Chapter 2

Besides being granted a weapon and having ‘everything’ repaired, I was able to enter a portal very early, before they were being regulated by the new section of the RCMP and the treaty Native Band leadership.

My mother’s cousin had two portals open up on his dairy farm. His son was thought to have a weapon, and he put out a post on the family WhattsHapp asking for anyone who could join him. I threw my name out and was included (probably because I was the only one who did).

The cousin thought he had some form of long-handled brush cutter (we later learned it was called a Tsakat, and may have fit him perfectly due to it being used traditionally by farmers to clear land, and the fact that it was historically from Armenia ... as was his mother)

We met at the farm that weekend, both of us decked out in whatever body armour we could piece together. I had on mostly Lacrosse and hockey gear with a few soccer pads on my forearms. Bruce was wearing his motocross suit with old Carhartt coveralls over top. We were going to be warm.

Just us two idiots.

I asked the kids to be good for my Aunt Diane and off we went.

I still cringe at the attitude we had back then. The portals were a joke mostly to us. We wanted to have an adventure and we just went for it. Sometimes fools get lucky.

Bruce and I clasped hands and walked smiling into hell. It would be over 4 hours later that we would return, battered, bruised, and scared with some new scars and some new treasure along with a healthy new respect for these portals.

Our weapons were waiting for us like others had found them, floating by themselves in the start room. These rooms are generic as far as I’m concerned and give anyone entering a chance to orient themselves before passing on to the level, which is through a second grey portal at the bottom of a long flight of stairs. They look a lot like the stairs at Versailles (just a lot gloomier).

Bruce snatched his weapon (which he named ‘Bill’ right away) while I approached mine much more slowly. The bottom of the shaft had a large silver coloured knob as a counterweight. It wasn’t exactly razor sharp like a spear, but quite pointy.

The top had a thin spike about 1 & 1/2 inches long that the sling loop went over. A foot down from the top, a cord was looped and tied to the pole with a fancy knot. Halfway down the string was a pocket, then the cord continued on to terminate at a loop. A large stone was with it.

I managed to grasp both the stone and the staff at the same time. We had read from online posts that they became yours when you touched them. I could feel it, as soon as I touched it. There was no mistaking my weapon for his.

“How come yours is all black?” Bruce asked, looking at his wood and steel coloured Bill.

“Really can’t say ... does this look like writing to you?” I asked, tracing the odd patterns on the head of the shaft.

“What are you seeing?” He asked, putting his weapon away and bringing it out again (there was an eastern Native tribe that was trending on MeTube, giving away a lot of free info at this point).

“These ... you can’t see them? They’re bright silver on black!” I said, annoyed.

Bruce glanced at the shaft. “Nope, nothing...” and went back to making lunges and overhead slashes with Bill.

I marveled at my weapon a bit longer, putting the stone in the pocket and slipping the loop over the spike at the end.

“I’m going to try a couple of throws.” I called out over my shoulder. Bruce just shrugged. It felt like I’d done it a thousand times before ... sling behind shoulder, opposite side foot forward, push with the top hand while using the bottom as the fulcrum.

The small torch on the wall was extinguished into a crumpled plate of metal and my stone bounced hard enough off the wall to hit the opposite one.

I picked up the stone, it was perfectly round despite a hard collision with the stone wall. Reloading, I looked at the next torch on the wall.

“Hey, leave them alone, use the broken one for target practice!” Bruce called out from the far corner by the stairs. Chagrined I reoriented my throw and mashed the broken torch some more.

“I only have the one stone...” I mentioned to the younger man with his Bill.

“No problem, sniper the first target, or the one you figure is most dangerous ... and you can hit, then use it like a staff to hold them back while I decapitate ‘em!” Bruce went on cheerily.

We had heard that there would be a few Zombies in the first run. We sort-of practiced with me holding back a group and him hooking and slicing their heads. We had high hopes and were totally ignorant.

Together we walked down the stairs to the grey portal at the bottom, I loaded my single stone, while my partner rolled his shoulders like some boxer ready for a fight.

“Ready?” He asked.

“Yep” ... and we linked our free hands, then walked through the portal and into hell.

I have since learned that what we got was called ‘The Factory’. It’s the hardest of the first levels of purple, since there is nowhere to hide and the shaggy, stumbling zombies bunch up and follow you everywhere.

I saw them first and cringed ... they looked and moved like some patients I had at the hospital with a stumbling gait and eyes that didn’t seem to fully register what was going on around them.

There were way more than just a few of them.

I grabbed Bruce by the shoulder and pulled him down behind a dilapidated forklift.

“We need a defensible position, I had training a few weeks ago that said: in a riot, if you can’t run then take a defensible position!” I whispered.

The young farmer / warrior had lost all of his recent bravado after looking at 5 walking corpses and just nodded mutely.

Looking around, I saw a large staircase that led to a platform where a trolley crane sat parked.

“Let’s smash a few heads, then when they come for us, we retreat to the stairs and hold them back there. I’ll bar the way and you hack ‘n slash ... ok?” Bruce was starting to shake with fear, and I could smell piss.

“Ok Look, change of plans ... let’s just retreat to that stairway. You explore the crane cab and make sure that nothing is alive ... or un-alive ... in there, then come back down and help me as I hold them off.” Another silent nod from the panicked boy.

“Right, stay low until we run out of cover, then walk quickly. Break into a run if we’re spotted ... Go!”

The idiot broke into a sprint right away and quickly outdistanced me. I could hear the occasional groan over my shoulder and had reached the stairs when I quickly turned back to see the five of them far closer than I would have expected. They didn’t run but moved with a kinda quick walk. I targeted the leader and struck a (sorta-rare) perfect headshot from over 25 meters away. The stone actually went right through his semi-rotten head and through the neck of another behind him. I marked mentally where I thought I’d seen my stone fall.

Three ‘walkers’ were still on their way, the first and fastest outpacing his friends (do zombies have friends?) and I decided to be aggressive and stepped into her with a hard swing with the butt of my staff caving in her skull. Unsure how to fight the next two who were shoulder to shoulder, I gave way and backed up towards the stairs.

Zombie 1 on the left side stumbled on his (former) buddies prone corpse and zombie 2 got a few meters ahead of him before I again pounced on a lone enemy and lunged the butt of the staff through his outstretched arms and into his heart. The body seemed to stop and take a second to decide what it was going to do before falling in a heap at the bottom of the stairs.

Zombie 1 got the same treatment, but in the head again. I was feeling like one-on-one; I could take them. They were probably as strong or stronger than me, but slower and much, much stupider.

I crept up the stairs as quietly as possible, knowing that I was basically abandoning our most defensible position but needing to find out what the hell Bruce was doing.

He was cowering, no other way to put it.

Curled up in a ball making weird off-waving gestures at the cab of the crane. He looked like he wasn’t going to be any help unless I could coach (or coax) him through this overwhelming fear response.

I sat beside him not saying anything, but tipping my head so my helmet was touching his. We stayed that way for a few minutes while his sloppy, staggering breathing calmed down. We were watching a zombie through the cab windows trying to walk through the door towards us but running into the glass and steel door over and over. He had a clean bright name tag that clearly said Barry’...

I started giggling ... the kids and I had just watched a movie where a bee named Barry keeps running into a window trying to get through it, saying ‘Maybe this time ... Maybe ‘this’ time ... Maybe ‘this’ time.’ over and over again.

I started whispering the line in time with its bumping into the glass.

“Maybe this time...”

Bump

“Maybe this time.”

Bump

“Maybe ‘this’ time.”

Bump

Bruce must have recalled it ... he started giggling along with me.

“What’s wrong with this door?” I asked in a fake low voice.

Bump

“Johnny must ‘a locked the door.”

Bump

“I gotta poop”.

Bump

“I’m late for lunch!”

Bump

I knew he’d be okay when Bruce started making his own voiceovers...

“I’m late for a hot date.”

Bump

“I gotta get to the dentist!”

Bump

“Maybe this time!”

Bump

We were giggling our way through a terrifying situation. “Look,” I started when we’d run out of giggles. “I don’t want that thing at our back, so we gotta kill it. I already took care of five, one at a time, downstairs. They are strong but slow and stupid. They don’t seem to learn either so if we find something that works, it should just keep on working.”

He nodded, silent again but not shaking anymore.

“I want to pop the latch on the door, then I’ll spear and hold it. I want you to take a few chops at it. Try taking an arm at the joint, once they aren’t able to grasp at anything, take its head at the neck. I can hold it against the rail.” I looked down, nothing was climbing the stairs ... yet.

We hauled ourselves up, “Ready?” I asked.

“Yup!” He said ... first positive words since we got in here. I really hoped he was.

I popped the latch on the door with the pin end of my Staff and Barry, the slowly decomposing crane-operator bounced the door open. It stuck open against the rail. I got low and pinned him to the door. Bruce went straight for the head, his Bill taking it at the neck. Barry’s head fell down the 15 meters and went splat on the factory floor not far from the bodies at the bottom of the staircase.

It was uncomfortably loud in the silent factory of the dead.

I unpinned Barrys name tag from his flannel shirt, thinking to take it as a keepsake of Bruces first kill. We looked through the cab just to see if there was anything interesting in there. I found a bucket of giant nuts and bolts that were each almost half the size of my fist. Bruce found a pair of clean work boots. We pulled out our finds and discussed what to do next.

Our decisions were kinda limited ... I could see a large group of the dead shambling our way and slapped the lad next to me, pointing them out. “Hey, these bolts look a lot like the stone I had. Thread a nut or two on each bolt for me, I’ll see if I can thin that herd down there from way up here.”

I shoved the other half of Barry’s corpse over the rail, feeling a little guilty about not feeling guilty about it. I needed room to move, and this was obviously life or death. Bruce handed me a bolt with two nuts on it, it must have weighed about half a pound. I loaded it up and tried a general shot just into the middle of the group. I managed a hit and reloaded.

“We got ‘bout a dozen more!” Bruce called out from the bucket.

Two more shots, and one of the group fell and lay still. The others scattered a bit as they stumbled around it. I directed my fire to the densest part of the group. Five more shots and two more dropped from the horde. They were about 100 meters from the staircase beginning and I had fired off all but two of my ammo at the walking corpses, dropping a few more.

“Let’s get down there and fight a long retreat back up the staircase. I’ll hold them back; you slash and hack.” I called out and we hustled to the staircase.

Running down the first few flights, Bruce paused.

“C’m on! We need to get down there to give ourselves as much retreating room as possible!” I all but shouted.

“I have an idea!” He shouted back, as he hacked through the handrails at the bottom of the set of stairs and bent it into the walking area of the stairs. “This is kinda like a cow guide, just designed to catch and impale instead of guide and protect.” he said as he hacked at the opposite handrail.

I could picture it, two or four handrails cut-off to a sharp point and bent in like spears to the inside of the staircase. They’d get impaled or at least slowed down by them.

“Get at it!” I yelled. “Just leave me room to slip back through.” I hollered as I turned to trot down the next flight. The smashing and banging drowned me out.

I had time to step off the bottom of the stairs and loose two more bolt/nut projectiles from my sling before retreating back to the staircase to try backing up the stairs with my staff in front of me ... it wasn’t easy and tripping and falling backwards up the stairs would end me.

The fastest zombie just got to die first, as there was no support or other distractions. Hard lunge to the chest and I breached its heart. The second one was on me quickly and I tried another lunge, but failed to destroy the heart. This zombie grabbed my staff and pulled.

“Bruce!” I screamed. The sound of banging stopped, and I heard more feet on the stairs.

Seeing him running down the last flight stairs I shifted off to my left, and twisted the grappling corpse to the side, opening it up for attack. Bruce ran into position and took its head off with one swipe. The corpse stopped pulling, but its hands didn’t automatically release either.

I got my foot up and wrenched my staff out as Bruce called out “They’re here! Retreat!” and we stumbled back up the stairs. I watched Bruce bend-in the lower rail on one side, then the other. Making a sort-of man-trap at knee height. He then started to bend in the upper handrail to match them. I got the idea quickly and bent-in the last one, using my staff as a lever.

The first zombies were basically right there, so I sent Bruce off again to start on the next set of man-catchers, saying I’d try to kill a few before retreating. The first corpse hit the first tube and just kept pushing, impaling itself (which it ignored) but was directed to the side ... a nasty squishing sound made. I stepped back, lined up and caved in its head as the next contestant stepped up and skewered itself on the other bent handrail.

I went back and forth four times, killing three more zombies before Bruce reappeared at my side. “Change!” He called out, and stepped in to swing at the heads that were still moving.

I got a break to breathe while he killed 5 or 6 more. “This isn’t going to hold much longer.” he said as he lifted me by the armpit. “Let’s retreat to the next position. We’ve killed about ten here and there’s about thirty more, so we need three or four more man-traps setup.” Already the stairs were shaking, and the handrail/skewers were bending again under the sheer press of the crowd.

We retreated and set the new trap. “Let’s bend the bottom ones in completely to block any crawlers better.” I said between gasps.

We heard the metal groan and snap below us, the whole stairway shaking as the handrail holding them back finally snapped off. We got the second trap set well before the first shambling body managed its way up the stairs. Bruce had run back up to the next trap location and was banging away at the metal already.

I felt the whole staircase start to sway...”Bruce! Stop cutting! We’re gonna lose the whole staircase!” I screamed. To his credit, he stopped immediately and ran back down to help me.

“The handrail must be part of the structure.” he hollered.

“No Shit!” I called back, grabbing what was left of a handrail to steady myself. “We’ll just have to make it count.” I grunted as I bashed in another rotten face.

My plan to wear my old Lacrosse gear hit a snag as I got too close and one of the Walkers grabbed the cage on the front of my helmet. I yelled and wiggled, and tugged. With a bit of luck, the chinstrap popped off and the helmet was ripped free (along with a painful chunk of my hair!) I kept ‘kickin’ ass and takin’ names’ for as long as I could keep my arms up. Bruce spelled me off while I recovered. He was a lot more efficient than me at this and seemed to be over his initial fears completely.

“Retreat: it’s getting to jammed up here!” He called out. There were ten or so of them left.

“Do we have one more position?” I called back, hauling myself back up.

“Kinda...” he replied nonchalantly.

We reached our last fallback position. Only one bar was out, leaving a meter wide gap for the zombies to pass through. I glanced at him.

“Do you wanna risk cutting one more?” He asked.

“Don’t think there’s much of a choice. We can’t win a stand-up fight against that many.” I sighed.

“Get back to the crane deck, I’m going to cut the last bar.” he yelled out. The groaning of the stairs had picked up already. The last of the horde trampling their fallen and smashing the second set of man-catcher poles.

Two quick chops and the last upper handrail was free. Looking at it from here, I could see how the handrails were a full support member of the structure as a whole. I don’t know much about architecture, but I could easily see that.

The stairs swayed quite a bit then, and Bruce grabbed at the remaining structure, dropping his Bill which bounced once and fell to the factory floor below. I saw him reach his hand out for it as it was falling, then the look on his face turned from anguish to one of surprise ... his Weapon never hit the floor ... it just disappeared. Bruce turned to me smiling and brought out his Bill from inventory.