Canada Under Attack: Where Shadows Walk

Part 5

The rest of the summer was spent doing one of three things: scavenging for any supplies we could find, avoiding people with the red plague, and fighting off those desperate or crazy enough to attack the house in an attempt to take what we had.

You'd think I was kidding about the last one. Heck, we were Canadians, known across the world for being civil and polite, even to total strangers. Funny how the lack of law enforcement, food and water, and the effects of a killer plague changed all that. Now we had gangs of crazy starving people roaming the streets and willing to do just about anything to get a bite to eat. That is, if they weren't already dying from the plague.

We had three pitched battles during the summer on our street alone, with a handful of us in possession of guns and supplies fighting off mobs that came to take our stuff, armed with bats, axes and anything else that came to hand. I'm not sure which was worse: watching Jesper die in front of me from a shot to the head or learning from my dad how to do the same to somebody else, then doing it. I found myself fervently praying every night during the third wave lockdown that I wouldn't see anybody I knew in those mobs and be forced to shoot them.

As hard as I tried not to, it was inevitable that I would have to shoot somebody, with things being as crazy as they were. I remember the day that I did. I twisted hard to the side and puked out my guts after shooting my first zerker. As in 'berserker', the name we were giving to the crazies in the streets. This zerker in particular was a guy not much older than me, maybe Cam's age, dirty and gaunt from three or four weeks without substantial food. He had charged our makeshift barricade that we had pulled together after a couple failed attempts from smaller mobs to get onto the street.

Using stalled cars, chunks of wall and debris to plug the holes, we had managed to block the entrance to the dead-end street we lived on, using the houses and their fenced yards to cover the back. It was more of a fortification than a deterrent. The mob had somehow reasoned that, if we had guns and were willing to use them to defend ourselves, we were also defending supplies and clean water. A hastily assembled wall wouldn't actually stop them. We were just hoping it'd give us enough cover to protect ourselves.

Ironically they were right. Suspecting that the mob eventually would figure it out, my dad, working from some mental prepper handbook, had quickly started to prepare us for an all-out attack shortly after his scouting trip. Of course he was also right, as he had been ever since the visitors started their assault. Kinda made me wonder which chapter in that little book was written about alien invasions. Because he was spot on with most of it.

Anyway, using ropes and a lot of sweat, we pulled the stalled cars into place in a day, feeling eyes on us the whole time. The old guy a couple doors down, helped, as well as a couple of immigrants from Africa that also lived in the dead-end. Both of their families had come from rather screwed up countries on the home continent so had quite naturally started squirreling stuff away as soon as they could.

They weren't armed, like us and the old man, but they had more than enough supplies for a couple years. They had done enough giving things away upon the threat of violence, they were willing to help us stop it from happening again. Thank goodness they were: we seriously needed their help moving those cars and building the barricade.

The attack came within minutes of us filling the last big gaps in the makeshift wall, confirming that they had watched us build it and were now trying to catch us before we could finish the job. My first target was also the first guy down our street, charging with a long-handled axe in his hands and hoarsely yelling.

Of course, charge was a relative term. They were tired and hungry, with not much left in the tank. So it was more of an awkward stumble. But, in numbers, they would easily overwhelm the handful of us if they managed to swarm over our ragtag wall.