Post #5: Reality Check

The first thing I did this morning was check to see if the yard was empty. I grabbed a baseball bat from the closet and ran out and quickly locked the back gate. I also checked the gate on the side of the house that leads to the front yard. Lucky for Joel and I that the people we bought the house from had a Great Dane, and they had built a sturdy wooden six foot fence.

So Joel never got home by 2:00 yesterday afternoon. It was almost 11:00 last night, and if he hadn’t called me from the road on his cell, I would’ve had a heart attack with worry. He always travels home through Saskatoon because it’s the most direct route from the mine.

There was a road block set up on the north side of the city that had incoming traffic backed up for about two miles. The police stopped every single vehicle and questioned everyone about whether they’d been having flu symptoms, if they’d been in contact with any of the infected, or if they were wounded. Parked on the side of the highway was a semi with a huge trailer. People in HazMat suits were stationed outside the trailer. All cops and the HazMat people carried guns. The car in front of Joel got pulled right off into the ditch and the people were forced into the trailer. One of them had to be dragged and was kicking and trying to bite one of the HazMat guy’s hands. The biter ended up with a heavy cloth-like bag over his head.

This morning when I told Joel about Mr. Mennings being in our yard, he asked me something that made me feel like an idiot. “Why didn’t you call the cops?” Joel said, after he pulled me close and was assured I was really okay. “What if he would’ve tried to get into the house? I wonder where he went. Hopefully he never attacked anyone!”

I hadn’t thought about old Paul Mennings wandering off into someone else’s yard. Crap! It hadn’t even crossed my mind. I think that even though I believe what I’ve been seeing on the news and hearing from other people (that the dead are actually returning), my brain’s really been in denial. I really hoped that this is nothing more than an extreme flu pandemic and that it’s the high fever that makes people go crazy (or something like that).

Of course I was surprised when old Paul was eating the rose bush, but when he stopped to look around, I saw that the whites of his eyes were completely red. His expression was really what made my stomach clench. He looked furious and tortured at the same time. I’ve never seen that expression before. It was that moment where I finally realized that this is really happening. It really IS zombies. It is.