Trail Of The Dead

The sun cuts through the valley, sending long lines of warmth streaking across a fogencrusted town. Sitting atop a plateau above the town, seated like a king above its serfs, beams of light strike against three towering grey stacks reaching up the sky like three perverse fingers, the peak of the town, before the rest of the inhabitants are able to wake up. The line of sun slides slowly down the spire and the rumble of large mechanical contraptions surrounding begin to bustle. Steam erupts from various pools as the mornings rays illuminate vats containing thousands of litres of chemical runoff. The day has begun for the industry of the town. The sun won’t hit the busy worker bees of the city for another 5 minutes. Trail was formed in the late 1800’s as the premiere mining town of the west coast of Canada. Sitting on the shores of the angry Columbia River, its position just north of the US border and the proximity to major shipping lanes proved to be an asset that grew the former trading outpost into the third largest city in Canada. An influx of immigrants in its founding years created a strong tradition of family that would never be broken. At one time the city supported 18 hotels with 6 newspapers, 9 lawyers, and several houses of illrepute. As the city expanded, so did the smelter on the hill. It was said that the sight of black smoke billowing virulently from the smokestacks on the hill was a sign of the success of the town. The deforestation and blackening of the surrounding area was seen as the cost of progress, a second thought to be pushed aside in the mad scramble for money. As the years progressed, the city expanded into neighboring valley systems which had avoided the noxious fallout from the smelter, while at the same time, gold mines began popping up in more lucrative places in the region. By the late 1930’s, the population had been partially driven out of the ground zero of pollution caused by the industry and moved into surrounding suburbs. Communities such as Sunningdale, Fruitvale, Rossland, Glenmerry began to spring up, each catering to a specific subset of people, each moving farther and farther away from the source of malcontent, but money. With the start of World War 2, the smelter and town, dancing again in their symbiotic relationship, grew at staggering rates, the smelter becoming the largest of its kind in the world. Manhattan Project materials were produced in secret labs on site, secret enough that the inhabitants weren’t aware of their production, yet as all secrets, the group it truly was meant to be hidden from, the Axis powers in Europe, were quite knowledgeable of its existence and the decision to strike against the center was only hampered by its location on the far west coast and the difficulty in getting insurgent agents into a town renowned for its hostility towards aliens. The smelting that took place in the town was mainly of lead and zinc, two materials which proved to be extremely valuable in times of war. Large slabs of lead were seen leaving the plant at all hours of the day during the war, trucks laden down so much that their drive trains barely scraped over the rocky roads leading out of the area. Employment was up, crime was down. It was a teapot in a tempest, the most peaceful place during a world war was the area producing the most materials for the war. After the world war, things began to settle in the area. As the need for labour at the smelter slackened, a mass exodus of families began. The decades of smog and pollution

were taking their toll on the local population. Cancers of the lung hit all-time highs as asbestos was used almost universally throughout the plant. Children were getting sick due to the high amounts of lead in the soil of the area and with a lack of vegetation in the valley, most mornings people woke up to the sickening smell of sulfur instead of fresh breeze that the rest of the province was known for. With the lack of jobs, people began moving to the coastal areas, stores shut down, hotels closed and crime began encroaching upon the city. By the 1970’s, drugs were one of the most lucrative businesses to be in, and the population, now cut to a tenth of what it had been less then 50 years ago, felt powerless to stop it. Funding from the government hit rock-bottom in 1975 and, amidst the Vietnam War, which took away legions of engineers from the area, the cold war which prompted many people to move away from major industries, Trail finally hit its lowest point. After the wars ended, both real and imagined, a new movement got underway. Environment became no longer a buzzword but a way to restimulate the economy. Committees were set up to remove asbestos from operating plants, groups of concerned citizens began removing lead-inundated soil from all public areas, filters were placed on any smoke-spewing stacks, effluent that used to be dumped directly into the river were being cleaned up, large piles of slag, the leftover byproduct of the smelting process is being re-refined and even more beneficial materials are being purged from it. Slowly, the forests and the vegetation returned to the Trail area. The black cliffs that had dominated for 100 years were beginning to bloom. Where previously it was easily to tell where Trail ended and the rest of the area district began, now there was just a slow fade from bright emerald to a sparser, yet just as spectacular green. By 2000, despite the appearance of an ugly, large industrial complex looming high over the city, Trail had become a booming city in its own right. Large swarms of people-bees, tired of the endless running associated with urban living found a midpoint between lazy country days and vivid city nights. Thanks to advances in telecommuting and low housing prices, there were also a lot of professionals working in Trail, couples who would normally have to rent an apartment in a larger center were able to afford large houses, single professionals could have a nice house, the car parked out front with a dog sleeping noisily on the front step. Life, as it were, was at a high-point in Trail. Lying between two mountain ranges, and split in two by the Columbia river running hurriedly through it’s center, Trail was not, by any means, an exception to the rule of towns inside the interior of BC. West Trail, populated by the smelter on the hill, the main downtown core consisting of mostly small-town shops and big-center services, and rows of houses growing curiously out of the mountain-side. It was possible to drive through the center of town, take the first road up, and reach the top of the town with a clear view across the valley within 5 minutes. Houses, created in the early 40s to accommodate the working-class labour population, were now wooden shacks, propped up with hope of receiving an inheritance from relatives in order to buttress the well-maintained, but old, infrastructure in use. Directly below the highway leading up the hill to the smelter were a row of houses and shops colloquially referred to as “the Gulch”. A heavy Italian population in the 30s had settled there and the smell of pasta overwhelmed passersby in the middle of spring and fall. Trucks would regularly rumble down from the hill,

prompting the population of the Gulch to pressure the council members of Trail to find ways to re-route or decrease the traffic snaking its way past their houses. In the end, there was no way to deviate from their path and the population, old as it was, slowly receded until all that was left were the few deviant pubs where sinners of Trail would regularly congregate to be as loud as required by the constraints of youth. West Trail had become the commercial center; hurried, important-feeling people talked loudly as they spedwalked along the sidewalk. Old retirees, who had lived in Trail for generations, staggered across cross-walkers, not remembering where they had planned to go today, instead, taking up the time of clerks working in various offices, striking up conversations to make up for their deep-seated loneliness that they would only find solace in by curling up in front of the TV with cat or dog aside. Of the two halves of Trail, East Trail was the commercial; mindful, busy and abrupt, while the West was the residential; the heart and soul. A regional hospital and large high school rising high above the populace balanced out the sight of manufacturing cacophony across the river. Suburbs like Sunningdale, seated a short drive along the river, directly facing the smelter, but far enough removed that it seemed inconsequential, allowed much needed escape. Glenmerry sat farther away, hiding the view of mountains, cut in pieces by over-reaching cigarette-shaped monoliths, from its inhabitants. Rows of town housing, offering cheap living, stretched across various streets. Apartment buildings dot the landscape, seldom broaching four floors and all poorly maintained. It seemed that for every person who found success, there were two more who strove to attain it. Moving farther east, away from town, strip-malls and large franchise offices periodically appeared, all following the highway following the river on its run for the coast. Small villages, Montrose and Fruitvale, rising up again in another valley, continued along the highway and marked the end of residential living and the beginning of farm land and, far off in the distance, and even more impressive mountain range, impassable in winter, and treacherous in the summer. The river cutting through the center of town, the Columbia, was once a forbidding wall of tributarian violence. Prior to the industrialization of the area, it flowed so forcefully that it bowed upwards, a huge arc of watery devastation moving faster than most cars. With dams in place, it had been domesticated into the equivalent of a housecat; still fast but complacent, allowing people to traverse across it without due penalty, allowing the creation of bridges to bypass its power and control, eager to tempt those that did not justify themselves as worthy of its attention. Over the course of the hundred years that Trail had existed, many people had been swept away at her shores. Half a kilometer across, two bridges had been erected over top of it. The oldest bridge, a rickety square, iron-girder railway conduit with a wooden floor was now used only for emergencies. Sitting almost outside the city limits, leading across from the poorer end of East Trail into the poorer side of West Trail, it stood synonymous with neglect. Mustardcolored, with patches of earthy-rust breaking through, the wood that made up the base of the driving surface had also become eaten away. On one side was a wrought-iron walkway, allowing those brave enough to stare right down through to the river, which stared right back up at the walkers. The bridge itself, barely wide enough to allow two

cars to pass each other without has stood since 1918. Plainly referred to as the Old Bridge, it has withstood the worst of Canadian winters, the blasts of graffiti that affect all public displays and yearly restructurings to prolong its life. Known to a few of the more highly privileged citizens of Trail was that the supports for the bridge, 30 feet underwater, have been eroded and damaged over the years. The life and stability of the bridge was in question, and the costs of replacing the bridge outweighed the benefits of keeping it open. However, in cases where the other bridge was incapacited, this bridge took the full brunt of traffic to get from one side of Trail to the other. In 1956, the aptly named “New Bridge” was created. Curved steel girders scraped across the sky as a four-lane highway created a life-line between the two sides. Cement walkways on both sides, supported by iron railings provided safety for those wishing to walk across, while vehicles traversing the gap were given well-maintained and over-sized lanes to drive their expensive vehicles across with no fear of getting jammed with a loose board or a rogue spike puncturing a tire. Decorated during the annual city festivities, it would be home to firecrackers shooting into the river below, a sparkled waterfall that delighted children and adults alike. In the winter, plastic snowmen hung from the rafters, with lights following the gentle curves on the arcs of the bridge. Postcards of Trail would always include pictures of this monument to local engineering; a navy green skyway across a yawning, icy blue divide. Wednesday The alarm went off just before Ben Monteith’s hand slapped the top of the cheap plastic clock. Hitting the snooze button five times in a row, at nine minutes a snooze, was a common theme for mornings in Ben’s house. Forty-five minutes later, annoyed with having to wake up, and the sound of a shower turning off prompting him to move out of the warm confines of bed, he swung his legs out from under the blankets, prompting the two cats sleeping on them to leap frenziedly out of bed. His feet, uncomfortable with the idea of having to step on the hardwood that snakes its way from the bedroom into the living room and kitchen, refused to move at first, hovering gingerly over the floor. Only with the interfacing of lumped-up towel to disheveled head and the taunting “Get out of bed you lazy ass” finally motivated him to move his body into the shower. Danni Plante, thrower of the towel, stepped into the bedroom, quickly combing her wet hair as she attempted to prepare for another day of work. Danni had moved from Switzerland the year before to be with Ben, a move she had avoided for as long as possible, but now was beginning to accept as the best idea she’d ever had, not that she’d readily admit that to Ben, who was just now stripping down to take a shower, 15 minutes before they had to leave for work. She worked part-time as a cashier at a local bank, a job she wasn’t entirely fond of, considering her previous occupation as a tour director and her degree in human kinetics. “Another long day of counting other peoples money,” she thought to herself as she reached for the blow-dryer. Ben and Danni weren’t struggling by any means. Ben was a reasonably paid computer software developer for one of the largest telephone companies on the west coast, and Danni’s part-time union job was more then enough to make them comfortable. The house they lived in, purchased just before Danni

moved, was relatively inexpensive for the area in Fruitvale that they had moved to. A short drive into Trail, 15 minutes at the worst of times, the only impediment was the large hill they had to drive down in order to get into Trail. Municipal plowing services in small towns in BC weren’t exactly high priority and Trail was no exception. It was unusual to not have at least one accident coming down the highway from Fruitvale to Trail during the winter and Ben, having been raised in Fruitvale his whole life, was keenly aware of this when he had purchased his home, trading in his sportier car for a four-wheel drive SUV. The strain of purchasing a new home and a new vehicle often put strains on Ben and Danni’s relationship, Ben was the more conservative of the two, oftentimes forgoing the necessities because of a need for having some kind of savings in place, whereas Danni was the more realistic of the two. During and directly after college, she had racked up massive amounts of debt, and had only cleared these debts before she had moved back to Canada to be with Ben. She had no problems using her credit card freely, where Ben’s nature prevented him from moving outside of his own frugal world. His job had been secure for four years now, getting a job right after graduating college had put him in good position to be comfortably without loans while support from his parents, who lived a short drive away allowed him to be more careful than necessary. His friends would often taunt him with his unwillingness to spend money and over the course of the year that Danni had been with him, he had begun to loosen his pocketbook. Her thoughts drifted back and forth from when she moved to where she was at now as she finished applying the last bit of makeup, forcibly cracking a smile in preparation for the days work. She stepped back from the mirror for a second to admire her handiwork; a well-groomed, attractive female, late twenties, with long red hair that she had always seen as her best feature, Danni was the feistier of the two redheads inhabiting the house. Never one to back down from a fight, on moving in she had asserted control over everything but the finances, much to Ben’s happiness. She had quickly whipped him into something resembling a human being, and he had provided her with the stability inherent in a small town. Unfortunately, she still had problems getting him out of bed on time. Five minutes later, the sound of the shower shutting off, and the uncoordinated thumping of feet on the floor indicated that Ben was done cleaning up and ready to go. Danni waited patiently in the foyer as she watched Ben dash into the bedroom, heard the sounds of a man either strangling a cat or attempting to get changed quickly and grimaced when he reappeared, looking like he had just woke up. “You look like you just woke up,” she said, her eyes darting towards the tufts of hair that were sticking horizontally out of his head. “I did,” he grinned, motioning for the door. This was their usual schedule, a year of living together had created this routine for them and they would follow this routine forever if possible. The clock read eight-forty-five, giving them exactly fifteen minutes to make the fifteen minute drive into Trail. Ben, his office fairly relaxed about operating hours as it was a telecommuting firm, walked slowly, deliberately to the door as Danni stood waiting on the passenger side. “Can you walk any slower?” “Yes, yes I can,” he laughed as he began an exaggerated slow motion dash to the car. She groaned with impatience but had to stifle a bit of a laugh. Despite his

behavior this morning, she still had to give him credit for maintaining such a boisterous persona. He got into the car, grinning like a hyena. “Ok, let’s get to work!” As Ben and Danni made their trek into downtown Trail, Dillon Guesford sat staring out from his third-story cubicle into the quiet spring day. He’d been at his desk since seven AM this morning working on another upgrade to a plant up at the smelter. Since graduating with his degree in electrical engineering three years ago, Dillon had worked at the same engineering firm a block away from Ben’s office. They had been friends since birth which came in handy when Dillon came back from university looking for work. As Ben’s father Samuel was a high-level manager, it was a foot in the door for Dillon, which he quickly took advantage. A wise decision in Samuel’s case, however, as Dillon was a hardworking, diligent engineer who many of the older employees had come to rely on for work that they did not necessarily want to complete on their own. He looked at the time, a sterile, white-faced round clock hanging above the main entranceway to the floor and sighed, “8:45 and I’m not even making a dent in this pile. CRAP.” He resumed staring out the window, laughing at the fact that Bens jeep was still nowhere to be seen in its usual parking spot in front of his office. “Running late as usual,” he snickered to himself, “Danni’s gotta love that.” He quickly scanned for any other familiar vehicles but only came across his. A souped-up black Ford F-150 sat in his usual spot, mud splotches running up both sides and into the back, a single yellow ticket attached to his windshield being the only colour to be seen on its alternating shining black and mottled brown exterior. “DOUBLE CRAP!” he exclaimed out loud, prompting fits of laughter as cubicle-dwellers beside him take heart in the fact they’ve parked in the smelter-provided parking lot at the other side of town for free. It was quickly turning into a waste of a day, with the only good point being his girlfriend, Olivia, or Liv as she preferred to be called was coming into town for lunch. They’d only known each other since New Years but he felt they definitely had potential and was looking forward to sitting and chatting with her, and maybe more, in a couple hours. Turning back to his computer screen where the layouts of an enhancement to the leadzinc refinery regained his attention, he made a conscious decision to harass Ben about his tardiness. They had always had a competitive friendly relationship. Ben was the intellectual, Dillon was the practical. Ben saved money and Dillon spent money. Ben was the extrovert while Dillon was more reserved. Whereas Dillon had had his truck for the past couple years now, Ben had felt the need to keep up and purchased his Jeep after seeing Dillon’s adventures out at the local mud grounds, driving up steep hills and barreling down the same. Unfortunately for Ben, his SUV wasn’t as rugged as Dillon’s truck and thus was relegated to simply an expensive station wagon, a fact he had waxed poetically about to Ben many times. They remained good friends despite their differences, both opinions and personality-wise. He jiggled his mouse a little to disperse the screen-saver which had invaded his work once again and glanced out the window, watching Ben’s blue jeep hit the bump in front of his parking spot a little hard and bounce to an abrupt stop. Danni stepped out on the far side, just out of view and Ben’s door opened, appeared laughing as his girlfriend came around to scold him for something. They took a few short steps down the street to where Ben’s office entrance way, a short kiss and they parted ways. Ben looked up in the direction of Dillon’s window with a big

smile on his face and made his way into the building. Dillon laughed and finally began working on his project. “Those two are definitely an odd couple,” he chuckled to himself, “Now; let’s see if I get these mold injectors working properly.” Thad Voght’s chair slid over from the fly he was working on as the familiar chime of an instant message came from his personal desktop sitting across the lab. A message from Ben, pronouncing his love for early morning meetings greeted him cheerfully. “Ben, I am willing to bet that you just got in about thirty seconds ago” he replied. He tapped impatiently while awaiting a response which was the expected, “Guilty as charged”. He slid the chair back to the work he had been working on previously before the internet age pulled him away. Thad was a genetic researcher working for the University of Seattle. His was a casual friendship with Ben. Although they chatted online on a regular basis, they hadn’t really seen each other often enough. Thad lived and worked in Seattle, Washington, about six hundred kilometers west of Ben. They had met when Ben and Danni were both working in Vancouver, a short drive from Seattle. Danni and Thad had met previously and it was through her that Ben and Thad became friends. Whereas Ben and Dillon would almost be considered polar opposites, Thad and Ben were twins separated at birth. Both self-confessed computer nerds and intellectual geeks, the pair had enjoyed many long hours hammering away at each other in various online games. Over the course of several years, Thad had made many trips to Trail to visit Ben. A new visit was within the works to come out again in a few days, the final details still needing to be clarified. Thad was now in a rush to get the final bits of his thesis on genetic forces at work on tsetse fly development completed before he could leave. Dissecting his fiftieth fly of the day, he eagerly awaited leaving the lab to start packing for his trip. His background was the effect of radiation on genetic research and, although he was relatively youthful, he was considered one of the preemininent minds in the field. His theories had proven to be controversial, subjecting decades of research in radiation to new scrutiny. Overwhelmingly the community at large was beginning to accept the data and the findings that supported his suppositions which had been aggregated since his graduation. It was time for a vacation, however, and he looked forward to a weekend away from the lab that seemed to take up more and more of his time as he grew older. At 28, he was still the youngest person in the professional genetics lab but more and more new graduates were beginning to appear in the hallways. Quite tall and slim with short brown hair, he stood out as one of the least imposing figures in the department. His experience as one of the less-practiced scientists in the lab, despite his achievements, had made him unpopular with many of the older researchers who envied his success. Because of this, he had taken to being less forceful with his opinions, deferring against his better judgment to the wills of those who actively hoped for his failure. It was difficult being the heir apparent of success, the rock star of radioactive genetics as it were and his body language and personality reflected that; he appeared sullen and quiet in department meetings, his brow furrowed as old ideas long disproved were bandied about as current fact while new research and science that he had been doing, was ignored by his colleague. Competing universities had been leaping on his work, excited for the daring new direction his research was taking him, but those he expected to support him most found him new-age

and unproven. His passion for his trade had been dampened over the years but his mind continued its razor sharp acuity and new ideas and theorems constantly danced throughout his head. Lately, he had been observing some astounding congruities between brain activity in test flies and theta radiation; he couldn’t wait to show his results but required a bit more time to acquire the results that would back up his claims. The mental image of having to give a presentation to the department head next month made him clench his fists involuntarily. “I need to relax,” he spoke softly to the minutiae under his knife, “but at least I’m in better shape then you are.” He let out a quiet laugh that a passing-by professor took pause to stop by the door for. In his opinion, Thad was working too hard to prove himself and was in desperate need of a vacation. Tim cursed as he broke out into a sprint. He was already five minutes late for his pharmacology class and this was the third time this semester that he had been late. Professor Lightburn wouldn’t kill him, but after the past three months of struggling through the class, it wasn’t something that would lend itself well to him completing the class successfully. He had been out of high school for three years already and wasn’t really accomplishing his career goals of actually having a career worth mentioning. Right out of high school he had moved out, started working in a hardware shop for minimum wage, never very happy with what he was doing or where he was going. Eventually, with his parents pressuring him very heavily, and his brother Ben seemingly succeeding in everything he was doing, he applied for the licensed practical nursing program several hours outside of Trail. He had enjoyed interning positions he had taken part in while in Trail at several nursing homes and he figured that the LPN program was the quickest way to get a professional and well-paying job at those institutions. That was however, dependant on him getting to class on time. His hand hit the front door of the school loudly causing the front desk clerks to jump in surprised annoyance. He sprinted down the main hallway, took the first left past the economics department and found the door to the pharmacology class shut. Cursing loudly, he slammed his fist against the locked door next to the class he had planned on attending, prompting a reaction from a group of students studying in the class across the hall quite similar to that of the administration he had ran by at the front of the school. He gave the locker one last punch and walked casually away back the way he had run, making sure to give the staff at the front a big grin and an “Aw shucks” shrug of his shoulders. He stepped out into the brisk morning air, zipped his spring jacket up, and hunching over slightly, strode over to his car which, in his haste, had been left with the lights on. “Well, at least that’s one good thing about missing class, I’m not stranded here”. He opened the door, which he had also left unlocked, flopped himself into the drivers seat and turned the ignition, half expecting a condescending click indicating battery drainage to bring even more joy to his day. He was pleasantly surprised when the engine did turn over, and putting his car into reverse, vowed to never be late for class again. Driving home, figuring that with one class missed there was no point in staying at the school to wait for the next class to begin, he contemplated what to do for the coming weekend. He hadn’t been home in awhile, but it wasn’t something he was necessarily

looking forward to. Since he had come out of the closet about his sexuality three years ago, he had felt strongly like the black sheep of the family. Harsh words between him and his mother had strained an already borderline relationship and he wasn’t as tolerant as he used to be when he lived in Trail. Granted, he appreciated the support, both financially and emotionally, that they had offered him to go to school in Cranbrook, but he was still hesitant about returning to what inevitably became a lecture on his lifestyle. He would appreciate seeing his brother and sister again though. His brother Ben had moved into a house with his girlfriend Danni a year back and he enjoyed Danni’s company. They both had felt like black sheep of the family at times and were bonding quite well over that fact. Ben had always suspected Tim’s secret so when the truth finally came out, it didn’t affect Ben as it had the rest of the family. May, Tim’s sister, was still relatively young and living at home; her response to the news was one of disregard, she hadn’t really cared either way and was just as eager to leave the house as Tim had been three months previous. He rubbed the three-day old stubble under his chin and looked at himself in the rear-view mirror. Twenty years old, he looked younger than most and was constantly IDed when attempting to enter drinking establishments. He chalked this up to meticulous personal hygiene. He owned more facial cleansers and skin-softeners than most women did and his vanity was certainly never doubted. He never really resembled his family, physically or aesthetically, he was shorter then his older brother and over the course of the past couple years, slimmer, although that had to do more with Ben’s desk job and lack of exercise than anything else. His younger sister was pretty, for a girl, so they regularly tried to outdo each other, much to her consternation; there was a point where they were both competing for the same boy but that had been some time ago and all scars since then had healed. They now enjoyed a slight sibling rivalry as opposed to his brother, Ben, and May who were fairly close without enmity. Concluding that there was nothing really to do in Cranbrook over the weekend, he made the decision to head back home for the long weekend, a warm meal beat microwave noodles in his mind even if the cost was measured in angry words instead of cold cash. At the same time Tim was leaving school, May sat diligently in her history class, not really paying attention to the bespeckled, wild-haired high school teacher at the front espousing how clever native Canadians were before they were massacred by her ancestors. She doodled an exaggerated caricature of her rather boring source of information and sighed. A quick poke in the back of her head by her best friend, Andrea, prompted her to snap back to attention, prompting fits of laughter from the two rows of people seated behind her. She turned to give her best scowl face to her friend but was interrupted by the teacher telling her to pay attention to class or go to the office. She quickly resumed her doodling position adding her friend to the picture with large jagged spears protruding out from her body. The first class of the day and she had already been yelled at, “Not a promising start,” she thought as the class moved to the next chapter in their textbooks. She flipped the page of her seldom used textbook and returned to her doodle. She was an exemplary student and was well-liked by both faculty and students alike. Part of the more popular crowd at the school, she was slim, blonde and looked older then she was, which may have enhanced her popularity among the boys in the school. At the same time as being considered popular by the popular crowd, she was known as one of the elite snobs by the less fortunate. Although nothing could be further

from the truth, and she resented that opinion, there was nothing she could do to combat that attitude and was forced to be as inconspicuous as possible. In the end though, it didn’t really matter much to her, this was her graduating year, and she every intention of escaping from what she considered the most boring town in the world as soon as possible. She had plans to take electrical engineering in Vancouver and she wasn’t going to let anyone stop her, not her friends, not her family, no one. Her favorite subjects at school were drafting and electronics and she excelled in both; there was little to no doubt that she’d succeed at whatever path she would choose, it was just a matter of time. The school bell rang as she put the finishing touches on the spears emerging from her doodled friends prone carcass and she stuffed everything into her bag, stood up, and dashed out of the classroom, hoping to have a quick word with her friend before her next class started in five minutes. Running up behind her, she returned the poke in the back of the head with an even more aggravating elbow in the back. “Thanks for that poke in class, I was scared I was going to fall asleep and smack myself unconscious on my desk” she said, rolling her eyes at the aggravation of being forced to sit through subjects that she had no interest in. “No problem.” Andrea smiled, she knew that May was an intelligent girl, and often sought out her help in pretty much every subject they took together. It delighted her that May struggled to remain conscious in class, maybe if she ate once in awhile she wouldn’t be so prone to… “So, what did you want?” “Mark was looking at you; I felt the need to point it out.” Mark was one of the less popular boys in the school, and reminded May far too much of her older brother, Ben. Mark was one of the computer nerds that May avoided at all costs, not out of habit but of pure desperation. He had had a crush on her ever since he moved into town three years ago and through the magic of the public schooling system, had ended up in every one of her classes the final year of school. Where ordinarily she would have been flattered by attention, Mark’s advances were entirely too immature for what she was searching for; hair-pulling instead of the roses and chocolate that she knew to expect once she began college, if her monthly magazine subscriptions were any indication of what true college life was like. “Ugh, why can’t he leave me alone? I see him enough, I hear him enough, I smell him enough” Mark was also still on the learning curve for personal hygiene, in Mays humble opinion. Andrea laughed and cupped a hand over her mouth as if to give May a secret message. “He smells SOLELY for you!” “Oh god, you’re sick, get lost Andrea.” She pushed Andrea into the nearest locker and headed off for her next class in the electronics room downstairs. Her favorite class, it matched perfectly with her aspirations in life, and it certainly did help that the teacher was a strapping young male who May

couldn’t wait to see every day. She pushed her way past a group of younger students who apparently decided that there was something disgusting hanging from the ceiling, and staring at it intently would dislodge it forthwith and made her way down the stairs. As she made it to the mid stairwell the world seemed to sway ever so slightly. Feeling nauseous, she paused, her hand on her stomach as the need to wretch overwhelmed her body suddenly. Feeling a cold burning sensation burn a swath across her face, she leaned over the metal bar handrail in an attempt to coax her body back into function. Her knees began to buckle ever so slightly as Mark bumped into her from behind. The stairwell was empty and the bump she had received was Mark’s subtle attempt at getting her attention. This affront to her personal space revived her almost instantaneously and, with hot blood flushing across her face, she snapped angrily at Mark. “What was that for you jerk? There’s plenty of room here, did you just learn to walk?” “I’m sorry; I just thought I’d say hi” “Well, I don’t know what planet you come from, but most people talk with their lips, not with their hips” Mark blushed slightly and pushed his glasses up his nose as he was prone to doing when embarrassed. Her brother did roughly the same thing when he thought he was under attack, as if a thin layer of glass was going to be able to hide what his eyes were already saying. He walked away quickly, heading down the rest of the stairs and into the electronics room. She straightened herself up, brushed her backside off of the Mark germs which no doubt had begun to infest, and walked as elegantly as she possibly could down the stairs and into the room, where the smell of solder immediately inundated her. It was a good smell, in her opinion, reminding her of time spent with her grandfather in his shop; her sitting on his knee as he attempted to make her decorations for her tree house, or fixing up broken lightbulb ovens. Mr. Brad, the electronics teacher, had yet to arrive which was disappointing. She went to the back where her current project, a simple strobe light with rotating dials controls sat. A couple more quick additions and she’d be done the project for the month, just in time for the long weekend where she planned to sit, relax and eat junk food while enjoying her Playstation. She grabbed her strobe kit and returned to her seat, where, under the watchful gaze of Mark, she put on her welders goggles, plugged in her soldering gun, and got to work. Dominick Vermeulen slammed his car door loudly and treaded heavily to his basement apartments back door. Another interview, another dead end; having his structural engineering degree seemed to be getting him nowhere, despite graduating near the top of his class, despite having work experience with some of the more respected firms in Vancouver, he was having problems getting actual employment. He took off his black trench coat and hung it over the back of one of his second-hand chairs. He stretched upwards, feeling a slight twinge in his back from the workout a couple days previous, and vowed tonight to push himself even harder. Although an engineer by trade, Dom, as he preferred to be called, was anything but the stereotypical bulky, wire-framed glasses engineer. Tall, muscled, with long blonde hair

tied back in a ponytail reaching well past his shoulders, Dom took pleasure in misleading peoples expectations. While most expected him to be a brain dead jock of some kind, he was a quiet, hard-working office worker who on his off hours worked out at any gym he could get to or spent time modifying his 1987 Chevy Malibu beast of a car. He had added a new 327 horsepower engine in the past year and was just now adding the structural support to handle this added torque. He had scared himself witless the first time taking it out for a test drive after adding the new powerhouse and now was forced to tone down the power until he could make it easier to control and harder to hear. Currently, the rumbling sound of his Malibu was driving his landlords crazy as his tendency to be out to late hours of the night would reward them with rattling walls and thunderous resonance when he finally returned home. He flexed his arms again and sat down at his computer to check his email. Glancing quickly at his phone he realized that he had a message and debating whether or not to check it, he eventually did pick it up. He groaned softly, it was his mother. “Hi Dominick, it’s your mom. Just wondering if you’re planning on coming to visit this weekend. I know you were here just last month but I thought you could use a rest from job-searching. I’m assuming you don’t have a job yet, but if you do, good for you! I’m happy for you, just let me know soon if you’re going to come out or not. Mike and I are staying home this weekend and relaxing and I was hoping you’d come and join us, or just spend a couple nights here and visit, maybe see your friends too. Anyways, call me when you get this message please. Love you. Bye” He quickly erased the message, put the phone down and went to lie on his couch. The last thing he needed was to be back in Trail this weekend. It was hard enough now paying rent on time and eating on a regular basis, but the cost of gas and the amount of time required to get there wasn’t going to feed him or get him a job. He did like the idea of going back home to visit, if only because he could go visit old friends and maybe find a way to get an interview at the local engineering firm. He had done a week of interning there back in high school and they were one of the reasons he took on engineering in the first place. He enjoyed the creation of new buildings, ideas; he took pleasure in all things mechanical and one of their specialties was structural engineering for the smelter on the hill. It was possible that he might be able to swing an interview at the office as one of his friends fathers happened to be a high-level manager. He quickly checked online to see if Ben was at his desk. Seeing the tiny Away from Keyboard icon next to Ben’s name indicated otherwise and decided to called his mother, being directed to her voice mail immediately. “Hi Mom, it’s Dom. I’ll try to make it out there this weekend, no promises. I’ve got to do some more job-searching the next couple days, so if you don’t hear from me, I’m still coming. Bye” He hung up, quickly checked his email for any potential job offerings and realizing that there were no forthcoming decided to go for a drive. “Might as well enjoy the rest of the day,” he thought to himself, grabbing his trench coat, “Maybe I’ll hit the gym for a

couple hours, burn off my frustrations”. He bundled into his car, turned the key and revved the engine a few times for effect, appreciating the throaty rumble every foot-press elicited. His phone rang several times as he drove off but no message was left. Eight hours after arriving in Trail, Danni stepped hurriedly out of the bank branch towards Ben in his jeep parked eagerly for arrival. The rain drenched her quickly as she broke into a run between the eaves of the bank and the open door of the jeep where Ben sat laughing at her predicament. “Forgot something, didn’t you?” he asked smartly, holding up her missing umbrella. She slammed the door behind her, hair soaking as it had been eight and a half hours earlier, “Imagine that, you had it here all the time didn’t you, you hid it from me. You are a vile, despicable human being,” she muttered jokingly as he pulled away from the parking stall, drove up to the red light with wipers beating furiously across the windshield, and then turned the corner to head home. “Using my latent telepathic powers, I am detecting that you had a brilliant day, full of cheerful people who make your job a pleasure and that any difficulties you did have were quickly and efficiently taken care of,” he said as they drove across the new bridge towards east Trail. “Amazingly enough, no” she replied staring out the window at the river below, which was intermittently broken up by the green pillars of the bridge, “I had a rough day, people were crabby about the weather and our accounting systems went on the fritz, yet again.” “Lucky girl.” They were now climbing the slight hill that led into Glenmerry from east Trail. It would take a good ten minutes before they would get home and the silence between them was comforting. They had reached, many months ago, the point where the need to make conversation had passed and they could just enjoy each others company without being forced to discuss their entire day with each other. He reached over and grabbed her hand and gave it a tight squeeze as they passed by the mall and she squeezed his hand back. He smiled at her and tapped his cheek, his sign for her to kiss him, which she did gratefully. Eight minutes later they arrived home, safe and secure, the house already warmed with natural gas heating, the cats eager to greet their masters at the foot of the stairs. Ben opened the door, Danni stepped in behind them, and they settled into their routine as if they had been together for years. Dillon Guesford left his office, got into his truck and drove directly home where his girlfriend was waiting outside his door. He greeted her with a hug and a kiss, and they proceeded directly to the bedroom for an hour of passionate lovemaking. Thirty minutes later, Dillon rolled out of bed and turned on the TV while Liv prepared dinner for the two of them. A football game was on, ironic as they had first met during the Superbowl several months previous. “Hey, Green Bay’s playing, come watch,” he yelled out over the usual pre-game theatrics and she quickly came to join him. Snuggling up under his arm as the game started, she felt protected by his presence, an older man who would take care of her if necessary. She was several years younger than he was, and at times, he had found it difficult to keep up with her, but much like Ben and Danni’s relationship, they were the

perfect foils for each other; she, the impetuous youth, and he, the rock-solid base on which she had quickly come to depend. He held her tighter as the first kick went flying into the end-zone and the worlds worries quickly washed away. Thad, still seated at his desk, still dissecting flies, had not stopped for lunch by 6PM and he was beginning to get hungry. His stomach rumbling, he quickly began a fifty minute test for the amount of theta radiation in the dissected fly he was working on and stepped out for a second to head to the university mess hall where he hoped that one of the money-gobbling vending machines would have at least one cup-of-soup left available for purchase. Finding none available, he walked down the empty hallway and out into the fresh air of the university research lab parking lot where he was promptly greeted with a fresh blast of Seattle’s finest rain. Quickly running to his bike, he unlocked it from its pad and cycled furiously to the nearest Jack in the Box which he had hoped would not be inundated with college students on their dinner break. Riding up in front of the restaurant, and stepping off his bike, he couldn’t immediately tell how busy it was but judging from the number of bikes his had to compete with space for, he wasn’t too enthusiastic about his chances. He opened the doors and the smell of grease and fat wafted towards him. He stepped forward, immediately recognizing some of the students from the university and struck up a conversation with the nearest, who was certainly surprised to see him outside of his usual office. Tim sat at his desk working on medical terminology for an exam he had tomorrow first thing in the morning. Friday being a holiday, professors at the college were determined to make sure all students had to work for their weekend. After being late this morning and deciding to skip classes for the rest of the day, he had originally intended on studying for the exam but due to an interesting show on television and some chatting he had to do on the Internet, he hadn’t got an opportunity to do until 7 o’clock. Now thirty minutes into his studying, he was just beginning to get some of the concepts inherent to the test he was taking tomorrow. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and stared intently at the clock, and then back at his textbook. “I don’t remember school being this goddamn hard” he muttered to no one in particular as he flipped the page to a full page diagram of the human gastrointestinal system. He promised himself that he would study until at least nine o’clock, and then retire for a goods night sleep, but more and more he was finding that if he made it to eight, he would just have to take his chances tomorrow. May stood at her till in the local hardware store beginning closing preparations. The store had officially closed at six, but there were still a few stragglers and they were beginning to piss her off. She had things to do and she didn’t want to wait for these old people to decide on what they wanted. Angrily grimacing as one of the stragglers slowly made their way to her till and at the last second turned around for another last minute purchase, she turned to Andrea, who also happened to be working that night and rolled her eyes. “Andrea, why do I work here? Why am I dealing with people like this guy,” she pointed to an elderly man deciding leisurely between two different colors of water hoses, “when I could be at home, watching TV or doing any other hundreds of activities that don’t involve people like him.” She pointed at the man again to make a point. Andrea popped

her gum. “Because, I suppose it’s just your lot in life to suffer, but at least you get to suffer with me!” “I think you mean suffer because of you!” Andrea poked May in the arm as the hose-man and the last of the stragglers made their way to the front of the building. It was going to be a long time until they got to close, so they decided to make the best of it. Dom groaned and turned the keys as off as soon as he pulled into his parking spot in front of his house. His body seemed to ache all over as his frustrations with the day had spilled over into his workout that night. Pushing himself to new personal weight records had made him feel better at the time, but as soon as the endorphin rush faded, the pain of muscle strains in his back, shoulders and arms began to supplant them. He meekly pushed open the door to the Malibu and stood up in the pouring rain, relishing the cool water running over his face. He slammed the door shut a bit more firmly than he opened it, and shuffled slowly to the basement door leading to his suite. He braced himself against the door with his arm and fumbled to put his key into the lock before hearing a satisfying click and throwing himself whole-heartedly into his living room. Not bothering to take off his coat, he flopped down on the couch and flipped on the TV, hoping to catch the first couple minutes of the Green Bay game. Kosmos-465 hung silent like a jewel above the western hemisphere. A Russian geosynchronous satellite launched in 1971, it had contained communication relays and state of the art electronic espionage equipment. Over the course of thirty years, as the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union collapsed, Kosmos’ usefulness began to decline and it was eventually abandoned to more recent models. Few people in the Soviet military were aware of 465s second use however; those that did had passed away and now 465 was seen as more of junk in space then the weapon it had been designed for. At her core was an atomic bomb unlike any seen previously in the world. There was no explosive payload; instead, a theta-radiation surge would blanket the western hemisphere in a second contaminating all peoples, animals, and buildings, rotting away their insides instantaneously, reducing any living matter to a thick gelatinous blob. This weapon had been produced in the Ural mountains under the most strict secrecy provisions the Soviet military had available at that time. Most scientists who had worked on the project were summarily executed at its conclusion and their families paid off handsomely. Thirteen years and thousands of man-hours had gone into the creation of this weapon, code-named выключатель льда or IceBreaker, and it had been intended to be used as a last resort in case of the fall of Moscow due to invasion, nuclear first strike, or the death of the Premiere due to assassination. Thirty years later none of this had taken place, and yet, as Kosmos-465 made its final pass over the Adirondack Mountains at 9:31 eastern standard time, the birthing chamber of the device swung open, the realignment jets fired, and the harbinger of doom descended silently into the night. IceBreaker fell swiftly, and at its pre-programmed firing height of 15,000 km detonated, showering the continents of North and South America in a violent white light that went well beyond the brightness of the sun, which had begun to set in the west. Everything

inundated with the light froze for an instant, absorbing this angry outburst and the only sound heard was a deep thunderous groan, as if the earth itself had been maimed horribly and was now accepting its eventual fate of death. Danni and Ben sat up sharply just after the brilliant flash of white light interrupted their dinner. They had been discussing Danni’s day at work when the entire house was suddenly bathed and illuminated from all angles. No shadows existed for the two seconds that the flare had raped their house and even the two cats had been dazzled away from their constant frolicking to take note of this weird intrusion. Dillon and Liz were blinded when the football game was temporarily interrupted by a brilliant flash of white light. They both looked around confused as they noticed the living room was suffering from the same bright white contrast as their TV was; and then just as suddenly it died away. The commentators on the TV seemed to be as surprised as they were and it took a few moments before the game resumed. Thad’s meal had just been given to him a very young girl behind the Jack in the Box counter and he was heading out the door when the blast hit. A colorless wave seemed to crash over the entrance and all throughout the restaurant; every diner looked up to see what was going on. Thad had a flashback to being in a severe snowstorm several years ago in his native Buffalo, except at least there was some depth to the world, whereas now he felt as if he was suspended in a milky substance with no weight. The light disappeared and, after his eyes readjusted he saw nothing out of the ordinary. The people seated were quiet, but the murmurs of bewilderment became louder as he closed the door behind him, wiped off the seat of his bike, put on his helmet and rode back to the school. The rain had begun to subside by the time he returned to the school. His meal in hand, he casually strolled back into his lab, tossing his dinner next to his work computer as he went to check the results of the theta-radiation test he had started before he left. At both ends of the graph results, nothing appeared out of the ordinary. However, in the middle of the test, it appeared someone must have jostled the machine or interfered with its test cycle as at about 6:30, according to the time log at the bottom, the line disappeared and reappeared shortly thereafter. Thad swore loudly. He would be forced to rerun the experiment again and that would require another dissected fly and another 45 minute test before he’d be able to go home and it was already late enough. Angrily, he tore out the radiogram and added it to a pile of papers he had planned to take home and study later. He’d look more closely at the results when he got home; right now his priority was completing this test. Tim, finishing up the last of his studying for the day, pushed aside the books and took a long swig from the coke he had just opened. The blinding crash of energy around him caught him by a surprise and by the time he had finished choking on his soft drink, the light was gone. “What in the hell was that?”

He stood up and walked to the window where it was beginning to get dark. There were no cars on the street that could have shone a light into his window, nor any people walking on the streets, nor anything else out of the ordinary that would have caused such an event to occur. “Weird.” He walked back to the computer where several people online had messaged him asking if he had seen it too. May had taken off her hardware smock and was upstairs in the employee room when she suddenly felt light-headed, much like she had felt earlier in the day at school. She looked around, dazed; nothing seemed to appear correct, the room itself had taken on a washed out look, walls and corners, appeared to slide into each other and her depth perception had vanished. She sat down in and hard, uncomfortable chair and rested her face in her hands, hoping that this feeling would vanish quickly. She lifted her head up slowly from her cupped palms to find the world much like she had left it before feeling dizzy. The sound of footsteps coming up the stairs into the staff room roused her from her chair. Andrea looked positively bewildered asking her if she just saw that. Confused and still groggy from her near accident, she replied “Yes.” and proceeded past Andrea down the stairs and out the hall to where her parents car waited. She waved to her father who sat in the drivers seat and he started the engine. It was time to go home; it had been a long day. Dom was quite asleep by the time a white burst spread across the city of Vancouver. He was staring into a giant hole situated in the center of a large meadow; in this world, shadows had taken on a sour-milk white, something tangible in its purity and peering into the lightness of the hole, he could almost make out a body or shape at the bottom. As he stared intently, seeking some recognition of form, he felt himself sliding slowly forward into the pearl abyss. At the last second, he jerked himself awake and found himself breathing heavily on his side, staring at a TV broadcast that was discussing an event that had occurred only moments ago. Turning off the TV, he took off his shoes, slid the socks off his feet and gave them a quick rub. He glanced around the room at the darkness that permeated the space in his basement and decided it was time for bed. He planned an early start to tomorrow; he wanted to ensure he would have some good news for his mother when he made it to Trail on Friday. Thursday Thursday started out much like Wednesday had. Ben slept in as Danni hurriedly prepared for the mornings drive to work. Despite not having to work until eleven that morning, she had planned to ride into Trail with Ben in order to get some shopping completed, as well as study for her distance education course in human physiology that she had started on a whim a month back. She had earned a degree in human kinetics but was eager to upgrade her skills and that had required going to the local college to receive packages in distance learning. The course she was taking currently only lasted two months but it was a prerequisite for the more advanced courses she had planned to take this fall. Ben was more reserved about having her in the office for lengths of time like this as he had always felt uncomfortable mixing his work with his personal life. He was good friends with everyone

in the office but he had found that it was easier to escape work by going home when the person at home knew nothing of his work. This morning, he was out of bed by the time Danni exited the shower. She was surprised to see him up and promptly poked fun at his usual reluctance to get up in the morning. She kissed him good morning regardless and let him get ready for work as she ironed her work clothes. As she pressed her uniform, her mind drifted back to the night before; the flash had caused her no physical discomfort but her mind had found it strangely disquieting. It had caught them off guard, and they had not heard any official explanations for what had occurred. Checking news sources online, no one seemed to have had an answer that calmed her curiousity enough; some people blamed harmless solar flares, others predicted this as the first step towards Armageddon. She was of the opinion somewhere between the two; this wasn’t just some random happening with no consequences but she didn’t think that there was anything terribly pressing to worry about. If anything positive had come about because of this, Ben had woken early because he wanted to find out more about what had happened last night, and their lack of TV meant timely data was hard to come by. He quickly dried off, threw on a pair of jeans and a tshirt and ran downstairs to see if any updates had appeared online. “The Flash”, as it was referred to, had been the buzz of the internet since it had occurred but he had wanted to see what the official media explanation was for the event, and the TV in his office was his best chance for information. He checked his usual websites and blogs and they seemed to be as perplexed as he was. Instant messages to Thad and Dillon were unanswered and no email had come in with revelations as to what was occurring. Thumps on the floor indicated Danni was ready to go, and turning off the computer quickly, he leapt up the stairs, grabbed his coat and shoes and bolted out the door, leaving a stunned Danni to wonder why he was so excited this morning. As she got into the Jeep she had to ask Ben why is he in such a rush. “Where’s the fire, chief? They’re not going to know anymore then what we’ve seen or read already. It’s not going to be a big deal.” She wasn’t sure if she was saying this to calm him down or to calm herself down. “It’s going to be explained away and within a week everyone will have forgotten and we’ll go back to our regular lives and routines just as we always have.” Ben disagreed wholeheartedly. “Where were you three years ago when two planes flew into the World Trade Center towers? I bet you can remember distinctly where you were, how you felt, the people you were with, everything. Every generation gets these kind of defining moments which seem, at the time, completely life-changing, and a lot of people come out and say ‘Oh, it’s not that big of a deal, people will forget about in a year’” but people don’t. It’s just not true. Ask our parents “Where you were when JFK was shot? When the Americans landed on the moon? When Elvis died? And then will give you specific details about everything that happened in that moment. We’ve had one already, September, a couple of years back, now we’ve had another. No one understands it, no one is completely sure of it, but they know that they’ll remember it for a long time, regardless of whether or not it’s an important time in our life to do so.”

Danni had to stifle a laugh at Ben’s enthusiasm. “Okay, fine, you have me convinced. Can you start the car now and get us to work? I’d like to find out the same time the rest of the world does what the hell happened?” Ben turned the key and the engine rumbled to life. “Am I allowed to go fast?” “No, I’d also like to be alive to find out the same time the rest of the world does, thank you very much.” “Damn” She punched him in the shoulder in mock disgust as they made their way into town. Dillon searched the web for any information on the blinding light that he and Liz had experienced the night previous. He had got into work at his usual time and found the entire office starkly quiet doing the exact same thing that he had planned on doing, searching for some explanation of what had taken place. Currently no one had an answer, either online or off. He closed a message from Ben without reading it and looked out the window, surprised to see that he was just now pulling up, a good thirty minutes before he usually arrived. Nodding his head subconsciously, he understood why Ben was in so earlier. He was looking for the same answers, rumors, explanations that no one had yet. Wheeling around in his chair, he went for a walk to clear his head. He stepped out of the annex comprising his floors office and entered the central stairwell. He walked up to the top floor and was not surprised to see that this floor as well contained people staring at their monitors. No conversation was taking place as people were concentrating intently on what their screens were showing them, which, Dillon discovered with a quick scan around the room, all seemed to be news sites on “The Flash.” He walked down a short hallway to Samuel Monteiths office. Samuel was Ben’s father and manager of the engineering office. Dillon knocked on the door and stepped into the room, finding Samuel studying blueprints for a new slab-mold being installed up at the plant next month. “Glad to see someone’s still doing work.” Ben laughed as he sat down at a chair opposite Samuel. If ever there was any question that Samuel was Ben’s father, never was it as obvious of his parentage as when they were at work. A shorter version of Ben, Samuel carried the same mischievous nature as his son, coupled with the gravitas of being responsible for the work of hundreds of people in the office. “I had to turn my monitor off and work on these hardcopies before I became mesmerized like the people out there” Samuel made a sweeping gesture of false contempt towards the seated masses and took his glasses off. Aside from the moustache and graying hair, he

could have been an identical twin to Ben at times. At this point, with a very discernable anxiousness that twitched beneath his body, Samuel was obviously intrigued by what happened yesterday but had the responsibility and maturity to continue on working despite his interests. “Where were you when it happened?” Samuel asked. “I was picking up May at her job and just this big flash” “Me and Liv were watching the football game and all of a sudden everything went white, on the TV, everywhere. It was like swimming in milk, just poof, the end of the world or something except we’re all standing around today discussing how we died.” They both lowered their voices as they continued to discuss what had happened. Conversations like this tended to draw a crowd of people who wanted to add in their own speculation and they had preferred to discuss it amongst themselves, family friends who were practically family. Samuel tended to treat Dillon as another son. Dillon and Ben had grown up together and Samuel had been good friends with Dillon’s parents before he had even been born. It was good fortune that Dillon was such a talented engineer that he’d end up working in the same office as Samuel and Samuel was certainly thankful to have him on the team. “So, what do you think it was?” Samuel had rolled up the plans and was quickly stuffing them into a cardboard tube for storage. “No idea, I have not one iota of a clue what that was.” “Yeah, me neither and I’m not quite sure I want to know.” “I’m sure it was nothing. Just a weird sun thing or a comet or I don’t know. Something that once we find out the cause of it, we’ll all sit back and laugh and say ‘Wow, remember how much we were panicking about this stupid little thing’” ”I hope you’re right Dillon, I hope you’re right” “Ben actually came in early today, I think he’s just as fanatical as everyone else in this place.” Samuel laughed “Like father, like son.” Thad’s day, in his opinion, was a write-off. From the very moment he stepped into the lab, there was no indication that work of the more traditional variety would be completed. As scientists, the universities labs staff were completely enthralled by last nights event and thus had spent most of their time in discussions asking who had been running tests during that time period and if anyone had any idea of what had happened. It occurred to Thad to take another look at his result graph from the theta-radiation test he had taken last night. The repeat test had come back with no anomalies so he had, at the time, completely

disregarded the previous. He shuffled through his backpack for his notes from yesterday and found his test graph to be in rough shape but readable. He placed it on his desk scanned the bottom line for time information. From reading the graph, at the same time “The Flash” occurred, the theta radiation graph line had disappeared. He pondered this for a second, thoughtfully stroking his chin. “Too coincidental. Maybe I’m reading this wrong” His finger traced the line as it moved along the page. “Now, at this point, the points on the graph no longer exist. Is it that they no longer exist or…” He moved his finger along and at the point where there appeared no data, his finger rose slowly up to the top of the page. He slapped his forehead in frustration. “The points WOULD be on the graph IF the paper had been tall enough!” He stopped himself short on this line of thought. A massive dose of theta-radiation was unheard of. Even his theta-testing project currently on flies only used the smallest possible amount of energy and his equipment was made extremely sensitive to measure this minute probability. He ran his finger along the line again up to the flashpoint of yesterday. He stopped and walked over to the graphing machine which was running a test that someone else had prepared roughly forty-five minutes ago. “Sorry, science waits for no man,” he muttered as he pressed the stop button on the test. He opened the metal casing and studied the interior. The mechanics were quite similar to a Geiger counter, measuring radioactive activity per second. By doing some quick mathematics, judging what level of radioactivity increased the graph by a millimeter, he would be able to determine a general range for what could have possibly occurred last night. “In order to make the graph jump so high that the line isn’t even continuous, it would require …” He dropped his calculator in shock. “No, that can’t be right.” He thought for a second. His calculations indicated that the level of radiation was so high as to be utterly inconceivable. Even the atomic tests, of which he had studied in great detail, broached nowhere near the level signified. This had to be incorrect. There was just no possible way that an energy explosion of such magnitude had occurred without killing everyone in the process. His studies on theta-radiation on insects had determined some astounding things. Each living thing was radioactive, theta-radioactive to be more precise. Acting much like the background radiation found throughout the universe, background theta-radiation existed

in his test subjects up to the point that they were killed or suffered sufficient trauma to kill their brain. It was as if the brain activity created this radiation surge throughout the body, in small quantities, as a means of generating and continuing life. He hadn’t brought this information to his peers yet as this was some earth-shattering. New data on how life continued sat at his fingertips yet he was hesitant to bring it the attention it deserved. Theories such as this needed to be processed, refined. Practical tests had to be completed, empirical data had to be gathered. And now, the very substance that sustained life had been exploded through the bodies of every person he knew of. He needed a vacation. He knew that if he was going to present these findings, he would have to appear with rational mind and the constant slavering he had been doing over his test for the past several months were not conducive as such. His peers had been vociferous in their demands that he take a break from his studies; if he were to inundate them with such findings, looking and feeling as crazy as a mad-hatter, there would be no honest interest in his work. His weekend vacation to Trail had already been planned and despite his scientific curiosity, he intended on taking it. He bundled his tests up together, along with his calculations of doom, and stuffed them back into his bag, along with the original radiation test. It was only mid-afternoon but there was too much to do before he left. Friday was going to be a long day. Tim’s test went poorly, as he had expected. Without studying, he had walked into the test feeling ill-prepared for the questions he was going to be asked and regrettably, as he walked away from the room, he knew that he had not passed. It hadn’t helped him that his mind had been preoccupied with the events of last night, much like the rest of the class that had bothered to show up had apparently been. He chuckled and wished that this test was down on a Bell curve, the numbers of people who would be scoring zero would certainly pull him out from under the yoke of inability. Another class was due to begin in thirty minutes but as he walked into the center foyer, his attention was drawn to a news show being broadcast on one of the small TV’s hanging from the lobby walls. One of the American chief health advisors was giving a press conference in front of the White house. Tim asked one of the other viewers to turn the volume up. “I repeat, at this time we are not at liberty to speculate on the event in question. What we do know is that at 9:31PM eastern standard time, a non-percussive explosion of unknown origin occurred in the upper atmosphere over the eastern seaboard covering all of North and South America and no harmful side effects have been determined at this time. Please, do not panic. At this time we are investigating many leads and when we have more answers, we will inform you. Any questions?” “Are we under attack?” “No”

“You said ‘non-percussive explosion’. What does that mean?” “Consider what happened analogous to a flash grenade. The purpose is to create a brilliant flare of light without the destructive consequences of explosive material.” “If this thing was like a grenade, how can you say we’re not under attack?” “At this time, no foreign group, terrorist or state, has come forward to claim responsibility for this event. One of the leads we are following appears to indicate that this may have been a natural phenomenon. I would be hard-pressed to say that we were attacked, and in the interest of maintaining calm, I ask that this be presented as such.” “If it was a natural phenomenon, what was it?” “At this time we don’t have an answer for that. Theories include a solar flare, a magnetic disturbance and sunspots. We simply don’t have enough data to conclude that any of these are the cause however. “Have there been any reported deaths directly as a cause of this ‘natural phenomenon’?” “Last nights event caused its own fair share of traffic accidents and shock-related incidents. We are confident in saying that this was handled by the American people professionally, and we are also confident that were this to occur again, it would be handled in the same manner” “Are you expecting a repeat?” “No, there is no evidence to support that” “Was the United States specifically a target?” “No, all countries in North and South America were affected by the flash” “Is this a precursor to alien invasion?” “No. Thank you for your time everyone. As we get more information, you will be contacted.” The reporters all stood up as the advisor walked off the podium, shouting questions that, despite their best efforts, were curtly ignored. Tim shrugged his shoulders at his fellow spectators. “Well, that was informative”

“If by informative, you mean ‘we don’t know a damn thing, but please, take our word for it, you’re ok’, then sure” one of his fellow nurses-in-training exclaimed. Tim laughed and nodded his head in agreement. That hadn’t been the most revealing press conference ever given and it had lended itself to more idle speculation than before. It seemed to Tim odd that only the western continents had been affected. He himself had not felt any different waking up this morning. No superpowers, he wasn’t able to see through walls or leap over tall buildings so he had doubted it was radioactive. He would have to ask Ben about it when he got to Trail. Ben always seemed to know the answers for everything and Tim had no doubts that Ben was currently poring over every information source he could get his hands on to get an answer. He was good for that. A good researcher. Tim wished that he had Ben’s drive and determination as he left the school early again to see if there was more TV coverage back home. May’s classes all seemed to blend into each other as she moved from one to another. In each class, thoughts and conjectures on what had occurred last night were the topic of discussion. It hadn’t mattered whether she was in social studies or economics, each teacher had asked what the student was doing at the time of the flash and without fail, each recounted their individual story in excessive detail. The beginning of this class had started with the teacher recounting their personal experience, which like most people, seemed to involve ‘going about my usual business until that stupid white light blinded me.’ With this teacher waxing poetically about her dreary evening, May turned to Andrea and rolled her eyes. Andrea stifled a laugh with her hand but others sitting nearby giggled. Many of them were already tired of hearing about it and were eager to get back to their previous lives. The bell to end class and begin lunch rang halfway through the teachers description of her dinner and May was elated to be free of such boredom. She walked into the cafeteria, and seeing Mark sitting at her usual table, turned to go outside instead. Andrea, who had been walking closely behind her, matched her forehead to May’s nose with a sharp crack, prompting the laughter of the lineup both inside and outside the lunch hall. “Thanks Andrea” ”I didn’t expect you to turn around so quick. How’s your nose?” “Broken, let’s go outside” “Why?” “Mark’s at my table.” ”Aww, that’s cute.. let me go say high!” “No, let’s just find another place to sit.”

“No, come on, let’s go sit with him” May attempted to hold Andrea back but she was too quick. Seeing Andrea sit down next to Mark infuriated May and she stormed out of the school, intending to sit at one of the picnic tables sitting next to the baseball field. From here she could clear her mind and watch the schools male baseball team practice. She intended to stop talking to Andrea after this. Andrea was her friend and she was deliberately trying to annoy her about Mark. It was working too. She wanted nothing to do with him, especially after yesterday’s bump in the hall. She rubbed her nose, expecting to see blood on her hands. She had been bumped pretty hard and she was fairly delicate, it seemed that anything could set her off. At least she had remained conscious this time, she could count on both hands the number of times she passed out because of being hurt like that. She stared off into space as the star of the baseball team stepped up to the plate. With a swing of the bat, he sent a pop fly out into centerfield as the girls seated at the table next to her cheered wildly. She groaned and shook her head. “Stupid snobby high school girls,” she muttered under her breath as she turned her back to the game. The day wasn’t going fast enough for her. Dom rose Thursday morning and was out the door before most people had eaten their breakfast. Showering, eating and dressing nicely for his interviews that day, he felt confident in his abilities this morning. Feeling more positive then he had in weeks, he was certain today would be the day he could finally say that the four years of schooling he had taken were going to pay off. Straightening out his pony tail, and swiping his hand over his dress-shirt to smooth out the wrinkles, he had almost looked like be belonged in a professional office. He had to prevent himself from running to his car and tearing off to his first interview of the day. He arrived at the lobby of his first interview General Engineering early and without incident. He walked up nonchalantly and told the moderately attractive brunette sitting behind the desk that he had an interview for a job. She stared at him oddly for a second before motioning for him to sit down at an overstuffed chair while she called in to tell the interviewer that he had arrived. Dom listened intently and judging from the tone of voice she was using, things were not going to go well. She sounded incredulous that he was here and judging from her facial expressions, the responses she was getting were not in Dom’s best interest. His suspicions were confirmed when she finally hung up the phone. “I’m sorry, Mr Vermeulen, but all interviews have been cancelled for today.” “What? Why?” He blinked. “Well, after what happened yesterday, the management here decided that they wanted to adopt a wait and see attitude before committing to any new hires. I’m sure you understand.”

Dom wasn’t about to disagree. Despite his first urge to argue the point, he knew that that would have sounded the death-knoll for his chances at working for this company; so he nodded and smiled, thanked the receptionist with a big smile and headed out the door. One down, five to go, and batting zero. Still maintaining optimism, he decided to grab a quick bite to eat as his next interview wasn’t for another hour. He went through the drivethru of the closest fast-food restaurant and drove around watching the clock tick by one number at a time. The streets seemed quieter than usual today, but chalking this up to it being still relatively early on a Thursday before a long weekend, he actually enjoyed the ease of getting around downtown Vancouver without having to deal with rush-hour traffic. He himself would have still been in bed today had it not been for the several interviews he had to take part in, although the wisdom in getting up early for this futile exercise was beginning to seem suspect. His next interview, unfortunately, proceeded much the same way as the first one had. He entered the building, a little more reserved, only to be greeted this time by a middle-aged, frumpy looking receptionist who looked him up and down at first, judging him as inappropriate, before calling into the office to get permission to relay the bad news. She shook her head and explained in vastly more impatient terms what he had already heard in his first visit. “Sorry, no interviews today” ”Something about yesterday you’re going to tell me.” ”Yes, thank you for your interest but we are no longer hiring.” This time, Dom was a little less polite and cursed as he left the building. “Twice in a row now, what is going on?” he muttered to himself as he walked into the parking lot where his car awaited eagerly to take him to his next rejection. He was quickly becoming dejected. He slumped into the front seat, laced his fingers behind his head and laid his head back. Closing his eyes, he tried to understand why this was going so poorly. For some reason, something happened yesterday to cause many people to panic and yet, he had not heard or seen anything that indicated the end of the world was coming, so what was the problem? He headed off early to his next appointment, almost certain that he would receive the same brush-off as before. There wasn’t any sense in thinking optimistically at this point. He, unfortunately, wasn’t disappointed. His last attempted interview shone the proverbial light on his problem. As he sat in the waiting room, a news broadcast came on with cameras at the White House. The chief health advisor for the US was talking about an event yesterday and the reporters in the audience were asking questions that raised Dom’s eyebrows. He didn’t remember anything special happening yesterday and his confusion appeared so apparent that the young receptionist asked him about it while twirling her hair in her fingers.

“You don’t know what happened yesterday, do you?” “No, I fell asleep after I got home from the gym and I haven’t had a chance to watch TV all day. Now I’m going to all of these job interviews where people are saying now they’re not hiring and I don’t understand it. What’s going on?” “No one knows, that’s the problem. See, last night, I was just sitting around and all of a sudden I was blinded by a bright light, and now it’s all over the news.” “So, no one knows what happened?” “Nope, no one.” She smacked her gum and smiled at him. “So, lots of people think it’s the end of the world and don’t care what they’re doing.” She smiled at him again, eliminating all doubts as to what her intentions were. “So, it’s really slow in the office as no one wants to do any work. I’m kinda bored sitting here all alone with nothing to do.” He appreciated her sentiment before it took a minute to really understood what she was inferring. It seemed a tempting offer but he had things to do. Coughing uncomfortably, he thanked her for her time and information and left the office. “Five for five. Typical.” He wasn’t sure if he should feel angry or resigned from this latest turn of events. At least there was a reason he hadn’t successfully become employed today. His esteem hadn’t suffered as he moved from rejection to rejection, and he was sure his mother would appreciate the fact that a major nationwide event had happened which had instantaneously evaporated the job market. “Fuck it, I’m going home today.” He left Vancouver before noon. He’d be in Trail by 7. Ben and Danni both searched frantically in Ben’s office, as well as collaboration with Ben’s coworkers for information on what had occurred, but thus far, nothing new had been discovered. Some time after Danni had left for work, Ben and his five colleagues retired to the lunch room where CBC was covering a press conference in the US which resulted in no new information coming to light. Disappointed, Ben walked back to his desk and slumped into the chair expecting a slow day. He checked his email and was not surprised to find nothing. His phone was not blinking as it usually did with several voice mail messages requiring attention. He stared around his desk for something to fiddle with while he wasted away his day. He read his certifications on his cubicle wall, all courses that seemed important at the time but recent events had made everything seem very distant and inconsequential. He looked up a couple of his commonly visited web pages they all seemed themed around what he had been looking for; all just as confused as he was. He thumbed through several computer programming books attempting to look busy but nothing could take his mind off of the topic of choice being discussed on the other

side of the office. He joined the conversation just as they finished discussing where they had been when ‘it’ happened. His group of coworkers were as varied as groups can be. There were Rudi and Sylvia, two recent transfers from Vancouver nearing retirement age. They had moved out here last summer, giving up their house in which they had lived in for 30 years for a larger house in the country that didn’t require locking their doors at night and a commute that didn’t take an hour both ways. Gord and Heather Smith both were long-time residents of Rossland, the town just up the hill from Trail. Both had been tree-planters previously, a fact Ben relished in referring to as “hippy life”, before they had come to work for Bellus International. Gord had been particularily successful at Bellus and had quickly progressed up the corporate ladder to middle-management, a position that required frequent late hours which had begun to distress Heather, who unbeknownst to the office was expecting their second child in seven months. Colleen Provan had just returned from maternity leave after having her first kid late in life. She had grown up in the Trail area and despite leaving it for the coast at one point, eventually returned to find the lifestyle that she had once scorned exactly what she needed now. Dale Green was the newest employee. Young like Ben, he had known Gord and Heather back in their tree planting days and they had talked him into applying for a Bellus job and he had succeeded. They were a tight-knit group, having worked together through many trying times, layoffs, crooked managers and now, what seemed to be another life-changing event. “It’s an experiment,” Rudi said, stroking his beard. “They’re testing the effects of new drugs on the populace to see if we crack under unknown terrorist actions.” Rudi was the conspiracy theorist of the group, for every action there was an unknown motive for it. Over the years that everyone had gotten to know each other, they knew to ignore Rudi when he began his diatribe. Sylvia just smiled and nodded in agreement with Rudi. As an older married couple, they had their differences but in cases where Sylvia wasn’t sure, she always deferred her opinion to Rudis. Colleen chimed in with not even noticing it last night. Motherhood had taken a toll on her and most of the time, with her husband working in Cranbrook, she was alone to look after the baby. She was steadily becoming more wore down and had fallen asleep before the flash had even taken place. The phone had run several times after it happened; her husband had called her from Cranbrook asking if she was ok but her slumber had been so deep that she hadn’t heard the phone ring. He had assumed as much and planned to make an earlier trip home then usual back to Montrose. Gord and Heather’s reaction had been much like Ben and Danni’s, tempered by middleage responsibilities. Their son had reacted strongly to the blast and they had spent the majority of the night attempting to calm him down, explaining the surprise intruder of the safety of their house as something harmless. Dale had noticed but had been too busy to care. His girlfriend had invited a friend of hers over and they were engaged in unmentionable acts under the influence when the flash made its way through the bedroom. Thinking this was just another side-effect of the drugs

they were on, he laughed and resumed the activity that would cause him to come in late Thursday morning. With no one else at Bellus to talk to, the group laughed and cajoled each other about their responses to the incident. They were relieving tension by releasing it to each other. While some of them were secretly panicking, they felt comfort in each others voices and felt secure in their environment. This was the life they had come to live and it was best to live it to its fullest, despite what was happening on the other side of the tinted-black, wiremesh windows that separated them from the general populace. “It’ll be nothing, honestly. I’ve done some research and apparently this has happened before. Like an asteroid that blows up in the atmosphere, it doesn’t cause any damage, but does make one hell of a lightshow.” Gord opined. Several coworkers nodded in unison. This seemed plausible - and comforting. “That wouldn’t really explain how it just seemed to penetrate EVERYWHERE though Gord” Rudi added, “light still has to follow the rules of physics.” Gord nodded in agreement. “I suppose you’re right. Maybe it was just a very energetic light. Things happen that we don’t understand and they happen on a regular basis.” Ben had already explored this line of reasoning and it led him nowhere. Light doesn’t go around corners nor go through walls. There was something else, some other type of energy that had caused this and none of them seemed to have stumbled upon this idea yet. He’d have to sit down and discuss it with Thad arrived. He found Thad usually had the answers and he fully suspected he’d have a good idea for what was happening now. Reports of rioting in the major centers of the US, mostly the larger cities of New York and Los Angeles, had begun to make the news by the end of the work day. It seemed that hysteria begun to hit a fever pitch as religious types had latched onto the event as prelude to the End of Days and some of the more violent members of society had been swept along in the excitement. Without some measure of control holding them back, they had caused property damage and clashed with police in massive numbers, prompting a state of emergency to be temporarily declared. News reporters seemed ecstatic to be covering something other than the confusion caused yesterday and the airwaves were full of embedded reporters walking amongst the rubble of burned out buildings, bullet-ridden walls and standing next to the victims of violence for the past several hours. News helicopters made constant sweeps across the cities attempting to determine where the next outbreak was going to be. Radio traffic amongst the various news agencies in the air appeared to report that there was nothing unusual happening aside from an abundance of drunken citizens who were stumbling from house to house in the dead of night. As they were greater priorities to deal with, this was not reported on to the point where a disturbing trend would have been noticed. There seemed to be an overwhelming number of intoxicated wanderers snaking their way through the city. At first glance, one would assume that this be a natural reaction to the environment but on closer examination, it would appear there has never been a drunk who looked or acted quite like this.

Friday With the long weekend upon them, Ben and Danni took full advantage of their free time and slept in until noon. The night before had been spent lying in each others arms talking about the various news that they had heard over the course of the day. The reports of the riots down in the US had prompted some level of concern amongst the two of them. With Thad living in Seattle, they weren’t sure if he had been a victim of the up swell and violence many had seen on their TVs. They hadn’t heard from him at the usual time and he was due to be in Trail just before dinner. Judging from the online chatter, there had been violent uprising in some of the other major cities in the US, including Miami, Houston and Detroit. It seemed as if the major population centers had suddenly decided to go crazy all at the same time, feeding the sentiment that the world was out of control to those north of the border. Details on the riots had still been fairly difficult to come by, intoxication seemed a large motivation for the majority of the violent behavior but unfortunately, as towns were placed on curfew and news agencies forbidden from landing helicopters in designated ‘hot zones’ and reporters were refusing to hit the ground, instead relying on the relative safety of their newsrooms to report on the happenings. With no TV, Ben and Danni were solely reliant on web reports on the major newssites which, with the onrush of people in similar predicaments, were dreadfully slow. Instead of hammering on the few websites which had information, Ben and Danni decided to relax their body and minds with a simple DVD marathon and snuggling under the blankets on the couch. With Dillon out of town this weekend, it didn’t look like they were going to be heading out to any of the local drinking establishments so they were stuck at the house for the remainder of the weekend. There seemed to be no way to pacify their ill-at-ease minds with alcohol so, in the end, they had decided on mind-numbing entertainment as their only escape. Thad would get here when he got there, Ben had said, there was no sense in worrying about until they knew for sure that he was late. Danni agreed, but voiced her opinion that she hoped Thad was going to be okay. They both huddled together and awaited his arrival impatiently. The phone rang several hours before Thad was due to arrive. Danni waited impatiently as Ben answered the phone. She couldn’t tell immediately who it was but it sounded like family. “Probably his mom telling us to come over for dinner.” she thought as she tapped her fingers impatiently on the remote control mute button. He hung up and came back to the couch to see her. He laughed and told her what the phone call was about. She laughed too and they continued watching their movie. Dillon’s luck with Liz wasn’t as fortuitous. In a panic after news reports continually came back with aggressive rioting, suspicious happenings and hysteria across large centers, Liz herself was in hysterics. Dillon attempted to calm her down as best he could, but she seemed bound and determined to not let him. “Can’t you see what’s happening?” she screamed as she stormed upstairs to the bedroom. He chased her up the stairs not really understanding what answer she was looking for.

“The world is going crazy and it’s going to come here next and I am so worried about everyone and I’m scared and I don’t like it!” She was in hysterics and Dillon wasn’t prepared for it. He walked into the bedroom, finding her sobbing on the bed. “What’s really bothering you? I mean, nothing’s happening in Trail, there’s nothing to worry about up here, we’re ok right now and we’ll be ok later too” “That’s your opinion!” she yelled at him, startling enough to cause him to take a step back. She’d always been emotional but never as angry or upset as she was right now. “What do you want me to do? I’ll do anything you want, just tell me what to do.” “I have to go see my family” He paused, a little surprised by her suggestion. Liz and her family had had a falling out several years ago when she decided that they weren’t supporting her and her needs to the extent that she had thought they should be. Her father had given her the ultimatum of either ‘shaping up or shipping out’ and she had chosen the latter option. She had moved the 300 kilometers from Kelowna to Trail on her own when she was nineteen and she had never looked back. Since they had begun dating, Liz had never broached the subject of her family, changing the subject quite coarsely whenever Dillon had asked her about them. He had decided not to press her on it and on rare occasions she had given him indications that she was not on good terms with her family. Hearing her say she had to go see them, in Dillons mind, was akin to hearing the Pope say he was no longer Catholic. “You want to go see your family now? Why?” “Because…because I don’t know..maybe this will be the last time I’ll get to see them and I can’t live with myself for the rest of my life if I don’t see them and something happens. I just won’t be able to live with myself, do you understand?” Dillon nodded; he understood and he was a little relieved that she had finally revealed what had been bothering her. As well, it gave him the opportunity to be that strong foundation again that she always relied on. His chest swelled as he suggested that they go see them, right now; pack up some quick luggage, overnight necessities, and go see them, together. She looked up from the bed, her eyes puffed out with obvious emotion, and smiled. “You’d do that?” “I would do anything for you, you know that.”

“Are we going to leave right away? Are you going to be alright meeting with my parents?” He waved off her questions with a flick of his hand. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s get packed and we’ll go right now. Just give me a minute to tell my parents we’re leaving.” Relieved that he had the ability to calm her down finally, he walked down the stairs into the living room where his phone sat next to his computer. He picked up the phone and pressed the first quickdial key which called his parents in Fruitvale. His mother picked up after three rings. “Hi mom, it’s Dillon. Liz and me are going to Kelowna for the weekend, I just thought I’d let you know.” He noticed that Ben was online and at his computer so he sent a quick message saying that he was going out of town to visit Liz’s parents this weekend, and to wish him luck. “Are you sure that’s a good idea Dillon? Things are happening and I don’t really want you driving all the way up to Kelowna. What if something happens?” He hadn’t really thought of what his mothers reaction to the trip was going to be. He had a close relationship with his mother which sometimes bordered on over-protection. She seemed to look after his best interests sometimes against his own best interest and he had let her. Now, with someone for him to look after, he had begun to press against her wishes and she was not terribly impressed with that fact. “I’ll be ok. Don’t worry. Liz just wants to go see her family and with it being the longweekend, we figured this is a good time to go.” “You didn’t tell me about this earlier in the week.” “Yeah, we just decided to go. It’s a nice day out and we’ve got the entire weekend off, so we’ll just go and have fun.” “Are you sure that’s a good idea though? I mean, you’ve never met her family before, and what if something happens to you or the truck? Then what? You can’t come home and you’ll be stuck up there and then we’ll have to come get you.” “I’ll be ok, don’t worry. Anyways, I have to go, Liz is all packed up and ready to go.” Dillon lied, a little, just to get her off the phone. He didn’t like the idea of having to explain everything to her and as far as he was concerned, he was giving her too much leeway in the decision as it was. He shouldn’t have to ask permission anymore. “Ok, well, we’ll see you when you get back.”

He hung up relieved. That could have gone better, he thought to himself, but at least I don’t have to worry about them worrying about me. A message from Ben said that he hoped Dillon carried a weapon of some kind up to Kelowna to fend off her crazy family. He laughed; Ben had it easy as far as he was concerned. Danni’s family was as far away as possible in Canada and they only saw each other on very rare occasions. That isn’t to say Ben didn’t like her family, he quite enjoyed visiting her dad and he took great pride in saying so to Dillon. He half-considered Ben’s suggestion. Considering what was happening south of the border, there was always a possibility that it could spread to Canada. He decided to toss a metal bat into the back of the truck. Better safe then sorry. Thad’s morning started off with an air raid siren going off at the local army engineering outpost. He thrashed awake, startled by the warning and was out of bed staring out the window in the direction of the sound by the time it began to falter. He assumed it was a test of the emergency broadcast system for the area and a quick flick of the TV remote to the local Seattle affiliate confirmed his suspicions. Apparently the situation in California and New York had worsened while he slept. The news was fairly sparse on exactly what was happening but apparently rioters from the day before had become more daring. News helicopters had been watching drunken rioters, breaking into buildings, breaching homes violently. At times, it was almost too much to cover and the networks were scrambling to get enough coverage of it to feed to the public. And now, it was getting worse, Houston, Miami, Detroit were getting wild. Thad was particularly worried about his family in Buffalo, but felt confident that they would be safe in their relatively mellow suburb. Turning off the TV, he went for a quick shower before he began packing for his weekend trip. Despite the insanity taking part in the larger cities, Seattle seemed preternaturally quiet. Traffic was light moving north towards the border and he was relieved because of this. Traveling between Seattle and Vancouver usually could prove to be quite hectic as there was a burgeoning trade infrastructure between the two cities but traffic at the moment was sparse on the I-85. As he made his way up through Bellingham, the omnipresent fog common through the Pacific Northwest encapsulated him fully and he was forced to slow his vehicle to a bare crawl as he inched his way through the vapor soup. Feeling slightly claustrophobic about being so blinded by the outside smog, he turned the music up to a deafening blast. He sang along with the words as his black mini-van crept slowly along the highway until a sudden thud made him jostle up in his seat surprised. Whatever he had run into was solid and unmoving. He didn’t have the stomach to rev the engine and drive over the impediment so he put the van in reverse and back up to see what had caused his holdup. Lying in the middle of the road was a dark shape. The fog was impairing his vision enough that he wasn’t able to accurately determine what it was. He knew what road kill looked like, he had experienced it many times driving this way up to Vancouver. It seemed that everyone hit an animal of some kind on this clouded patch of highway. From his vantage point inside the van, the animal was relatively large, not big enough to be a moose, or deer, but certainly larger then a big dog. He couldn’t

recognize any features to determine what species of animal it was and it’s size was just enough to make it a hazard if anyone else came by at too fast a pace. He backed up the van several metres and pulled off to the side of the road, just in front of Bellingham County cemetery. The combination of the fog and the cemetery being in such close proximity had filled up with a subconscious sense of dread but his conscious mind dismissed those thoughts. He was a grown up, and there were no boogeymen to worry about. He shut off the van, leaving the headlights on to illuminate his work, opened the door and stepped into a slight breeze. The stench of the roadkill almost immediately overpowered him and he was forced to surpress a slight gag as the smell of blood and flesh was stronger then he had expected. He had worked in a lab for most of his adult life, but it was surrounded with dead flies, and this was certainly no dead animal. He noticed that the kill must have been fairly recent as it seemed to be still twitching as the motor neurons in the body began to break down. Again, his first reflex was to forget about this poor animal, get in the van, and continue on his journey but his sense of civic responsibility held him fast. He inched his way closer to the prone corpse, his feet sliding roughly on the pavement below, kicking small rocks out of the way as he slowly lurched forward. The corpse, covered in so much dirt it appeared almost as a mound of soil, was bent at awkward angles; two, what he presumed were limbs, stretched forward along the road to the north, like a baby reaching for its mother. The two rear limbs stretched across the road, its feet pointing to the cemetery behind him. From what he saw, it seemed like the animal had come directly from the cemetery, a trail of dirt led right from the entrance way to its current resting place. He shuddered slightly; it was just too absurd the thoughts running through his mind as he took another step forward. Another twitch from the corpse. It must have died very recently as most dead animals only do that for several minutes after death. Some animals, like chickens for example, were able to run around without their heads attached for many minutes afterwards, but examples like that were usually limited to animals which contained very little brain mass. Cockroaches died when their heads were cut off not from losing their heads, but from starvation due to not having a mouth to feed with. He took another step forward and the corpse twitched almost in unison. It occurred to him it must have been a domestic animal of some kind as there seemed to be some kind of cloth covering it. Every so often a slight breeze would come by and Thad would see pieces of cotton fabric flapping. “Maybe a little girls pony, covered in a sheet got out of its pen somehow, wandered through the cemetery, and then got hit by a car. Makes perfect sense” he spoke aloud, trying to explain away the feeling of dread he was experiencing more and more viscerally as he stepped closer and closer to the prone animal. There was a trace of movement from the mound of flesh that made Thad stop cold in his tracks. It was possible the animal was still alive. It didn’t appear to be breathing to Thad, and he couldn’t see any movement in its chest to indicate that it had the ability to breathe. He shook his head and stepped forward again when he noticed a piece of shining metal near the center of the mound, sitting almost center along what he presumed was the animals back. He squinted, trying to make out what the bit was, maybe a tag of some kind awkwardly placed. He squatted down, several feet away from the body and stared

intently. He was sitting in the middle of an Interstate in the heart of a dangerous fog, the lights of his van shining directly upon him from behind, trying to determine what a piece of metal was doing on an animal which appeared to have died recently, when a thought struck him with such force he fell back on his haunches, his hands splaying out to his side as he realized what he was actually looking at. That wasn’t a tag or a marking bit for a domesticated animal. No. It was a belt buckle. His hands, cut from their sudden introduction to the ground, raced to his mouth, stifling a scream Thad could only muffle by swallowing every bit of humanity he had and hiding it deep in his psyche. The taste of blood and rock on his hands was especially pungent and after pushing himself away from the body with his feet far enough that he couldn’t make out its details again, he let out an anguished wail as he wiped his hands on his pants. He pushed off the ground again, crabwalking backwards until he was almost under his van. “What in the fuck was that?” he screamed between wails. A dead body in the middle of an interstate was definitely bound to raise some eyebrows. Had he been the one that caused this poor person to be in this state of horrifying nature? Waves of shock and disbelief washed over him for the next 15 minutes as he sat, his back to the drivers side door of the van, his knees pulled up to his chest, staring at the dead man lying strewn across the highway. His eyes traced align the mans shoulders, along his slender body and down to his legs, where Thad finally recognized shoes with tied laces. He also again noticed the line of sand and soil on the ground leading back to the cemetery which he was parked in front of. He stood up quickly, opened the van door, jumped into his seat and slammed the door loudly. His headlights still remained focused on the body in front of him and the fog was still hiding most of his surroundings, other then the corpse, the entrance to the cemetery, and the road he had traveled on up to this point that had caused so many problems. Relaxing in the relative safety of the van, he did a more thorough long-distance examination of the carcass. He immediately understood why he didn’t recognize the shape as a human being at first. Where ordinarily one would find a head, a mash of skull fragments and brain tissue existed. Pieces of eyes and a nose protruded out at rude angles from the pavement and hair, covered in dirt and knotted into snakelike fragment, sat like a bad toupee. Whoever this mad had been, it seemed he’d quite literally lost his head, presumably by a tire attached to a car that hadn’t swerved in time to miss him. “Teenagers must have dug him up and drug him out onto the road as a prank”, Thad thought to himself, “but why? A harmless prank or just trying to be a nuisance.” Judging from the amount of dirt and debris leading from the cemetery gates, there hadn’t been that many people carrying it. It seemed that he had been drug, arms first, out onto the road and left him to cause accidents to people like Thad. Satisfied that this was a sufficiently stupid enough reason to get panicked by a dead body prank, he started up the engine, rolled the van slowly forward towards the body so he could recognize specific markings identifying the man. Finding none, he slowly made his way around the body and continued on his drive to Canada.

He arrived at the border 15 minutes later; he had pushed the van and his driving to the limit trying to get away from the horrifying scene he left behind. The Canadian border crossing guards were friendly enough, asking where he was from and where he was headed, where did he work, what was the purpose of the visit, did he have anything with him, was he planning on leaving anything behind? Answering each question quickly and tersely, the border guards grew suspicious and he was asked to pull the van over off to the side for a quick search. Standing in the cool air as border guards pulled his vehicle apart, Thad thought about what he had experienced just down the road. He had this nagging suspicion he was missing something, a connection wasn’t being made between two events. Thinking about what the body had looked like was making him sick, and this was readily noticed by one of the border guards who walked up to him to ask him more questions. “Are you feeling alright sir?” the tall, glassed Canadian border guard asked, carrying a clipboard in his hand. “Yes, I..I just haven’t eaten today and I guess I’m just hungry. I’ll have to stop in Vancouver for some food.” “Well, you said you were heading for Trail; that’s a good 8 hours east of Vancouver so you’re probably gonna want to stop for some good eating before you head out that way.” “Yeah, I suppose that’s a good idea.” “You really don’t look very well. We thought you looked pretty shifty when you drove up, but seeing you out in the open like this, you look more ill then anything. Do you want our doctor to have a look at you? You haven’t contracted any serious diseases that you’re planning to bring into Canada are you?” the guard joked. Steve shook his head seriously. “No sir.” Ordinarily he would have been surprised by the guards friendliness and sense of humor but the past 20 minutes had shaken him deeply to his core. He just wanted to get to Trail and get this trip over with. The guards eventually released him and the torn-apart van and within another 30 minutes he was on the highway heading east out of Vancouver. Only another seven hours to Trail from here, he thought stepping his foot farther down on the gas pedal. The van engine trembled but slowly he began to pick up speed. The sooner he got there, the better he’d feel. The engine sounded louder than it had before, he noticed. A distinct rumble was coming from somewhere in the back which for a second had caused him a fit of panic thinking maybe he had caught the body from back in Bellingham underneath the body of the van; but the border guards had been very thorough in their inspection. He ran his hand over the pile of documents and junk that had been emptied onto the seat at the crossing. “Very thorough” he muttered. Had there been something out of the ordinary inside or outside or underneath the van, they would have noticed immediately and he would have probably spent the weekend in a holding cell as opposed to speeding along to his

destination. This line of thought relieved him physically but the rumbling sound itself still bothered him. He hadn’t thought of the effects of this trip on his aging van, he promised to take it into a car repair shop when he got back from Trail. Tim slept in that morning until well in the afternoon before waking up startled to find that he didn’t have to go to school that day. He stared out his bedroom window at the sun sitting high in the sky and, realizing that he had already slept half the day away, jumped out of bed and started to get ready to go home to Fruitvale for the weekend. He thought of excuses on why he was late arriving as he packed a quick packsack with his toothbrush, a change of clothes and hair gel and eventually settled on spending most of last night studying for a test. That seemed reasonable enough to his ears so his drive home was relatively stress-free. Before he got to Fruitvale, he stopped in Creston, a town sitting between Cranbrook and Fruitvale seated at the mountain range that separated the West Kootenays from the East Kootenays, to visit his aunt, who was a nurse at the local hospital. It was with her encouragement that he eventually had decided to enter the nursing program and with his recent failures, he was becoming concerned that he would end up disappointing her. He didn’t mention any of this when he stopped by her place to say hi. She invited him in and they sat for an hour discussing school, various medical terminology that he didn’t understand before a phone call from Fruitvale, from his mother asking his aunt if she had heard from him, prompted him to get his gear back together, thank her for her help, and get back on the road again. Fruitvale was only an hour away from Creston, and now that his mother was informed of where he was at, he was free to take a more leisurely approach to driving over the mountains. Creston itself sat on a flat piece of land surrounded by mountain ranges on all sides. As soon as one left Creston heading west, there was one of the most imposing mountain drives in the interior of BC, Bombi Summit. Suffering from the worst weather seemingly at all times of the year, it was often treacherous even during the spring. Heavy snowfalls at the higher altitudes had prompted avalanche warnings throughout the month and his aunt had warned him that he would have to be careful, at least until he passed over the top and headed back down into Fruitvale. As he drove along, he remained wary of the snowpacks on either side of him, but judging from the road conditions, he didn’t think there would be a problem. He arrived in Fruitvale almost exactly an hour after he had left Creston. Knocking on the door of his parents house and walking in, he was immediately greeted by the family dog, Chap, a small purebred shih Tzu, who was probably the family member most happy to see him. Walking upstairs, he found his mom and sister sitting in the kitchen discussing school, Tim’s least favorite subject. “Hi Tim,” his mom said, “welcome back. Your room is all ready for you.” “Thanks mom.” He left the kitchen and walked across the house to his old room which had been cleaned out thoroughly after he had left. The pictures of his friends he had dutifully pasted all over the walls above his bed had been removed and any trace of personality had been painted over. His TV had been moved downstairs, his dressers

cleaned out of all his clothes. It appeared like it had never been his room before and the impression he first got, that he was a temporary guest, was only reinforced by a piece his mother had placed cleverly on his pillow, as if to say “Welcome to the Hotel Monteith, we hope you enjoy your short stay.” He shook his head and tossed his bag on the far side of the room between the bed and the window. He walked over to the window and looked out across the neighborhood. Fruitvale was a small town, he could see most of it from where he was standing. It was also a quiet town. Far enough outside of Trail that you didn’t see the smelter, it didn’t have any real industry to speak of save a few lumber mills just on the outskirts of town and a very small downtown core consisting of two competing gas stations and a convenience store run by a pair of Chinese immigrants. There was no noise here, unlike Cranbrook which had freight trucks running through it at all hours of the day and night; he thought he could almost hear the crickets chirping their clichés as he laughed at the wholesome country image that he hadn’t really thought of since moving to Cranbrook. As much as it felt good to be home, this town hadn’t really felt open to him and his lifestyle. He was young and he wanted to have fun, this was not the place to do it and he and his parents both knew it. He walked back into the kitchen where his mother was already preparing dinner. “You’re late. What took you so long?” “I slept in because I was busy studying so much last night.” That sounded almost reasonable now that he said it. “We were beginning to worry. Have you been watching the news? All the craziness happening in the US. It could come up here you know. You should be more responsible.” “yes mom.” “Have you heard from your brother lately?” He hadn’t in fact. Although Ben was available almost at all hours online, he hadn’t bothered to contact him with news that he was going to be home this weekend. It hadn’t even crossed his mind to mention it and he didn’t really care that he hadn’t thought about it. He had a decent relationship with Ben, not as close as Ben and May were, but they talked now and then. It had actually been Ben that had drug him out of the closet to their parents. Amazingly enough, his relationship with Ben had improved since then; Ben had been one of his best supporters when even his parents seemed to be turning against him. “No, I haven’t. I didn’t even tell him I was going to be in town.” “Well, we’ll have to call him and Danni and have them come over for dinner this weekend.”

“Isn’t Thad supposed to be coming to visit this weekend?” Ben had mentioned that a while back and Tim was surprised he remembered. He didn’t really like Thad terribly. In his opinion he was a little dorky, much like Ben was he supposed. “Oh, right. Well, I guess we’ll have to invite them all over.” “I guess so, do you want me to call him?” “Yes please. Ask them to go buy a bottle of wine too.” He picked the phone up off the wall and walked into the living room where he would have some privacy while he called Ben. Ben picked up the phone after five rings. “Hello?” “Hi, do you like, not answer your phone or something?” “We were watching a movie dork, what do you want?” “Mom wants you guys to come over for dinner tonight.” “Well, as much as that idea makes me happy, Thad is coming to visit and we haven’t heard from him yet so we’re sitting here waiting.” ”She also wants you to buy a bottle of wine. She said Thad can come over too.” “Well, isn’t that generous of her! Wow, with an offer like that, I can’t refuse! Thanks Tim, we’ll see you later!” Tim laughed and hung up. “What a sarcastic bitch” he said to May as she walked around the corner. “Is he coming?” she asked. “Yeah, but I don’t know if he’s going to bring wine.” May sat with her mother waiting for Tim to arrive. He was due several hours ago and in impatience, her mother had called Creston looking for him, finding him visiting their aunt leisurely. Relieved, they’d returned to the argument they were having previously. May’s mother Deanna, had received a phone call yesterday from the school explaining that May’s behavior in class had been very rude and they were considering a punishment for her. Very surprised by this, Deanna had sat May down in the kitchen for a three-hour complaint session where she stated unequivocally that May had better shape up or she would be ‘out on her ass’ as it was put. May was startled to find out that there had even been a complaint about her and she was at a loss to say about what the problem was.

“The principal called and he said you were not paying attention in class, you were rolling your eyes during a class, doodling threatening pictures of one of your teachers and talking back.” Deanna said scowling furiously, her lips tightening around a pursed mouth. She had already dealt with a similar problem in Ben several years back. Tim had avoided this problem thankfully but it seemed May took after her oldest brothers school habits more then her other brother. “Well, yeah, but he was being boring, and then Andrea made me mad and I drew a picture and ..” “I don’t care, you were being disrespectful and I got a call from your teachers about it and I am not happy” “Well, whatever” May sat sulking when she heard the front door open and their dog ran frantically out to greet the person at the door. He came lumbering up the stairs and walked into the kitchen. Tim had finally arrived. May thought he looked rather ragged and tired when he walked in. There was no doubt, in her mind, that he had slept in, not from staying up and studying all night but from chatting online to his many friends. She had see him online but hadn’t bothered to talk to him, and she wasn’t about to mention his lie to her mother either. There was one common bond among all of the Monteith kids and that was their mutual dislike for their mother. They loved her, there was no doubt about this as she had done many things for them but she was usually intolerable as a person. Arrogant, hypocritical and mean-spirited, she had broken most of their spirit over the years through constant rants and they had depended on each other for support. They had developed a code of conduct that required standing up for the other whenever possible, and in the likelihood of one getting in trouble, there was a certain amount of stretching the truth or leaving out facts that was to be expected. It was a small price to pay for a peaceful household. Dom passed only three cars as he left Vancouver. Strange, he thought, to see so few cars on this major stretch of highway during the day, especially on a weekend. Currently he was following a black minivan that was doing well above the posted speed limit and he was happy to use this as a radar blocker for the majority of the trip. He eased back in his chair and enjoyed the wide open roads to throttle up his car, producing a satisfying growl that would have caused his neighbors inside the city to call the police. Passing over the mountain pass separating the Vancouver area from the interior of BC, still following the black van which he assumed would pull of in Princeton, Dom let his mind think back to the last time he was in Trail. It was December of last year and he had returned for Christmas holidays. Visiting with family for the major festivities, he had actually spent most of the time drinking with friends at the local pub. Danni hadn’t arrived yet so Ben was mostly a free man and their group of friends would sit around in the bar getting rowdy as the night went on. Cougars, older women looking for a younger man for company, regularly prowled the scene and it was all Dom could do not to laugh fitfully when they passed by. Their time was mostly spent trying to see who could drink

the most beer, who could play the best game of pool, and who could pick up the hottest chick in the bar. Dom was the most successful in the third category. A muscular blonde with long hair pulled back in a pony tail, girls flocked to him, much to the disappointment of the alpha males around him. He offered an interesting package of good looks, street smarts, physical size and an educated background which they appreciated. Ben’s mother had once said to Dom that he looked like a stripper, not an engineer, which Ben still made fun of Dom for. That New Years specifically had been one of his best in recent memory. Ben had been living just across the old bridge in East Trail so it was relatively easy for them to go drinking across in West Trail at the pubs located in the Gulch and them stumble back to his house to continue drinking more. They had started in one of the nicer sports pubs in the area situated in the nicest hotel in the area, directly below the smelter. Several rounds of beer had been drank before they all stumbled out the closing door and wound their way to one of the more dodgy pubs in the downtown core where they remained well after midnight, drinking and enjoying a complimentary steak dinner provided by the proprietor. Dom and Dillon met for the first time that night, both being friends of Ben and both being total opposites of each other. It was a strange triumvirate, they all had their own strengths and weaknesses but it seemed like none of them had anything in common, yet here they were sitting around a table like old friends drinking until Dillon started to get sick at which point they decided that it was time to go home. The group of them, about six people, all walked to Ben’s house over the old bridge. They passed house after broken down house along the end of Trail, along the riverside to get to the yellow bridge that stood uneasily, as if it was saying it was tired and ready to take a nap into the river sitting below it. The first steps on the grate-sidewalk across the bridge were laced with extreme trepidation. Looking down through the grate, one could see the water of the river rushing aggressively over the rocks below. It looked very cold and very uninviting. Ben had led the way; he had never been scared of heights and had spent many mornings crossing over this bridge, either walking or driving to work which was nearby. Dillon followed Ben, he too had spent much time crossing over this bridge, living several streets away from Ben, closer to Glenmerry then Trail. Dom had the rear. He hadn’t wanted the guys ahead of him to see just how uneager he was to be taking this path over a chasm of swirling force. He walked steadily across the bridge, hands on both of the wooden railings lining either side of the grate walkway. He refused to look down and had spent most of his time staring up at the yellow girders sitting above the triangle support structure making up the bridge. He had fixated on the rust holes starting to eat their way through the bridge and this had only slowed down his walk. By the time Ben and Dillon had reached the other side with the other party, Dom was still halfway across, taking step after step, slowly moving his way across the bridge. He imagined the grate he was standing on giving way and him falling through the gap, franticly attempting to grab on to the wood handles or a iron crossbeam that would support his weight. The grates he did grab on to would gouge his hands as he fell, and he would plummet swiftly and

silently into the night, hitting the freezing water below with a cannonball splash that would bring his friends running back up the bridge to find out where he had disappeared too. Waves of nausea washed over him as he visualized this outcome and he held fast to the railings. Three-quarters of the way across the bridge he had regained his stomach and, with the view of rocks showing from beneath the bridge, his sense of well-being returned. He fought the urge to run off the end of the bridge; instead, strolling nonchalantly, punching Ben in the arm as he walked past, taunting them for being in a rush to get home when he had plenty of alcohol hidden inside his overcoat. He opened it up, feeling like a flasher to his first victims, showing his friends the bottles that he had stashed in his jacket before he had left his parents house. A round of laughter broke the silence of the street and they continued up another block, still laughing, until they had returned to Ben’s, where a warm house and warm bellies awaited. He was still following the black minivan as he began the long drive down from Rossland. The ski-hill community he was passing seemed hushed, the season that they benefited from the most still had another half a year to wait. A few people made their way lazily from store to store on the towns one street, shopping mostly for groceries and occasionally stopping to chat with a friend At 5PM, a black minivan pulled into the driveway of Ben’s house. Ben and Danni quickly scooted to the window where they saw Thad fumbling with some items in his passenger seat before he stepped out of the van and began walking across the yard, not following the cement walkway, but moving in a beeline, straight from his door to theirs. Danni immediately noticed he look agitated, moving unsurely and hunched over even more then he usually was. They both walked over to the door and were standing at the landing before he had a chance to ring the doorbell. Ben opened the door, and Danni barged right past him, giving Thad a big hug and a thank you for coming all the way from Seattle to visit them. Thad smiled and relaxed a little, Bed assumed that he was just happy to have a vacation. “Are you going to move out of the way so I can come in or am I going to be camping on your front step?” Thad asked sarcastically. Ben and Danni looked at each other and laughed, Ben stepping up the stairs a few steps and Danni moving down the other set of stairs, giving Thad the room he needed to shut the door and take off his shoes. “Actually, we’ve thought about it, and you’re going to camp right where you are now!” Danni teased. “Well, it’s a bigger space then Ben’s old house” Ben smiled large and laughed “No doubt there. And look..stairs!”

With his shoes off, Thad made his way upstairs to the living room where he immediately was taken with just how much of an upgrade Ben had made from his old place. Each time Thad had come to visit, it seemed like Ben had been in a new house. The first time Thad had come to Trail, Ben had lived in a converted garage which wasn’t much bigger then the living room he was standing in now. He sat down in one of the new chairs that Danni had made Ben buy when she had moved there and was impressed with the lack of second hand furniture that had usually made up the bulk of a Ben Monteith home. “Wow, this almost looks like a real house, Ben. I’m impressed.” Ben walked into the kitchen, opened up the refrigerator and pulled out three local beers for them to enjoy. Walking back into the living room and taking a seat in the loveseat next to Danni, he handed them each a bottle. “You’ll be even more impressed at my parents house, which we’re set to go to in about,” Ben looked at his watch, “fifteen minutes. So drink fast, we should all be drunk when we get there, it will make the time go by so much faster.” “We get to go visit your mom and sister? Excellent” Thad grinned, relaxing finally as he drank his beer. He had always liked harassing Ben about his little sister. She was definitely cute but too young for Thad’s taste. Still, it was good to get a rise out of Ben somehow. “Well, you can have my mom if you want, I won’t stand in your way. I’ll even call you dad if you want!” They all burst out laughing and for the next fifteen minutes made ‘Your Mother’ jokes until finally, realizing that they were going to be late, Danni stood up, dragging Ben out of the seat and said “Time to go, let’s go.” Thad and Ben both groaned. Ben hadn’t really wanted to go over there for dinner and Thad was just beginning to relax and enjoy himself. “Are we going to go buy wine?” Danni asked, knowing the answer before she even asked. “No way, we’re bringing Thad, that’s good enough.” Thad shook his head and laughed. He found Ben and Danni crazy at times, but they had, in fifteen minutes, taken his mind completely off of what had happened earlier in the day. He would, of course, bring it up to them later on, but in the meantime, he would just enjoy himself, even if it meant spending sometime with Ben’s family. They walked back down to the foyer where, putting on shoes and jackets, they walked out into the crisp spring evening air. Thad’s van had traveled far enough in the past 24 hours so they decided to take Ben’s jeep. Jumping into the back, Thad couldn’t help but

comment how much roomier the back was then it was in Bens’ former Mustang and how excited he was going to be to show Ben’s sister, May. Ben reached into the backseat and attempted to punch Thad in the arm but missed. Danni shook her head and jumped into the front passenger seat. ”Can we go already?” “We’re going, we’re going, just let me hit him first.” Ben thrashed his arm about in the back again as Thad ducked and weaved around his arm. Realizing that this was a desperate struggle, he returned his arm to the front again, turned the key on the ignition, and turning to the back so he could back out of the driveway, told Thad that he would get his revenge later. “I’m looking forward to it.” Thad grinned. Ben’s jeep arrived in the Monteith’s driveway just as Deanna was reaching for the phone to call him again. She head the car door slam three times, which meant that Thad had arrived successfully and was coming over for dinner. She quickly placed out another seat for him, next to May, and went back to the kitchen where dinner was almost completed. The doorbell, a couple quick knocks on the door, Chap running to the front and Ben’s voice yelling out “Hello” announced their presence and the family all wandered into the front hall to greet them. Tim and May were the first ones around the corner and Ben was obviously surprised to see Tim there. They both welcomed Thad and as everyone walked up the stairs, they stopped Ben and told them that Deanna was not happy about them being late. Waving off their concerns, Ben explained “Thad arrived maybe 15 minutes ago, we rushed over here as soon as possible. We can only go so fast, don’t worry about it.” Dinner went smoothly, with Thad laughing at his placement next to May and the family, catching on to Ben’s feigned discomfort with the two being in such close quarters together, laughing about the two of them getting married, Thad a famous genetic scientist and May a famous architect. The amount of food served staggered everyone, as Thad relished the home made food that he hadn’t received since he’d been back home in Buffalo years ago. He had found Deanna an excellent cook, even if Ben didn’t agree. Samuel, Ben’s father asked Thad how his trip from Seattle had been and he choked a bit on his turkey. “It was okay, for the most part. Got stopped at the border for awhile, they tore apart the van, but other then that, it was okay. Had a lot of bad fog down in Bellingham but that was okay. Overall, it was okay.” Ben and Danni looked at each other with raised eyebrows. It was obvious to them that Thad was hiding something. He’d been to anxious to explain everything as okay, and,

when he had arrived he did at first seem troubled about something in particular. They would have to ask him about it later. “Well, I’m glad you had a safe trip. What with all of the crazy stuff happening down there, who knows what could happen.” Samuel resumed eating his potatoes. He was fishing to see if Thad had any more information on the problems in the US. “It just seems weird.” Thad nodded, staring deeply into his plate. “It has been weird, but I’m sure it will be okay. Just gun happy Americans. I’m practically Canadian so I have nothing to worry about.” Deanna spoke up. “Well, after we heard that Seattle was rioting too, we got worried about you.” Thad, Ben and Danni all sat straight up in their chairs at this news, but only Thad could feel the hairs on the back of his neck perking up in fear. Ben shook his head. “I didn’t hear anything about this, last I heard it was in all the major cities that they were having problems. Just regular looting like after Rodney King got beat up.” Samuel put his fork down for a second. “I know you guys don’t have TV but you should pay attention to the news anyways. They say that places like Seattle, Portland, y’know, the smaller cities are starting to have problems. And they don’t think it’s just rioters. They think it’s some kind of epidemic.” Danni broke in. “Epidemic? Like a flu? How is that possible?” “Well, they don’t think it’s like the flu at all. It’s more like people are panicking about the other cities having troubles, so they think that their cities are going to go next so they go out and cause problems,” continued Samuel. “A self-fulfilling prophecy.” Thad explained. He had lost most of the colour in his face at this news. “All because of that stupid flash and everyone acting dumb.” “Well, there might be more to it then that,” Deanna mumbled, unsure if she should speak to the point which had been brought up on the latest news broadcast from Los Angeles.” The whole table looked at her intently. “See, the riots had been so violent that they couldn’t get anyone down to see what the problem was, and it only seemed to get worse. When they finally did get around to seeing what was happening on the ground, they found out that there were some weird things going on”

“Like what?” May’s eyes were almost bulging out of her head. “Well, I don’t want to scare anyone, but the news was saying that the areas that were all having the most problems were usually situated around cemeteries, morgues, hospitals, old folks homes, stuff like that.” Tim laughed and rolled his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean? Old people are running around causing havoc? Can’t we just lock the old people up and make them into goo or something?” “Like Soylent Green?” asked Ben, only Thad got the reference and laughed. “No, they’re saying that, I don’t know, the dead are walking the earth or something stupid like that.” She stuck her arms out in the classic undead Frankenstein pose, searching for brains. Thad stopped laughing immediately and turned pale enough for the entire table to notice. “What’s wrong Thad?” Danni asked, concerned for her friend. “I ran into something like that on the way here.” He wiped the cold sweat that had suddenly formed on his forehead as he recounted with horror the story of the body he had found, now apparently crawling from the Bellingham County Cemetary before it had had its head unceremoniously crushed by a car mistaking a man for road kill. At the end of his story, he stared around the table, with tears in his eyes, registering the shock on everyones faces. “So, this is actually happening!?” screamed May as she got out from the table and ran to her room.” Deanna raced after her, scowling at Thad for telling a scary story at the dinner table despite it actually being Deanna that had started this line of conversation. Samuel, Tim, Ben, Danni and Thad sat around the table, quiet, listening to Deanna comforting May in the other room. It was sometime before Samuel spoke up. “You were serious, weren’t you Thad? What is going on?” “I don’t know. I don’t know. It must have something to do with the flash on Wednesday, but other then that, I have no idea.” “But you’re smart, you’ll figure it out, won’t you?” Tim implored. He had been shocked by Thad’s revelations and it had taken him some time before his mouth had unhinged itself enough for him to speak. “Well, I was running a specific type of test for radiation when it happened and I looked at the test and it did something weird, but I can’t say for sure that the two are related.”

“What did it do?” Ben asked, sensing that there may be information here that might help. “Well, the graph of the theta-radiation test I was doing on one of my flies spiked about the same time as the flash happened. I tried figuring out what it spiked to by comparing how high the spike would have needed to have been in order to make it appear that it had missed that piece of the test completely, but the figures I got back were just so astronomically high as to be unbelievable.” Thad explained. “We’re talking a blast of energy unlike anything ever created before.” “What is theta-radiation” asked Samuel. “Theta radiation is like background radiation of the body. Does anyone understand background radiation?” Everyone but Tim nodded their head. “Background radiation is this mysterious energy source that is all around us at all times, it’s like static on the radio. It’s always there and we’re not sure where it came from. Some people say it’s left over radiation from the beginning of the universe, some people say God put it there. Who knows. Anyways, theta-radiation acts the same way as this background radiation except theta-radiation is constrained to living tissue, like the flies I was working on. They are theta-active until I dissect them, and then that theta-active charge dissipates until there’s nothing there. I think it’s part of the miracle of life.” Samuel was nodding the entire time. “So, is it possible that this flash was just a big thetaradioactive bomb that went off?” “Well, it would explain the jump in the graph, but wouldn’t explain why there’s these rumors of dead people walking around.” Ben chimed in. “Maybe it does though. Maybe a body retains that charge like a battery. We’ve all seen the Matrix right. Science fiction sure, but they were right in one thing, every body does create energy of some kind. Well, this theta-radiation you’re talking about. What if a big dose of energy gets reabsorbed back into the cells. Wouldn’t that be just like a jumpstart? Dumping a whole bunch of energy back into a container, starts it going again. “You’re saying that big white flash was actually supposed to make the dead walk again?” Danni asked preposterously. “That doesn’t make any sense, it’s not like it’s affected us any like a weapon. I don’t feel any different.” Tim pointed out, poking his body as if he was undergoing a personal autopsy. “And I haven’t gained any super powers so it’s not like the radiation affected us.”

Thad nodded in agreement. “But maybe it didn’t do what it was supposed to. Maybe it was supposed to be stronger, maybe it was supposed to be weaker, maybe it was just an accident that happened and now we have to deal with the consequences of it. Maybe the people predicting the end of the world and Armageddon were right. The table went silent at this thought. The sobbing from May had quieted down and Deanna returned to the table still furious about what had been said earlier. “You had no right to scare her, Thad.” Samuel interjected angrily “Deanna, there’s something bigger going on here then what you think. There could be a very big problem and Thad may have figured something out that the rest of the world hasn’t yet.” “Well, what does that mean?” she asked dejectedly. She was no longer the center of attention and she was irritated how quickly Thad had come in and taken over the conversation when she had first brought up the possibility of something happening beyond their current understanding. “It means that there might be bigger things happening and Thad better start telling people this. AND…oh my god.” Samuel jumped up from his seat and ran downstairs and out the door. Ben and Tim followed right along with him. He had grabbed the keys to Ben’s jeep and they all piled in quickly as Samuel started the engine and gunned the motor. Ben, surprised by this sudden action, asked “What the hell? Where are we going in such a hurry?” “You’ll know when we get there. We’ll be there soon enough, don’t worry” Samuel, Tim and Ben had left without saying where they were going, leaving Deanna, Danni and Thad wondering exactly what was happening. Although they were certain the Monteith boys would be able to look after themselves, they were all still concerned with the apparent lack of preparation they had done. Samuel had bolted out the door with the two boys following closely behind him before anyone could ask what they were doing. Samuel had looked frightened of a possibility which none of them had been able to deduce as yet. He had suggested Thad tell people something and then left. Thad thought more about what he was going to say. “See, we’ve never actually tested theta-radiation activity in people yet. Human testing is expressly forbidden by many laws, many international treaties, et cetera, et cetera. If I could test a normal person, and then one of these re-energized persons..” “Zombies” Danni corrected.

“No, we don’t know what they are, or even if they exist. So calm down, I shouldn’t have said anything because now we don’t know what your boyfriend and his dad are off doing because of me spreading panic. I wasn’t sure, I wasn’t 100% sure and I shouldn’t have said anything.” “No Thad, I think you’re on to something. The TV said that something weird was going on, and you’re the first person to say something that actually made sense.” Deanna had calmed down considerably since Samuel exploded at her. After listening to Thad speak, she was beginning to see the wisdom in what he had said. There was good reason to be scared, she thought to herself, but there was no reason to be stupid. “So, where did they go?” Danni asked impatiently. If there were zombies out there, they hadn’t taken any weapons of any kind to help themselves with. What were they planning to do? “I think they probably had to see for themselves if what I said was happening was really happening. Where would you go if you wanted to know for sure if the dead had risen and walking the earth in the final days?” Danni shrugged, she hated guessing games, and considering the seriousness of the situation, she didn’t understand why she was being forced to play them. “The cemetery” Dillon and Liz had uneventful trip from Trail to Kelowna. There was relatively little traffic on the way and the handful of cars that he did past seemed to be rushing to get where they were going. He thought he recognized Dom’s car; it was hard to mistake a beast like that roaring across the desert just east of Osoyoos. He looked to be in a hurry, probably anxious to get home. Dillon thought of waving but he wasn’t that close of friends with Dom, and he probably wouldn’t have been recognized. Liz had been fairly quiet since they had left Trail and Dillon was beginning to think she was having second thoughts. “Are you ok?” he had asked numerous times and only received a smile and a nod as a response. She was probably nervous about visiting her family, he had decided, and that made two of them. He wasn’t accustomed to meeting girlfriends parents, mostly because she was the first girlfriend he’d had that he would have the opportunity to meet her parents with. He hadn’t been in any rush to get to Kelowna and the thought of meeting them finally had prompted to take a more leisurely drive then usual. When they finally entered Kelowna, it took half an hour to find Liz’s parents house. Apparently they had moved since Liz had life and it had taken some time find their new address. As they drove into the more high-class area of Kelowna, Dillon became confused about exactly what he had got himself into. Liz had always said that her family was always struggling between paycheques, but for some reason he was driving around

multi-million dollar homes search for her parents. Eventually, they came upon the address they had gleamed from the phone book. It was one of the modest houses on the block, Dillon’s quick estimate put it at around a million and a half dollars. He looked at her with his jaw agape. “What the hell is this?” “This is their new house, I guess. The old one was nicer.” He shook the cobwebs that were starting to form in his brain away and got out of his truck. Liz hopped out the other side and they met around the front of the truck where he could get a better view of, what he would consider, a mansion. “I thought your parents struggled?” “They did, houses like this are expensive. The car payments are a lot too” He fumbled for words as he caught sight of the two BMW M5’s sitting inside their garage. “Apparently, our definitions of struggling don’t seem to match. You didn’t tell me they were rich.” “Look, is this going to be a problem? I left because I didn’t like the way I was being treated and that didn’t depend on how much money they made. So, if you want to leave, fine, but I still have to do this.” “I don’t want to leave, but I was just surprised by all of this. You never talked about your family much so seeing what I do now, I’m not sure why you didn’t.” She shrugged and walked up the door, brushing off his questions. She rang the doorbell and chimes rung throughout the house. Dillon suddenly felt very undressed but he joined her on the doorstep nevertheless. Her father answered. He was a short, well-groomed man who looked like he was just ready to go golfing. He looked Chris up and down, gauging his approval of this man standing on his front step in jeans and a t-shirt. His response to seeing Liz was just as terse. “What are you doing here?” Liz’s face blushed a bright red in embarrassment. While she had expected to not receive an open-armed welcome, she wasn’t quite prepared for the combativeness that she was experiencing. “I came make peace”

“You did, did you? You think 4 years after you leave, you can just arrive and say ‘Hi, I’m here, take me back’? I don’t think so. You left on your own accord and as far as I’m concerned I have no daughter. Now if you’ll take your boyfriend,” he stared at Dillon as a fly to be swatted, “and get off our property, that would be great. Thanks” And the door was slammed in their faces before they had a chance to respond. “That could have gone better,” Dillon said as he walked back to the truck. “at least they didn’t release the hounds to chase us off the property. Why did you want to come up here again?” “Because I had to see if I’d made a mistake. This may have been my last chance to see them, I had to make sure things couldn’t have been different.” “Well, now we knows. Now what? It’s getting late and I’m not really in the mood to drive all the way back to Trail right now.” “I agree, we’ll get a cheap hotel and spend the night in Kelowna, maybe do some shopping if that’s ok?” Chris shrugged his shoulders involuntarily. This was quickly turning into an expensive trip and he hadn’t planned on spending the night in a hotel. “I guess. It’ll have to be pretty cheap though.” “Oh c’mon, it’ll be fun.” “If you say so.” Dom arrived in Montrose after following the black minivan all the way into Fruitvale. It wasn’t often that that had happened and he wondered aloud if he had known the person speeding ahead of him. He was at his mom’s boyfriends, Larry’s, place within 5 minutes of getting to Trail. They both had obviously heard him pull up as he watched them both stand up and look out the window as he arrived. He got out of the car and walked to the backdoor, stepping over the gate that was in place to keep their new puppy from running away. He knocked on the door and let himself in. His mother, who he hadn’t seen since last Christmas rushed over to greet him, and her boyfriend, soon to be husband, came over and shook his hand. “Thanks for coming out, that didn’t take you very long at all. We heard you coming when you were still back in Creston.” They all laughed.

“Is it possible your car has gotten louder since you were last here?” his mom asked, her eyebrows raised at her sons hellraising ways. “Absolutely, dropped in a 327, guzzles gas like hell but it’s like the end of the world to the people on the outside.” Both Dom’s mom and her boyfriend stopped suddenly at his words. “Dom, you don’t know how right you are, but maybe we should sit down and visit first.” Curious about what they had meant by that, he sat down and soon forgot amidst the conversations of girls, work and life that him and his mother had to catch up on. He explained how yesterday he had gone to several different interviews and it had seemed none were interested in the slightest. Larry nodded knowingly; the news on the television had become bleaker and bleaker since Dom had left Vancouver and right now they were very thankful he had made the decision to visit when he had. Dom sensed they weren’t telling him everything they knew, and eventually, after several beer and a couple bottles of wine, he finally asked. “So, what is going on exactly? Is there some big conspiracy to keep me in the dark or what?” “Well, to be honest, we weren’t exactly sure how to tell you. Everything is very confusing right now and even the television is giving conflicting reports about what is happening. What we do know is that things seem to be getting a lot worse down in the US. Los Angeles and New York are under strict martial law, they called out the national guard and everything. Before you left this morning, a lot of the other major US cities were rioting and going crazy, and recently we got news that the relatively minor cities, y’know, a couple hundred thousand people, were getting nervous and antsy. It seems like Seattle was going to be the next tinderbox to go up in smoke.” The license plate on the black van he had been following had been a Washington license plate, he remembered. The detail at the time had not seemed that important but now he was beginning to think that the driver may actually be someone he knew, possibly someone from Seattle actually. “So, what’s causing all of these problems?” “Well, see, that’s where we’re getting conflicting information. It seems like a lot of mass hysteria. People going around in groups, rioting, stupid shit like that. Take advantage of the craziness and go crazy yourself too. We thought that made sense, typical American stuff. Anyways, one of the latest reports said it was definitely people causing problems, but they weren’t regular people.” “What, were they black people?” Dom joked.

“No, they were dead people.” Larry replied. Dom looked at them both, waiting for the punch line. They had been hesitant to tell him this, figuring he wouldn’t believe it any more then they had but some of the pictures and video that had been shown on the TV looked quite convincing. Several hosts had opined that this was an elaborate hoax being portrayed right in the middle of fanatical religious furor but others, less respected but more open-minded began to say on air that the impossible really was happening, the dead had come back to life. “Ok, now I know you’re pulling my leg. The dead come back to life? Like some kind of Night of the Living Dead movie?” His reaction had been like many other people that had been interviewed - skepticism, sarcasm, a reference to a pop culture icon – but underneath it all a current a disbelief and fear. “Well, again, we don’t know for sure, but this is what some people are saying and we wanted to make you aware of that so when it finally did come out, you weren’t all shocked like you are now.” “Well, until they confirm anything, or I see some kind of picture of proof that this is happening, as far as I’m concerned, this is all a big hoax that’s being pulled on a bunch of gullible people and I don’t have to listen to it.” His mom and Larry both nodded; he’d come around soon enough. Tim, Samuel and Ben arrived in front of the Fruitvale Cemetary less then two minutes after they had left the house. Sam had driven them right up to the door, with the headlights bursting through the evening darkness and spreading lines of shadow across the graveyard. From the jeep, they stared out into the darkness, searching for some sign of life, for some sign of movement that would signify that indeed, Heaven and Hell were giving up its dead. Seeing nothing immediately, Ben and Sam opened their doors and stepped out into the cool air for a better look while Tim elected for the most comfortable (and safer) option of staying in the car and watching in case anything happened. If he was to become concerned, he would honk the horn twice quickly and they’d come back and leave immediately. So far, while he had to fight every urge he had, he hadn’t honked the horn. “I don’t see anything, dad.” Ben said, his hands on the bars of the entranceway, peering into the semi-darkness in front of them. “No movement, no dirt paths, no fresh graves.” Sam nodded, he hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary either. “Do we have any weapons in the car?” ”What, why?”

“I think we should go take a closer look.” Ben laughed. “That’s where I get it from, you see. And you wonder how I always get into trouble, it’s from being too damn curious.” Sam shrugged his shoulders as he walked back to the jeep. “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.” “Personally I have no intention of meeting any devil, but that’s just my personal feeling in the matter. I don’t have any weapons in the jeep except for one of my wooden swords and a short tire iron.” Ben had been taking lessons in Iaido for four years now and was quite adept. Iaido was the art of the samurai, mastering a katana blade for confrontation, being quick and efficient with strikes, but powerful enough to down opponents in one swift slice. His teachers had all thought he was quite skillful and maintained that he continue pursuing excellence in the art but life had gotten in the way. With Danni moving over he hadn’t wanted to spend that much time away from home training and work had been demanding hours over the usual amount, along with training and more work outside of town. He’d fallen out of shape over the months of not practicing and was finding it harder and harder to keep the interest up. He had been given his own sword, unsharpened, many years ago to practice with but he also had wooden swords, called bokuto, to practice against other practitioners with. It was one of these bokuto he had in the jeep. He popped open the back of the jeep and reached in for the bokuto. Digging deeper, he grasped the tire iron and pulled it free of its housing. Tim was curious about what they were doing and when Sam explained, Tim urged vociferously that they change their mind. “Look, I realize you guys are curious, and want to see what’s happening but think logically about what’s happening here. Have you not seen any scary movies lately? I like to consider myself an expert. This is where the handsome lead says to two dumbasses ‘don’t do that or you’ll die’ and then they die. See what I’m saying, you’re going to go and die, and I’m going to sit here screaming like a little girl watching you. Don’t be a dumbass, don’t die” “Tim, we’re not going anywhere.” Ben explained nervously “Like we did before, if you see anything or get scared, honk twice, we’re out of here. If anything happens, you’re a nurse, we’re safe right? “ Tim shook his head. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” “Stop talking.” Sam interjected between the two of them, standing with a tire iron firmly in his grasp. “Let’s go.”

Sam and Ben both walked slowly towards the opening of the graveyard. The iron bars were still intact, and it didn’t look as if the door had been opened yet. Looking through into the yard, they hadn’t seen anything to warrant concern but Ben stood ready as Sam opened the door slowly. The gate creaked open and the lines that had been previously drawn across the lawn grew, and then disappeared, leaving a square block of illuminated field in the center of the yard. Sam walked in and Ben followed him closely behind. “You scared?” he asked his father. “Yep, you?” “Oh yeah, shitting myself. Good thing I’ve got this piece of wood here to protect me.” He slapped the end into his palm. “I don’t know how much damage I’m going to be able to do with this though. Don’t they usually have to use guns to shoot the zombies in the head in the movies?” “Yes, well, it’s a good thing we’re not in the movies.” They slowly made their way into the center of the yard, always staying inside the box of light as if it was a circle of protection, keeping the dangerous elements at bay. Ben looked back at the jeep, where Tim sat, his eyes agape at the apparent stupidity that his brother and father were exuding at the moment. They passed the center of the field. Even graves recently dug seemed to be undisturbed and Ben’s grip on his sword began to relax. “I don’t think there’s anything here dad. Nothing looks different, nobody walking around. Maybe Thad was wrong. Maybe TV is wrong too.” “It’s possible, let’s just make a quick pass around the edges.” They had reached the end of the cemetery, just outside the box of light and they split off, Ben moving off to the left, and Sam moving to the right. Tim honked the jeeps horn once and Sam waved him off after almost jumping out of his skin. While they were in the dark, they didn’t feel as secure as they had. Sweat broke out on Sam’s forehead as he moved into the darkness. He was sure that this wasn’t the greatest of ideas, but he attempted to appear confident in order to make Ben and Tim feel better. He didn’t think it was working but he could hope. He lost sight of Ben as he moved around the first corner, heading towards the front of the cemetery. Ben seemed to be clutching his wood sword rather tightly, but Ben was more than able to wield it if necessary.

Ben, on the other hand, was equally suspicious of his own abilities and more confident of his fathers. Since they had arrived, he had taken control, given orders, given direction and been the boss that he had been for many years. Now, as Ben made his way along the wire fence, bokuto in hand, he squinted into the darkness for any sign of his father but did not see one. One of the graves he was coming up on was fresh. A dirt mound set to the side indicated that it had been freshly dug, probably this morning. Curiousity, getting the better of him, pushed him to take a closer look. He extended his sword out, acting almost like dowsing rod, keeping back the evil that he expected to rise out from its early grave. His feet slid over the grass, slightly dampened in the cool air. The mouth of the grave yawned in front of him, an ugly blemish on the otherwise smooth green skin of the yard. He inched closer again, angling his sword down to point directly in the gravemouth. Closer still, he could almost see the bottom of the grave. The hand that clamped on his shoulder made him scream. Thad, Deanna and May sat around waiting for the men to return. They had been gone fifteen minutes and there was still no news from them. Neither Tim nor Sam had taken their cell phones with them so the three of them sat expectedly, waiting for some news. They had decided to take their minds off of the happenings by turning on the TV but what they would see would only confirm some of their suspicions from before. The CBC had some startling news that none of them had foreseen. “Breaking News from the US consulate in Ottawa. The border separating Canada and the US, the longest unguarded border in the world, is being closed. Officials inside the White House maintain that a crisis is forcing the government into taking the unprecedented step, in the face of a possible contagion or public health problem, of closing the worlds largest unguarded border and posting armed guards to prevent movement across it. Canadian diplomats have been meeting with their American counterparts to discuss how long this action is going to continue and asking when the borers will be opened again. Recent violent activity in the larger US cities such as Los Angeles and New York have led to martial law being declared and National Guard patrols being delivered to the major cities in order to quell violent uprising that seem to be linked to a hysterical belief that Wednesday’s Flash event was the first sign of the End of the World. Reports of strange happenings, hallucinations of the dead walking among the living have only fueled speculation that… The TV cut out unexpectedly. The power was still on but it seemed that the feed for the TV signal had been lost. Deanna quickly clicked through all of the channels, finding static on each and every one. “Well, Thad, looks like you’ll be spending some time up here. Hope you feel comfortable.”

Thad nodded. “Well, I always wanted a vacation, looks like I’m going to get one, whether I like it or not.” Dillon spoke to the front-desk clerk of the Day Hotel in the center of Kelowna. There were plenty of rooms available at a fairly decent price so Dillon purchased one closest to the pool and spa at the front of the hotel. If he was going to pay for a hotel, he’d at least enjoy it. He met Liz back at the truck and they packed their bags up to the second floor where, once Dillon fumbled the key into the slot, the door opened up to a dingy, smokeencrusted room that resembled a room one would find a gangster in a bad movie, stuffed between the mattresses. Liz shook her head. “Well, this is…nice.” “I could have sworn this was a nicer hotel but eh, we’re stuck with what we’ve got. At least we have a pool.” Dillon attempted to but his best face on but he too felt disappointed with the way things had been going since they arrived in Kelowna. Brushed off by her father, stuck in this seedy motel for the night that he could barely afford and now Liz was irritated by their situation. He turned on the TV only to find static on all channels. “Perfect” he grumbled as dropped down on the end of the bed. Liz sat down on the other twin bed. “Now what do you want to do?” Chris shrugged and laid back, staring at the ceiling. He figured that getting to sleep as soon as possible would mean that he’d be able to leave that much earlier tomorrow morning. They both sat in their respective beds for fifteen minutes before Liz spoke up. “What are we doing? Can we go out or something?” Chris squinted his eyelids closed together. He hadn’t really felt like going anywhere but he also didn’t feel like arguing with Liz at this point. He sat up in the bed, and stared over at her, where she sat, hands clasped over her lap not-so-patiently awaiting an answer from him. “Well, what do you want to do? Go to the mall? We could go try and visit your parents again if you want.” He was getting mad and this wasn’t a common occurrence in his life. He had been nothing with patient on this trip, right from the planning right to the drive up, right to the rude father who he had wanted to punch in the face halfway through the conversation, and now, only after suffering through all of these hardships was he beginning to vent. “Don’t be such an ass. I just don’t want to sit here watching TV, wasting our time.”

“In case you haven’t noticed Liz, this whole trip was a waste of time.” She blinked several times quickly. He’d never spoken to her like this and she was in shock. Most of the time she had no problems getting anything she needed out of him; for him to show a backbone now was shocking and disturbing. She needed his support now more then ever. She decided to go for a walk. There was a nice park that she could walk through just next to the hotel and by the time she got back, it was possible that he would be more pliable to her suggestions. “I’m going for a walk.” “Ok, have fun, I’ll be here.” She muttered as she went out the door something that Dillon couldn’t hear. He was certain it wasn’t anything nice. Ben screamed as the hand on his shoulder pulled him back away from the gravesite. Sam stood there, chuckling, wondering why his son was wound so tight standing in a graveyard, over an open grave, when it was possible that dead people were coming back to life. Ben shrieked again. “My GOD dad, are you trying to put ME in there” he yelled, pointing at the grave that he now saw as completely empty. “Well, that’s a bit of an anti-climax.” The jeeps horn began to honk erratically. They assumed that Tim had heard Ben’s girly shriek and trotted back to the vehicle were Tim appeared as white as a ghost. “I thought something HAPPENED! Why are you guys trying to scare me so badly!?!” “Tim, you think you’re scared, you should have seen what dad did to me.” Sam was still chuckling as they pulled away from the cemetery. “So, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.” “Neither did I before you almost pushed me into one of the graves. So, what do you think?” Tim snapped his fingers. “Cremation.”

Sam and Ben both rolled their eyes. The plots in the Fruitvale cemetery were too small to support full-sized caskets so the residents were all cremated before being entombed. It would have been hard to rise as a zombie made out of carbon ash. “Well, I feel old and useless.” Sam said, still laughing about Ben’s shriek. “So now what, do we go check another gravesite?” Ben shook his head emphatically. “No way. Unless you’re planning on dying any time soon, we are not going to another one in a very long time.” “Fair enough, let’s go home.” The jeep arrived back at the Monteith household and the people left-behind could hear jovial laughter erupting from the jeep as the inhabitants exited. Thad, wondering what could be so funny, stood at the window looking down onto the front yard. Ben and Tim looked a little shocked but ok, and Sam seemed to be enjoying himself thoroughly. The Monteith trio walked into the house as Deanna and May rushed to the door to meet them. Deanna was livid with Sam, risking their lives for a stupid hunch, but still, she was thankful they were okay. Thad spoke up first, after the hugging and slapping were done. “So, what did you find?” “Well, absolutely nothing. Everyone gets cremated around here.. I don’t think mounds of dirt are going to be a big threat at this point.” Everyone chuckled at the silliness of this thought. “So, we’re okay?” Deanna asked, feeling a bit better then she had when her male family members had left suddenly. “Well, we don’t know anything mom. We know less now then we did before. We know that there won’t be any zombies in Fruitvale for sure, unless someone’s got a dead body buried in their basement. I don’t know. Any news since we left?” Thad piped in. “Yes, I can’t go home. The border is closed, locked and they don’t know when it’s going to open again. So, you’re stuck with me for awhile.” Ben wasn’t sure if Thad was happy about this news or not. A scream broke through Dillon’s dream and startled him enough to jump straight out of the cheap hotel-bed he was resting on. Shaking away the remnants of a deep sleep, he

walked over to the door and opened it, half-expecting to see dead bodies strewn around the area, much like his dream had been. His sleep had been fitful since Liz had left. She had left angry, and he had remained the same; his anger had created a dreamscape containing fires burning with the bodies of his family, his house ablaze as his neighbors dropped in concentric circles around it. A scorched earth path led from where he was standing to the door that opened with the scream that had woke him. He looked to the left and right, along the cement walkway of the second floor of the Day Hotel and found no other travelers sharing his curiousity with the scream that had awoke him. He walked back into his room and grabbed his keycard for the hotel room. Liz had still not returned and he figured that with an unidentified scream, it was his job to make sure it wasn’t her that was in trouble. He stepped out of the room, locking the door behind him and made his way down to the ground level of the complex. There was a park next to the hotel and he had figured she would have gone walking there. He walked over to the truck and grabbed a jacket he had kept in the back storage compartment; it was beginning to get cold out and he figured that she’d need a jacket as she had left without one. The bat he had taken from home also sat in the compartment as well. Feeling rather silly, he pulled it out at as well. A scream didn’t usually indicate that good things were happening, and despite the fact the park was a fairly well lit area in the middle of a fair-sized city with relatively low amounts of crime, he had to feel secure. The bat gave him that. There was a path that led from the hotel lobby which they had arrived at not anymore then two hours ago to a walking path that was quite well-worn. He assumed that she had taken this path so he followed it, bouncing the bat on his leg as he walked. Silence pervaded across the park, with only the slight rustle of trees, placed to block out the neon glow of neighboring buildings, to interrupt. The rock path he walked upon rolled slowly across the park; from his current vantage point, he could see where the park itself ended, a grove of weeping willows standing sadly. The scream he had heard did not lend itself to determination from where it came so he followed the path blindly, passing a park bench where names of lovers were carved in for all eternity. The path dipped slightly to pass by a dark pond. The wind whispered across the top and sent small waves towards him. He walked slowly over to the pond and knelt down by its side. Dipping his hand in its cool water, he was amazed again at how utterly silent the park had been since he entered. He hadn’t heard a bird or chipmunk make a sound. He twiddled his fingers and stood up again, staring off into the dark distance. Just below the weeping willow trees, there seemed to be a mound of movement, the first nonvegetational movement he’d seen in the park. The muffled sound of a struggle quickened his heartbeat as he made a few short steps towards the struggle. He swung his bat up and clasped it on both hands. He yelled out a quick “Hey”, trying to get the attention of whatever or whoever was happening. The last thing he had wanted to go was interrupt two people being frisky in a dark park so he announced his intrusion as loudly as possible. When yelling didn’t work, he picked up a rock and threw it at what looked to be two bodies fighting on the ground.

He took another step forward. He had another thought that he was interrupting a moment of passion for two people when he saw that it was actually two people on the ground. They both looked rather haggard, the man on top with dirt smothered hair and the woman on bottom, she looked familiar. He took another step forward, recognizing the cloth of the woman underneath as being the same as Liz’s shirt. He broke into a run screaming “Get away from her!” The man never moved. Dillon reached the pair of them and swung the bat like a golfclub, attempting to knock the man off of what he saw as an unconscious Liz, her face bruised and bloodied from her attacker. The man didn’t seem to take note of the bat hitting him across the ribs and began scratching at her again. Dillon, feeling anger swelling up inside him, steadied himself and swung the bat again. This time he heard the breaking of ribs as the man dislodged violently from his victim. He looked down at what had been Liz. She looked as if she had been mauled by bear, her face was scratched,deep gouges running from her eye sockets, her eyes removed by the madman who lay groaning a few feet away from her. He broke down and fell to his knees, sobbing as a child would. It seemed after he had removed the man, she had stopped her struggling and fell silent. He rested his head on her chest and stared up into her vacant, lifeless face. Her body was still warm. He lifted his face, covered in tears, to look over at her murderer, who amazingly was getting back on his feet. Dillon was amazed that the man was able to stand, considering the blow received. He could almost hear the bones shifting around as the man unsettling step towards Liz, apparently eager to inflict the same sort of punishment on Dillon as he had on Liz. He was moving slowly enough to avoid however, and Dillon rolled out of his way just before he had been reached. The man, who Dillon assumed was very drunk, reacted so slowly that Dillon had more then enough time to come up behind him, eager to strike a finish below across the back of the mans neck, a killing blow that went avenge Liz’s senseless murder. The smell of the man overwhelmed Dillon. Not only was the man very drunk, he was also very unclean and this odour temporarily shocked Dillon out of his murderous rage. Instead, he grasped the man on the shoulder and threw him back like a rag doll, away from Liz’s prone body. The man’s body felt feathery, crumpling under Dillons grip as he fell off to the side. Dillon turned to face the man as he rose up, once again, and Dillon implored him to stay down. “Listen asshole, I will kill you if you get up again and come at me. STAY DOWN. I don’t want to have to hurt you some more.”

The man must not have understood because once he regained his sloppy standing, wavering from side to side, he again started moving in Dillon’s direction. Dillon stared at the man intently. He was pale, his eyes dark and seemingly lifeless. His face and hair were matted with clumps of soil and there were runners of dirt streaming down his face. He lurched towards Dillon again and Dillon took a step back, standing directly over top of his girlfriends body. “One more step man, and I swear to fucking GOD I’m going to take off your head.” The man took another step and Dillon swung the bat. It smashed against the man’s shoulder and he kept walking towards Dillon, his arm dangling uselessly by his side. “What the fuck?” Dillon muttered aloud as he was faced to take another step back, with Liz’s body now separating the two men. The vagrants arm fell out of it’s socket and hit the ground with a soft crackle. “Whoa, what the fuckity fuck!?” He grabbed hold of Liz’s arm and began pulling her along the track. The one-armed man swayed after them, reaching out to grab them despite their being several feet away. Thoughts of watching old zombie movies ran through Dillon’s mind as he dragged Liz along, this man, reaching out at them, walking ever so unsettlingly, impervious to harm and pain. He was just about back at the pond again where only fifteen minutes earlier life had seemed so much simpler. The man was slowly gaining on them as Dillon was beginning to tire from his ordeal and the adrenaline rush he had benefited from in breaking the mans arm was beginning to be pushed aside by panic and fear. Panting wearily, he pulled Liz up into his arms and began dragging her in a slow crab-walk along the path. He was able to put several more feet between the two of them before he felt a twitch in Liz’s body. Shocked, he had almost dropped her completely, instead he had fallen with her, crumpling into a big heap on the path. He had assumed that she was unconscious after the man-thing had attacked her. Her waking up would be a definite help, not having to carry her along would mean they could get away easier. He rolled her on to her back and wiped away some of the blood on her face. She had been beaten pretty severely but he was happy to see her coming around finally. He gave her a shake to bring her around, bringing about a slight moan from her blood covered lips. He held his head to her face but couldn’t hear breathing. Wondering if he had only heard something resembling a moan, he gave her another shake, which prompted her to enunciate a more protracted moan, seemingly identical to the man which lumbered ever closer to the couple. Leaving her to recover, Dillon once again stood his ground and against the advancing beast, standing between the man and his very injured girlfriend. He once again threatened the baseball bat in the direction of the assailant, feeling another surge of protective adrenalin wash over him. The fight or flight reflex had come on full tilt, and Dillon

wasn’t running anywhere. He dug his heels into the ground and flexed his hands nervously around the hilt of the bat. “Come and get it.” He was so intent on the man in front of him, that he missed his girlfriend getting up from the ground behind him. She slowly made her way up from the ground, steadying herself with her hand as she wavered up to something that resembled a drunken fighting position, rocking from back to forth like a newborn calf freshly divested from its mother. She lunged forward. Her and Dillon fell to the ground in a heap and immediately she began thrashing at his face, her nails scratching at any flesh she could get close to, her teeth mawing at the space separated by the cool night air. Dillon’s hot breath, like a runaway train, pushing up into her face; her cold blood, dripping down into his eyes, his mouth, drowning him. He attempted to scream but he was gasping for words that wouldn’t come to him, her weight keeping him from catching the breath he needed to scream for help or to beg her to stop. She was on top of him, smelling of the same deathly odour that the man had when they had first met. Looking up from his position on the ground, beneath Liz who was scratching and biting at his face, he could see the man slowly moving towards the two of them. He was having a hard enough time dealing with a small girl, he would never survive the two of them at the same time. “Liz, what are you doing!? Stop, you’re going to get us both killed. Please stop, you don’t understand, that man there.” He tried to point but both of his hands were busy holding the bat up against Liz’s chest, pushing her back away from him. The man’s feet stopped just above Dillons head and his remaining arm reached down to Dillon’s face. Dillon thrust his arms out with his last remaining strength, tossing Liz aside like a paperweight, and twisted himself around, his feet pointing at the originator of all these problems. He pushed away with his feet, trying desperately to get away from the two problems he now faced. Standing up, tired, sore, looking much like the two people he had just accosted, he stumbled back towards the hotel, blood oozing out of the back of his head from a rock that he had hit when Liz had tackled him down. He ran, a run of old men and drunks, crashing through bushes towards a black truck, his black truck that sat gleaming in the moonlight, his salvation in a time of madness. Fumbling through his pockets for the keys, he hit the button for the remote control unlock and the truck lights flashed, indicating it was ready to give him access. He flung open the door and leapt across the cab, slamming the door behind him as he left. He hit the remote on his keychain again, locking the doors. He hit it again just to make sure, and then hit it a third time to make sure there wasn’t a problem.

He sat up, watching Liz and the man walking towards the truck, lumbering like college kids after a party. They began banging on the windows, with no real strength but a tenacity unmatched by any human being. He got his first good look at his two assailants. The man had no eyes; where his eyes were supposed to be, two dark pits, containing two small pieces of grey flesh remained. His one good arm, a gnarled hook of a hand at the end of it pawing at the window. His clothes were ancient, dirt trodden and worm-ridden, Dillon could see maggots crawling along the neckline. Liz’s face had been removed of all emotion or intelligence. She growled atavistically at Dillon, staring but not seeing him through the side-window of the cab. She pawed again at the cab, her hands leaving bloody trails across it. She pressed her face up against the cab, attempting to bite her way through the glass. He could see her teeth, red with blood, possibly his, gnawing, chewing, gnashing together as her prey sat comfortably behind a clear, impassable shield. Dillon let out a high-pitched whine, seeing his beautiful girlfriend reduced to a slavering mess. He brought his hand to the back of his head, where he could feel his hair lumped together from the blood pouring out of the back. There were scratch marks on his face, he could feel them through the blood on his hands as he ran his fingers down his face. He looked in the rear-view mirror and he resembled very closely the things that he had been running from. “I must be seeing things, this is too much. I must have hurt my brain. This isn’t happening. This isn’t real. I am not seeing this. You are not real. Neither of you are real. I am in my bed, upstairs. Sleeping soundly. Liz is there with me. You are not Liz. Please do not be Liz.” The tears streamed down his face. The truck cab began to spin. Dillon reached out instinctively onto the steering wheel, feeling the leather under his hand as all reality seemed to slip out from underneath him. Just before he lost consciousness, he once again looked at Liz, not seeing the monster she had become but the angel she had left him as, standing there, beckoning for him to follow her to a place he couldn’t go but a place he would eventually end up in. His cell phone, sitting in its holster next to the steering wheel rang eight times before the caller gave up. Saturday Both Monteith households were silent well into the afternoon of the weekend. The older Monteiths had spent the night huddled around May and Tim, comforting the both of them. The younger Monteiths had spent their night huddled around the various computers around the house, discussing with other people around the world the effects of the US/Canada border being closed, the apparent introduction of what was commonly being referred to as zombies, to the world. It seemed that overseas they hadn’t

experienced the flash on Wednesday that seemed to start the current predicament in the western hemisphere. It also seemed that they weren’t experiencing the weird after effects of the blast, namely the riots and violence that seemed to verge on the fanatical belief that the world was coming to an end. Most of the Europeans Thad, Danni and Ben talked to made light of the ‘crazy Americans’ that they were seeing on TV, and according to what news reports the three were getting online, that didn’t seem to be far from the truth. New York and most of California had been plunged into darkness following a night of intense rioting, power lines had been brought down all across the board and the Canadian government had been forced to reroute power away from the US in order to deal with similar problems. Vancouver and Toronto had taken a downward spiral similar to what their sister cities across the border had been experiencing the day before. Violent outbursts, rioting throughout the streets, had taken place in the relatively more calm areas such as Burnaby. Concern for the smaller cities had reached critical peak in the south, with many smaller populations arming themselves heavily for the seemingly unstoppable bloodshed that would soon infest their cities. Trail had itself been notifying local authorities and citizens to be on the lookout for odd happenings and there was to be a meeting Wednesday night in order to gain a better understanding of what was happening. Ben had attempted to call Dillon, who had left for Kelowna that morning, hoping he was ok but was not able to get through to him. Thad shook his head. “I honestly can’t believe any of this is happening. Are we seriously contemplating the idea that the flash caused the dead to all come back to life?” The three of them sat at the dinner table, eating a late breakfast hastily prepared by Danni. “Well, I think we have to find out for sure, and you’re the scientist here, so you’re going to help us.” Ben implored. “And since our last attempt to see things with our own eyes failed, we’ll have to go to where we might be able to see it for sure.” Danni looked at Ben quizzically. “What exactly are you suggesting we do?” “Well, according to what we’ve seen, there’s been a pattern. The larger cities went first, probably because they had more dead people in their town, so it was easier to tell right away that something was wrong. All the dead people get up all at the same time, and their numbers overwhelm everything in their way. The smaller towns may be immune or at least better protected because either they have limited room for full corpses or they cremate them all. So, I think we should go zombie-hunting to verify this for ourselves.” “Wouldn’t it be easier just to wait for the TV to come back and show us video of the zombies or to wait for someone to post pictures online?” “No ones going to believe it until they see it with their own eyes.”

Thad broke in. “So, what’s the plan then? We go to Vancouver to seek out zombies?” Ben shook his head. “No way, avoid the larger centers. It’s the massive throngs of zombies all at once that cause problems, we’ll go site-seeing in a smaller center like Kelowna.” Kelowna was 300 kilometers north of Trail and at a population of around 150,000 people, it was the largest city in the interior of BC. Situated on a crystal-clear lake, Kelowna had been a big draw for urbanites who wanted to leave the city for something more calm, and country-folk who wanted something similar to the big city,both of them looking for moderation instead of the extreme. It was a four hour drive to get to Kelowna and it was a place Thad had never been to so he was immediately interested. “So, you’re saying we should drive up there and check it out? See what all the panic is about?” “Exactly Thad, and besides, Dillon is already up there. We can meet up with him if we have to.” “But you haven’t been able to get a hold of him.” Danni added, looking a little concerned about Dillon’s whereabouts. “True enough, but we’re not going to find him, if we sit around here.” “No, but is it going to be safe if we go?” Both Danni and Ben looked at Thad for some kind of encouraging word or an idea on how to avoid trouble. Thad laughed “I’m just a scientist. I give you ideas on what I think is going on, but it’s not up to me to figure out how to get you INTO problems.” Ben nodded. “That’s ok, I think I know the person to call to get us into problems.” The Vermeulen household had slept in as well, not as late as the Monteith households however, as the Vermeulen’s had been to bed fairly early, not having internet access and the TV cable being out meant they had spent most of the night sitting at the dinner table playing cards. Dom had gone to the basement early to do a quick work and after a halfhour of lying on the benchpress, he had headed to bed. The phone ringing upstairs, with no one seeming to be in any rush to answer it, prompted Dom to come barreling up the stairs, muttering about the laziness of the house. He picked up the phone on the fourth ring.

“Hello is Dom there please?” “Yeah, that’s me.” “Hey Dom, it’s Ben. How’s it going?” Dom was a little surprised to hear from Ben. They hadn’t talked in a long time, in person or on the phone, or on the internet for that matter. To be hearing from him when he hadn’t even told Ben he was coming into Trail was surprising. “Good, uh, how did you know I would be here this weekend?” “Lucky guess I suppose. Or maybe I just was hoping you would be there. Uh, you’ve heard about all the weirdness I assume?” “Yeah, I think it’s a crock, you?” “Well, we want to find out so we were thinking of heading up to Kelowna on a kind of expedition but we need someone with your uh, unique talents, so to speak to help out if we get up there and get ourselves into trouble.” “So, what exactly are you saying?” “Well, things might explode, there might be some violence, y’know, the best of the end of the world type deal. The best case is that we go up there and nothing is happening except a bunch of college girls needing liberation from the boredom. The worst case is we have to fight our way through a bunch of Thriller-rejects.” “Sounds like fun, what do you need?” “Come over ASAP and we’ll start doing some planning, we want to leave as soon as possible. Dillon’s up there already but we haven’t heard from him since he left yesterday.” “So, is this a rescue mission too?” “I hope not.” May and Tim sat at the computer in the basement of their parents place looking through news websites for any type of confirmation on what Ben’s friend Thad had thought of as happening but none were forth coming. There seemed to be a lot of speculation along the same lines as what he had mentioned, and some of the headlines exclaimed loudly that the reanimated dead were walking the Earth when the actual article was essentially ‘eyewitness accounts’ from people Tim found he usually avoided when walking around downtown Trail. In essence, both May and Tim were resigned to the fact that they didn’t know anything and that life should go on as usual in the interim. Tim went to read a book

upstairs and May continued playing on the Internet. Sam had slept in most of the morning and was just now getting up to mow the lawn in the backyard and Deanna had spent most of the morning vacuuming around the mess her family members had made. A phone call from Dillon’s parents shook the household a bit. They had asked whether or not anyone had heard from Dillon in the past couple days, phone calls to his cell phone had been unanswered and no one had seen him, or Liz, since he left for Kelowna the day previous. Deanna made a call to Ben’s house, where no one had answered there either. She relayed this news on to Dillon’s parents; now both households were concerned about their children taking an unnecessary risk, or at the very least, not informing them of their plans. Sam came in from mowing the lawn after Deanna called Dillon’s parents back. “I haven’t been able to get a hold of anyone. Do you think they are out exploring or something?” “Knowing Ben, he’s planning on something to do. Danni will keep him under control, don’t worry so much.” “It’s hard not to worry about that boy, he’s so much like you; always getting into trouble.” “Yes, but I think he knows how to get himself out of trouble too, something I was never that good at. Maybe they took Thad on a tour.” “Maybe, I just hope they’re ok. There’s too much going on not to worry about them.” Dillon awoke to a screaming headache and someone banging on his window. He sat up and, forgetting he was in his truck, smacked his head on the steering wheel. The person that had awakened him from his fitful slumber appeared to be a policeman. “Son, you can’t sleep here. It’s not safe. I’m going to have to ask you to either go home or find a better place to stay.” “Er, yes officer. What seems to be the problem?” The officer, taking off his sunglasses and placing them delicately in his front pocket, pointed over to the passenger side window, where a bloody mess of handprints sat coagulating. “I think you know what the problem is, and judging by your face, I think you saw some of the worst of it.” He looked at himself in the rear-view mirror. He appeared to be wearing war-paint of some kind, red streaks running down the sides of his face, across his nice, splattered across his forehead. As he ran his fingers down the marks on his face, he remembered

what had happened last night and his shoulders began hitching at the thought of what he had experienced, and the loss of Liz as well. “My girlfriend, she was attacked. I thought she was dead, but then she got up and attacked me. And I just made it into the truck and she was at the window and…” His voice trailed off as he considered just how violently unreal and malevolent she had seemed, scratching at his window, biting and tearing at the glass, trying to get to him. He began to sob, his tears washing away some of the blood, both his and hers that had accumulated on his face. The officer, surprised by this sudden outpouring of emotion reached through the window of the truck and unlocked the door. Opening the door, he grabbed Dillon on the shoulder to comfort him. “I understand son. Lots of things have been happening that we can’t explain and have a hard time dealing with but it’s not your fault. It is most certainly not your fault. Now, what I need you to do is to tell me what happened, give me names and information so we can keep track of what’s happening, and then you have to go home.” Dillon recapped the story of how he had heard a scream and gone looking for his girlfriend, Liz. He had walked into the park and saw two people apparently fighting. As he walked closer, he realized that it was Liz being attacked so he had knocked off the assailant with a bat he had in the backseat. The police officer saw the bat lying on the floor of the cab of the truck, covered in blood. Dillon had fought off the man and had been dragging the girlfriend along when he had got too tired to continue and attempted to stop the man. She had got up and jumped on his back, knocking him to the ground and he had to fight them both off. He had just barely made it to the truck before he passed out and the first thing he remembered afterwards was the knock on the window. Dillon gingerly rubbed the back of his head, feeling clumps of blood sticking to clumps of hair and a nice bump protruding from the back. Dillon looked around the cab of the truck, looking at the weapon that had probably saved his life last night and the cell phone that had died sometime last night as well. “My phone and Liz have something in common” he joked to himself before bursting into tears again.” The cop stood next to the truck for a few more minutes before his radio went off and he was called to another emergency. Before he left, he told Dillon to leave town while he could, things were getting a bit more hairy in the area, and the sooner he left, the better. Dillon took this under close consideration, and as the police officer drove away, he promptly lost consciousness in the cab of the truck again.

Thad and Dom were in the lead, traveling quickly along the highway in Dom’s modified Malibu while Danni and Ben in the jeep picked up the rear. Before they had left, Dom had stopped off at his parents place again and picked up some fireworks that he had kept from many years ago. Ben had stopped at the local hardware store and picked up some flares while Danni had purchased a set of two-way radios for communication between the two groups. Thad sat in the passenger seat of the Malibu as it rumbled along the highway. “You were following me all the way from Vancouver, weren’t you? I thought there was something wrong my van because it was making all these horrible loud noises, and now I find out that that’s the effect you were looking for.” Dom nodded. “The louder it is, the more power it must have. Just wait until I make it even more powerful. It’ll be like the hand of god coming down and knocking people on their asses. I can’t wait.” “Wonderful. So what do you think of what we’re doing”? “Well, it’s going to be hard to find Dillon, I’ll say that much. As for the zombies, if they exist, we’ll find them. If they don’t, at least I got to go for another drive.” Thad looked out the window as they drove through downtown Trail. “I guess Ben and his dad went to one of the local cemeteries last night to see if they could find anything. Aside from having the shit scared out of him, Ben said they didn’t see anything suspicious, but then again, there probably weren’t any complete dead bodies to begin with.” “Or this whole thing is just a big hoax. Honestly Thad, the living dead wandering the earth? It sounds pretty suspicious to me. As a scientist, you must feel that without proof, it isn’t really anything at all.” “Yeah, I understand that, but sometimes even scientists sometimes to give way to some kind of belief structure, to allow the feelings of others to influence your findings.” “That sounds like the exact opposite of what a scientist should do.” “Well, depends on how you look at it. Take Darwin and his theory of evolution. The only reason he tried so hard to prove it was because the world at the time spent all of their effort trying to prove him wrong. It was like an intellectual arms race; the faster they could come up with something to show how false he was, the harder he had to try to find data that refuted their claims.” “So, what you’re saying is that the more I try to tell you you’re full of shit, the more you’re going to try to prove me wrong?” ”Yeah, pretty much.”

“Well, at least we got that much out of the way.” Ben and Danni’s conversation wasn’t as intellectual as the car in front of them. “Man his car is loud” Danni exclaimed as she heard him rev the vehicle up to make the long climb into Rossland. “Noise equals power remember, Dom’s favorite saying.” He winked at Danni and patted her on the leg. “How are you feeling? Are you ok with this?” “Oh, I’m okay now, but I can’t guarantee how well I’ll feel once we get up there and there’s a whole bunch of dead people walking around trying to kill us.” “Well, what’s the worst thing that could happen?” “They could kill us.” “Good point. But the best thing that could happen is that it’s just a bunch of people acting crazy because that’s what everyone else is doing. Mob rule and all that jazz. If we run into Dillon, I’m sure he’ll be able to explain or at least tell us some of the things that have been happening first-hand.” “If we find him.” “When we find him. I printed off the map to Liz’s parents address that we get from the phone book so he’s probably there.” “And if he’s not?” “We go looking. It’ll be hard to miss a pimped out black ford F150 driving around in yuppy-ville Kelowna.” She shrugged her shoulders as Rossland passed by quickly. The streets were empty aside from long line ups at the grocery store, where it appeared that half of the town was preparing for the worst, hoarding food in case of emergencies. She wondered if she should have been doing the same instead of going on a wild goose chase. Picking up the radio, she called over to the two men traveling ahead of them. “TCZ 1, TCZ 1, this is TCZ 2, over.” “Go ahead TCZ 2” “Thad, did you notice all of the people standing in line at the grocery store. I don’t remember seeing that in Trail, did you?” She clicked off the radio waiting for a response.

A hiss and a crackle followed by “The mall was extremely busy at the food store end. I didn’t see any grocery places in downtown Trail though.” “Thanks Thad, just wondering if maybe we should have done the same.” This time Dom came over the radio. “A waste of money when we find out that there really isn’t a problem. Better to buy beer and laugh at all the losers wasting their money on spam products.” The radio sounded out a chorus of “Mmm, SPAM” from the vehicle ahead and both Ben and Danni laughed. “So, what is the plan for when we get to Kelowna exactly, fellas?” Dom replied. “Find his girlfriends parents place. Talk to him there. Find a bad afterwards, have a few beer, come home.” “What if we don’t find him there?” Ben spoke into the radio. “We split up and search different parts of the city. If he’s not there, and he’s not home, then he’s in a hotel somewhere. We’ll take the hotels on the north end, you’ll take the hotels on the south end, and we’ll find him somewhere in the middle. Probably naked too.” Another chorus of laughter erupted from the Jeep. “Man, I think I’d rather see zombies than Dillon naked.” Thad joked over the radio. “He’d say the same about you if your positions were reversed I bet.” Ben added. Two hours later they were on the major highway between Osoyoos and Kelowna. Very few vehicles had been encountered on the road since they had left the Trail area and they were beginning to wonder if maybe they had come ill-prepared. “I didn’t bring any swords, except for the wood one in the back.” Ben said to Danni as the sign for Kelowna ahead read 20 kilometers. “Did Dom bring anything? Thad?” “Dom brought fireworks, Thad brought his immense brain to think his way out of problems.” Danni shook her head. “Be serious Ben. What if we run into trouble?” “Well, we don’t own a gun, so that wouldn’t have helped. We’re in fairly hefty, powerful vehicles, so we should be safe as long as we don’t leave them. If we do have to leave them we’ll just have to improvise.”

“I don’t think I’ll be improvising. I think I’ll be sitting in here waiting for everyone to get back.” “That’s okay too. We’ll need someone to keep the engine running while we scout around if we have to.” “Ben, I want you to be safe.” “What could be safer then a bunch of friends on a friend-finding expedition to a zombieinfested town with no weapons of any kind?” Ben grinned. “Well, let’s hope you’re going to be safe, because we’re almost there.” Thad and Dom continued talking about Dom’s car as they continued well into Kelowna city limits. Traveling down a slight incline into the southern part of the city, they both were amazed at how it seemed that there was no one actively out of their homes, moving from place to place. The streets were eerily empty, emptier then Dom had ever seen in his many visits to Kelowna, and even the floating bridge between the northern and southern parts of the city, separated by the lake, was empty. It seemed to both of them that Kelowna had become a ghost town, much like many of the old mining cities they had already passed by. Even the grocery stores, large franchises along the main byway through the city were deserted. Dom stopped the car in the parking lot of the large mall in the center of the town, Ben’s jeep stopping next to them. “What’s up Dom?” “It’s very…strange. Where is everyone? I’ve never seen it this dead before.” Danni leaned over to the drivers side of the Jeep and yelled out “You might be more right then you think.” Brushing off her suggestion, Dom walked around to the back of the car where he popped the hood and pulled out a solid steel tire iron. Walking back to the side of the car, he tossed the tire iron into Thad’s arms. “Just to be on the safe side. Your turn to lead Ben, off to Liz’s parents house we go.” Danni pulled out the printed off map as Ben rolled up the window and prepared to roll out. “Are we sure we’re doing the right thing?” “Yes, the wrong thing would be to do nothing.”

The directions they had received off of the internet led them to an upscale part of upper Kelowna. Both vehicles slowed to a steady crawl as they snaked their way through the high-class neighborhood, passengers staring out the windows at the large mansions on either side of the road. Dom spoke out over the radio. “Are we sure we’re in the right place, I mean, this is pretty high-class shit we’re driving through.” Danni responded. “Map tells us we’ve just got another couple blocks to go and we’ll be there, but I agree. This is very uh, rich. Try to break anything while we’re here.” “I feel like if I sneeze their security patrol will come and take us away.” Ben said as he gazed at several closed circuit cameras sitting atop what looked like electrified fences. The houses seemed to be getting more and more elaborate as they drove along the avenue. New cars, swimming pools, tennis courts in every backyard, and Ben couldn’t believe this is where Liz’s family lived. He had always found her a little stuck-up, but he hadn’t imagined her family as the high-class elite that for all intents and purposes he was inferring from their neighborhood. Coming up in front of the house on their map, they had all felt a little relieved. It had been more modest then some of the more elaborate abodes they had past but it still wreaked of extravagance. Both Thad and Dom were infatuated with the pair of BMW M5’s sitting in the front garage but it was Danni who immediately noticed that Dillon’s truck was nowhere to be found. She mentioned it to Ben who waved off her concerns. “He’s probably gone out for the evening or something. I can’t imagine he’d want to sit visiting in-laws for any length of time, although judging by some of the stuff I see, I’d sure want to; just to make sure that they put me in the will.” Danni swatted him in the arm and asked what the plan now was. “I suppose I’ll have to go introduce myself.” He parked the jeep along the sidewalk, Dom pulling the Malibu up close behind him. Ben and Dom met at the front door of the elaborate mansion in front of them. Dom rang the doorbell but agreed to let Ben do all the talking. The person that answered the door looked less than happy to see them. “No solicitors please.” Ben chuckled and explained that they were looking for a friend of theirs that had driven to Kelowna with his girlfriend to meet her parents and hadn’t been seen since then. He neglected to mention the zombie matter as that was a topic he had decided with Danni to be off-limits when talking to new people. It was hard enough convincing Dom of what was happening, let alone complete strangers. From the look on the face of their greeter though, it didn’t appear to Dom or Ben that they were about to get any help.

“I’m sorry, I don’t have a daughter anymore. She left home about 8 years ago and she’s just not part of our life.” “Well, I’m sorry to hear that sir, but our friend was traveling with this daughter you don’t have. He was driving a nice black Ford F-150.” There was a trace of anger in Ben’s voice that Dom was forced to stifle a laugh over. He’d known his friend had a bit of a fiery temper, but he had usually kept it in check. Apparently dealing with the so-called elite members of society prompted a very strong streak of cynicism. “It’s possible I saw some grubby man with a girl who looked something like my daughter, but they aren’t here. We take great pains to only let worthwhile people around here.” The man looked Dom and Ben up and down with very obvious traces of scorn. Dom finally understood why Ben was appearing so agitated, and fought to control his aggravation; this man needed a severe punch in the head, by Dom’s reckoning, and if this line of questioning was to continue, he would surely receive one. “That grubby man was a friend of mine, and now we’re looking for him. If you have any information, I would be grateful.” Ben was speaking through clenched jaws. “No, sorry. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got better things to waste my time on.” Ben and Dom both took this as their cue to leave and meandered down the step, Ben pausing to pick up a loose rock in one of the dirt gardens bordering their elaborate stone driveway. “Thanks for the help” he yelled as he turned and rifled the rock through the windshield of the nearest M5. “Run” he said to Dom, who was laughing at the complete insanity of Ben’s actions, although he would later admit that he was glad Ben did it, as he would have done it otherwise. They rushed down the driveway, hearing the man yelling in the background, where Danni and Thad were calmly discussing what they should have for dinner. Seeing the two men running down the driveway like that prompted them both to break off discussion and get into a vehicle, Danni ending up in the Malibu while Thad was closest to the Jeep and entered the passenger seat. Dom and Ben both made it to their respective vehicles and with a quick turn of the key, they were away, putting as many kilometers as possible between Ben’s vandalism and their selves. Thad asked Ben what had happened and Ben calmly replied that there was a disagreement, Dom gave roughly the same answer to Danni when she asked. Ben radioed over to the Malibu telling the occupants that they were going to Plan B and to keep their eyes open for any potential walking-dead types or Dillon. Plan B had been to have the Jeep search South Kelowna, across the bridge and the Malibu would stay and search North Kelowna. Plan B hadn’t accounted for the change in passengers and Danni was not too impressed with the results.

“Can we stop and switch vehicles please?” Over the radio, Ben asked why. “Because I was supposed to be in the Jeep with you. How can I drive Dom’s car around when I don’t know how to drive manual?” Ben and Thad both considered this for a second but neither thought it was that important. “I wouldn’t really worry about it dear. From what I see, there’s nothing up here, at all, to worry about, aside from some crazy rich people, but they can’t drive because they have a broken windshield.” In the other car, Dom snickered. “Besides, right now we’re just looking for Chris. After that, we’ll do our other search, and then we’ll switch cars.” Ben’s demeanor had been a calming presence on everyone but Dom up until now. After their experience at the house, Dom was now impressed with how Ben was handling himself. “So, keep your radios on and charged, make sure to call in every 30 minutes. We’ll finish around 6ish. Everyone okay with this?” Judging from the silence on the line, Ben assumed it was. Around 2PM, the TV reception had returned to the Monteith household. The whole family huddled around the set as a breaking news report was coming out regarding the latest happenings. Major power plants had failed in the larger cities in the US as people, regarding their lives as at risk, refused to venture to their jobs and systems that had to be maintained broke down. Backup generators and outside power sources were now being used in small pockets throughout the larger centers in order to bring the breaking news to confirm that yes, the bodies of the deceased were indeed rising from the grave and wandering the earth causing havoc because of their numbers and their need to feed on live flesh. Sam turned the TV off immediately. Some of the images were too graphic for his children to deal with, not to mention his wife. The phone began to ring and Deanna jumped up to grab it, a neighbor having watched the news special was panicking and Deanna offered to visit and console her. Tim and May sat in amazement at what they had seen for a brief moment. Video of rotten, eroded corpses lumbering toward the cameramen who were obviously in a very big panic as hordes of former people made their way forward menacingly. Helicopter coverage showed thousands of these monsters snaking their way along major roads searching for fresh meat before Sam had forced the TV off.

Huddled together with their father, Tim and May asked him what they should do. They hadn’t heard from Ben since last night either and Tim suggested that they try calling him again. May got up from the couch and called over to the house, receiving no answer after letting the phone ring upwards of twenty times. “No answer over there.” “I wonder where they are.” “Safe, whatever they are doing.” Tim hoped. After his experience with Ben at the cemetery, he was confident Ben would be able to handle himself in any situation. Sam had the same feeling as Tim. Despite Ben’s reaction to his being scared, he hadn’t panicked as much as his younger brother had, paralyzed with fear inside the jeep. Their phone rang again, and Sam got up to answer it. There was a meeting to be held in the Trail community hall on Wednesday, which Sam had known about, but it was a discussion on how to counter the zombie menace which could possibly threaten the town. Thanking the unknown caller for the information, he hung up and walked out of the kitchen into the living room where his two younger kids sat next to each other, quietly discussing what they had seen on TV. He was proud of them for being so calm in the face of adversity, he only hoped that Ben was continuing to be so. Ben screamed as the line of former humans marched in horrifying unison towards the Jeep. Thad had noticed a black truck parked in the lot of a hotel surrounded by an iron gate halfway through the first hour of searching for Dillon in Kelowna. It was parked back far enough that, even when they stopped by the side of the gate and peered through the bars, they weren’t able to positively identify the license plate of the truck, or any immediately identifiable features other then the fact that it was a black Ford F150. “I’ll jump over the fence and go check it out, you stay here nice and cozy.” Thad agreed that this was a good idea and Ben turned off the vehicle grabbed the keys, tucked them into coat pocket and got out of the vehicle. The fence itself was eight feet, rod iron bars sitting approximately six inches from each other. At the time, Ben hadn’t wondered why a hotel would have its main gate closed, preventing anyone from getting, but Thad had questioned why they would do something like that. Ben, who wasn’t in the best shape of his life first attempted to jump up to the cement walls surrounding the gate and pull himself up over to the other side. He was able to grasp on to the lip itself, but with his arms outstretched, he simply did not have the strength to pull his slightly overweight body up high enough to throw a leg over for some added traction. Muttering to himself and promising to go on a diet after this, he also attempted running up the front of the wall, just high enough to get a good grip, but

recent rain had made the wall too slippery to get a secure enough hold to prevent Ben from smashing his face on the wall if he were to fall down. Calling out to Thad to help him out, he looked around the hotel lobby area which seemed to be strangely deserted. Only a few vehicles sat in the parking lot, one of them being the truck they were hoping to identify. Thad looked around nervously, uncomfortable with the idea of leaving the safe nest of the jeeps interior. “Are you sure you need me? Isn’t there another way in? Maybe around back?” “Thad, I only need you to boost me up so I can get over.” “Well, what do you when you get on the other side?” “Good question. I’d probably have to climb up on one of the garbage containers and then jump over from there. Don’t worry, you don’t have to come with me, I just need your help to lift me over. I’ll be right back, don’t worry.” Still not feeling altogether comfortable with this plan, Thad exited the vehicle and walked slowly over to where Ben eagerly awaited a boost over the wall. “Kind of exciting, like breaking-and-entering but legal” he smiled. “Just go in there, check, get out. I’m not going to wait out here for any length of time” Thad said explicitly as he knotted his fingers into a loose catch for Ben’s foot. Stepping into the catch, Ben pulled himself up, with Thad pushing from the bottom, and in no time, Ben was on top of the wall looking down into the secured parking lot. “Marco” “Polo” came the response from the jeeps passenger side. Thad had scrambled back to the car as soon as Ben had made it over the wall. “Smooth sailing from here” Ben thought as he hopped down on to the asphalt. Running over to the truck, a quick look confirmed his suspicion that this wasn’t the truck they were looking for. He did a quick inspection around the back of the hotel, hoping to find other vehicles but was disappointed to find none that vaguely resembled their prey. He made his way lazily back to the front of the lot where his path back to the outside of the hotel space was made up of a large garbage canister sitting against the wall, directly beside the wrought-iron gate. He hopped up onto the top of it, and hearing a clank, jumped quickly up and over the wall, fearing that the canister was about to collapse on his weight. He looked over at Thad, who was sitting wide-eyed and pale, looking off down the street behind Ben.

Ben slowly turned around and screamed. Standing several blocks down the road was a line of people, unorganized, disheveled, ambling discomfortingly up the road towards the two of them. Thad had picked up the radio and was making frantic gestures to get Ben back to the car but Ben was intrigued by their appearance. He stood for several minutes, watching them move closer and closer to their position, slowly, their arms grasping and reaching for Ben who was too terrified to move. He could feel the blood draining out of his face and arms, his heart beating a fast staccato in his chest, but he couldn’t will himself to get up off the ground, or even to prepare himself for their onslaught. All he could do is stare at the throngs of mutilation making its way towards him. Thad, who had been on the radio the entire time Ben sat there enthralled, honked the jeep horn wildly as he realized that that his friend hadn’t moved since he had noticed the walking dead. Snapping around at the sudden noise, Ben was once again coherent, and raced to the jeep. He grabbed the handle of the driver door, and realizing that he had locked it began searching his pockets for the key. He went through his jacket pockets, his shirt pockets, his jean pockets before he realized that his keys were no longer on his body. He looked up at Thad with the horrifying realization that he had lost his keys, possibly on the other side of the wall. “I lost the keys” “WHAT!?” Thad screamed through the closed window. “I don’t have the keys on me. I think I may have dropped them back there.” “You’re kidding me. You better be kidding me. Please say you’re kidding me.” Ben hung his head. “I’m not kidding you, I don’t have the keys.” Thad’s eyes went round as saucers. “Ben, they’re getting closer, what are we going to do?” Ben ran over to the wall and tried jumping up to catch his hands again in order to pull himself over, but he knew this was a waste of effort. He moved around to the gate where he stretched his arm through and clawed around, hoping to clasp onto a piece of metal that would allow him and his friend to drive away safely – but no luck. Ben looked up and the zombies were now just two blocks away and closing surely. He ran back to the car where Thad sat impatiently waiting to leave. “Find them?” “No, are you going to help me over the fence?” “Ben, they’re RIGHT there! There’s not enough time, just get in the car, and we’ll figure out something else.”

“Thad, listen to me, there are hundreds of those things coming, if we sit and we wait in the car, they’re going to surround us and sooner or later they’re going to get in here; now either we deal with that when it happens, or you can get out of the goddamn car and help me get those keys. Now, we don’t have much time to argue, so get out, help me over, and we’ll leave.” “This isn’t such a good idea.” Thad said as he opened the passenger door. He slammed the door behind him and for a second, both him and Ben froze in their place. He slowly turned around and pulled on the door handle, half-expecting it to be locked behind him. It opened. They both sighed with relief and made their way over to the wall where they resumed the position that had caused this mess to begin with. “As soon as I get over, get back to the jeep, but leave my door open, I may be in a hurry.” Thad lifted Ben up onto the top of the wall and Ben quickly disappeared onto the other side with a thud. Moving quickly back to the jeep, Thad hopped in and locked the doors, feeling safer on the inside as he watched the zombies pass through the intersection of two blocks away. He opened the door barely and yelled out at Ben that they were only a little less then two blocks away now. “I know, thank you Thad.” Ben mumbled as he searched the ground for his keys. His hands ran over the rough asphalt but the keys were nowhere to be found. He remembered the noise he had heard when he had jumped back over the wall, and he climbed up onto the garbage can to see if, from that vantage point, he could see where he might have dropped them. Seeing nothing, he got back down, and opened the lid of the canister, thinking the keys may have fallen in there. The smell of the garbage was intense, and he quickly closed the lid. “Ok, I’ll look in other places first.” He could start to hear the groaning and moaning of the zombies as they made their way past the halfway point of the block. They sounded like an infernal chorus, people being punished for sins they had to commit, singing high praises to their eternal damnation. He suppressed a shudder as he searched around behind the canister. He searched under several pieces of cardboard that had been thrown away, but still he could not find the keys. The groans were getting louder, and several honks of the horn from Thad indicated he was getting impatient as well. “I’m searching as fast as I can, Thad.” Ben yelled. He opened the lid of the garbage container again, and pulled out the plastic bags that sat inside. As he pulled them open, the bags ripped open, emptying their contents, which seemed to be made up of mouldy food and newspaper, into the can.

“FUCK” Ben swore as the noise of the herd of zombies grew even louder. His hands thrashed around the inside of the garbage can wildly as he searched for his keys. The horn on the jeep was blaring constantly now and he could barely hear himself think. The noise of the zombies he could barely make out undernearth the sound of the horn, but he could tell that they had grown very close. He grabbed the can and tipped it over on the asphalt, spilling the contents haphazardly across the blacktop. He kicked around pieces of someones sandwich, yesterdays newspaper and a set of keys before realizing that he had just kicked his set of keys. He picked them, his heart racing jubilantly as he righted the canister, and jumped up on top of it. He lifted himself onto the top of the wall and realized why the Jeep’s horn had been sounding so constantly. Danni and Dom had run across Dillon’s truck into the last hour of their searching, the sun just beginning to set. They were just passing by on their last sweep of the northern-most section of town when Danni had noticed a black truck sitting solely by itself in the middle of a seedy motel sitting aside a park. Urging Dom to stop and check it out, they did so, and they had found Dillon sleeping apparently blissfully in the cab of his truck. Several bloody handprints on the passenger window, as well as bloodstains on the upholstery of the truck suggested that there had been a struggle that they hoped Dillon had made it through okay. Danni banged wildly on the window to get his attention. “It’s okay officer, I’m leaving soon” Dillon mumbled through a half-numbed mouth. “Dillon, wake up, it’s me Danni. We’ve come to get you.” “Danni? What are you doing here? Where’s Ben? How did you get here?” Dillon sat up slowly in the cab, touching the back of his head where a small wound had blossomed into a massive bruise. “We’re here to get you, like I said. Ben’s searching for you on the other side of town. Dom drove me here.” “Dom’s here? What’s Dom doing here?” “We needed help getting here, he’s helping.” Dillon stepped out of the truck which had been his sleeping space for the past 24 hours. His legs were numb and he sat for a few minutes on the ground stretching them out as Danni quizzed him about where he had been and what he had been doing since they last talked to him. “Liz went crazy.” Dillon explained to her, tears forming in his eyes again. “I’m sorry Dillon, I – I know how much you loved her.”

“Everyone’s going crazy. Why is everyone going crazy?” Dom stood next to his car listening to their conversation. Danni had been very patient with him thus far; far more then he would have been. Seeing the bloody hand prints on the side of the truck had given him much to fear. The thoughts that maybe there was something going on were racing through his mind and whereas previously he had immediately brushed them off, the nagging feeling that they may be in trouble was not so easily ignored. He looked around town, uneasily. It had been to him, incredibly quiet, quiet enough that he didn’t think he had seen more then two vehicles the entire drive around town. He wanted to leave, now. He took a walk over to the intersection next to the hotel and looked both up and down the street. Still, he could not see anyone walking around, or a car running, or anything that indicated a person was alive in this town. Danni sat with Dillon a little while longer before she could hear the radio in Dom’s car beginning to make noises. She walked over to the car, where Dom had left the windows open, reached in and messaged whoever had been radioing to repeat their message. It was Thad. “We need help, get here as soon as possible. Please hurry. There’s a lot of them.” “Thad, what’s going on? Where’s Ben? Is he okay? Where are you?” “I don’t know, somewhere in the south. Next to a hotel. I can see them walking this way but I don’t think Ben’s seen them yet. Okay he has, I have to go. Get here soon.” She panicked and screamed for Dom, who came running around the corner. “What!? What’s going on?” “It’s Thad and Ben, they’re in trouble. They ran into something. A lot of something. Thad didn’t say what.” She was hyperventiliating so she stopped a second to catch her breath. “Is Dillon okay to drive?” Dillon stood up and walked over to where they were standing, wiping away tears that seemed to steadily be coming from his face for the past day. “I’ll be fine, what do we do?” “We have to find them and I think they will be very easy to find.” Ben looked down at a sea of undulating heads and arms. The jeep had been completely surrounded by people and they scratched and clawed at the windows, rocking the jeep gently as more and more of them joined in the effort to crack the shell to get to the juicy

center. Ben could see Thad on the interior, looking horrified as rotting corpses fell apart in front of him, ungainly reaching to his flesh before being knocked away by a thin sheet of window protecting him. Ben stood up on the wall and a few of the zombies attentions turned to him – several of them now reached up attempting to grab his feet, maybe to pull him off the wall and devour him as they had undoubtedly devoured many other people. His feet dodged a few of the taller undead who had almost been able to grab him. “What are we going to do, Thad?” he yelled above the general din of disgustingly soft squishing sounds and the grating sounds of old jaws attempting to chew. He could barely see Thad in the jeep now, with more and more zombies joining the efforts to enter the vehicle. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I knew this was a bad idea. Now what do we do?” “Maybe I can throw the keys to you through an open window and you can drive away, lead them away from me, and then come back and get me. “What if you miss the throw.” “Then we’re screwed.” “And what makes you think they’re all just going to be led away by me.” “Another good point.” Ben thought of other options, such as jumping onto the roof of the jeep and passing the Keys to Thad through an open door but the zombies were now making their way onto the roof, that didn’t look feasible. Another option would be to jump down off of the ledge which wouldn’t leave him much options after the fact. He could run off along the ledge and leave through the back of the hotel, but that would leave Thad stranded with no options. He was running out of ideas, and judging by the ferocity with which the jeep was being attacked, he was also running out of time. A rumble seemed to be forming among the throngs of attackers surrounding both Thad and Ben now. Thad could feel the seats in the jeep beginning to tremble and he was reminded of his drive from Seattle to Trail, the throaty growl that seemed to accompany him the entire way. It seemed to low to be coming from the man-things attempting to eat their way through his window but his view was almost completely blocked out by the things around him. He screamed, asking Ben what that noise was, and he didn’t receive a response. Ben wondered exactly what their plan was. In the distance he could see two vehicles; a half black loud Chevy Malibu, and a well-built, tough-as-nails-looking Ford F150, black as well. The people inside the vehicles, from what he could tell being Dom, Danni and Dillon, seemed to be discussing the best way to get their friends out of the mess they

were in, and they had been hanging back far enough that the zombies hadn’t noticed them yet. Dom revved his motor several times and even from where he was standing, Ben could feel the power coursing from it. Some of the zombies had changed their mind and now began heading for the trio parked well out of the way. It was a mere fraction, however, of the many who were beginning to make their way through the jeeps exterior. The glass on both sides of the backseats was beginning to crack from the pressure of tens of people pushing on it directly. “It’s the cavalry.” Ben yelled to Thad over the din of marauding bodies. “But I don’t know what they’re planning to do.” He heard a faint “Get ready to jump” from the interior of the cab and he realized what the plan was. Another rumble from off in the distance and both the truck and the car made their way towards Thad and Ben. “Thad, put the Jeep in neutral, please!” Ben yelled as the gap quickly closed between the oncoming vehicles and his. Another fifteen seconds and they would be there, Dillon’s truck on the side closest to Ben, enabling him to jump into the back, and Dom’s car pushing the jeep along far enough out of the way to make a practical escape for everyone. However, they were going to have be going fairly quickly in order to prevent any zombies from either latching on, or grabbing Ben as he jumped into the back. Their speed, he was gauging from watching them hurtle towards the group, was probably about thirty, not too fast, but still quick enough that when he hit the box, it was going to hurt. He held his breath in anticipation. They were almost there, just another half block. Ben made one last look down to the jeep where some of the undead had moved away from the windows in order to attack the moving target, he could make out Thad looking backwards at the oncoming error and putting his seatbelt on. 10 seconds. “I could use a seatbelt right about now.” Ben thought, bracing himself for the jump 5 seconds “Duck and roll, duck and roll, hit the box running, simple.” 3 seconds The sounds of bodies being crushed filled the area. Dom’s engine was nauseating loud and the smell of both burnt rubber and burning flesh filled the air with a slap that almost knocked Ben off the side of the wall. 1 second

He said a quick prayer, and hoped this would work. 0 seconds He jumped. Danni, Dom and Dillon had found it relatively simple to find the location of Thad and Ben. It seemed that every monstrosity in the town was headed in their direction and throngs of them – walking, crawling, limping, shuffling – made it an easy path to follow. Dillon made a point of it to crush as many of the bastard humans as possible, taking great pleasure in crushing their skulls beneath his truck tires. He was also thankful he was driving alone as he hadn’t wanted anyone to see him in the state of righteous anger he felt. He had every intention of making these animals pay for what they had done, and as a young female zombie, who looked freshly killed, fell under his wheel well, he almost felt a piece of ice rip into his heart, killing whatever humanity he had left. There would be no turning back for him after this; Liz’s soul would rest in peace but Dillon’s would continue on, its fire consuming all in its path. Danni had seen the duo first, or at least a hulking mass of flesh mounting a full-fledged assault on her vehicle. With her and Dom in the Malibu, they had made quick progress in getting to the scene, and now that they had witnessed what the problem was, they had to determine a course of action that would allow them to save their friends. It was Dillon’s idea, at first, to drive back and forth maiming as many of the killers as possible before getting to their friends. The bloodlust in his eyes had scared Danni enough that she wanted to travel in Dom’s car, despite feeling safer in the truck. In her opinion, he was taking unnecessary risks; she had watched him in the rearview mirror of the car, swerving to take out as many stragglers as possible as they made their way to Ben; she was just waiting for him to overcorrect and flip his truck, thus changing their idea for rescue into one of digging their own way out of a larger problem, but he had persevered. Dom’s idea had been the one that had eventually been selected. By using the horsepower of both the truck and the Malibu, they should be able to push their way through the throbbing hordes and make it through to their trapped friends. It was Dillon’s idea to take the far side, closest to the wall where they could see Ben frantically avoiding any of the beasts grabbing for him. He figured that Ben would be able to jump into the back of the truck, and tossing his bat into the back, at least Ben would have a weapon to defend himself with. He had already lost one person to the zombie horde; he had no intention of losing another. Danni radioed ahead to Thad, telling him of their plan. Even over the radio, she could hear the monsters snarling through the windows of the jeep. Thad sounded panicked, and had mentioned that the glass was beginning to break and that they should hurry. He yelled out to Ben that he should be ready to jump, but then he radioed back to Danni that he didn’t think Ben had heard. Privately, Danni prayed that he had, and that this would turn out correctly. She looked over at Dom and nodded, she turned her head to her right,

where Dillon was parked and nodded, both of the men revved their engines, and they were off. Ben’s shoulder hit the floor of the truck box hard and he heard a pop as he rolled to the back and slammed head first into the tailgate. The truck had slowed down a bit before he jumped and he had misjudged the distance he had to jump in order to make it into the back; his feet had caught the side of the truck before he made it and he had tumbled into the back shoulder first. He could see hands and arms reaching over the back of the truck trying to get to him, his face sitting looking up at the darkening sky as arms temporarily moved in and out of his field of vision. For a second, he felt the earth give way and the solace of unconsciousness almost over took him before the truck accelerated once again and his head slammed once more into the back, jolting him awake. Groaning much like the zombies he had avoided, he got to his knees warily and seeing the baseball bat lying close by his resting place, he grabbed that with his good arm, taking a powerful, but misguided swing at one of the few arms still hanging on to the back. The bat glanced off the forearm and hit the back of the tailgate producing a loud clang that caused the drive of the truck, Dillon, to turn back through the open cab window and yell at Ben to be careful. Ben slowly looked around and saw that the jeep had also been pushed free, with Thad furiously trying to keep the jeep going in a steady direction without the aid of power steering. Looking back, he could see Dom and Danni’s happy face in the passenger seat of the Malibu that was pushing the bodies of zombies into the back of the jeep. After they had gone several blocks, both Dillon and Dom stopped their vehicles and passengers were traded off, Danni (who had a spare set of keys for the jeep) and Ben returned jubilantly to the now battle-scarred jeep and Thad took Danni’s place in Dom’s Malibu. Reaching out his window, Ben shook Dillon’s hand thankfully. “Glad to see you. Glad to see you’re okay. Thanks for the assist. I don’t know what we would have done without you guys showing up when you did.” “You’ll have to thank Dom for the idea, it was all his. I’m just here to destroy some fucking undead.” Ben was surprised at how angry his friend seemed and he only found out why at a gas station just on the southernmost tip of Kelowna. “Liz turned; she didn’t make it. She tried to attack him just like any of those people we saw today.” Danni told Ben as they stood next to a refilling station. “Shit, that explains why he’s so pissed off.” Danni nodded sadly. “He’s been pretty upset since we found him in the truck. He’s been using any free chance he’s had to do them damage as you may or may not have noticed.”

“I was too busy trying to save my own skin to notice.” He touched his left shoulder which had been bruised fairly heavily in his misadventure but not broken. Danni had looked at it but she couldn’t tell if it was broken. They’d have to visit a doctor when they got home. “Your shoulder hurts?” “Very much so. I can move it, but I don’t think I’ll be doing any pushups any time soon.” “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do a push up.” She laughed as she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “I’m glad you’re okay though. I was getting worried for a while there. Seeing you standing up with all those things trying to get you; I don’t want to see that again.” “Well, I’ll be sure to avoid ravenous groups of the undead from now on.” Ben smiled. “You better.” Dillon sat silently in his truck watching Ben and Danni chat. He had moved his bat into the front seat and he was busy trying to wipe the blood off of it. Something had been stolen from him this weekend, and he made an oath to make sure someone paid for it. The ones he had killed earlier were only the start. The sound they had made falling under his tires, a gelatinous squishing noise that made his heart sing with glee would be replayed over and over again in his mind until he became addicted to it. “This isn’t over. Not by a long shot, Ben and Danni. Be happy now because we’re going to replay this again and again and again; and one of you may lose the other and then you’ll be like me. Enjoy your happiness, it will be shortlived. He returned his attention to his bat, where using the pocket knife attached to his keychain, he etched out Liz’s initials in the handle. “I may not have been able to protect you Liz, but I am going to protect these people. I am going to protect my family. While I’m around, I’m not going to lose anyone else as long as I breathe. Believe me.” He watched Danni kiss Ben on the cheek as they burst into laughter. He grimaced at their joy and turned his head as another tear rolled down his cheek. “I will make you proud, Liz.” Thad and Dom sat in the Malibu discussing everything they had just dealt with. Thad was still shell-shocked from his experience watching zombies attempt to tear his eyes out through a thin pane of glass and Dom was reveling in the experience at being able to

legally run down pedestrians. Needless to say, their conversations weren’t meshing well with each other. “I could have died.” Thad repeated for the fourth time in five minutes. “Don’t worry, if you die I’ll be happy to run you over too. I’m just glad my car didn’t stall out as I pushed you along.” Dom patted the steering wheel as a child would pat a new puppy on the head. “My girl did pretty good, impressed me greatly. How much do you think that jeep weighs? How many zombies do you think I was pushing along with it? Thirty? Forty?” “The jeep, I couldn’t control the jeep. My arms just froze in position and we coasted out. I could almost smell them all over the place. Then I ran over a couple and maybe they got caught underneath. I could hear bones crunching as they went underneath.” “Yeah, that was pretty cool. Made it easier for me to drive up over them. Must have a lot of horsepower in here if I was able to push the jeep over top of some of them. Damn that’s impressive. I wonder if I should reinforce some of the struts though. I’ll have to check them out at least, make sure the strain of pushing through all those things and then hitting the jeep didn’t bend anything.” “Why are we still here? Why aren’t we leaving? We have to get out of here. What if they come back. I don’t want to have to sit through this again. Why are they just standing there talking? Why isn’t someone standing watch? Why are we still here?” Thad’s hysteria was borderline hyperventilation and Dom casually ignored the rant as he pulled his car into the stall to fill up its gas tank as well. He stepped out of the vehicle and walked over to the tank where Ben and Danni stood chatting. “Thad is driving me crazy.” Ben nodded. “He’s probably in a bit of shock, we should really get him some water or a paper bag to calm him down.” Danni walked over to the convenience store which seemed to be abandoned. Aside from some marks on the glass front, it seemed to be relatively zombie-free so she walked inside. The lights were still on and a closed circuit TV trained on the gas pumps showed the Malibu and jeep sitting silently under the gas station canopy. “Hello?” she yelled as she walked to the counter. No one answered and from the looks of the cash register, people had already been to this store and cleaned it out. The cash register had been emptied and various coins sat scattered on the floor. ”Great,” she muttered as she grabbed several chocolate bars from the counter and walked over to the fridges where she also grabbed several bottles of water. Figuring that no one

would care if she didn’t pay, she walked out of the station and handed a chocolate bar to Dom and Ben before walking over to the Malibu and handing one of the bottled waters to a muttering Thad. She also took the time to walk over to the truck where Dillon kept a vigilant watch. “Hey hero, I figured you could use a drink.” He took the bottle out of her hand and took a quick swig. “Thanks, I suppose with all the excitement and adrenalin, this is probably a good idea.” “Thanks for what you did back there. You saved his life you know. I can’t thank you enough for that.” “Well, keep bringing me water and I’ll consider your debt repaid.” She looked beside him where his bat sat. “Keeping that on hand in case of emergencies?” she asked. “Yes.” He answered quickly as he moved the bat under the seat. “Well, I’m glad you brought it. I think it saved his life too.” “Hopefully it won’t have to be used again.” ”I hope so too.” She paused before she walked away. ”Dillon, we’re all very sorry about Liz and..” Dillon cut her off abruptly. “Yes, I know, but that’s not going to change anything. All we can do now is move on and forget. Forget and move on.” “Well, I was going to say remember her as she was, not as what she became.” She patted Dillon on the arm and walked back to her boyfriend who had since returned to the drivers seat of the jeep. “Ready to go home dear?” “I think I’ve had enough excitement for one day, and I think you’ve had enough excitement for the both of us for a year.” Ben nodded profusely.

Dom finished filling up his vehicle and slapped the hood of the jeep as he walked by. “Let’s roll ‘em out chief. We’ve got a ways to go before it gets dark. Let’s get home before we miss all the excitement.” As they drove away, Danni said. “I don’t know what he’s so excited about.” Ben added nonchalantly. “He’s free. I’d be excited too.” “I’ll remain scared for the time being.” “Amen.” Monday School started at its usual time for May and she crawled out of bed early enough to catch a quick shower before the rest of the house had stirred out of its fitful slumber. The house had stayed up late last night waiting for news from Ben and when he had finally returned their call it was well after most of their bedtimes. Tim had decided to spend a few more days in Trail; he had no pressing reason to return immediately to Cranbrook and he figured that people would be fairly uninterested in classes considering the global crisis they were facing. Sam had left for work early that morning, eager to get out of the house and gossip with office-mates. Deanna was sleeping soundly in their bed upstairs, thankful all of her children were safe and sound in Fruitvale. Stepping out of the shower, May quickly dried her hair and put on her favorite pair of jeans, a nice loose shirt and a necklace she had received for her birthday several years ago.