I lay atop my cot and flashed my light on Sgt. Green’s letter. If only he’d just ordered us to load up the carriers and fight our way out of the city – even if he’d done it twenty four hours ago, he’d still be alive and I wouldn’t have to worry about stepping into his shoes.
Across the room Jo stirred and then yawned, stretching her arms out of the sleeping bag. She unzipped it halfway and kicked her body out of the down-filled cocoon, sticking her feet inside a pair of rubber boots. She clumped across the room and climbed onto the edge of my cot. I didn’t bother trying to hide the letter from her as she poked her head over to see what I was reading.
“Whatcha looking at?” she asked as she brushed her hair away from her eyes. “Is that … is that a letter from Mommy?”
There was a tiny, almost hopeful sounding lilt to her voice. I still had Mom’s goodbye letter – Jo didn’t know about it. She’d never know about it. Ever.
I flipped the letter over and showed it to Jo. “It’s from Sgt. Green,” I said very business-like. “He left us something to help us survive.”
Jo seemed to shrink a little. She was wearing a t-shirt that was more nightgown than anything. Across her narrow chest were the words CHARLIE COMPANY.
“So many people are gone now,” she said quietly. Her eyes drifted away from the letter and she gazed at her rubber boots. “Is Sgt. Green going to come back? Is he going to become a creeper?”
I shook my head. “He won’t. We took care of it.”
“Nobody else is ‘fected, right? Nobody else is going to turn, right?”
“We’re all good to go, Jo,” I replied. “And we’re all going to keep you safe. Got it?”
She nodded but kept her eyes fixed firmly on her rubber boots. “We’re not safe, David. The creepers got Mom … they’ll get all of us.”
I folded up the letter and dropped it on the floor, leaned forward and gently placed both hands on Jo’s face. I turned her head and rested my forehead against hers. “Jo … I’m your big brother and I’m going to protect you. We’re getting out of here – we’re going to go somewhere safe. That’s what Sgt. Green’s letter was about. He put together a plan for us to get out of the city. We’re going to get as far away from civilization as we can get. We’re going to start over.”
“But there’s so many creepers – they’re everywhere. We’ll get swarmed and then …”
I lifted her chin and stared hard into her eyes. “Jo … we’ve got lots of ammunition. We’ve got food and supplies. We’ve got each other – we’re a family.”
She pursed her lips together tightly and I allowed her a few moments to absorb what I’d just told her. I wanted her to hope even though hope was always something we’d tried to keep at arm’s length. If the last six months had taught us anything it was that hoping would always come back to bite you in the ass. But Jo was eight and she needed something to believe in.
“How are we going to get out of here?” she asked as she bent down and grabbed Sgt. Green’s letter.
“The armored personnel carriers,” I said calmly. “When we’re hatches down in those things, those monsters can’t touch us. We can blow right through them like bowling pins.”
“But where will we go?”
I brushed her hair away from her eyes. “We’ve gotta figure that one out still. Sgt. Green said we should head to the mountains where there is fresh water and game for us to hunt, but there’s another place … maybe.”
“Where?”
I told Jo about the radio broadcast from Sanctuary Base. I told her that it was about a thousand miles from the city and that it was supposed to be zombie-free, and all the while Jo nodded silently. She didn’t smile. She didn’t jump up and down on my cot to celebrate that we were going to be leaving. She was processing the information the best way she could, and what she said next took me by surprise.
“They might be bad guys,” she said coldly. “They might be trying to trick us. They could be getting people to go there and then they might kill them and take their stuff.”
Wow. Six months of living in hell had given my kid sister a brutally practical outlook on our new reality. I didn’t know whether to bust out bawling that an eight-year-old was talking like a combat veteran or to hug her for having the sense to recognize a very real threat to our survival.
“It’s possible,” I said, matching her tone. “We need more information. We need a backup plan and we need to make a decision as a team.”
“How much longer will we stay here?” she said with a hint of anticipation in her voice. Her eyes flashed over to her carbine fixed against the wall above her cot.
“Not much longer,” I said quietly. “We’re going to have a team meeting and I’m going to simply tell everyone what has to happen.”
She gave me a big hug and then she flashed me a toothless grin. “Good – you should be in charge.”
Her vote of confidence lifted my spirits. Jo believed in me when I was having trouble believing in myself.
I glanced at my watch, it was 04:10 and the broadcast from Sanctuary Base would be in a little more than two hours.
“Okay, kiddo … you’re part of the team. We’ll gather around the radio on the sentry tower and we’ll hash out our next move. And Jo?”
“What?”
“Thanks for believing in me.”
She gave me another hug and then planted a big wet kiss on my right cheek. “You’re my brother, dummy. Of course I believe in you.”
***
Cruze gave me a hard shake. “Dave, get up … we need to talk.”
I’d been dreaming about pizza of all things. A nice, thick wedge of George’s Pizzeria pizza loaded with extra cheese, onions, bacon and pepperoni. It almost broke my heart to open my eyes.
“What’s going on, Cruze?” I said, yawning as I glanced at my watch.
She shut the door to my room and nodded toward Jo who’d gotten back into her sleeping bag and was sound asleep.
“She knows,” I said. “Everyone except for Sid and Doug know about the broadcast.”
“You told Kate and Kenny?”
I shook my head and handed her Sgt. Green’s letter. “Mel did … have a look at this.”
She opened the letter and I gave her a moment to read through Sgt. Green’s final instructions. Cruze made a grunting sound a few times and then handed it back after she was finished.
“Interesting,” she said.
“What?”
“Green said we should head to the mountains and I’ve sort of plotted out a spot where we could go to if we decided against heading to Sanctuary Base.”
Cruze dropped to one knee and pulled a map out of her pants pocket. She unfolded it on the floor and I swung my legs over the edge of the cot and leaned in to take a look. It was a map of Western Canada and Cruze had marked a red star to show our location and a blue X that was smack dab in the middle of a forest. I leaned closer and saw the words PRINCE ALBERT NATIONAL PARK printed in black ink just above where she’d marked the X.
Cruze had been busy. There were small red X’s scratched over the cities of Airdrie, Red Deer, Wetaskiwin, Camrose and Edmonton which made sense as those were built-up areas and if we were going to head northeast, we’d want to avoid them. I looked on the western side of the map and saw a series of blue lines that meandered through secondary roads leading into the mountains and she’d drawn a big red circle around Lake Louise, a tourist destination for skiers in the winter time.
“So yeah … Sanctuary Base is secluded enough but according to the coordinates in the radio message they’re in the middle of a freaking forest … they could be anywhere in that park.”
“The middle of a forest!” I groaned. “Not exactly the best place for line of sight defense.”
“The mountains are nothing but forest,” she said, pointing to the big circle at Lake Louise. “But a ski resort is the high ground; I mean you’re on the top of a mountain. It would be harder for creeps to get up there and we could pick them off if it came to it.”
I nodded. “High ground matters. But assuming we made it there, we’d be completely on our own. Sanctuary Base sounds military, they’d be well-armed. There’s strength in numbers, right?”
Cruze exhaled heavily. “Or it’s a trap.”
“That’s what Jo said, too.”
“Smart kid. Look, Dave … there are risks associated with both places and about the main benefit to Lake Louise is that it’s only a couple of hundred miles from here. Sanctuary Base is a hell of a lot farther away.”
I glanced at the map. “Yeah … our carriers wouldn’t make it so we’d have to go scrounging for fuel or alternate transportation. There would be enough fuel to get us to Lake Louise for sure.”
We sat in silence and just stared at the map. I was leaning toward Lake Louise but the lure of attaching ourselves to another military unit seemed too good to be true. There might be medical care and better organization. They could have set up a ton of defensive traps in the woods and more importantly there would be a rigid chain of command to follow. There would be real full-time military leaders with way more experience than a bunch of weekend warriors.
There was also the issue of selling a move to a secluded spot in the mountains to the team. We’d be well and truly on our own if we managed to get out of the city. We’d have to learn how to hunt, how to trap and how to survive in the bush. Sure, Sgt Green had recommended we head to the mountains, but he didn’t know about Sanctuary Base. I wondered if he would have recommended we head there had he been the one to hear the radio broadcast.
I gave Cruze a pained look. “Jeez … I don’t know what to do here. There’s risk any way you look at it.”
She folded up the map and stuffed it back into the pocket of her combat trousers. “If it helps, Dave, I’m going to say the risk is equal on both counts. And we’re going to have a hell of a time just getting out of the city to begin with.”
I glanced at my watch one more time. It was 06:00.
“Okay, Cruze,” I said, climbing out of my cot and stuffing my feet into my combat boots. “Would you get Jo up and gather everyone at the sentry post for the broadcast. I’ll brief Sid and Doug. I’m going to read everyone the letter from Sgt. Green and we’ll decide something ASAP.”
Cruze patted me on the shoulder. “Smartest thing you’ve said all week. Okay, I’ll get everyone and Dave?”
“Yeah?”
She folded her arms across her chest and said, “We’re fucked if we do and we’re fucked if we don’t. Just make the call.”
“Yeah,” I said grimly. “I’ll make the call.”
Doug Manybears was scanning the area around the armory for anything that might be a threat to our defenses while Sid leaned over the parapet, flicking ash from a burning cigarette every few seconds.
“We need to talk,” I said, mustering a bit of firmness in my voice.
“Sounds serious,” said Doug, a spindly Sarcee from the Tsuu T’ina nation. He was the improviser of the team. He’d lost not only his family, but his entire Indian band in the weeks after Day Zero, and somehow, incredibly, he managed to fight his way from the outskirts of the city into the very heart of creep-infested territory. We found him under the cover of darkness in that same parking compound where we burn the bodies. He was cut to ribbons and ensnared in the razor wire after he’d scaled the chain link fence. It took us a month to mend his wounds and bring him back to full strength – all of us marveling at the mere fact that he somehow survived against incalculable odds. It gave all of us hope that we too might survive even though we were losing people ever few days.
“It is serious,” I replied.
Sid leaned onto one elbow and dropped his smoldering cigarette butt on the cold cement walkway, stubbing it out with his heel. “We know about Sanctuary Base, so spill. What do you know?”
Sid lost his father during the opening days of the siege. He’d been an only child: his mother died bringing him into the world and on the few occasions when I’d hang out over at Sid’s house, there was a layer of tension between Sid and his Dad that was so thick, you’d need an industrial cutter to slice through it. Standing at six foot four and with hands the size of dinner plates, he was brawny and utterly fearless during the dozens of terrifying breaches of our security. We’d fought side by side and he was ready to lay down his life to protect my kid sister, Jo. We all were. I just hoped he was going to back me on what I was going to say next.
I read Sgt. Green’s letter and filled the pair in on the broadcast from Sanctuary Base. I told them about bugging out to Lake Louise or heading to Prince Albert National Park, and the entire time, both listened attentively, each throwing me the occasional nod.
“We’re going to fight our way out of the city,” I said, deciding that a matter-of-fact approach would buy me more goodwill than say, for example, my raising a shaky hand and offering myself up as a volunteer to be in charge. “We’re taking both APC’s. Sid … I want you in the turret for my carrier. Doug, you’ll be our driver and Kenny will drive the other one. Cruze is the unit 2IC and will be in charge of the other carrier. Kate Dawson will be my second while we’re mobile. Mel will be the gunner in Cruze’s machine and Jo is coming with us. We’re going to break out of the city and head northwest until we’re clear of town.”
I’d been expecting push-back from Sid, and surprisingly, it didn’t come. He looked at Doug and then back at me and said, “About fucking time we’re out of here. I’m good with being a turret gunner so consider me a second set of eyes. As for Dawson … whatever. She’s usually got her shit together.”
“Good,” I said. I could hear the sound of approaching footsteps from the stairwell leading back into the armory.
Doug opened the cotton duck accessory bag for the radio and reached inside. “I’m going to put the ten-foot whip antennae on, maybe that will make the broadcast come in clearer.”
“Not a bad idea,” said Sid as he slipped the night vision goggles over his head.
It was still dark outside as everyone gathered at the sentry post. A strong breeze pushed the whip antennae Doug secured on the radio back and forth with each little gust, the mast tapping against the parapet every few seconds. Doug had also just installed a fresh battery into the bottom of the man pack and cleaned the connections for the handset and small speaker that was no bigger than saucer.
I gazed at each of the last survivors of The King’s Own. Every single one of them wore a look of expectation mixed with quiet desperation – well, everyone except for Sid. He’d lit another cigarette and was keeping his eye on the streets surrounding our position. I looked at my watch – it was 06:28.
“Everyone keep quiet,” I said as I flipped the radio to short wave. “When the broadcast comes through just listen closely. Dawson, write down every word you here because I want to compare it to the original message in case they’ve altered it.”
“Will do,” she said she fished her field message pad out of the pocket of her combat jacket.
I set the knob on the frequency of the original message. A haze of static penetrated the silence of the early morning and nobody said a word. Nobody even breathed for fear of jinxing ourselves. In the distance I could hear a series of throaty, lifeless groans – the sound you hear when the creeps catch a whiff of you. It was too far away to be a threat to any of us and I decided that maybe the creeps were giving payback to the feral cats that had attacked them.
The static abruptly stopped and a male voice filled the air:
NODUFF. THIS IS SANCTUARY BASE CALLING. SANCTUARY BASE AT 53.200 NOVEMBER 105.7500 WHISKEY.
There was static for ten seconds and then:
NODUFF. THIS IS SANCTUARY BASE CALLING. SANCTUARY BASE AT 53.200 NOVEMBER 105.7500 WHISKEY.
Jo stood next to me and took my hand. Her palm was clammy and cold. More static filtered through the speaker for another ten seconds and then:
NODUFF. THIS IS SANCTUARY BASE CALLING. SANCTUARY BASE AT 53.200 NOVEMBER 105.7500 WHISKEY. ALL CLEAR NOW – I SAY AGAIN – ALL CLEAR. SANCTUARY BASE. NODUFF. ALL CLEAR. NODUFF. NEXT CONTACT AT 12:00 ZULU.
“Fuck this,” Mel Dixon snapped as she grabbed the radio handset and squeezed:
“Sanctuary Base this is, I spell, KILO INDIA NOVEMBER GOLF SIERRA OSCAR WHISKEY NOVEMBER. Our unit has received your message, over!”
There was more static and silence for about five seconds as Mel tried again:
“Sanctuary Base this is, I spell, KILO INDIA NOVEMBER GOLF SIERRA OSCAR WHISKEY NOVEMBER. Our unit has received your message. Radio check, over!”
I took the handset from Mel and shook my head. “They can’t hear us – they’re too far away.”
“Shit!” she hissed as she kicked the accessory bag in frustration.
Sid exhaled a plume of smoke and said, “Nice fucking move … anyone with a short wave receiver in the area would have heard us. You just told them the King’s Own is alive and well, you twat.”
Mel threw Sid a venomously look. “Fuck you, Sid.”
He shook his head and chuckled to himself, muttering the words “split arses.”
Dawson took a threatening step forward until she was less than an inch from Sid’s face.
“What the fuck did you say?”
He took a drag on his cigarette and deliberately blew a mouthful of smoke in Dawson’s face. I saw her clench both hands into tight fists and if I didn’t step in there was going to be a dust up that could tear the team apart.
“Enough of this shit!”
I snarled as I stepped between the pair. I gave Sid a hard shove that didn’t even move him from where he stood. It was as if his feet were encased in cement. “We’re on the same side so get it together.”
“Asshole prick,” Dawson spat.
“Kate!” Cruze snapped. “Raise your voice again and we’ll be swarming with creeps. If Green was still here this little outburst wouldn’t have happened.”
“Yeah, well he’s not here,” Sid griped.
I needed to say something so there would be no doubt in anyone’s mind as to who was in charge. And surprisingly, I didn’t flinch. I didn’t feel like I was going to throw up. I didn’t do anything more than look at my kid sister whose eyes narrowed sharply. She threw me a single nod, as if she was telepathically giving me a vote of confidence.
I drew in a deep breath and growled,
“Everybody down on one knee now!”
The team complied with my command. Instantly. Even Sid.
I shut the radio off and let everyone kneel in silence for a few moments. I wanted them to hear the sound of the monsters shuffling around our position. I wanted them to breath in the scent of death and decomposition. To suck the poisonous air of a city ruled by the dead into their lungs.
I pulled Sgt. Green’s letter out of my pants pocket and read aloud in a voice that was little more than a whisper. And I didn’t give anyone a chance to say a word about it when I’d finished.
“Dawson you’re my 2IC,” I said firmly. “Sid and Doug are with us – and Jo, too. Cruze is taking the other carrier with Mel and Kenny. I want both machines packed with everything we need to survive. I want rations stripped down. Section level weapons. Mortars and H.E. I want the guns mounted in both turrets. Two toboggans lashed on the sides with full tent groups. Camouflage nets for winter and summer. Check the med kits … check fucking everything and then double check it. We’re getting the hell out of here, people. Unit-O-Group at the carriers – 18:00 tonight. I’ll be issuing orders.”
Then I stood up and took Jo by the hand. Together we walked through the stairway and disappeared into the armory.
I didn’t bother looking back.