary insanity insomnia gives me allows my thoughts some licence.

Of course where there is one, there are more. Two more zombies staggered out of the alley across the street. Two males, one was obviously older, and the other must have been around my age. “Dibs grampa.” I told him, I was already prone and had my rifle trained on the old husk of a senior. Stacey grunted and lay down next to me, his hunting rifle steadying on the younger figure.

I think the old man must have worn dentures in life, or pre-death. He didn’t have the tell-tale chewed off lips most of the zombies have, and upon closer inspection, he didn’t have any teeth at all. Half of his face way hanging off in a ghastly flap from his left cheek up. The eye socket was empty and hollow. I tightened my finger on the trigger, just before I fired, the old man moaned, long and rattling. I have always wondered where that sound comes from, with their vocal cords probably being too rotten to make any noise at all.

“Fuck my life.” I fired and took the octogenarians head off. Stacy followed my lead and took out the younger one. The moan would lure others though. The three we had killed already were two hundred metres away, a good distance away for slow shots.

I could see them begin to wander down the street from the left and the right, a group children came out of the elementary school a few blocks away. As I began to sight in the first small dead and deformed monster, I heard the worst sound of my life. The front steel doors to the school right below us opened and a woman was calling out; “Maria! Maria, my baby come here! Hurry sweety, Mummies here!”

“What the fuck is she doing?” Stacey bellowed. He stood quickly and ran to the ladder.

“Fuck my life.” I peered over the edge, the mother was Mrs. Jenson. She is a frail single mom who lost her entire family during the outbreak. She’d apparently lost her mind to. “Hey! Close the fuckin door!” I yelled. She ignored me.

I looked back to the massing horde, seventy-five metres out. “Close the door and get inside! NOW!” One came out of the forest to our right. It was followed by a dozen more, “Shit.” I shot the first one, and then the second. A group was coming around from the far left side of the building now as well. I could hear Stacey trying to get the woman back in, I could also hear Finny’s voice telling her to be reasonable. I dropped three more. The horde from the streets was now only thirty metres away. Mrs. Jenson broke away from Stacey and Finny. She bolted into the parking lot and picked up the child I was about to shoot, who immediately bit into the woman’s throat and ripped it out. Her scream was cut short and ended in a bloody gurgle. I aimed and placed a round in Mrs. Jenson immediately, then into Maria.

Below me, Stacy was struggling with the door. Half a dozen were swarmed around it, trying to pull it open, I set my fire selection lever to ‘A’, and opened up with the barrel pointed down. “RAT-TAT-TAT.” It wasn’t enough however. I killed most of them, but the door was open anyhow, and the larger group of zombies had now joined the struggle at the door. I left the roof and slid down the ladder. I hate ladders, but didn’t care about this one. I could see the front hallway filling up with undead as soon as I hit the ground. I sprinted as fast as I could through the courtyard to the rear of the school. Finny was there, holding the door open for me.

“C’mon! Hurry!” she said to me.

“Fuck that noise.” I grabbed her hand and pulled her back to the ladder. Stacey and his kids were right behind us. “Get to the roof, I’ll keep them back. Stacey, watch my ass when you get up there!” Finny helped the children up and went up herself. Another survivor tried to make it into the courtyard to us, but was grabbed and pulled screaming back into the building. I levelled my rifle to my eye and thumbed the fire selection back to ‘R’. And began placing single shot kills within the oncoming horde. Stacey called for me to climb, so I did.

Once on the roof again, Stacey and I hauled the ladder up and watched as the undead spilled into the courtyard. The screams of the other survivors could be heard over the random gunfire and unceasing moans of death. The sun was peeking down the valley now. I peered over the edge. There were five milling around in the parking lot. The rest had forced their way into the school.

“Cover me.” I moved the ladder to the side and lowered it in front of the door. I stepped over the edge, but a tender hand held me back. Finny’s beautiful green eyes and flowing blonde hair almost stopped my heart in the morning light.

“Don’t go.” her voice was gold.

“I have to, I’ll be alright. Stacey.” I turned to him, “Take care of them.” I pointed to the stragglers in the parking lot.

Once on the ground I wasted no time. I slammed the heavy door shut and wedged my crowbar between the handles. Stacey’s rifle rattled off seven rounds; he must be nervous. I would be out a handy tool, but I also didn’t have to deal with the zombies. We had permanently sealed off the other doors as a precaution, we had always planned to escape through the court yard, onto the roof and lock the undead in the building.

The others followed me down the ladder and I lead them into the forest. We had supply stashes placed in a number of locations in the underbrush so we would be fine for a while. As we wandered through the forest, I didn’t know where we were going to go, or how we were going to survive. I knew all along that the fortress we made out of a school couldn’t last forever. But it figures, someone had to go mad enough to open the doors during an attack. She had been pushed so far over the edge and lost so much, that when she saw her daughter again, even dead and rotten as she was, she needed to go to her, and in turn, cost a great many their lives. Stupid people.

I don’t know where you are or if I’ll ever see you again. The events of today have shocked and confused the world, but they’ve shocked and confused me even more. I’m still not sure if any of this is real, but you two are gone, so it must be. If I can never find you again, then I made a terrible, selfish mistake letting—no, forcing—our family to be separated. If you are safe, I hope you won’t read this until you’re eighteen or older. What happened today was terrible. That much is obvious even to young kids like you. For our family, though, it was doubly terrible, which you probably don’t know about. I don’t know how to explain it to you, or even if I should explain it. I hope to see you both someday soon, but I won’t tell you about it then. I’ll let you read this when the time is right . . . if the time is ever right again.

*

It was one of those fine early summer mornings. The winter rains had ended and the breeze brought with it mild temperatures and the faint scent of the Pacific. To Melinda, that breeze, that scent carried with it the calm pink hue of fresh salmon. The kids were still upstairs asleep. Robert, as usual, was out in the mud feeding his pigs. She cupped her large earthenware mug of Darjeeling with both palms to ward off the morning cool.

Every morning, she started her day at the CBC News homepage. This calmed her and allowed her to get the bad stuff done with early so the rest of the day would be smooth sailing. The headlines usually involved suicide bombers in the Middle East, huge icebergs floating down the Pacific coast from Alaska, East Side gang violence, missing prostitutes, or cross-boarder trade disputes. None of those stories made the headlines that morning.

“Rob!” she yelled out the kitchen window. “Rob! Come in here, quick!”

“Where’s the fire? Where’s the fire?”

“Just get your ass in here, now!”

“Awright, awright. I’m coming.”

The man clad in overalls wiped the oily, sweaty strands of a too-long comb-over back from to the top of his balding head, removed his mud-crusted rubber boots, and walked through the kitchen door.

“What’s got your panties all in a knot, woman?”

“Just have a look at this.”

“Okey doke . . . hmm . . . what in—this has to be some joke.”

“I don’t think so. Look, it’s here on the CTV site, too. And the BBC, and CNN. I checked them all.”

“What about the TV news?”

“The TV isn’t working. All the channels are just showing snow.”

“Jesus.”

“What are we going to do?”

“And they’re just popping up right out of the ground and attacking folks?”

“Yes. That’s what it says. Jesus. What are we going to do?”

“Just shut up a second! Christ, I gotta think.”

His face becoming paler and paler, Rob stood at the sink scrubbing his hands over and over as he intently surveyed the yard and pigpens.

“Robert! Would you stop thinking about your goddamned pigs for one minute! We’ve got to do something.”

“Don’t you raise your voice to me.” He spoke calmly but with thinly veiled menace. “Are the kids still asleep?”

“I think so. We’ve got to get them up.”

“No. No. Let them be for now. You lock the doors and keep an eye out. I’ll go down to the basement and get the guns.”

Melinda was locking the deadbolt on the back door when she saw her first zombie. Stumbling through the muck among the squealing pigs, the thing moved slowly towards the house.

“Robert! Get up here now. I see one.”

“Hold tight, I’m coming,” he huffed as ran up the steps from the basement three at a time. “Out of the way, I see her.”

Melinda had always felt uncomfortable with Robert’s obsession with guns and war. Every farmer needs a shotgun or two, he’d say about the guns. You can never trust those commies and our pinko government, especially with us so close to the States, he’d say to justify maintaining the stocked bomb shelter. Now, she breathed a sigh of relief as the droopy grey flesh on the dead woman’s face exploded into the air and the stumbling body fell still in the muck. She briefly wondered if the zombie had been someone she knew. Not with a bright pink skirt that short.

“Okay, Melinda. We’re okay for now. Go rouse the kids and get them in the shelter.”

While following Robert’s orders, she heard another two reports from the shotgun and hurried even more.

*

I’m sure you kids know all about the zombies by now. Hell, I’m sure you know far more about them than I do. You remember me rushing you out of bed and down into Daddy’s shelter for safety. You were still so sleepy, you didn’t really question what was going on. You probably questioned why I didn’t come with you with the RCMP that morning. A lot of things happened outside that shelter before you guys were rescued. That’s what I have to tell you about, though it’s the hardest thing to ever tell someone.

*

When she came back upstairs, Ed was again staring out the kitchen window towards the yard and pigpen. She noticed two more bodies, decayed but mostly intact, lying headless near the muddy grounds of the pigpen.

“Don’t worry, dear. We’ve got lots of ammo. None of them bitches is gonna get near us. I’ll make sure of it.”

Melinda looked quickly at the bodies in the yard and suddenly vomited into the sink. Her eye caught sight of a hand wriggling its way up through the muck. Half the flesh on the fingers had disintegrated so that only bone and tendon remained. Check that, she thought to herself, bone, tendon, and gaudy oversized rings. A series of silver bracelets rattled against each other and the boney wrist emerging from the pigpen floor. The high-pitched tinkling brought a convulsive shiver coursing through Melinda’s body and raised gooseflesh all up and down her arms.

“Here comes another one. Don’t you worry a bit,” Ed told her, waiting until the zombie had fully emerged before blasting its head off. “I told you that farmers needed guns, didn’t I? Didn’t I?”

“Y-yes. You did. You were right.”

“That’s right, I was I right. Now you keep an eye out on the front of the house. I’ll stay here and cover the back. If you see anyone coming, just holler.”

By the time the first RCMP cruiser pulled up in front of the house, a total of seven headless zombie bodies littered the muck and grass out back.

“Rob! George Black is here. Thank God!”

“What’s he want?”

“He’s here to save us. What else would he be here for?”

“Well, we don’t need no saving, but okay, let him in.”

“Hi Mrs. P, Robert. You’ve heard the news, I see.”

“Yes, we have,” Rob replied, resting the butt of the shotgun on the tiled floor of the front hallway. “Come on in. What the hell is going on out there?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Some religious folks are calling it the Rapture. Suzuki and his folk are blaming climate change—maybe some bug released from one of those melting icebergs . . . but it seems to me we’re all just groping around in the dark.

My job is to keep folks safe, so that’s what I’m trying to do. We’ve been working our way around the county checking on folks. First, we start with homes close to the graveyards—that’s where the trouble is starting—and then to folks not so close. I hope you guys haven’t had much trouble all the way out here.”

“If you call seven zombies not much trouble, then no we haven’t had much,” said Melinda.

“Seven? My goodness, that’s the most I’ve heard of out in our parts. Where are they?”

“Just out back here. Luckily, Rob keeps a shotgun around and took care of them. See?”

“Well done, Robert. Well done, indeed.”

“Just protecting my family. Anyone woulda done the same.”

“ . . . five . . . six . . . sure enough, there’s seven of them. Uh-oh, looky there. Here comes number eight. Now where’d you come from, poor thing.”

“Don’t worry, I got her,” Rob said.

“Nope. Not this one. Let me do my job here, Robert.” Constable Black unholstered his sidearm and fired two shots at the zombie. The first entered her sheer black halter top, producing a hollow popping sound. When the zombie continued forward, he aimed more closely and sent shocks of half-blond half-black hair across the yard as the skull shattered.

“Now that’s odd,” the policeman spoke slowly. “All of these corpses are female . . . young females from the looks of it. Where could they be coming from?”

“Robert! What are you doing?” Melinda screamed too late.

The back of Constable George Black’s head had disappeared through the open kitchen window in a blast from the farmer’s shotgun.

Melinda fell to the floor behind the table, crying and repeating, “What did you do? What did you do? What did you do?”

“You shut your mouth you stupid bitch. We don’t have time for crying now. Get up! GET UP! Now calm down. We gotta get rid of this body and the car.

“What did you do? Why—”

CRACK! Robert smacked her across the jaw, leaving a large red hand print. “Listen to me and listen good. You’re going to go down to the basement and get the spade. Also, grab another box of shotgun shells—you know what they look like. We’re going to bury him out there. Let the pigs unbury him if they ain’t too scared today. I’m taking his keys and I’m gonna move the car around behind the barn. I have the shotgun and this .38 in case any of those bitches get in my way. Do you understand? Do . . . you . . . understand? Nod if you understand!”

Melinda nodded.

“Okay then. Get to it! Go go go!”

*

That morning, I’d found out some very sad and disturbing news about your father. So, when the police came to save us—to take us away to safety, I had to stay behind to help your father. I don’t know if you remember the trouble then or not. The police really wanted to take us all to safety, but I couldn’t let them. Your father and I had some issues to deal with. I’m not proud of all my actions that day. That’s something you’re going to have to come to grips with as you grow up—being an adult doesn’t mean you always know what to do, or that you always make the right choices. Eventually, I convinced the police to take you two from the house and leave your father and I behind. I hope they took good care of you.

*

Melinda stumbled her way down the wooden stairs to the basement. The spade was hanging on the wall, suspended on two old nails. She began shuffling through the boxes on Rob’s workbench. She found the shells for the shotgun and something else. She remained in the basement for some time, unable to stop looking through the contents of this other box.

“Melinda! Get up here now. Bring the spade for Christ’s sake.”

Robert was staring out the kitchen window when she reached the top of the stairs.

“There’s another one out there. Just give me a second,” he spoke, raising the barrel of the gun to his line of sight.

*

“Awake? Robert? Wake up, Rob. Good. Take a minute, look around, get your bearings. That’s right, you’re still in the kitchen. You’re still alive. You can’t move, no. You can’t speak, no. I tied you up. That’s right, I did it. I found what was in your little goodie box downstairs. You fucking pig!” Melinda finally broke down and slapped him across the face as hard as she could. With the adrenaline running through her veins, she left large purple hand-shaped welt.

“Oh, no you don’t. Wake back up, you sick bastard. You’re going to be awake for this. I don’t know who you are anymore, or who I am, or what anything is while we’re at it . . . but I know you’re going to be awake to witness all this. Let’s see, you killed seven this morning. There’s one out there right now. How many more are going to show up, huh? Judging from those pantyhose in that box, there will be at least a dozen more. A dozen you sick fuck!” She wound up for another slap, but suddenly stopped herself. From out front came the sound of a car engine idling and a door being shut. She grabbed the shotgun and ran to the front door.

“There’s one out back right now,” she yelled to the RCMP officers slowly approaching the front door. “Come on in.”

“Sure thing, ma’am. We’ll take care of it. Don’t worry.”

“Oh, I’m not worried. Just have a look out there.”

The two officers, a man and a woman, rushed into the kitchen and immediately saw Robert, gagged and tied up to a wooden chair with an assortment of mismatched torn pantyhose.

“What’s going on here?” the female officer asked, turning around and seeing Melinda with shotgun raised towards them.

“Listen carefully to me, okay? I don’t want to hurt you. I want you to take my kids, but I’m staying here with Robert and you’re going to leave us.”

“Okay, okay, calm down now,” the male officer spoke. “We can’t just leave you two out here.”

“Oh, yes you can, and you’re going to. But you’re going to make sure my kids are safe first.”

“Where are your kids, ma’am?” asked the female officer.

There was a sudden bang at the back door as a zombie wearing black lycra tights hit the door and began scratching.

“The kids are downstairs in a shelter. They’re safe, but they don’t know anything about what’s going on here.”

“And just what is going on here, ma’am?” the male officer asked.

“You’re the cops. You tell me.”

“We know what’s going on out there,” he replied. “But you’ll have to tell us what’s going on in here.”

“On any other day, you’d be as happy as hell with what I’m going to show you. It would make your careers. Look out in the yard and tell me what you see.”

“Okay. I see—what—seven headless zombie corpses?” he said.

“Look closer. What else do you notice?”

“My goodness, Tom. They’re all women, and look at what they’re wearing,” the female officer added.

“My God. We’ve been looking for them for years. This is huge. Zombies or not, this is fucking huge,” Tom said. “We’ve got to take him in.”

“No you don’t,” Melinda said. “You’ve got bigger things to take care of, including my kids. I’ll handle him.”

“I’m afraid we can’t let—” Tom began.

“Yes, we can Tom,” the female officer said. “We sure can.”

“But, this is—”

“I know who this is. I know damn well who this is. On any other day, we could be heroes for bringing him in. Today, we’ll be heroes for leaving him and bringing in others. That’s right, isn’t it, ma’am? He won’t be a problem for anyone much longer, right?”

“You got that right,” Melinda said.

The three stood silently in the kitchen for some time. Tom, constantly surveying the scene finally rested his eyes on the man gagged and tied up with old pantyhose. “Where did you say your kids were, ma’am?” he asked finally.

“They’re downstairs in the shelter. Bring them out through the living room, please. They don’t need to see this.”

“Okay, ma’am. We’ll do that. Now, what about you?”

“I’m going to stay here.”

“I understand. Do you want us to come back?”

“I really don’t know what to say. You’ve got a lot of work to do out there. I’ve got my work here. If you can, come back tomorrow, but I won’t hold you to it.”

“Alright, ma’am,” said the female officer. “Good luck.”

*

What happened that day was terrible for the world and terrible for our family. I hate to have to tell you this, but your father died that day. He kept a secret from us for a long time. You see, your father was a very sick man. I stayed behind to take care of him. I guess the best way to tell you is just to tell you: your father had a brain tumor. When the zombies first came out of the ground, the shock of the news just killed him. You have to understand that I had to stay behind to bury him—to make sure that he would never become a zombie himself. It was the worst thing I’ve ever had to do. But, it’s all done now, so we can rest at peace, at least a little. I pray that I’ll see you tomorrow, but I don’t know what will happen to me, or especially to you kids, which is the scariest thing a parent can face.

Love always,

Mom

*

Later that night—she waited until at least ten luridly clothed women crowded the back door. She pulled Rob’s chair over in front of the door, ignoring the man’s struggles and the deep scratches the chair legs left in the linoleum. Gun cocked in one arm, she pulled open the door and fled to the shelter down the stairs.

THE END

I like to think I bought some time for some people of the Greater Toronto Area. During the later stages of the Panic, about a week before the military began it’s move west, Toronto was falling apart. Ghouls were making larger and larger areas of the GTA impassable. When I say that, I mean that it was no longer possible for police or emergency crews to move in or through them because of the volume of ghouls. I’m talking more then 50% of the population shambling around, attacking everything that lived. A complete evacuation had been ordered, and people were walking. The highways were hopelessly clogged, all over the GTA. There was a terrible accident on the Gardiner Expressway, and a large number of vehicles were on fire. I remember it well because it was the first time a fire was just allowed to burn. No attempt was made to put it out. The Gardiner was the main escape route for maybe 100,000 people. Helicopters with loudspeakers were telling the people stranded on the downtown side of that mass of flames to head for the Don Valley Parkway, which would take them north. Coming through and around that fire stumbled the dead. It’s a cliché by now, but they really did look like a slow-moving river. There must have been 40,000 of them, slowly shambling after the crowd. People were walking in their thousands ahead of them. It was on the news, and while it was terrible to see so many people fleeing, it was a little heartening because of the orderly way in which it was conducted, with footage of people helping complete strangers. Elderly and sick people were being assisted around the abandoned vehicles that sat bumper to bumper by everyone around them. There was no panic, because now people knew that the ghouls were very slow. As long as the people kept to a brisk walk, there would be an ever-widening gap between them and the following dead. These people…..refugees, I suppose they now were, were joined by thousands more feeding into the DVP from the various streets that crossed it. Thousands were walking down on-ramps and joining the north-bound crowds. One large group was walking ahead of its own pursuing group of ghouls. This group walked off Eastern Avenue, and then they suddenly dried up. Not a single person was walking down that on-ramp. A news chopper showed what happened next. The people at the end of that group kept looking behind them. About 20 minutes after the last person walked down that ramp, the dead appeared. Just a few at first, they quickly swelled into thousands. They stumbled their way onto the DVP…..completely cutting off about 10,000 people. Every single one of those ghouls turned south after the smaller (relatively speaking; there were several hundred thousand fleeing north) group, who were now trapped between them and the other group of ghouls who had come through those flames. As far as I know, not a single person of that trapped group survived being cut off and trapped between the two groups of ghouls. Maybe some left the road when they saw what was happening, crossed the Don River and scaled the far valley wall. I hope so. The rest of that north-bound group panicked and ran for a short time before returning to their earlier pace; it’s a miracle hundreds were not trampled, especially when thousands of voices cried out from the south. The newsman was crying, saying there would be no footage of the massacre. The larger remaining group now had a larger gap between them and the ghouls. That was good, but now the ghouls were a true army; they packed the DVP in both lanes, from guardrail to guardrail. After the massacre, police and army units were being hastily posted at the tops of the on-ramps. It seemed a token gesture, but I think it made people feel better. An hour later, and the ghouls were on the move again. The north-bound crowd had swollen to around 300,000 people and had slowed to a crawl….or the pace of a ghoul. I was in my home on Chester Ave., which runs north off Danforth Ave. Danforth crosses the Don Valley, passing over the DVP, and what seemed like every neighbor I had came out to stand on the bridge and watch the procession north. I had not heard about the horror that had just occurred to the south, and soon went back home to continue packing. I had no idea where I was going, but going I was, the hell away from the city. It was there that my friend and co-worker Alan Wades found me. He told me about the massacre to the south, and we put the TV on. There was still footage of the refugees walking north, and of the army of dead stumbling after them. The threat was apparent at once. The dead were now actually moving faster than the refugees. A new horror was in the making. We just looked at each other. I was the one to finally break the silence. I said the only thing that came to mind at the time.

“We better get to work.”

His eyes widened, and he nodded. Work for us was pretty close at that time. We were working just north of our homes in Todmorden Mills Park. There had been some serious erosion, and the company we worked for, Don Valley Excavation was working to remove the soil in preparation for the construction of a large retaining wall to prevent further erosion. The work site was near the DVP, and near an on and off ramp.

“Guess we’ll need Gary and Davey right quick then!” he said, and it was my turn to nod.

Gary Porter and Dave Fauser were welders we worked with. They were either working on things in our shop or were making repairs to company equipment at work sites. There was no hope of Fauser making it there; he lived too far away, in York Mills, which may as well have been on Mars then. We both dove for the phone at the same time to call Porter, and we hit our heads pretty hard. It was funny, and we needed a laugh. We were able to reach him easily, and explained the situation to him, and that we thought, with his assistance, we could help. He agreed at once, having finished all his packing, and started out for the worksite. We wished him luck, and set out ourselves. He lived in nearby Greek Town, and would be there in around 20 minutes. Our short walk to the site was memorable. People were standing in the streets, and everyone was talking about the same thing, getting out of the city. And, almost to the last person, they had no idea where to go, where was safe.

“Dave, imagine how this situation is going to look in 3 weeks or so, if this continues,” Wades said.

We made the rest of the trip in silence. When we reached the site it was thankfully untouched. Neighborhood patrols kept the area fairly safe, though that was a thin illusion. At any time, 500 ghouls could walk in the kill everyone there. I opened the gate that had been erected, and we jogged in. Now that we were there, things seemed more urgent because there, right beside the work site were the refugees making their slow way north. They didn’t speak much, and looked back often, though at this point they couldn’t see the end of the column, let alone the pursuing dead. We stood there in silence watching them, and Porter scared us out of about 5 years of our lives when he walked up behind us and shouted a greeting. After some ungentlemanly name calling, we got to work. We went to the office trailer, and retrieved our keys from it. The welding equipment was stored in a small intermodal container, the kind that can travel in large numbers on ships, or on rail cars or on trailers on the highway. We called them sea cans. It was always locked at night, as it held the second most valuable equipment on the work site. Another container beside it held tools and smaller equipment, and was only slightly less valuable then the one holding the welding equipment. Locks are for honest people, and if someone really wanted to get into them they could. So, our reasons for being there were parked in front of them, one in front of each. With those parked 15 cm from the doors, no one was going to steal anything from them, period. In front of the welder’s sea can sat a Cat D7, which Alan started. In front of the tool sea can sat a D9, which I started. Once they were running, we climbed down and joined Porter at the office trailer where he was making coffee. Even at this urgent time, we were not going to move the Cats one centimeter without warming them up properly. Upon reflection, caffeine was probably not the thing we needed at that time, but old habits were difficult to break. As we sat, we talked about what needed to be done to our Cats. It was agreed that metal plate would be welded over as much of the engine areas as possible to protect them from the prying hands of the dead. Also, there was no option but to weld us both into the cabs, and to cover all the windows with plate too. Once the plates were welded to the outsides of the cabs, the plates would also be welded from the insides for added strength, which was sure to be tested. Slim observation slits would be cut into the plates covering the front, sides and back of each. With this unsophisticated game plan, we went outside, and moved the Cats into an open area where we would have room to work on them. We got the things we would need from the sea cans, and then turned to Porter awaiting his instructions. He was the welder, we just ran the equipment. The work went quickly, since there was no need for them to look pretty. The only thing we took extra time on was making sure there were no hand holds on these plates, no purchase for dozens or even one undead hand. Porter would attach a plate, and we would all try to grab it in a way that would let us apply any amount of force to pry it free. As we worked, the refugees paid us little attention. The D7 was finished first, with only the plate that was to cover the door left unattached. Those would be the last things welded on. Before we started this, the Cats were shut off, and the batteries disconnected. We wanted no chance for there to be damage to the electrical systems from the welder or plasma cutter. Porter showed us how to use the latter to cut the observation slits, and the work went much faster with him welding and us doing that. It was agreed that the thinner these slits were the better. Even if only fingers could fit through them, 100 fingers all pulling would surely pull the plates off given enough time. It was while we were cutting these slits we heard the moan. We all froze at once, then turned towards the sound. It was a single ghoul, walking past the open gate to the work site. We shared a single look, and then jumped down from the Cats, and rushed it. It had been a woman, and had been through a fight. Her jaw looked like it had been dislocated, and her right arm looked broken. There were bloody hand prints on her shirt and pants. We beat her to death. Porter hit her with his knees, having launched himself into the air about 2 meters from her. Once she was on the ground, we just kicked and stomped her head until she stopped moving. To be sure, we got a rock and smashed the remains of her head a few times, then dragged her off the street.

“Felt….kinda good, killing one of them,” Wades said as we walked back to the Cats and got back to work.

I don’t remember saying anything then, but I agreed with him completely.

“Just wait!” Porter said grimly. That shut us up for a while.

30 minutes later we were ready. We went back into the office trailer and turned on a radio there. The news was full of the unfolding drama in the Don Valley. They were advising people watching to avoid being seen by the advancing dead, that if one could just be unobserved one would be safe. They wanted them right where they were, advancing north, not into the surrounding neighborhoods, which were still populated. It was hard to get a fix on them, but we figured we’d get plenty of warning. Wades suddenly turned to me.

“Hey, the guard rail’s in the way!”

We all laughed and laughed.

“Guess we just wasted our time then. Oh, well,” I said.

It was not really that funny, but we laughed until the tears came. I guess we needed it.

“Are you guys really going to do this?” Porter asked.

“Damn right we are,” I said, and that was basically the end of it. I was afraid that if we talked too much about it, all the perfectly good reasons not to do this thing would become apparent, and we might not go through with it. We got to discussing our plan. We would need an open space, and that meant moving the cars and trucks out of the way, something I have to admit I was gleefully looking forward to.

“Shotgun on the Avalanche. It’s mine,” I said.

They snickered. My views on such things were well-known. It was a Chevrolet Avalanche, which had been lowered and had had huge wheels with spinners attached, as well as tons of other bling. I was not worried about legal repercussions of the impending automotive massacre. I was pretty sure it would be a while before the law would be interested in or even have the ability to investigate such things. Besides, we were trying to save a couple lives.

“Look!” Porter said, pointing to the refugees.

It was difficult to see at first, but as we watched for several minutes, the crowds seemed to slowly thin out. I turned to them both.

“Ok, it’s time.” There wasn’t really anything else to say for me. I embraced them both, my hands shaking a little.

“Give ‘em hell, boys. I hope I see you again,” Porter said.

We had talked it over, and decided that Porter would move to a place of safety where he could talk with us on the CB and warn us when the dead arrived. It was decided that this place should be out of sight because the refugees might decide that they needed his truck more than he did. He moved to the top of a rise near the worksite, from which he had a clear view of the northbound lanes.

“Good to go. Now lets go before I think about what we’re about to do,” Wades said.

That was all we needed, and we fairly flew into the cabs. We had put crude handles on the door plates so we could help hold them in place while Porter welded them. It was the weakest part of our improvised armour, since they would only be welded from the outside. There was no help for it. I was sealed in my cab first, and then Wades was. This went quickly as the plates had been fitted beforehand. It was a crude-looking job, but we did well for the amount of time available to us, a welder and his two amateur apprentices. Then, we were both ready, and Porter reconnected our batteries, and we started the engines. I was terrified. Scenarios were running through my head, like my starving to death as the ghouls surround my disabled Cat for days preventing my escape. Had we forgotten anything? I experienced a moment of panic when I realized we had not agreed on a channel to use on our radios. A couple quick words to Porter cleared that up though. He went over to Wades and told him channel 28. We all had both company radios, which used repeaters to boost their range, and shorter-range CB radios, which was what we were using now. We had made other preparations, and were as confident we could be. We had lots of water and as much food as we could find at the work site. We had raided the refrigerator, and cleared out the remaining lunches our co-workers had left. We then raised the blades and turned towards the Parkway.

“Mine!” Wades called over the radio. He lowered his blade to ground and took the hapless guardrail off with a crisp snapping sound. He then raised his blade and ran over the rail and supporting posts.

Without further ceremony we struck the northbound cars. I made sure I hit that Avalanche hard, and raised my blade to flip it. So sweet.

Now, I don’t want to suggest we just recklessly attacked things; there were still people heading north. They didn’t slow us down any though; it was easy enough for them to move around us. We talked as we worked and decided on a plan. We would try to completely block off the southbound lanes with cars, in the hopes it would force the dead into the northbound lanes, and it was here we encountered our first obstacle. Separating the north and southbound lanes was a concrete barrier, too thick for even our Cats to break apart. We soon learned it was best to work side by side as pushing the cars sideways into other cars until we were pushing 3 at once was very difficult. We would get in close to each other and push towards that concrete divider, both raising our blades at once to try to lift them onto the top of the barrier. Once they were there, we had no way to move them. The screeching metal and squealing tires were louder than our straining engines. There was debris everywhere, and the pavement was wrecked, our treads digging into it when we were pushing a heavy load. By the time we had an area 500 meters long cleared, there was only the occasional person moving north. We could see that most of them were wounded; probably bitten. There was nothing we could do about them, so we moved on to the next part of our plan. We needed access to the southbound lanes to create our barrier. So, we put our Cats into their walking gears and “raced” beneath a nearby overpass. The traffic was just as congested here as on the Parkway, so it took a little time. We didn’t bother using the blades; we raised them and ran over the cars as best we could. We ground and crunched our way past the southbound on-ramp, and just started pushing the cars up against the divider, making sure this barrier was even with where our northbound clear area began. We pushed some up onto the divider and more past the shoulder of the road as far as we could down an embankment. The dead could still get around that, but we were out of time. Porter called us on the CB.

“Heads up guys, I can see the first of the dead. They’re attacking the stragglers. And…..they look like they’ve all been painted red,” he said.

“Ok, man. Thanks. You should bail. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had already seen you, if you’ve seen them,” Wades replied.

“Yeah. Yes. Ok. I…I hope we all meet again. My prayers will be with you. I’ll tell any authority I meet where you are and what you’re doing. Maybe they will be able to send you some help. Until next time, lads!” Porter said, heading off. It was the last we would hear from him for 3 years.

Putting our Cats into their walking gears again, we went back to what Wades called “our chosen battlefield” on the northbound lanes. We took the same route we had taken before and by now the cars we had driven over looked flat. We positioned ourselves about halfway down this cleared area and waited.

“We’re really going to do this, aren’t we,” I asked the air.

“Are we really going to this?” Wades asked over the radio. I told him that was what I had just asked and we laughed, each triggering the CB microphone so the other could hear the laughter. I think it must have sounded crazy.

“Ok. Lets do it just like the cars, blade to blade and push them back. Best turn on the radio to drown out the…..the sounds,” I said.

“All right,” he replied, and we waited.

I think my heart had never beaten so fast. It was terrible, waiting for the dead to appear, so we could just get this over with. I closed my eyes and concentrated on controlling my breathing. When I opened them, I saw the first of them coming around and over the cars at the end of cleared area. There were just a few of them at first.

“Let’s split up and take them individually. When they come in greater numbers we’ll come together again,” I said, sounding more confident than I was.

“Fag,” Wades said. We laughed as we started towards the vanguard of the dead.

Henshaw concluded his tale here. He told me in no uncertain terms he did not want to discuss what followed. I was able to piece together what happened next by interviewing neighborhood resident Tim Franklin. What followed was a slaughter of the walking dead. The two Cats went back and forth, pressing the dead horde back against itself. After only 15 minutes had passed, there was a black sludge ten centimeters deep, extending 20 meters from the beginning of the cleared area. An hour later, the sludge was 25 centimeters deep, and extended 100 meters into the cleared zone. Henshaw and Wades backed their Cats up again and again, and hit the horde, whose advance had been slowed. As the dead ones entered the cleared zone, they would be struck by the blades and knocked off their feet. They would then be pushed back into the ones behind them, and partially crushed. Following the first hit, their brains were rarely destroyed, but with hit after hit, they were eventually destroyed, all their bones pulped. When the Cats treads started to slip and spin in the gore, they would back out of it, and press their blades into the pavement and advance, pushing the thick liquid forward and giving them an area of traction for a while. Franklin was on the eastern crest of the valley and had an excellent view. After approximately 3 hours had passed, a group of five locals joined him, armed with hunting rifles. They started cheering before Franklin had to remind them of their position; safe but only just so. When the dead started climbing onto the cabs of the Cats, they fired their rifles to clear them. Franklin described their aim as wanting. Sparks danced off the cab and armour plates, and both Cats jerked to a stop. They then agreed to pick a corpse and all try for his or her head at once. That cleared them off within minutes, leaving the armour unbreached. Franklin chuckled, saying a finger extended from the front observation slits on each Cat. He had a reasonable guess at which fingers they were looking at. The shooters sheepishly decided to adopt their concentrated fire tactic from then on. For 4 hours more the Cats pushed and crushed, aided by the occasional careful volley from the shooters. Franklin was unsure when it happened, but he suddenly noticed the Cats were hanging back for longer periods of time, the dead appearing in smaller and smaller numbers. Around the same time, a troop of 42 soldiers trotted from the north, shooting and bludgeoning those few dead who had gotten past the Cats. To a man, they appeared shocked by the sea of gore, and mostly-black Cats doing the work. Several ran beside the Cats, and got the attention of the Wades and Henshaw, and it was over. After conversing with them for a time, a detail of soldiers went with them over the ditch to the construction site, and proceeded to cut them from their filthy machines. The rest of the soldiers then pressed the shooters and Franklin into service, handing them C7A1 rifles, explaining that their previous owners no longer had any use for them. They formed a skirmish line as best they could, careful to avoid the sludge, and began walking south at a leisurely pace, firing as they went, checking between and beneath the cars.

I only had the pleasure of talking to Franklin twice before he succumbed to Dellson’s disease, the rare but deadly pneumonia that arose during the war from the squalid conditions and unburied corpses littering the world. A few details are missing, such as the names of the armed locals, and what happened to them when they left with the troop, so I hope the readers can bear with me.

This concludes the story of Henshaw and his friends. I hope readers will be inspired to put their own experiences to paper for future generations (or at least allow people like myself to do so for them). My travels will next take me west, where I will speak with the only known survivor of the fall of the Prince Albert safe zone. Thank you for reading