Hellifax (9 page)

The road’s incline was perhaps a lazy ten degrees, and Scott walked until he spied another garage behind a house. He took in his surroundings, seeing tiny white wisps swirl off the street, marking a subtle increase in the wind.

Adjusting the straps on his backpack, he headed inside.

The garage was made of red brick with a black main door. He cleared away the snow at the base until he found the handle and hoisted up the door. Cranky wheels squealed.

Empty.

Not even a pot to piss in.

With a snarl, Scott shoved the door downward and looked at the sky. The sun just passed its zenith, and he figured he had two choices.

Continue on foot.

Or hole up in the house until the snow melted.

He didn’t like either choice. In the end, he got walking. He’d packed enough food and water for a couple of days if he ate sparingly. Snowmelt would offset some intake of water. The thought of returning to Gus and Roxanne entered his mind, but he discarded it. That was a potential triangle he didn’t want to get involved in.

With snow shovel in hand and gear slung across his back, he mushed.

The sky remained bright as he plodded deeper into the city, following what was the 102 until he reached an overpass. He lumbered over to the crossing’s guardrail and gazed at the highway running underneath, north and south. Beyond, the land glistened under the midday sun. A forlorn breeze gave sound to the picture, and at that instant, a great feeling of loneliness swept through him. Even after two years, the desolation was still a chore to combat at times, even for a natural recluse like himself.

He continued on, making good time on the highway, until it split into two separate lanes marked by a white “No Engine Braking” sign. To his left lay a cluster of houses just past a metal tower holding up dead power cables. To his right and at the end of a curving road stood what appeared to be a hospital. The choice was easy. He stayed in the left lane and continued on, not wanting to venture anywhere near a hospital, apartment complex, or some other large building that could potentially be sheltering a large number of gimps.

Scott thought he was still on School Avenue. The land dipped and went by an open field on the left. No signs of life. More houses and power line towers on the left, a frozen collage of colours and cables. None of the houses appealed to him as a place to stop, and seeing as he still had an hour or two of daylight remaining, he decided to push on.

He stopped underneath a metalwork archway displaying the signs “WRONG WAY,” “TRURO SOUTH SHORE ANNAPOLIS VALLEY,” and “BAYER’S ROAD.” There was little cover, so he selected one house painted sky blue and approached it. It only had the one level and snow surrounded the property, but Scott didn’t care. He wanted to get out of the cold and eat something. The front door was easily accessible from the road, and he wasn’t surprised to discover it locked. He went around back, walking by a set of bicycle handlebars that came up to his ankles. The back door was wooden, paint flaking, and also locked. Scowling, he had no choice but to enter through a side window. He punched out the glass with the shovel, cringing at the noise. He waited for anything to come to the window, and when nothing did, he unslung his pack and plopped it inside.

The search of the house went quickly and the place was unoccupied, much to his relief. There was a playroom for a young child, and he was thankful it was empty. He didn’t want any part of putting down a kid deadhead. He closed the doors leading to the porch area he’d broken into and sat down at a kitchen table covered by a Christmas cloth. He removed his helmet and opened a can of ravioli from his backpack. He noticed a can of sweet corn in there as well, but he would save that for supper. Once again, the idea of turning around and heading back to the truck entered his mind, tempting him to leave his hopeless hunt and return to Gus’s mountain.

Instead, he finished his meal and left the empty can in the sink.

The next morning, he trudged up the middle of a four lane road, toward the rise of a small hill. From the position of the sun, Scott estimated it was around ten in the morning. Massive snowdrifts ran northwest, reminding him of documentaries where divers mapped untouched ocean floors. He looked back every now and again, just to see how far he’d come and to see if anything was stalking him. His spoon-shaped tracks ran away from him until eventually fading from sight. Halifax was a sprawling city, but from what he saw of the numerous elm trees laid bare by winter, he imagined it was an incredibly green place in the spring and summer. He and Kelly had talked about visiting Halifax several times, but the opportunity never presented itself.

Kelly. Fragments of his latest dream sunk into his mind like wood splinters. He tried focusing on just the good parts and forgetting about the bad. He swore he could still feel her skin on his fingertips. That sensation lifted his spirits in ways a man could only appreciate in very dark times.

In fact, he became so focused on his inner memories he didn’t realize the increasing lumps in his path. He stumbled on one, barely catching his balance and avoiding a fall by jabbing his shovel out in front of him. When he straightened up, he saw it and went cold inside.

An apartment building. Right next to the road. Four levels high, and God only knew how deep. Scott couldn’t see around the structure, but he felt the need to distance himself from it.

Then he noticed what he’d tripped over.

It was a half-buried man, on a part of the street not entirely covered in snow. A road worker with the yellow reflective X crossing his chest. Ice glued his pasty flesh to the asphalt underneath, and Scott had managed to crack the body when he stumbled over it. A grimace of pain contorted the thing’s features while snowflakes sprinkled its teeth and black gum lines. Numerous skin tags, as pointed as the tips of black pens, clustered about its mouth.

An eye cracked open in the gimp’s head.

Worse, the barest of hisses issued from the creature’s frozen jaw. Scott drew back.

The eye tracked him as far as it could. The head tried to move, but it was fixed to the pavement. An arm broke away from its body, waving stiffly in the air. The thing struggled to rise, groaning with the effort, but it stayed in place.

Scott realized he was standing in the middle of the road, countless other similar bumps dotting it.

An unnerving
crack
brought Scott’s attention back to the gimp, which was lifting its head from its icy pillow. A long shred of skin stayed attached to the frozen ground like a piece of nailed-down black canvas. The monster’s lips stretched before splitting, revealing a row of ebony teeth.

More moans cut the air around Scott as things awakened and crawled out from their white blankets. Arms slinked out of the snow. Fingers came forward slowly like the legs of spiders. Corpses pushed themselves upright, snow sloughing from their backs. One zombie sat up like a vampire rising from its coffin, its mouth clicking open in lockjaw fashion.

The zombie in front of Scott reached for him.

He whipped the shovel across the gimp’s head, shattering the wide plastic blade. Scott took a step back and held up the handle in shock. He recovered quickly and plunged the tip of the wooden shaft into the dead thing’s eye, feeling the ice hard resistance, but still spearing the zombie dead.

But others were near.

Scott reached back and gripped the shaft of the baseball bat. He scooted the weapon up and out of his backpack, immediately swinging at another gimp clambering toward him. He bashed the monster’s skull, breaking it open in a single clattering note and driving it to the pavement. Brain matter spurted across the snow like a grisly bowl of overturned cornflakes. Wasting no time, Scott bolted past the unmoving body and through the awakening crowd. Zombies struggled to get to their feet behind and around him. He ran, taking great lopping strides so that he wouldn’t trip in his snowshoes, holding the bat across his chest as he pumped up a small hill. The cries of the dead came from all sides, and from his peripheral vision, more dark shapes pulled themselves up through the snow, climbing to their feet. Zombies rose from the snow on the road ahead. Scott ran by them, not bothering to swing because they moved so very slow. The cold robbed them of their already limited mobility. He sprinted as fast as he was able until he reached the top of the hill.

And stopped to stare in disbelief at what lay beyond.

The very
land
was rising. Zombies as far as he could see oozed out from underneath the snow-covered streets, blotting out the white with black and grey. They stumbled stiff-legged into the sunlight from nearby houses. They pushed themselves free from tall drifts, getting up like long-lost mountaineers.

They all converged on him.

Scott’s breath hitched in his throat. A small
army
was mobilizing around him. He sprinted ahead—too fast––and clacked his snow shoes together. He stumbled to the asphalt, the bat held before him. Shadows fell across him as he clawed at his snowshoes, struggling with the straps, but freeing himself in the end. He kicked them away. Something pulled on his backpack. He got up just as a zombie met him face to visor. Scott jabbed the bat’s tip into the creature’s chest, knocking it backward. He broke another zombie’s knee in one swing, while another took the bat under the chin, straightening it out and knocking it off its bare feet.

Scott evaded three others seeking to entrap him, not wasting energy on dispatching them. He pushed through several more deadheads grasping at his limbs. Ahead on the right lay a wooden church with wide-arched windows. The thought of holing up in there didn’t appeal to him. He continued running, the snow above his ankles in places, leeching away a little more strength with each step. He spotted a gas bar and convenience store ahead, its white and red protective canopy set high above six sets of fuel pumps. Something else grabbed his attention as well.

Just past the pumps and below a huge blue sign that read MILK lay a wire cage filled with propane tanks—the grey, ten kilogram variety. Newfound strength surging into his limbs, Scott quickly outpaced the zombies behind him and ran through the mass between him and the gas bar. He wouldn’t have much time.

Reaching the propane tanks, a panting Scott saw the padlocks on the doors and groaned. Just inside stood a dozen of the barrel-shaped units, stacked on shelves in fours, all ready for a summer barbeque. Scowling, Scott lifted his bat and cracked it against the padlock, the ring echoing shrilly. The lock held, and he cursed at it.

The deadheads closed in. Scott didn’t look at them. He didn’t need the extra motivation.

With a frustrated grunt, he left the tanks and ran to the front door. It was unlocked, and he scrambled inside. He flipped the bolts on the door, locking himself in as shuffling zombies closed in on the shade of the canopy. Fear stabbed Scott through the heart. A veritable
concert
mass of cold stricken deadheads had gathered. Seeing the hunters thicken, he frantically glanced around.

Next to the door stood an open freezer, full of deflated and squished ice cream wrappers. The freezer had wheels, and Scott grimaced as he slid the long container over to reinforce the door. There wasn’t anything else, and he wasn’t certain if the glass would hold. Breathing hard, he searched up and down the shelving units. Most of the food and drinks were gone.

Zombies, made gloomier by the overhead canopy, crowded toward the window panes.

Inside, Scott located a long-neck barbeque lighter, still in its packaging. A clear vial was set into the grip, filled with jiggling butane. Snatching it up and ripping off the packaging, he looked for something to set alight and settled on a pack of men’s socks. There were plenty of magazines littering the floor, but little of anything else. Frantically, he scoured the place.

The closest gimp smashed an arm into the glass panels, making Scott look up. Hissing and moans reached him. The thing smeared its face across the window with a squeal. More zombies thumped limbs against the clear surface. Even
more
undead arrived on the scene, pressing into their companions from behind and squishing them against the panels. The barrier shuddered. Milky eyes tracked Scott. Tongues lagged. Teeth gleamed.

Scott backed up toward the storage room entrance and stopped.

There, underneath a shelving unit, he could just see the corner of something black. He pounced on it and brought up a container of charcoal lighter fluid.

There had to be an exit in back, but Scott needed a distraction. He needed cover to escape the gathering army. He needed a
fire
.

He quickly made a nest of the discarded magazines, socks, and any other refuse littering the floor, then doused it all with the lighter fluid. He looked around for anything to add to the clump, found a garbage can with trash, and dumped that into the pile. Scott thought of the storeroom, and he slammed through the swinging door into the back.

The area was dark and virtually empty, filled with nothing but ravaged cardboard boxes and a wooden pallet. He grabbed it all and lugged it back to the front of the store, to the growing pile of combustibles.

Hands thumped the glass. Scott looked up and gasped. He could no longer see the pumps outside. The zombies blocked everything. The door trembled in its frame from the swelling weight against it.

Scott scurried back to the storeroom and searched the shadows. Whoever had been here before him had taken everything.

But then he found them, all standing to attention behind the washroom door.

Four egg-shaped, one pound cylinders, containing propane gas. Scott hissed when he saw them. Then he grabbed them and rushed them to the pallet, heart hammering in his chest. Moving the four cylinders to the pile in seconds, he positioned everything around them and held up the lighter.

On the other side of the glass, the chorus of voices sounded eerily like
“Nooooooo.”

Scott lit the pile. The fire danced through the cluttered material, merrily igniting the quickest to burn. He retreated from the small blaze, feeding it more trash, waiting for the wooden pallet to catch. Smoke filled the small interior of the convenience store, clouding the dark mass of bodies slammed tight against the window. The flames blazed when they touched the material doused in charcoal fluid, and bright ribbons licked the propane cylinders. More smoke billowed, and eventually the wooden pallet started glowing around the edges.