Days With The Undead (Book 1) (15 page)

So they ran down the road all the way to the convenience store located off of Oregon State Highway 101, hoping to find help. All they found was the empty bathroom and locked themselves inside, their Undead pursuers close on their heels. Soon after the banging and thumping started. Lily told us that the two of them were afraid but there was no way they were going to open the door, no matter how mad their Mom got.

Lily told us that the banging stopped after a few hours (or at least that is what they thought) but they didn’t want to open the door in case their Mom was just trying to trick them. Somehow these two small children knew that opening up that door was death. When asked, they couldn’t tell us how long they thought they might have been in there. For kids, ten minutes can seem like an eternity.

For all the horror they’ve witnessed, they’re remarkably well-adjusted and quite friendly. At four and a half, these two kids were more intelligent than most of the population of the United States…

Looking behind us, we could see that the other vehicle, a black Hummer, had also stopped at the station for gas. It was going to be a long drive up the coast. We all prayed that the tank in their car held less fuel or that their SUV burned more gas than ours. Anything to give us an edge!

Ben scanned his maps looking for way to get off this road quickly, onto another and then another in the hopes of losing them. The only way we were going to be able to find a network of roads like that was to head a fair ways inland again and we weren’t sure that we were willing to do that quite yet.

We have another plan, something potentially safer, especially now that we had the children to consider. We just need the right place to put that plan into action.

The time will come. And it will come soon. The inhabitants of that vehicle are not going to know what hit them. We need to remember that this ultimately is a war of survival and in the end; the last person standing inherits the earth. That might have been a little dramatic but you get what I mean. We need to annihilate anyone that intends to disrupt our chances of surviving… And I mean anyone.

Day 23:

They slept like the dead. It was amazing to witness such resilience in these young children. They had no fear in shutting their eyes and drifting off to the land of nod. We all envied them for that. How nice would it be just to be able to close our eyes for a moment and not remember the things that we have seen, the abominations we’ve had to put down? Their innocence, while subtly changed by what they had seen, seems to have restored itself to a degree; like the way a child can believe in the Boogeyman but still feel safe knowing that when an adult is around, it doesn’t really exist.

We all know we did the right thing in bringing Lily and Liam with us, but it’s made our flight that much harder. We have two additional lives to consider and any plan we undertake must be worked in such a way that it provides for the safety of the two little imps soundly asleep in the back seat.

As we moved further up the Oregon coast, and into Washington State, it became obvious that the vehicle behind us was tracking us. There was no other reason for its behavior. It stopped to get gas at every station that we went into and stayed just far enough behind us to be completely out of range of our binoculars.

So far, all we knew at this point was that it was a black Hummer. We had no idea if they meant us any harm but the fact that they were keeping pace so far behind us didn’t sit well with any of us. Besides, with the vehicle so close behind us and no way to really tell what was ahead of us, we couldn’t work out an acceptable spot for an ambush. And once we were in Washington, we had a huge decision to make: going around the whole coastline would take us forever especially if we weren’t going to be able to get on a boat and sail off shore. If we were going to try to lose our tail, our best bet was to head inland, and go straight through Seattle and then make our way back into Canada.

At least back in Canada, we would have a few options. Right now, we were almost out of them.

The scariest moments might well lie before us. We were going to drive through the suburbs. And the suburbs could be full of the Undead. It seems crazy, I know… We’d been doing just fine by avoiding the major urban areas but unfortunately this time we just couldn’t avoid it. But at this point in time, we were trying to outrun and confuse someone following us and the roads we had been taking just weren’t giving us the options for escape that we needed. It was time for us to think outside the box.

It was all that we could do to try to prepare ourselves for the number of the Undead that we may encounter. It had been such a long time since we’d really seen any of them. None, in fact, but the odd one or two since Eureka and that was three days ago. We worried how the children would react in a situation where the Undead were plentiful and in our faces. Would they become a liability to our survival? Was it possible that their potential panic could spread to us?

These were all valid questions that we discussed out loud. It’s better to know what you could be dealing with than to find out in the heat of the moment that someone you need to rely on has frozen. Part of us hoped that the children would sleep during our passage through Seattle. However, chances are we wouldn’t be that lucky, they had already been asleep for thirteen hours…

As weird as this is going to sound, we all shared a common catharsis in watching them sleep. The looked so peaceful curled up into Max and Bob. Each of us had taken turns sitting in the backseat with them; we felt it was best that they both get really comfortable with each one of us. There was no telling when that level of comfort and trust would come into play.

It surprised me at how quickly Lily and Liam took to us. You would expect that there would have been some kind of wariness or resistance given their age and what they had endured but that just wasn’t the case. After telling us their story, Lily simply looked at me and asked if we were going to try to hurt them like their Mom had.

I looked into her sweet face and promised that I would never do anything but keep them safe. My answer appeared to have appeased the twins and they settled right in with us.

The approach to Seattle was unnervingly quiet. No Undead on the roads. No cars or trucks or vehicles of any kind clogging the arteries into the city, or even out of the city. The landscape was just too pristine for my liking… It was almost as if the Undead hadn’t touched this area, which was impossible. The absence of any debris or walking corpses could only mean one of two things had happened: the entire city was Undead and waiting around the next bend in the road for us, or perhaps Seattle was completely devoid of the Undead.

In the end, the city was an all-together different site to behold.

Seattle had been fortified like something you would see in a Hollywood blockbuster. Something set in medieval times. In the early days after the outbreak, some government official or enterprising individual with some political clout must have had concrete barriers erected twenty feet tall all around the city limits. Where they had gotten the barriers, I couldn’t even imagine. How had they managed to get the walls up so quickly?

It was like the last bastion of humanity in a dying world, and it was amazing.

Someone had gotten the message. The city could be alive and well on the inside of those walls. People could be alive and thriving; lots of people. Our prayers had been answered. We were excited and relieved at the thought that we might be able to stop running. There was just one really big problem… There didn’t seem to be any way in or out. We crisscrossed the roadways looking for an entrance or anything but all we found were concrete walls blocking our way at every avenue.

Looking for a way in was dangerous. We were losing precious moments on each thoroughfare and side street that we tried. And with each passing moment the mysterious black Hummer could have been gaining on us, easily finding a way to box us in with all of these blocked streets.

An entrance into the city could end that hunt altogether so we felt the search was worth the risk. It was also potentially a stupid endeavor. The Hummer could have exited from that entrance we were searching for. For all we knew, the people behind the barricade could be bad, for lack of a better word. Not able to find an entrance, our only choice was to keep moving forward.

Maybe it’s best that we didn’t find an entry point. I assume that people were alive and thriving inside those walls. There really is no way of knowing. On the other side of those concrete walls could be approximately 617,000 Undead just waiting for someone to let them out. Or there could be just as many living people waiting for the Undead to starve and die a pitiful second death. Anything at this point is possible.

Having made our way completely around the city’s limits, it was apparent that the new Seattle was meant to impenetrable. Driving away from the wall on Interstate 5, you could just barely make out the figures standing on the top of the wall. Proof that the city was alive. The only question was for how long… How long could a city survive without the ability to come and go for needed supplies?

At this point, we know one thing for certain; coming inland has benefited us. We have lost our tail for the moment but in this unpredictable climate of constant change, we could pick them up again at any point. The unknown factor of that cannot be avoided and as a result we’re just going to have to push towards British Columbia and hope for the best.

Day 24:

Lily and Liam have been doing well but they’ve been getting restless cooped up in a car for this long. Add to that their stay in the washroom and these kids were crawling the walls, practically screaming to get out. Four and a half year olds are apt to play but we have no toys. Our game playing skills were being sorely tested as well. Admittedly, we were finding it difficult to keep up with them.

Once back in Canada we started to see that things were different, more normal… Well, normal-ish. We avoided Vancouver even though I desperately wanted to see if my parents had somehow managed to survive by staying indoors. The chance was slim knowing my father - but there was still a chance.

Instead we took the TransCanada Highway north from Choate, thinking that we would then get onto Highway 97 and continue north to Prince George. Depending on what we encountered in Prince George and what kind of plan we had decided upon, we could go either west to Prince Rupert on Highway 16 or head east. Our main objective was to get free of the Undead and to find a place where we didn’t have to always be constantly on the move.

We did find it very odd that while we did not see any of the Undead, we didn’t see any living people either. But it still felt weird. There was no evidence that the Undead had even been here, that the area we were travelling through had even been touched by the infection. No cars clogging the roads, no evidence of any fighting. No telltale debris from a showdown with the Undead. It was like everyone had just simply vanished.

It’s amazing how your priorities change when you’ve got young ones to think about. It’s possible that we will still need to try to get on the water and travel to a remote town in the hopes of finding a place highly isolated and untouched by all of this. But then a town only accessible by water or air may not provide complete isolation from the Undead. And it’s also going to need to be resupplied which makes every trip into a larger area more dangerous. Is there any place besides Seattle that is still safe out there?

The Undead will eventually walk every open inch of land, of that I have no doubt. At some point, maybe not right away, but eventually, they would find the haven that you had created for yourself. Finding a safe place was the goal for us. It always had been; we just needed to make sure that wherever we chose to stop, it was the best place to do so.

Lily and Liam had definitely had enough of their forced confinement and since we hadn’t passed a single Undead since leaving the U.S., we decided to throw caution to the wind and make an unscheduled stop. We chose a quiet little town called Lac la Hache on Highway 97.

Old habits die hard and still being our cautious selves, we pulled over to the side of the road beside a park and waited for a long length of time, blowing the car’s horn just to see if we could entice any Undead to send us on our merry way. Not a single one showed up after forty-five minutes. It was just so strange that there didn’t seem to be anyone or anything about.

We warned the twins that they would have to stay very, very close to us at all times. That even while at play there could be danger. They seemed to inherently understand this and were buzzing with nervous energy. We drove up on the lawn of the park (I dare a police officer to give me a ticket), and got out of the Escalade. We made Lily and Liam stay back with Max at the wheel while we checked out all the outbuildings and surrounding areas. We’ve learned that you never could be too careful.

Once the coast was clear, the twins burst from the car and ran to the playground equipment. Their laughter filled the air and it was the sweetest sound to hear. Their joy was infectious and the rest of us couldn’t help but laugh along with them.

Soon we forgot about everything but the kids and the sounds of their laughter, the way that they would chase each other up and down the slide. The crunching sounds their shoes made on the pebbles covering the playground area as they came down the slide and turned to run around to go right back up to the top. We were suddenly like four proud parents all vying for the right to say “Look at my kid”…

We were stupid. We should have been watching.

We had no idea they were there until they were right upon us. Thank God that Liam happened to notice the man coming up behind Bob. It was by the grace of God alone that he managed to move just as the Undead was about to lay his greasy, putrefying hands on him.

And suddenly it was like we were surrounded.

The car seemed like it was kilometers away, with too many of them between us and it. The really stupid thing was that none of us had opted to stay with the car, thinking we were safe. Have I mentioned the word stupid yet?