In Hiding: A Survivors Journal of the Great Outbreak (9 page)

In
that split second we went from quiet shock to having to restrain Cody from
opening the door. He fought frantically, trying to get inside. As strange as it
all seemed I couldn’t really blame him. After all, all he wanted to do was help
his friend. It just took him some time to understand that the person on the
other side of the door wasn’t Scott anymore.

The
last time I had seen him he was making a break for his car through the back
receiving doors. It was Kerri who had noticed his car out in the parking lot
with the driver’s side door open and no sign of him. How he got in that garage
we could never know for sure. My guess was that he tried to get in his car and
was either overwhelmed by Zeds or had forgotten his keys inside the store. He
probably tried to get back inside, but the doors were all blocked by zombies or
locked. All except for one, the employee entrance on the far side of the
garage, which was the only, door that we hadn’t checked and a door I wouldn’t
even know existed until much later.

I
could tell just by looking through the window that he had been severely hurt.
Judging by the stains on what clothing we could see he had lost a lot of blood.
If I had to guess, that was most likely what had caused him to pass out which
was probably why he was unable to make any noise or get our attention the night
before. By the look of his injuries, the Zeds had gotten to him while he was
out there. Again, all of this is just an assumption on my part. We would never
know what really happened to him.

It
took some time for us to gather everyone outside that door. We knew we had to
let the others know what we had found or more like whom we had found. Seeing
Scott like that was a terrible sight and a big hit to the moral of the group.
However, it did reaffirm that we had made the right decision when we all chose
to stay.

His
former co-workers had a hard time seeing what he had become. I had only known
him for a very short amount of time and I still struggled to see someone who
had been a perfectly normal human being the day before in such a state.
 
But once we had everyone together the
difficult discussion began of what to do with him. Obviously, the people who
used to work with him wanted to help him even though they had no idea how to do
it. A few of us however had a different idea of what needed to be done.

He
had become one of them, and more importantly he was inside the store with us.
Sure he was trapped inside that garage and the door that stood between him and
us looked like it was strong enough to keep him in there. But some of the
others were starting to ask if we could ever really be truly safe with him
inside the building. Once those questions starting being asked, there was no
turning back. The cat was out of the bag as they say.

Anne
was the first to catch on as to where those questions were leading. So that was
when Paul just came out and said exactly what he wanted to do. He wanted to
kill him. Anne, Kerri, and Cody lost it at the mere mention of that. Anne
called Paul every name in the book including some things that were only
reserved for the worst of human beings. I’ll just say that there was more then
one regrettable thing said at that moment by both parties.

Tanya
tried to bring calm to the situation but it was too late. People were heated
and the yelling and name-calling was already out of control. Finally Ray was
able to settle things down when he asked if anyone else had a reasonable
suggestion with what to do with him. A few suggested just blocking the door and
leaving him in there or letting him out and tying him up and finding somewhere
else to hold him. Both of those suggestions didn’t fly well with those of us
who saw him as a threat.

It
was in the middle of that conversation when Ray introduced another issue that I
don’t think any of us were prepared for. He asked about Bruce and what we
planned on doing with him. Ray had pieced things together and although he
couldn’t be certain what he was suggesting was true, he was almost positive
about what needed to be done. He started talking about the similarities between
Bruce and Scott. The fact that both of them had been injured by the infected
and that both of them had been in close proximity to Zeds and that Bruce
shouldn’t be in the condition he was in from just a bite to the hand.

Ray
had suggested that what had happened to Scott was more then likely going to
happen to Bruce. Now Ray never suggested that we do to Bruce what we were
debating about doing to Scott. Instead, he had offered a much better idea and
it was one that we could all agree on.

We
opted to move Bruce into the caged area where the store kept the alcohol and
cigarettes under lock and key. We made him comfortable, we gave him blankets,
pillows, water and everything we thought he would need to rest and hopefully recover.
We never told him why we were doing what we were doing. We lied to him and told
him that we thought he had the flu or something and that we couldn’t risk the
rest of us getting sick. I don’t know if he ever believed that or if he was
just to weak to fight it. But he never fought us once as we moved him into that
cage.

I
remember grabbing a carton of cigarettes off the shelf just before we slammed
the door closed. It sounds cold I know, but I didn’t mean any disrespect by it.
I just needed them if I planned on keeping my sanity through this whole ordeal.
It’s funny how I can remember the little things like that. Just like I remember
feeling like we had condemned a man to his death as we closed that metal door.
I watched him for a few minutes as if I was waiting for him to turn into a
monster right then and there. It didn’t happen. It also hadn’t solved any of
our problems. Sure Bruce was contained just in case Ray’s theory turned out to
be true. But we still hadn’t come to a resolution on how to handle him if he
did turn.

Finally
after many more arguments, Tanya presented an idea to the group that everyone
could agree upon. We would put it to a vote. It was the only reasonable way
that we could resolve the issue.
 
Now I don’t know if it was because we were all emotionally drained or
that nobody in the group had any fight left in them at the time, but we decided
to postpone the vote until the next morning. The only thing we did decide that
evening was that although not everyone was going to agree with the decision, we
all needed to learn to live with the result.

Having
the vote the next morning gave everyone of us some much needed time to calm
down and take some serious time to think about what we were thinking about
doing. The fight over this had begun to drive a wedge between us all and if we
would have continued down that path we probably would have torn each other part
before the sun set that night.

Instead,
we all went our separate ways to reflect on the decision at hand. Ray returned
to the entertainment department hoping to find some more relevant information
on the news, Anne disappeared into the section where the books were sold, and
most of the others found their own quiet corner of the store where they could
find some peace and quiet to think about what we were about to do. My little
place just happened to be the roof.

I
stood on the roof looking out into the city. Black smoke still filled the air
as buildings burned. The West End, Riverside, Downtown, the fires appeared to
be burning everywhere. I could still hear the occasional gun shot in the
distance. I chose to ignore the sounds coming from the city because I was too
busy thinking about my family and whether or not they were safe. I thought
about them and everyone else I knew and where they might be or even what they
might be. But mostly I thought about Scott and what we might have to do in the
morning.

Trust
me when I say that vote wasn’t something that I took lightly. I would like to
think that nobody did. We were deciding whether or not to take a life. Even
though Scott had turned, there was no going back if we did kill him. We had to
weigh the options carefully. What if we did kill him and the next day a cure
was found. What if the state he was in was only temporary? That information
didn’t exist at the time and as unlikely as it was, we didn’t know. We had to
make a decision with the information we had. There was no cure and those
infected were extremely dangerous.

I
asked myself a wide variety of questions that evening. Would I be able to
explain our decision to his parents? What we were voting on doing. What if it
all ended tomorrow, would I have been able to look his parents in the eye and
tell them I voted the way I did for the reasons I did. I can only imagine how
many people were forced to do the unthinkable during this. Sons and daughters
forced to make those decisions about their parents and vice versa. Friends and
other family members forced into making the hardest decision they would ever
have to make in order to survive. It was what the world had turned into.

We
already had three dead and two of them had died at my hand. It’s not every day
that you kill someone, even if they had turned into something that resembled a
zombie. I would eventually get over those feelings, I would have too or I never
would have made it. Everyone eventually had to get over it and learn that it
was either you or them. That was just how it was.

The
reason I went to the roof was to be alone. I wanted to think long and hard
about the decision I was about to make and I didn’t want anyone else trying to
convince me otherwise and trust me when I tell you that there was plenty of
lobbying that went on. Paul and Trevor were pushing their agenda. Anne and
Kerri were pushing theirs. They were talking to everyone else, mostly in
private trying to persuade them to vote with their side. I heard all about it
from some of the others after the fact.

Anne
and Kerri were the first to approach me. They tried to plead their case but I
quickly told them that I had made my choice. The only thing I didn’t tell them
was that I was still working on committing to that choice. There was a part of
me that really didn’t want to kill Scott. But with everything that was going on
around us, the severity of the situation, and the realization of just how lucky
we were to find the safety that we had. I couldn’t risk that. Not for Scott,
not for anyone. I explained that to Anne and Kerri as clearly as I could. I
tried telling them that they were letting their feelings get in the way and
that I agreed with Paul on the matter.

Now
neither one of them was happy with me. But they never said anything vulgar or
criticized me for my opinion and I respected them for that. There were plenty
of other things that I wanted to say, but I didn’t. I realized there was no
need to escalate the situation at that time. Everyone was entitled to their own
opinion and the best course of action was to let the vote take place and deal
with the consequences after the fact.

I
knew what I was going to do. I had made up my mind. But there is a small part
of me that has always wondered if Anne or Paul were able to convince any of the
others to change theirs. I hoped not. I would hope that people would be strong
enough in their convictions to make their own decision and stick with it when
it came to something so important.

As for the rest of that night,
well I figured I could pass some time by trying to get to know some of the
others a little better.
 
I will
always remember the interesting conversation that I had with Shannon that
evening. I was wandering around trying to find something to do when I saw her
standing alone looking out the front doors. When I got there she thanked me
again for getting her out of that bathroom in one piece. But I was more interested
in what she was looking at then hearing her thank me again for what I had done.
I found it weird that she was just standing there watching the Zeds pounding on
the glass doors and my curiosity got the best of me. That was when I asked her
what she was looking at.

To
this day I still remember her answer. She told me that she had noticed that
they never stopped. The same dozen or so Zeds that were outside the door the
day before were still there. Sure others had joined them but they never acknowledged
when another one of them joined the crowd. They just kept pounding on the
glass, determined to get inside. They never got tired. They never stopped to
use the washroom or rest. They would never stop.

She
explained how she had been looking into their eyes hoping to see someone
looking back at her. She never did. There was nothing looking back at her,
nothing human about their eyes and she had given up hope that there was
anything left of the people they once were still inside them. There couldn’t be
she would tell me.

She
pointed out this one woman she had been watching for a while. She probably had
a career, friends, and a husband, maybe even children. Shannon and I both
watched her for a while. That was when Shannon and I realized that even if she
had seen the people who were once so important to her, she would have done
exactly what she was doing then. She would have tried to kill them.

The
Zeds out there would never stop. They would just keep going, trying to get
inside, trying to get us. The man that had attacked her in the bathroom had
always puzzled Shannon. He never tried to go underneath the door or even over
it. He just kept pounding on that door and he would have never stopped no
matter what. We talked about it and tried to understand it for a while. In the
end she told me that she was voting with Paul without me even asking. I guess
she just felt like she needed to tell me.