November 1st, 20:01
Nov. 7th, 2006 07:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
secret_historyThey ran. It was much easier to outrun the creatures than it was to kill them, and without a huge crowd of frightened people to impede their movements it wasn’t much of a challenge to duck out of the way of the grasping hands. They sprinted as fast as they could toward the far ladder, hearts hammering and the taste of fear bitter in their mouths. Michaela heard more rapid footsteps behind them and turned to look, fearing that they had underestimated the zombies’ capacity for speed, but it was only another small handful of survivors who had seen them and had banked on finding safety in this alternate route. Randhir scrambled quickly up the ladder, leaving the crutch behind him and then turning to catch it when Marco threw it up to him. He then turned, brandishing the paltry improvised weapon as a meagre defense in case the zombies, who had by now congregated at the far end of the platform, turned their attention back to the small group of survivors.
Marco was next up the ladder, and no sooner was he up then he turned and hauled Mickey the rest of the way by grabbing her hands. He pushed her to the side and reached for the next person, until a panting, frightened group of ten people stood trembling and huddled together on the platform. Mickey was already using the emergency mallet to break the glass in the compartment provided by the city’s fire department. She pulled out the heavy red-coloured axe with its curved handle and handed it to Marco, keeping the mallet for herself until she could find something better.
Now that she was able to get a proper look at the platform, she could see that it was littered with corpses, most of which had been savaged and torn apart. Bits of flesh and limbs were scattered about, and large areas of the granite floor were slick with spilled blood. She turned to the others and found them all staring at her expectantly. Like it or not, she was still in charge. Her heart sank, even as she forced herself to square her shoulders and straighten her spine.
“Everyone make for the stairs! Run as fast as you can and don’t stop until you get to the top! Marco, you lead, Randhir, take the rear. Hit anything that tries to stop us!”
Marco didn’t wait to be told twice, but raced ahead, the axe clutched in both hands. She didn’t stop to check, but she was fairly certain that for now, at least, their presence had gone undetected by the zombies, who were all too intent on the larger mass of humanity in the tunnel. They sprinted up the stairs, and she could hear the others panting as they strove to keep up with the pace Marco had set. Her own breath came in laboured gasps, as much from fear as exertion, and suddenly they were in Atwater station, behind the turnstiles, the white tiled walls gleaming slickly in the artificial lighting.
“Oh Jesus, the place is crawling with them!” Marco exclaimed.
For a moment Mickey thought she had led the small group directly into the maw of the monster, but as she reached the top of the stairs behind Marco she saw that, at the very least, there was no immediate threat on this side of the turnstiles. All the zombies she could see were on the other side, pressing against the metal barriers, reaching hungrily but futilely toward them. Her stomach lurched, looking at them: they must have been human, not so long ago, she thought. There were men and women and even a few children among them, young girls and boys of about eighteen and nineteen, CEGEP students attending Dawson, wearing torn jeans and t-shirts featuring their favourite bands underneath their jackets. Some of them still had beaten-up backpacks slung over their shoulders, though most of them had been ripped to shreds and had shed most of their contents, which were now strewn haphazardly on the dirty floor of the station.
“Approchez pas!”
A shout startled her. Looking around, she caught sight of a man in a STM uniform backing away from them, looking around wildly for a way to escape them. She motioned to the others to be still, then took a step toward him.
“Non, approchez pas, j’vous dis!”
She called out to him, trying to sound reassuring, although she was sure she just sounded terrified. “Monsieur! Ayez pas peur, on vous veut pas de mal!” Not for the first time, she wished her French was better under pressure. She was pretty sure she’d conveyed what she wanted to convey.
The STM employee hesitated. “Vous venez d’où?”
“Du tunnel. On a échappé aux... choses... en bas,” she couldn’t think of the French word for ‘zombie,’ and she wasn’t sure in any case if the man would know what she was talking about even if she did use the word. “On veut sortir d’ici,” she added, hoping he might know of a way out, although common sense told her that if he knew of a way out, he would have already taken it.
Apparently reassured that they weren’t zombies, he hurried over to them, glancing repeatedly over his shoulder at the milling throng of the creatures that moaned and struggled to get at them from only a few feet away.
“Ils sont pas capables de franchir la barrière,” he informed her unnecessarily. “Pis j’crois pas qu’ils sont capables de monter l’escalier. Vous m’avez fait peur en crisse,” he added. “J’pensais que j’métais trompé et pis que vous veniez pour me manger.”
“Non, non,” she reassured him. “On est pas des... euh, zombies.” To her relief, he nodded in understanding. “C’est quoi ton nom?” she asked.
“Martin.”
“What’s he saying?”
“Nothing really important,” she said a bit callously. “Just that his name’s Martin and that he thought we were zombies.”
“I speak English, you know.” With a thick accent, but it was definitely English.
“Oh, sorry.” She wasn’t really sorry. She didn’t have the time to be sorry, and she felt too drained to feel any emotion except fear at the moment.
“What do we do now?” someone else asked.
She glanced over at the zombies straining futilely at the flimsy barrier that separated them from the small group of refugees. Then she deliberately turned her back on them slowly. Who knew that all that training for crisis situations that she never thought she’d need would actually come in handy someday? she thought bitterly. Show that you’re in control of yourself, of your emotions, and people will think you’re in control of the situation, even when you aren’t. Of course, right now that kind of certainty was a double-edged sword.
“All right. There’s eleven of us,” she paused and did a quick head-count. “Eleven of us,” she confirmed, “and about thirty of them that I can see off-hand. Right now as far as I can tell, we’re safe for a few minutes. They don’t look like they’re too bright, or at the very least they don’t have the physical capacity to get past the turnstiles or to climb up the stairs. They’re slow and clumsy, and they don’t seem to be able to work together. They’ve also lost the element of surprise. That gives us something of an advantage, at least for now.”
“So what do we do?” The same person repeated.
Mickey hesitated. She didn’t really know what to do now. How bad was the situation in the city? Was it contained in any kind of way, or was it chaos out there? They had no weapons, no equipment of any kind, nothing on their side except the dubious knowledge that they were probably —probably— faster and smarter than their opponents. There was nothing in the Emergency Dispather’s Handbook about invasions of flesh-eating corpses. Not that there was really an Emergency Dispatcher’s Handbook, either, but she’d never felt less-prepared for a crisis than she did at this moment.
She looked at the rag-tag group she’d dragged along behind her. There was Martin (whom she kept thinking of as “the STM guy” in her head) and Marco, of course, who had never left her side, and Randhir, who had kept pace with them the whole time. To her surprise, she saw that Marlene was standing toward the back of the group, one hand shoved deep in the pocket of her grey down coat, the other still clutching her shapeless brown bag. Mickey would have marvelled at the woman’s ability to hang onto her purse in a time of crisis, except that she had done the same thing: maybe people’s instincts were to hang on to whatever seemed familiar when the whole world was going crazy around them.
A flash of pink behind someone else made her look closer, and she found herself smiling when she saw Paul, the punk kid from the metro. She was absurdly pleased to see familiar faces, although logic told her that it was normal for them to have sought out someone they knew to follow rather than run blindly into what might be the heart of the danger. Alfonso and the others from her metro car were nowhere to be seen, and she felt a lump in her throat, unaccountably, since she didn’t really know any of them. She hoped they were safe.
A man and a woman were huddled together, arms around each other and a young girl who looked to be about eleven or twelve, wearing pink jeans with sparkling sequins under a pink and white jacket that was now smeared with dirt and what looked like bloodstains. Better not to look too closely, she told herself. Two men stood slightly apart from the group, identical looks of apprehension and suspicion on their faces. One was a tall, athletic-looking black man in jeans, heavy boots and a brown leather jacket, the other much shorter and stocky, with thick brown hair and eyebrows that nearly met over a prominent nose, his open jacket revealing a white t-shirt and several thick golden chains. From the cedar tree-shaped pendant that hung from one of the chains, Mickey guessed he must be Lebanese.
She looked from her small, frightened group, back to the milling crowd that waited for them, and tried very hard not to let despair overwhelm her. How the hell was she supposed to get these people to safety? It had all seemed so simple before: get them out of the train, walk to the nearest station, and get out. Easy. She chewed her lip, trying to think.
“Okay,” she said finally. “First things first. Is anyone injured in any way? Cuts, bruises, sprains, anything broken, anything at all that hurts, we should know now. Anything that might slow us down if we’re trying to move fast.”
Everyone shook their heads, although Michaela saw the young couple she presumed were married exchange a worried look. They also shook their heads in denial, though, and so she thought nothing more of it. No injuries at all. Well, thank goodness for small mercies.
“Okay,” she repeated. “If no one’s hurt, we can concentrate on getting out of here. I don’t know how bad it is out there,” she continued, glancing at the ceiling as though it would somehow reveal what was going on above ground, “but I think we should assume the worst for now and act accordingly. We have to first get past those things,” she pointed to the turnstiles, knowing that her words needed no clarification, “and then get to someplace where we’ll be more sheltered, at least for the time being. We’re going to need some way to get news of what’s going on elsewhere, to figure out how to proceed from there. Also, we need a better way to defend ourselves than our bare hands and what little we have now: the closer we have to get to those things, the more risk we run of getting ourselve, uh, eaten.” She hesitated before saying the last word: it still seemed to incredible for her to voice aloud.
“Where are we supposed to get weapons?” the father of the little girl wanted to know. “We’re in the middle of downtown, and it’s not like this is the United States, you know, with guns on every street corner.”
Mickey refrained from rolling her eyes at that. Marco gave the man a scornful look. “For one,” he said, “we’re right next door to a shopping mall. Alexis Nihon is twenty yards to the right, in case you hadn’t noticed, and there’s a Canadian Tire in there. We can find pretty much most of what we need right there.”
“What if it’s full of those things? How are we supposed to get past them then?”
“We’ll have to deal with that when we get to it,” Mickey said firmly. “But it’s pretty late by now. If we’re lucky, the place will have mostly emptied itself a few hours ago. There may be a lot of those things here, but I think the presence of live people probably attracted the majority of them here. The ones on this level, anyway: they don’t seem to be able to manage stairs, like I said.”
“I don’t want to go out there with those things!” The STM guy said vehemently, his accent even stronger than before. “They are going to eat me! I don’t want to be eaten!”
She shrugged impatiently. “You can stay here, but for how long? It’s not like they’re going to just go away. How long have you been trapped here? Hours? Have they shown any signs of leaving?” he shook head head mutely. “I rest my case.”
“There aren’t any guns at Canadian Tire,” Randhir said abruptly.
“What?”
“I said there aren’t—”
“No, I heard what you said,” Mickey interrupted. “Why did you think of guns?”
“Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it? Let’s pretend for a minute that these really are zombies, which would make sense. The best kind of defense againt them is something long-range that can be relied on for consistent results. That means guns. Preferably rifles and shotguns.”
Marco snorted. “You’ve watched too many horror movies.”
“Maybe, but these things look an awful lot like the monsters in those movies to me, don’t you agree?”
Marco made a noncommittal gesture. Marlene spoke up, startling them all. “What about other weapons? They must have tire irons and baseball bats and things in the stores.”
“Those are okay as temporary weapons,” Randhir replied, warming to his subject, “but they’re not as reliable in the long run. For one thing, these guys aren’t going to get tired, and we are. You swing a baseball bat or a crowbar long enough, your strength is going to give out, and the things keep coming at you and trying to eat you. We need to keep them as far away from us as humanly possible.”
“There’ll be television sets up there, too,” Mickey said, unwilling to waste more time while Randhir extolled the virtues of firearms. They could deal with that later. “and radios. We can get the news reports, see what we’re up against, and figure out if we’ll need guns after that. We might be able to find some sort of organized rescue effort above ground, find out what’s really going on out there. There’s be telephones,” she added, “and a way out of this mess. All we have to do is get past the... zombies... blocking our path. I’m open to suggestions.”
No one answered for a few moments, the silence punctuated only by the soft moaning of the zombies and the sound of scuffling, scrabbling limbs. Finally the Lebanese man spoke up.
“What about tricking them?”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re attracted by living people, right? So why don’t we use ourselves as bait, and get them on this side of the barrier, then lock them in. Then we jump the barrier, and they can’t get at us anymore.”
“Risky,” Marco frowned. “First off, at least one person would have to open the barrier, for which we don’t have the keys, and that means going right up to them, running the risk of getting bitten.”
“Not if we move to one side first. They follow us wherever we go, right?”
“I see what you’re saying,” Mickey nodded slowly. “It’s risky, but the idea has merit. I think I know how to work this to our advantage.” She turned to the STM guy. “Do you have the keys for the barrier?”
He nodded, his complexion grey with fear. “But I don’t want to let those things in here. We don’t have nowhere to escape after that!”
“How secure is your booth?” she pointed to the ubiquitous ticket-booths in which the STM operators sat all day long.
He shrugged. “They haven’t got through it, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“That’s exactly what I’m asking.”
After that it took very little time to implement the plan that had started as a small kernel in the back of Mickey’s mind. She ushered everyone into the ticket booth, wedging them in as tightly as she could manage. There wasn’t really room for all eleven of them, but there was enough room for four on one side and five on the other. She remained outside with Marco, having shut the door to the booth securely and ordered the others to lock it from the inside (a standard safety feature for the STM employees faced with a belligerent or mentally unstable passenger). She turned to Marco, who was waiting, his expression grim, still clutching his fireman’s axe.
“I know I’m asking a lot of you,” she said quietly, “but you’re the only one I can be really sure of in all this. I don’t know any of these other people.”
He shook his head abruptly. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got your back, same as always.”
She smiled with relief, then glanced anxiously at the booth, to which the zombies were already migrating like sharks scenting blood in the water. “Okay. So now we wait until the gate is clear, and then we run like hell, unlock it, and then use ourselves to get the zombies back inside here.”
“I know, Mickey. You told me the plan already.”
“Sorry. I’m just nervous. There’s so much that could go wrong.”
“Let’s not think of that just now, okay?”
“Deal.”
She watched as the creatures dragged themselves over to the booth and began smacking at the bulletproof glass with the flat of their hands, their fingers leaving greasy smears on the transparent surface. She heard a few inarticulate shrieks from inside the booth, and guessed that the little girl was having a harder time keeping calm than the adults, which was understandable but not desirable at this juncture. Finally, she was satisfied that the way was clear enough to make a break for it.
“Now!”
They sprinted ahead, she with the keys clutched firmly in her hand, Marco close behind her with the axe, just in case. She knelt by the plexiglass barrier, fingers suddenly clumsy with fear and slippery with perspiration, fumbling with the metallic lock. She nearly dropped the keys in her haste, cursed, fumbled to find the right one again, and finally the lock popped open under her hands. She pulled her hands away, then yanked the barrier open as wide as it would go. She looked up: none of the zombies had so much as turned in their direction yet.
Marco stepped forward. “Hey, shit-for-brains!” he yelled. “Over here!”
“Nice, Marco,” she muttered. “Very imaginative.”
“What? It’s not like they understand me.”
Instead of answering she began to jump up and down, waving her arms, trying to attract the attention of the zombies, who right now seemed much more interested in the unattainable human flesh behind the bulletproof partition.
“Hey! This way!” she shouted as loudly as she could, and Marco joined in, making as much noise as possible.
They yelled and and shouted and banged on the barrier, until finally one of the creatures turned slowly to face them. Michaela’s heart began to race, as much from excitement that her plan appeared to be working as from fear. She shouted until she felt her voice starting to give out, and was rewarded by the sight of the zombie, a woman wearing slacks and a torn powder-blue blouse, take a few halting steps in their direction. She must have been pretty, not too long ago, Mickey thought distractedly, with well-tended brown hair with highlights, and she thought she could even see a silk bra in a matching blue tone through the gaping hole in the tattered blouse.
Now, though, the torn hands made a mockery of the careful French manicure, the vacant stare and slack jaw belied any pretension this poor creature had ever had to sophistication. She had lost her shoes sometime in the past few hours, and now staggered toward them on feet covered only by nylon hose, through which Michaela could see red-painted toenails. Then, as if responding to an unseen, silent cue, the others turned and began shambling after the woman like overgrown rats following a grotesque Pied Piper.
She waited, holding her breath, for what seemed an eternity. Part of her was very glad the creatures couldn’t move fast, and another part of her wished fervently that they could just get this over with, please. Finally she felt Marco tug at her elbow, and she began backing away slowly, drawing the zombies after her, past the barrier. She edged back, keeping at least five feet between her and the woman in the blue blouse at all times, watching as the others came shuffling behind. One past the barrier. Two. Five. Eleven. Come on, she prayed, come on! Only a few more to go, a few more metres to back up. Eighteen past the barrier. Almost there.
Only belatedly did she realize that there was no way she would be able to dodge around the crowd of zombies converging on her.
Marco was next up the ladder, and no sooner was he up then he turned and hauled Mickey the rest of the way by grabbing her hands. He pushed her to the side and reached for the next person, until a panting, frightened group of ten people stood trembling and huddled together on the platform. Mickey was already using the emergency mallet to break the glass in the compartment provided by the city’s fire department. She pulled out the heavy red-coloured axe with its curved handle and handed it to Marco, keeping the mallet for herself until she could find something better.
Now that she was able to get a proper look at the platform, she could see that it was littered with corpses, most of which had been savaged and torn apart. Bits of flesh and limbs were scattered about, and large areas of the granite floor were slick with spilled blood. She turned to the others and found them all staring at her expectantly. Like it or not, she was still in charge. Her heart sank, even as she forced herself to square her shoulders and straighten her spine.
“Everyone make for the stairs! Run as fast as you can and don’t stop until you get to the top! Marco, you lead, Randhir, take the rear. Hit anything that tries to stop us!”
Marco didn’t wait to be told twice, but raced ahead, the axe clutched in both hands. She didn’t stop to check, but she was fairly certain that for now, at least, their presence had gone undetected by the zombies, who were all too intent on the larger mass of humanity in the tunnel. They sprinted up the stairs, and she could hear the others panting as they strove to keep up with the pace Marco had set. Her own breath came in laboured gasps, as much from fear as exertion, and suddenly they were in Atwater station, behind the turnstiles, the white tiled walls gleaming slickly in the artificial lighting.
“Oh Jesus, the place is crawling with them!” Marco exclaimed.
For a moment Mickey thought she had led the small group directly into the maw of the monster, but as she reached the top of the stairs behind Marco she saw that, at the very least, there was no immediate threat on this side of the turnstiles. All the zombies she could see were on the other side, pressing against the metal barriers, reaching hungrily but futilely toward them. Her stomach lurched, looking at them: they must have been human, not so long ago, she thought. There were men and women and even a few children among them, young girls and boys of about eighteen and nineteen, CEGEP students attending Dawson, wearing torn jeans and t-shirts featuring their favourite bands underneath their jackets. Some of them still had beaten-up backpacks slung over their shoulders, though most of them had been ripped to shreds and had shed most of their contents, which were now strewn haphazardly on the dirty floor of the station.
“Approchez pas!”
A shout startled her. Looking around, she caught sight of a man in a STM uniform backing away from them, looking around wildly for a way to escape them. She motioned to the others to be still, then took a step toward him.
“Non, approchez pas, j’vous dis!”
She called out to him, trying to sound reassuring, although she was sure she just sounded terrified. “Monsieur! Ayez pas peur, on vous veut pas de mal!” Not for the first time, she wished her French was better under pressure. She was pretty sure she’d conveyed what she wanted to convey.
The STM employee hesitated. “Vous venez d’où?”
“Du tunnel. On a échappé aux... choses... en bas,” she couldn’t think of the French word for ‘zombie,’ and she wasn’t sure in any case if the man would know what she was talking about even if she did use the word. “On veut sortir d’ici,” she added, hoping he might know of a way out, although common sense told her that if he knew of a way out, he would have already taken it.
Apparently reassured that they weren’t zombies, he hurried over to them, glancing repeatedly over his shoulder at the milling throng of the creatures that moaned and struggled to get at them from only a few feet away.
“Ils sont pas capables de franchir la barrière,” he informed her unnecessarily. “Pis j’crois pas qu’ils sont capables de monter l’escalier. Vous m’avez fait peur en crisse,” he added. “J’pensais que j’métais trompé et pis que vous veniez pour me manger.”
“Non, non,” she reassured him. “On est pas des... euh, zombies.” To her relief, he nodded in understanding. “C’est quoi ton nom?” she asked.
“Martin.”
“What’s he saying?”
“Nothing really important,” she said a bit callously. “Just that his name’s Martin and that he thought we were zombies.”
“I speak English, you know.” With a thick accent, but it was definitely English.
“Oh, sorry.” She wasn’t really sorry. She didn’t have the time to be sorry, and she felt too drained to feel any emotion except fear at the moment.
“What do we do now?” someone else asked.
She glanced over at the zombies straining futilely at the flimsy barrier that separated them from the small group of refugees. Then she deliberately turned her back on them slowly. Who knew that all that training for crisis situations that she never thought she’d need would actually come in handy someday? she thought bitterly. Show that you’re in control of yourself, of your emotions, and people will think you’re in control of the situation, even when you aren’t. Of course, right now that kind of certainty was a double-edged sword.
“All right. There’s eleven of us,” she paused and did a quick head-count. “Eleven of us,” she confirmed, “and about thirty of them that I can see off-hand. Right now as far as I can tell, we’re safe for a few minutes. They don’t look like they’re too bright, or at the very least they don’t have the physical capacity to get past the turnstiles or to climb up the stairs. They’re slow and clumsy, and they don’t seem to be able to work together. They’ve also lost the element of surprise. That gives us something of an advantage, at least for now.”
“So what do we do?” The same person repeated.
Mickey hesitated. She didn’t really know what to do now. How bad was the situation in the city? Was it contained in any kind of way, or was it chaos out there? They had no weapons, no equipment of any kind, nothing on their side except the dubious knowledge that they were probably —probably— faster and smarter than their opponents. There was nothing in the Emergency Dispather’s Handbook about invasions of flesh-eating corpses. Not that there was really an Emergency Dispatcher’s Handbook, either, but she’d never felt less-prepared for a crisis than she did at this moment.
She looked at the rag-tag group she’d dragged along behind her. There was Martin (whom she kept thinking of as “the STM guy” in her head) and Marco, of course, who had never left her side, and Randhir, who had kept pace with them the whole time. To her surprise, she saw that Marlene was standing toward the back of the group, one hand shoved deep in the pocket of her grey down coat, the other still clutching her shapeless brown bag. Mickey would have marvelled at the woman’s ability to hang onto her purse in a time of crisis, except that she had done the same thing: maybe people’s instincts were to hang on to whatever seemed familiar when the whole world was going crazy around them.
A flash of pink behind someone else made her look closer, and she found herself smiling when she saw Paul, the punk kid from the metro. She was absurdly pleased to see familiar faces, although logic told her that it was normal for them to have sought out someone they knew to follow rather than run blindly into what might be the heart of the danger. Alfonso and the others from her metro car were nowhere to be seen, and she felt a lump in her throat, unaccountably, since she didn’t really know any of them. She hoped they were safe.
A man and a woman were huddled together, arms around each other and a young girl who looked to be about eleven or twelve, wearing pink jeans with sparkling sequins under a pink and white jacket that was now smeared with dirt and what looked like bloodstains. Better not to look too closely, she told herself. Two men stood slightly apart from the group, identical looks of apprehension and suspicion on their faces. One was a tall, athletic-looking black man in jeans, heavy boots and a brown leather jacket, the other much shorter and stocky, with thick brown hair and eyebrows that nearly met over a prominent nose, his open jacket revealing a white t-shirt and several thick golden chains. From the cedar tree-shaped pendant that hung from one of the chains, Mickey guessed he must be Lebanese.
She looked from her small, frightened group, back to the milling crowd that waited for them, and tried very hard not to let despair overwhelm her. How the hell was she supposed to get these people to safety? It had all seemed so simple before: get them out of the train, walk to the nearest station, and get out. Easy. She chewed her lip, trying to think.
“Okay,” she said finally. “First things first. Is anyone injured in any way? Cuts, bruises, sprains, anything broken, anything at all that hurts, we should know now. Anything that might slow us down if we’re trying to move fast.”
Everyone shook their heads, although Michaela saw the young couple she presumed were married exchange a worried look. They also shook their heads in denial, though, and so she thought nothing more of it. No injuries at all. Well, thank goodness for small mercies.
“Okay,” she repeated. “If no one’s hurt, we can concentrate on getting out of here. I don’t know how bad it is out there,” she continued, glancing at the ceiling as though it would somehow reveal what was going on above ground, “but I think we should assume the worst for now and act accordingly. We have to first get past those things,” she pointed to the turnstiles, knowing that her words needed no clarification, “and then get to someplace where we’ll be more sheltered, at least for the time being. We’re going to need some way to get news of what’s going on elsewhere, to figure out how to proceed from there. Also, we need a better way to defend ourselves than our bare hands and what little we have now: the closer we have to get to those things, the more risk we run of getting ourselve, uh, eaten.” She hesitated before saying the last word: it still seemed to incredible for her to voice aloud.
“Where are we supposed to get weapons?” the father of the little girl wanted to know. “We’re in the middle of downtown, and it’s not like this is the United States, you know, with guns on every street corner.”
Mickey refrained from rolling her eyes at that. Marco gave the man a scornful look. “For one,” he said, “we’re right next door to a shopping mall. Alexis Nihon is twenty yards to the right, in case you hadn’t noticed, and there’s a Canadian Tire in there. We can find pretty much most of what we need right there.”
“What if it’s full of those things? How are we supposed to get past them then?”
“We’ll have to deal with that when we get to it,” Mickey said firmly. “But it’s pretty late by now. If we’re lucky, the place will have mostly emptied itself a few hours ago. There may be a lot of those things here, but I think the presence of live people probably attracted the majority of them here. The ones on this level, anyway: they don’t seem to be able to manage stairs, like I said.”
“I don’t want to go out there with those things!” The STM guy said vehemently, his accent even stronger than before. “They are going to eat me! I don’t want to be eaten!”
She shrugged impatiently. “You can stay here, but for how long? It’s not like they’re going to just go away. How long have you been trapped here? Hours? Have they shown any signs of leaving?” he shook head head mutely. “I rest my case.”
“There aren’t any guns at Canadian Tire,” Randhir said abruptly.
“What?”
“I said there aren’t—”
“No, I heard what you said,” Mickey interrupted. “Why did you think of guns?”
“Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it? Let’s pretend for a minute that these really are zombies, which would make sense. The best kind of defense againt them is something long-range that can be relied on for consistent results. That means guns. Preferably rifles and shotguns.”
Marco snorted. “You’ve watched too many horror movies.”
“Maybe, but these things look an awful lot like the monsters in those movies to me, don’t you agree?”
Marco made a noncommittal gesture. Marlene spoke up, startling them all. “What about other weapons? They must have tire irons and baseball bats and things in the stores.”
“Those are okay as temporary weapons,” Randhir replied, warming to his subject, “but they’re not as reliable in the long run. For one thing, these guys aren’t going to get tired, and we are. You swing a baseball bat or a crowbar long enough, your strength is going to give out, and the things keep coming at you and trying to eat you. We need to keep them as far away from us as humanly possible.”
“There’ll be television sets up there, too,” Mickey said, unwilling to waste more time while Randhir extolled the virtues of firearms. They could deal with that later. “and radios. We can get the news reports, see what we’re up against, and figure out if we’ll need guns after that. We might be able to find some sort of organized rescue effort above ground, find out what’s really going on out there. There’s be telephones,” she added, “and a way out of this mess. All we have to do is get past the... zombies... blocking our path. I’m open to suggestions.”
No one answered for a few moments, the silence punctuated only by the soft moaning of the zombies and the sound of scuffling, scrabbling limbs. Finally the Lebanese man spoke up.
“What about tricking them?”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re attracted by living people, right? So why don’t we use ourselves as bait, and get them on this side of the barrier, then lock them in. Then we jump the barrier, and they can’t get at us anymore.”
“Risky,” Marco frowned. “First off, at least one person would have to open the barrier, for which we don’t have the keys, and that means going right up to them, running the risk of getting bitten.”
“Not if we move to one side first. They follow us wherever we go, right?”
“I see what you’re saying,” Mickey nodded slowly. “It’s risky, but the idea has merit. I think I know how to work this to our advantage.” She turned to the STM guy. “Do you have the keys for the barrier?”
He nodded, his complexion grey with fear. “But I don’t want to let those things in here. We don’t have nowhere to escape after that!”
“How secure is your booth?” she pointed to the ubiquitous ticket-booths in which the STM operators sat all day long.
He shrugged. “They haven’t got through it, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“That’s exactly what I’m asking.”
After that it took very little time to implement the plan that had started as a small kernel in the back of Mickey’s mind. She ushered everyone into the ticket booth, wedging them in as tightly as she could manage. There wasn’t really room for all eleven of them, but there was enough room for four on one side and five on the other. She remained outside with Marco, having shut the door to the booth securely and ordered the others to lock it from the inside (a standard safety feature for the STM employees faced with a belligerent or mentally unstable passenger). She turned to Marco, who was waiting, his expression grim, still clutching his fireman’s axe.
“I know I’m asking a lot of you,” she said quietly, “but you’re the only one I can be really sure of in all this. I don’t know any of these other people.”
He shook his head abruptly. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got your back, same as always.”
She smiled with relief, then glanced anxiously at the booth, to which the zombies were already migrating like sharks scenting blood in the water. “Okay. So now we wait until the gate is clear, and then we run like hell, unlock it, and then use ourselves to get the zombies back inside here.”
“I know, Mickey. You told me the plan already.”
“Sorry. I’m just nervous. There’s so much that could go wrong.”
“Let’s not think of that just now, okay?”
“Deal.”
She watched as the creatures dragged themselves over to the booth and began smacking at the bulletproof glass with the flat of their hands, their fingers leaving greasy smears on the transparent surface. She heard a few inarticulate shrieks from inside the booth, and guessed that the little girl was having a harder time keeping calm than the adults, which was understandable but not desirable at this juncture. Finally, she was satisfied that the way was clear enough to make a break for it.
“Now!”
They sprinted ahead, she with the keys clutched firmly in her hand, Marco close behind her with the axe, just in case. She knelt by the plexiglass barrier, fingers suddenly clumsy with fear and slippery with perspiration, fumbling with the metallic lock. She nearly dropped the keys in her haste, cursed, fumbled to find the right one again, and finally the lock popped open under her hands. She pulled her hands away, then yanked the barrier open as wide as it would go. She looked up: none of the zombies had so much as turned in their direction yet.
Marco stepped forward. “Hey, shit-for-brains!” he yelled. “Over here!”
“Nice, Marco,” she muttered. “Very imaginative.”
“What? It’s not like they understand me.”
Instead of answering she began to jump up and down, waving her arms, trying to attract the attention of the zombies, who right now seemed much more interested in the unattainable human flesh behind the bulletproof partition.
“Hey! This way!” she shouted as loudly as she could, and Marco joined in, making as much noise as possible.
They yelled and and shouted and banged on the barrier, until finally one of the creatures turned slowly to face them. Michaela’s heart began to race, as much from excitement that her plan appeared to be working as from fear. She shouted until she felt her voice starting to give out, and was rewarded by the sight of the zombie, a woman wearing slacks and a torn powder-blue blouse, take a few halting steps in their direction. She must have been pretty, not too long ago, Mickey thought distractedly, with well-tended brown hair with highlights, and she thought she could even see a silk bra in a matching blue tone through the gaping hole in the tattered blouse.
Now, though, the torn hands made a mockery of the careful French manicure, the vacant stare and slack jaw belied any pretension this poor creature had ever had to sophistication. She had lost her shoes sometime in the past few hours, and now staggered toward them on feet covered only by nylon hose, through which Michaela could see red-painted toenails. Then, as if responding to an unseen, silent cue, the others turned and began shambling after the woman like overgrown rats following a grotesque Pied Piper.
She waited, holding her breath, for what seemed an eternity. Part of her was very glad the creatures couldn’t move fast, and another part of her wished fervently that they could just get this over with, please. Finally she felt Marco tug at her elbow, and she began backing away slowly, drawing the zombies after her, past the barrier. She edged back, keeping at least five feet between her and the woman in the blue blouse at all times, watching as the others came shuffling behind. One past the barrier. Two. Five. Eleven. Come on, she prayed, come on! Only a few more to go, a few more metres to back up. Eighteen past the barrier. Almost there.
Only belatedly did she realize that there was no way she would be able to dodge around the crowd of zombies converging on her.
