secret_history | November 2nd, 6:35

Outside, it was pouring rain. Mickey’s hair was drenched within seconds of her poking her head carefully through the door to check for zombies. She pulled her head back in and drew her jacket hood tightly around her head, tying it securely in place with the drawstrings.

“It’s raining,” she said unnecessarily to the others, because they could all see very well that sheets of rain were coming down on the pavement and running off in small torrents, carrying large bits of garbage and other chunks of substances none of them wanted to think about too closely.

She could see people standing in the rain outside, mostly immobile, or shuffling around aimlessly, sometimes walking in circles. Zombies, she concluded. Nothing else would induce people to stay outside in a downpour when there were zombies around. Her heart sank as she saw just how many there were. Couldn’t be helped, she told herself with a sigh. They’d just have to make the best of a bad job, and it was a very bad job indeed. She glanced over her shoulder at her unlikely group, and saw that they were all waiting, grim-faced, for her to give the signal to start running. Marco was right behind her holding his bat so tightly that his knuckles had turned white. Kitty was clinging to his back, looking for all the world like a giant pink bug of some kind, the only part of her head visible the pink hood of her coat.

“We’re going to try to head from clear spot to clear spot,” she said, hoping that the zombies hadn’t noticed them. If they had, they at the very least hadn’t started moving toward them yet. “Stick together as much as you can, and don’t stop moving unless I tell you it’s okay. Hell, even if I tell you it’s okay, double-check to make sure I haven’t missed anything.”

She darted out into the rain, her new boots splashing through the puddles. She clutched at the metal crowbar she’d taken with her, hoping to God that she wouldn’t have to use it. Just keep moving, she told herself, and they won’t be able to keep up with you. Except that she had to be careful not to outrun the others. Marco could easily outrun her, but he was burdened with Kitty, and she wasn’t sure about James and Marlene, or even Donnie, for that matter, who didn’t look like he was in great shape to begin with. Paul didn’t strike her as the type to do a lot of track and field either. She tried hard not to think about how slim their chances for survival were: for now, all they had to do was make the twenty-minute run, and she’d figure the rest out from there. One problem at a time, one step at a time.

She sprinted ahead as fast as she could, making for the corner of St. Catherine and Lambert-Closse, where she was planning to pause and see whether St. Catherine was passable or whether they ought to try and make their way to Peel via René-Lévesque. The rain made it almost impossible to hear anything except the sound of their boots splashing against the pavement. She was at once grateful not to have to hear the desperate moaning cries of the zombies, and terrified because she couldn’t hear them coming.

Water drummed heavily on the hood of her coat and ran down her face like cold tears, and she wiped at her face with gloves that were already soaking wet. They came to a stuttering stop at the corner of Lambert-Closse, where a bus stood abandoned, still flashing a sign that said “Désole —Hors Service.” What Marco used to call the “fake-out” buses, the buses that came around the corner after you’d been waiting for ten minutes in the freezing cold but weren’t actually going along the route you wanted to take. The bus was empty, and Mickey had the wild thought of taking it and driving to safety, except that she had no idea how to drive one of those things and didn’t have the time to figure it out now.

Cars were stopped everywhere on the narrow street, their doors hanging open, some of them mere piles of mangled wreckage where they’d crashed into each other, into buildings, into posts. A fire hydrant had been knocked clean off its cement block, but the water that had poured from it was indistinguishable now from all the rainwater. Broken glass littered the street and glimmered in the dim light of the street, making it look like thousands of tiny stars were trapped in the rainwater, like the night sky reflected in a shallow lake.

“No use going that way!” Marco shouted at her, and she knew he was right. There were too many obstacles in the way, too many places where zombies might be lurking unseen.

Everyone was still accounted for, and that was a blessing of sorts. She glanced around, and saw a few shambling figures in the small park by Atwater metro, their features obscured by the rain, making their way haltingly toward the small group huddled in the middle of the street, arms outstretched in a gesture that only a few days ago she’d have dismissed as a movie-made cliché.

“Keep going!” she yelled, and took off running again, hoping they would stay behind her.

The gas station on her left was deserted, but the same couldn’t be said of the Montreal Children’s Hospital, just over a block away where the street curved to meet René-Lévesque boulevard. She cursed herself as she caught sight of the parking lot full of hesitant silhouettes: she should have thought of that. Hospitals were probably the worst-affected areas —anyone with a bite wound would head there for treatment, and then infect the people around them. She increased her speed, and prayed they would all be able to keep up.

She skirted the hospital as best she could, aiming for the other side of the street, but it was too late: the zombies had long since spilled over the sidewalk and into the road, and suddenly the sound of moaning was loud and insistent in her ears, and wet, decaying hands were reaching for her, pawing at her coat. She swung out blindly with her crowbar, felt it connect with something soft and yielding. The zombie she’d hit staggered to the side, and came at her again. It was wearing green hospital scrubs, she saw, her stomach churning unaccountably at the thought. Most of its face had been eaten away, making it impossible to tell right away if it had been a man or a woman, and Mickey didn’t stop to take a closer look.

“Don’t stop! Keep moving!” she yelled. “Don’t let them get a good grip!”

She screamed and almost panicked when she felt fingers grabbing at her hair, tore herself loose with a painful wrench and kept running. There was a clear space further up on René-Lévesque: she could see it even from where she was. She was shouldering her way through a mob now, keeping her head down and her hands tucked close to her chest so as to avoid being bitten. She could feel the zombies’ hands pawing uselessly at her coat, a few at her thighs, unable to find purchase on her rain-soaked clothing. Their moans seemed to bounce off the inside of her skull, and she fancied she could feel the foetid breath of the creatures on her neck, although a small, reasonable voice answered that that couldn’t possibly be right, as zombies were dead and therefore didn’t breathe. The rain had washed away the worst of the stench, which was a mercy, but they were still all around, crowding and pushing and shoving and smothering.

Screams came from behind her, closer than she would have liked, and above all the screaming she could hear Marco swearing at the zombies, a wet crunching sound accompanying each new curse. She guessed he was having trouble keeping the creatures at bay with Kitty clinging to his shoulders.

A moment later, and she suddenly broke free, staggering under her own momentum and nearly losing her balance. She flailed, one hand losing its grip on her crowbar, pitched forward, and managed to catch herself before she went sprawling to the wet pavement. She straightened, and found herself staring into the decaying face of what must once have been a woman, but was now glassy-eyed and decomposing, the skin blueish and waxy, the tips of the fingers that reached for her throat long since torn away. She heard an incoherent yell, wondered for a moment if she might not be hearing herself, and suddenly the zombie’s head disappeared in a spray of blood and gristle as Marco swung his bat in a brutal arc at it, caving in its face. He grabbed Michaela by the elbow and dragged her along for a few paces.

“Come on, Mickey!”

She recovered enough to pull free of his grasp and run after him, noting to her relief that Kitty was still holding onto him and seemed unharmed as of yet. She looked back over her shoulder, but could see nothing except a writhing morass of bodies and limbs, indistinguishable one from the other. She thought that she might have seen a flash of pink hair, someone that might have been Paul, but she couldn’t be sure, and the flash of colour was gone before she could so much as blink. She turned away and kept running, no time to think or wonder if the others were able to get away. All she could do was run. She headed toward the on-ramp for the Ville-Marie Expressway, where it seemed as though there was a space that was clear enough for them to stop and regroup for a moment, maybe do a head count and see if they’d all escaped unscathed.

She allowed her pace to slow about ten yards from the intersection of René-Lévesque and rue du Fort, her lungs aching from the unaccustomed exercise. She fancied she could taste blood in her mouth, and wondered if that was just the result of running too fast, or whether she’d bitten her tongue and not realized it. She put a tentative finger in her mouth, tasted wet cotton, and discovered that she couldn’t tell if the wetness on her black cotton glove was blood, or rain or saliva or all three. Marco slowed down at the same time. Kitty had her face buried in his shoulder, and refused to look up even though she must have felt him slacken his pace. Her hands were clenched so tightly on his shoulders that Mickey was sure he’d have ten very small bruises in very short order.

Almost reluctantly she turned to see who had managed to keep up. To her surprise, she found that Randhir was by her side, and looked as though he had been the entire time. Coming up behind him, panting for breath, came Paul and Donnie, then James and Marlene. Her heart sank.

“Kenny?” she asked of no one in particular. James just shook his head. “Shit!” she wanted to cry. She looked back, hoping to see his tall form emerge from the milling crowd of zombies, knowing she wouldn’t.

“Mickey, we can’t wait any longer. There are more of the fuckers coming from over that way,” Marco pointed up rue du Fort.

He was right. There was no choice but to keep moving. With a last curse directed in the vague direction of the zombies and maybe partly at God, she turned East and started running again.