Chapter 2

The trip out of Canada was actually pretty sedate. We saw the usual things you'd expect to see in the wilds, of course. There were some zombie wolves and deer watching us from the tree lines, clearly infected since they'd never have stood shoulder-to-shoulder like that had they still been alive. Shaun and I took rotations driving and sleeping so as to keep moving until we were on American soil.

Hitting American soil was where the problems started. Our papers didn't give us any static at the border. They were convincing as hell to anyone who inspected them closely, mainly because they were real. We'd had them officially made for us just using fake IDs to give our false names. We now officially had a legitimate history and a paper trail to match thanks to a friend of Dr Abbey's who I think was named Tess. She'd created a full history for each of us in return for a combo payment of money and LEGO of all things. God only knows why LEGO, but it's not our place to judge.

The other reason we made it through the border unopposed was simple: there was no border anymore. The checkpoint was smashed. We rolled to a stop as I checked my .40 was secure on my hip and opened my door to get out. Shaun was making his way to the weapons locker at the back and I guessed he was going for a shotgun or some other big gun to get the job done.

"George, what the hell's going on?" Dr Abbey asked over my ear cuff. I knew she could see what we were seeing, but I guessed it probably didn't make much sense through a camera as opposed to seeing it with her own eyes.

"The border checkpoint's been destroyed." I informed her. "Shaun and I are looking for survivors now. We're not holding out much hope."

"Just remember the package has priority." Dr Abbey told me. "If you can't find anything, GTFO and get here. I'm paying you to deliver, not get it onto American soil and then get yourselves killed leaving it stranded at what's left of the border which could now be a hazard zone. I'll have some of my legitimate contacts notify someone and they can worry about cleanup. You have a job. It's not your problem."

"Understood." I nodded. It killed me all over again to say that. If we had the chance to save someone, we should. But Dr Abbey was desperate for that package and she was right that it wasn't our fight. The whole reason we'd gone to Canada in the first place was because we were making the news instead of reporting it. That wasn't what we'd set out to do.

"You know, If that container turns out to just be full of LEGO or female toiletries, I'll shoot her myself." Shaun muttered, making me almost jump a mile as he came up behind me. I hadn't heard him leave the van. He had a point though. This thing had better be worth it.

Moving up, I drew my gun and started checking corners as I started moving through the piles of rubble and burned-out husks of buildings that made up the checkpoint. As I did, I noticed an arm sticking up from the wreckage. It was just a right arm, the rest of the body fully buried, and it was moving in a way that could only be described as lifeless. It raised up and flopped down onto the rubble repeatedly as it tried to get a purchase. It wasn't getting anywhere fast and there was no denying what was lying on the other side.

Not keen to attract anyone living or dead that may be in the area, I let my left hand venture to my waist, withdrawing a short piece of metal tube from the case on the back of my belt. I screwed the silencer on before climbing the rubble and aiming down. Silencers aren't often used against the zombies since they mostly hunt by sight rather than sound. I mostly kept it around for other reasons like raiders. It was a way of getting the first few shots off without losing the element of surprise after the first one. But that didn't stop me from putting four rounds into the rubble pile now. Normally I'd never dream of using so many, but I couldn't definitively see where my target's head was and didn't dare move the rubble to get a shot. I would have used more, but on the fourth one the arm spasmed and came to lie still. With that done, I unscrewed the silencer again and slipped it back into the case on my belt before holstering my gun.

"George!" I looked up at Shaun's shout. "Over here!" He was shouting and not bothering to use his ear cuff. This was serious. I jumped down and raced over to where he stood. Crumpled at his feet was a person. One who was definitely among the living, if only barely. He had a Police uniform on and was definitely part of the elite security division assigned to duties like border control in the post-Rising world.

"What happened here?" I asked him gently. He had an ugly gash running across his head and there was no telling ho concussed he was. But that was the least of his worries. There was blood pooling on the pavement around him from an unknown source. His uniform was dark so I couldn't see where it was and wasn't safe to try and put my hands if we needed to move him.

"Raiders..." His voice was little more than a strangled gasp. "It was a whole gang. With the noise... Panic..." I could fill in the rest.

"The noise and panic attracted zombies." I nodded gravely. Shaun had shouted to call me over. We couldn't stay long. But what did we do with him? Could we risk picking him up and putting him in the van? Would the automatic quarantine kick in and seal the whole thing up? That wouldn't help anyone. We had to stop the bleeding but had no way to tell where he was injured.

"George, there's a family I know that live nearby." I fought the urge to jump a mile at the sound of her voice. I forgot she was in our connection. "They're ex medics. If you can get him there then he has a good chance. They're about a click due East. It's barely any distance out of your way."

"I don't know if he'll make it." I couldn't hide the waver in my voice as I continued studying him. He didn't appear to be bitten at all, otherwise he would have shown signs of amplification. That didn't make the blood loss redundant.

"If you want to find out the details of what happened then he has to." Dr Abbey told me sternly. "If you get going now, his chances will be better. You have your bike with you, don't you? You can get on it and scout ahead or something." She raised a good point. My bike would help us scout ahead and if I took the shotgun or a rifle I could clear a path for Shaun. We'd have to disable the automatic quarantine and provided Shaun strapped the cop down tight in case he amplified in the back of the van and disabled the quarantine we might be able to-

"George..." Shaun's voice was flat and emotionless. I looked up to see the officer had slid sideways against the wall. Blood trickled from his mouth and nose as his jaw hung slack and his arms rested by his sides. Now the true extent of what we'd been dealing with hit me. He'd suffered multiple ruptured organs. It had been a miracle he'd lasted as long as he had.

"There never was any hope, was there?" I drew my gun again. Since Shaun had already shouted out to me, the silencer was now as good as pointless. I took aim at the officer's head and pulled the trigger. "We should go. It's not safe here." Shaun nodded and we turned tail, making a dart for the van. We used the blood testing panel to get in to prove to each other that we were clean, not wanting to stop and take a field test if we didn't have to. Normally I would have insisted on it, but since Shaun was immune to anything other than death causing him to amplify and my reservoir condition could potentially offer me some resistance, I didn't want to linger longer than necessary. We jumped in and hit the gas as soon as we'd both tested clean, with me covering Shaun from the driver's window as he used the testing panel. It was only once we were on the road that we allowed ourselves to relax. As long as we kept moving, we should be okay.

"People assume shooting something is easy. For them it probably is. Especially zombies. The thing with that is, they're able to recognise that the person that zombie used to be is no longer in there. They're dead and gone. It makes sense, really. Unfortunately, I can't do that. I've been infected. I've amplified and felt what it's like. I never completed that transition since Shaun put a bullet through the back of my head just as I amplified. Now that I'm back, I'm really struggling with shooting people. And the fact I shot a dead body before it reanimated today, the fact I desecrated human remains like that and just took it for a fact that he would come back, speaks volumes about what our 'society' has become.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to deny the Rising ever happened. There are those people out there. They live their sheltered lives never seeing a zombie, get complacent and begin to deny that there was ever an apocalypse. Then they wonder why, when their husband/wife/child is exposed via formite viral contact, they get up suddenly and start biting people. Those idiots have no one but themselves to blame. I'm not one of them. Since I've amplified myself, I feel uniquely qualified to tell those people what absolute fucking idiots they are. But I will say that ever since I died, the fact that every single person I kill now, living or dead, was once just like you or me- someone who had a family, a career and a life of their own to live- will always stay with me. Humanity will repopulate one day, and we will be able to take back the land we've lost. In a few hundred years, all of this will be looked back on by those who come after us and they may think it all a mere bad dream.

I envy and hate them more with every passing day."

From The Living Dead Girl, the blog of Georgia Mason II.

June 3 2046.