The North: A Zombie Novel

  The North

  Sean Cummings

  Bloor Street Books

  Copyright © 2014 by Sean Cummings

  All Rights Reserved.

  sean-cummings.ca

  Twitter: @saskatoonauthor

  Sean Cummings asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  16.

  17.

  18.

  19.

  20.

  21.

  22.

  23.

  24.

  25.

  26.

  27.

  28.

  29.

  30.

  Acknowledgements

  Also by Sean Cummings

  Shade Fright

  Funeral Pallor

  Poltergeeks

  Student Bodies

  Marshall Conrad – A Superhero Tale

  For Jenny & Ella

  On difficult ground, I would keep pushing on along the road.

  On hemmed-in ground, I would block any way of retreat.

  On desperate ground, I would proclaim to my soldiers the hopelessness of saving their lives.

  Art of War by Sun Tzu

  Nominal Roll as at 5 November 1400 HRS ZULU

  Binns, Robert – Dead

  Bosworth, David – Dead

  Czerini, Martin – Dead

  Collings, Stephen – Dead

  Consworth, Denise – Missing on July 9th, presumed dead

  Cruze, Pam – Ark Two Commander, Group 2IC

  Dale, Mitchell – Dead

  Dawson, Kate – Ark One 2IC

  Dixon, Melanie – Ark Two 2IC

  Dorn, Gregory – Dead

  Binh, Mandeep – Dead

  Eves, Dale – Dead

  Falton, Geoffery – Missing on August 31st, presumed dead

  Ferguson, Bonnie – Dead

  Finnerty, Michael – Dead

  Finnerty, Robert – Dead

  Gainey, Terrance – Infected, Quarantined

  Graves, Mona – Missing on August 31st, presumed dead

  Green, Robert – Dead

  Holowaychuk Alex – Dead

  Howard, Kenneth – Ark Two Driver

  Jeffers, Calvin – Dead

  Jiwa, Anil – Dead

  Manybears, Doug – Ark One Driver

  Rogers, Pam – Dead

  Sawchuk, Willie – Missing, presumed dead

  Simmons, David – Ark One Commander, Group Leader

  Simmons, Jo – Ark One

  Singleton, Bryce – Dead

  Switch, Dale – Dead

  Toomey, Sid – Ark One Gunner

  1

  Journal Entry: 12 November 22:15 HRS ZULU

  I’m on sentry duty in about fifteen minutes, so a quick note. There are only eight of us left now that Sgt. Green is gone. Sid Toomey is now the oldest person in a group ranging in age from eight-years-old to seventeen.

  Mom is dead. I should be mourning her loss but I’ve given up on the idea because there’s just no point anymore. Maybe in the madness of the days and weeks following the siege Mom fell into the inescapable blackness of depression over our hopeless situation or maybe her mind simply wouldn’t accept what her eyes bore witness to. Anyway, it probably doesn’t matter now because part of me believes that nobody will survive. I didn’t tell Jo I found a gun lying next to Mom’s body or the right side of her head was missing.

  But I took the gun.

  Death prowls in clusters of ten or twenty that can sometimes grow as large as a small army if the creeps ever catch a whiff of your scent. Their outstretched arms and claw-like hands drip gore onto the pavement, and their shuffling feet echo in the distance when the night is clear and cold. When they swarm you; their inhuman voices will cry out, screeching, raging and animal-like, and it’s only a matter of time until they burst through the barricade of your hiding place wherever it might be.

  I’m all that Jo has left; it falls on me to save her life and perhaps my own, though lately, it’s near impossible to believe that any life can be saved when the sun hasn’t shone in more than six months. The sky is a flat grey canvas that blankets the burning cityscape like a body bag, and the air is tainted with the smell of smoke and blood and putrefying bodies because the dead surround us. We can’t stay here in the armory. We need to get out of the city.

  I took the first sentry shift at 23:00 along with Melanie Dixon. She was sporting a doo-rag and she’d recently shaved her head. That Pam Cruze had also shaved her head and was wearing a doo rag had me thinking the pair might be an item, not that I or anyone else left alive gave a damn. If Cruze and Melanie had found something resembling happiness in this hell-hole new world, even temporary satisfaction, then good on them. We stood atop the north tower and gazed out over the blocks of overturned and smashed up cars and trucks that clogged the streets surrounding the armory. Less than a hundred yards away shambled small groups of the monsters, tripping and stumbling through the debris of a city that had transformed into a nightmare world where the dead don’t fucking stay dead and the living are just meat. Four stories below us in the parking compound a fire blazed furiously, fueled by the bodies of the creeps and Sgt. Green.

  He kept us going. He kept us alive even though our numbers whittled away in the weeks and months after Day Zero, the day when the old world ended.

  “It doesn’t seem right to burn his body along with the monsters,” said Melanie as she wiped her nose on the sleeve of her combat jacket. “We should have known those three were infected.”

  When she said “we”, what Melanie really meant was that I should have known. I had been Sgt. Green’s 2IC, his second-in-command. I had only a year under my belt as a militia soldier, but I’d shown a knack for organizing the team and the wily old Afghanistan war veteran picked me to be his back-up. That was two months ago.

  “I don’t know what we could have done any differently, Mel,” I replied, as I spotted a creep stagger through a debris-filled alleyway and fall flat on its face. It slowly got back to its feet and continued stumbling mindlessly down the middle of 9th Avenue. “They probably became infected when the creeps swarmed the fence two days ago. It was dark and we couldn’t exactly start shooting the fucking things because gunfire attracts every creep within earshot.”

  She shrugged and leaned over the parapet. “Maybe … or it might have been before that. We’ve had people carry the infection for up to seven weeks without showing any signs of illness only to drop dead while on sentry or taking a dump. “Anyway … I’m not blaming you, so get that out of your head. Got it?”

  “Yup,” I said quietly.

  A sharp gust of wind pushed the flames of the bonfire in our direction and the smoke from the bodies filled my nostrils. The sickly sweet smell of burning human flesh is something we’d become accustomed to over the past six months, though even admitting this fact made me feel like the David Simmons I used to be never once existed. The old me was just a hapless weekend warrior who’d spend Saturdays and Sundays marching around a parade square dressed in combat fatigues just to make a few extra bucks.

  I didn’t have a freaking clue back then, and I sure as hell don’t have a clu
e now – none of us do. We’d been fighting and dying by inches for months and if we didn’t come up with a new plan for survival, none of us were going to make it through to the end of the year.

  My mind flashed back to my first encounter with a creep. We lived in a three bedroom upper floor of a small house in Forest Lawn. It was a crummy part of town before the end came and we’d been the victims of three break-ins – not that we owned anything worth stealing. When she wasn’t liquored up, Mom worked at the doughnut shop next to a Ford dealership and took the bus to work each day. It was a Friday morning and I’d just turned on the TV only to see the emergency broadcast beacon on all the channels. Mom was passed out on the couch – drunk again as usual and Jo was packing her lunch for school.

  Only there wasn’t going to be any school that day – or ever again. I listened closely to the emergency instructions telling everyone to stay in their homes – to lock all our doors and to stay off the phones so that we wouldn’t jam the lines for emergency services. Ignoring the warning, I grabbed my cell phone and called up the orderly room at the armory to see if the King’s Own was about to be mustered. The orderly Sergeant didn’t answer, but Sid Toomey did. What he told me next sent me reeling – it was too unbelievable to be true. Even now, six months after the siege, I remember the madness in his voice.

  “Dave!” he shouted into the phone. “We’re bugging out – get your shit in gear and I’ll be at your place as quick as I can to pick up your family!”

  I kept my eyes peeled on the Emergency Broadcast System symbol on the TV. “What the hell is going on, Sid? Every channel on the television is showing the same emergency warning! I can’t even get the news online – the website is overloaded!”

  In the background I could hear shots being fired. “Fuck!” Sid roared. I heard a loud clunk and then the sound of screaming. A series of hard, wet thuds filled my ear followed by Sid screaming in an inhuman voice.

  “Fucking die!” he thundered.

  Another series of thuds and then Sid returned to the phone, breathless.

  “What the hell is going on?” I shouted as my heart raced. “Sid … Sid!”

  “There’s a shit storm blowing into town that’s too fucking unreal to be true – no time to explain!” he panted. “Dave – grab a baseball bat or a pipe or anything that’s long and sturdy. If one of these things attacks you, bash its head in. That’s the only way to stop them! Keep your mother and kid sister close because –”

  “Bash them in the head?” I nearly spat out the words. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  And then I saw who was standing behind my little sister in the kitchen. It was our elderly downstairs neighbor, Martin Kessler. Only he didn’t look right. His movements were jerky and his hair was flat and matted.

  “Get the hell out of here, Martin!” I shouted. “I don’t know what makes you think you can just walk into our place but …”

  The old man opened his mouth to reveal a set of yellowing teeth rooted into blackened gums and I thought for a moment he was going to say something, but no sound came.

  Not a single freaking sound.

  He looked more animal than human, his face was the color of ash and his eyes were just lifeless orbs set deep inside his skull. His shirt was stained with blood and chunks of what looked like meat and he wasn’t wearing any pants or underwear.

  “Jo … run!” I barked. The monster reached out with a pair of arthritic hands streaked with blood and gore missing her hair by inches. She raced to my side and wrapped her arms around my waist for dear life.

  Any other day I’d have been able to kick the living shit out of the old man but his sharp, almost feral movements belied the fact that he was a senior citizen. He lunged at me and I grabbed him by the wrists as he snapped at my face.

  Martin Kessler’s skin was ice cold. I was holding him at bay and the only sound I heard outside of Jo and Mom’s shrieking was the sound of the old man’s teeth snapping together.

  Mom raced into the kitchen as I fought the creature. She came back brandishing a butcher’s knife and she thrust it hard into Kessler’s back.

  He didn’t even flinch. Not once. He pushed me back against the wall, as Mom pulled out the knife and stabbed it into the side of Kessler’s neck. Blood oozed out of the wound when there should have been arterial spray and even that didn’t slow him down as he tried to take a bite out of me. In that moment of adrenaline-fuelled terror it dawned on me that Martin Kessler wasn’t just another crazy senior who forgot to take his meds. His skin was cold, his eyes bore right through me and he had a butcher knife sticking out the right side of his neck.

  Martin Kessler was dead and I’d be dead too if I didn’t think of something. I placed my right foot into his chest and pushed with all my might. Kessler’s grip released and he toppled backward over the coffee table, landing flat on his back.

  “Get my baseball bat out of my bedroom!” I shouted as Mom raced down the hall with Jo in tow. Kessler slowly got back to his feet. The monster’s lips folded back into a snarl and he lunged at me again so I gripped the top of the door frame with both hands and swung my feet into his chest sending him careening backward until he smashed into the wall a few feet away.

  “H-Here!” said Jo shakily as she handed me my aluminum baseball bat.

  “Stay down the hall, Jo,” I ordered. “And close your eyes. You don’t want to see what’s going to happen.”

  She did as she was told and I moved into the center of the living room gripping my bat tightly in both hands. Kessler lunged at me again and I swung the bat hard, connecting with the top third of the monster’s head. There was a loud crunch as the bat struck with enough force to leave a dent in his skull and Kessler dropped to the floor like someone had cut the strings from a marionette.

  I stood there, bat in hand staring at the creature. In the background the sound of the Emergency Broadcast beacon on the TV filled the room. Kessler didn’t twitch. He just lay there with his dead eyes staring up at the ceiling, his crushed head frozen in a pool of blood that was as black as tar. I’d just killed a man, only it wasn’t murder. The thing that attacked me wasn’t any way human. Now I understood the horrific sounds that I heard when I’d called Sid Toomey.

  “W-What happened, David?” My mother gasped, her breath stinking of whatever she’d been power drinking into the middle of the night. “Why did Martin attack us?”

  I shook my head. My stomach pitched and heaved and it was everything I could do to keep myself from throwing up right there on the carpet. “You won’t believe me if I told you. All I know is that we need to pack some stuff and get the hell out of here. Sid Toomey is coming from the armory to get us.”

  “We’ll do no such thing!” she barked. “We’re going to have to call the police and let them know that Martin Kessler attacked you – we have to report this.”

  I pointed to the TV. “You won’t get the police. That emergency broadcast signal is on all the stations and ten bucks says you won’t connect to the Internet.”

  “But—”

  I grabbed my mother by the shoulders and gave her a hard shake. “Listen to me … Martin Kessler is dead, Mom, and he was dead when he came up the stairs – that’s all I know. The safest place for us to be is at the armory. There’s food, and medical supplies and—”

  It was at that moment the TV shut down. I grabbed the remote control and tried turning it on and off but the power was out.

  “Shit … the grid just freaking died. Look, Mom … let’s just get some stuff together and head to the armory okay? Sid is on his way.”

  We spent the next few minutes stuffing everything from toiletries to undergarments in a small overnight bag. Sid arrived as promised. I gazed out from behind the curtains over the living room window to see an armored personnel carrier plowing through a trio of cars that were blocking access to our front yard. It stopped on the lawn and I spotted Doug Manybears’ head sticking up through the driver’s hatch. Seconds later Sid leaped out the back door
, carbine in hand. We raced down the front steps and straight to the back of the carrier. The air was filled with the sounds of hundreds of car alarms and honking horns. Across the street I saw to my horror a person shrieking in an inhuman voice as trio of monsters dug into his torso, each one pulling out a handful of shining, bloody organs which they promptly began feasting on.

  “Unreal,” I whispered, unable to take my eyes off the grisly scene. “This can’t be happening.”

  “Dave!” Sid shouted as a foursome of monsters, each one as dead as old man Kessler, marched toward him. He raised his carbine to his shoulder and fired a series of quick well-aimed shots and the trio dropped onto the lawn.

  “Hurry the fuck up!” Sid roared again as he covered us. He kept his carbine at the ready as we climbed in, then he jumped in the back and pulled the door closed, locking the combat locks for good measure.

  He pulled a carbine off the weapon rack and handed it to me. “Here. You provide cover from the rear hatch and I’ll crew command back to the armory. These … these creeps are everywhere. If any of those things get too close, fire single shots right at their heads. It’s the only thing that will stop them.”

  “We were attacked by our downstairs neighbor, Sid,” I blurted out. “Mom stabbed him and it didn’t do anything. I finally stopped him by caving in his skull with a baseball bat. A fucking dead guy attacked me – his skin was freaking cold, man! And across the street! They were … they were eating a guy! What is this? What the hell is happening?”

  “Hell on earth, Book of Revelations, End of Days … who the fuck knows?” he replied. “Get your ass up in the hatch and single shots, okay?”

  I pulled the carbine to my shoulder and nodded.

  “Dave … you with me?” Mel said as she batted me in the back of the head. “What’s our next move?” She spun around on her heels to look at me and I hoped she wasn’t expecting me to bark out orders like Sgt. Green would do because for the life of me, I didn’t have anything to offer. I wanted to throw her a glimmer of hope, something she could cling to that would get her through to the end of our sentry shift or to first light. I wanted to pull a genius tactical move that would save our lives but what could I offer that would have been better than Sgt. Green’s plan of hunkering down in the armory and waiting things out? There was nothing left to wait for in a city that’s little more than a creep-infested husk.