"Bashir, where in hell are you? Come here, I think I've been bit," Marlene Thompson shouted as she stumbled out of the warehouse, clutching her wounded knee with one hand while holding her pistol with the other. Wandering the warehouse in search of food wasn't a good idea, but hunger has a way of making people do things they wouldn't otherwise do, even during the zombie apocalypse...
With the arrival of winter, Marlene figured that the zombies had frozen, as they usually did, and that things ought to be a little safer than they'd been. The warehouse, located in the Industrial Avenue area of eastern Ottawa, seemed quite promising. Once upon a time, corporate giant Walmart stocked it to the brim, intent on having the warehouse service its local stores. Against her mate's reservations, Marlene decided to go inside and check it out.
What Marlene found inside was a thoroughly looted warehouse, and some of the reanimated warehouse workers were still inside, emaciated zombies still wearing their work blues. With her rifle, Marlene put down at least a dozen of the damn things, but one of them got to her as she raced for the entrance. Woman and zombie fell to the floor and wrestled furiously for several desperate moments...
Growling, the zombie got on top of Marlene, angling for a bite. Once, it was a burly foreman, a red-haired man with a thick beard. Now it was one of the undead, ravenous for her flesh. With her cutlass Marlene stabbed it through its brains, stopping it for good. Unfortunately, the damn thing bit her thigh before she could kill it. I'm doomed, Marlene thought, shaking her head at her lousy luck...
From the onset, her companion Bashir had been complaining that this was a bad idea, and Marlene ignored him since he'd always been something of a complainer. Born and raised in the City of Red Deer, Alberta, Marlene Thompson was a farmer's daughter through and true. Her father Lionel Thompson, God rest his soul, taught her the ways of the survivalists before his passing. Marlene was studying construction management at Algonquin College in Ottawa when the zombie apocalypse hit, and that's when everything started to go wrong...
When the first incidents of reanimated dead coming back to hunt down and devour the living began popping up all over CNN, RDI and other international news outlets, the world reacted with disbelief. Zombies were a staple of American television, with shows like The Walking Dead and iZombie dominating the airways. How could zombies be real?
Trump and his cronies in the White House actually laughed the whole thing off, and so did the other men and women tasked with leading and protecting America. America's elite ignored the threat, until the streets of the U.S. capital started to swarm with zombies, and the local police teamed up with the national guard to try to save the White House, to no avail. By then it was too late. City by city, town by town, America fell to the zombie plague...
Canada has always followed America's lead, socially and politically, and the zombie apocalypse proved to be no exception. The Canada Border Services Agency teamed up with the RCMP to prevent Americans fleeing the zombie apocalypse from entering Canada, to no avail. Soon, zombies were roaming the streets of Toronto, and the Canadian capital and other major cities soon fell...
Marlene Thompson, a survivalist through and true, definitely hadn't been caught with her pants down. For days before the panic hit the globe, she'd been monitoring various online broadcasts, and knew of zombie outbreaks in places like Senegal, North Korea and Brazil. The Albertan lass saw the coming of the storm, and prepared in kind. The West only cared when zombies started popping up in the United Kingdom and North America...
While everyone around her panicked and ran around like chickens with their heads cut off, Marlene Thompson got ready. She stocked up on guns, ammo, gasoline, and fortified the old pickup truck left to her by her uncle Jerome Thompson, and turned it into a mean, efficient, zombie-killing machine. One with steel-reinforced and zombie-proof windows, a mini-cannon on the roof, and anti-zombie torches.
First, the fearless young woman cleared up her residence at Algonquin College, and then, with the help of other armed survivors, Marlene cleared up her entire neighborhood. A lot of people formed quick alliances in the early days of the zombie apocalypse, and with good reason. With law and order now distant memories, trust was a rare commodity. Marlene had always been a cynic, so she quickly adjusted to the post-apocalypse mindset. Along the way, she met the man destined to play an important role in her life, Bashir Samatar...
"You need to wake the fuck up, big man, it's kill or be killed out there," those were Marlene's first words to Bashir Samatar, on the fateful and turbulent day that they met. He'd been holed up in the Nepean Centrepointe Library, besieged by local zombies. The lifelong nerd had actually been playing World of Warcraft on the library computers when the zombies swarmed the place.
Trapped inside the library, besieged by the undead, the young Somali-Canadian had no choice but to hide. After days spent trapped inside the library, running low on food and options, Bashir was wracked with deep despair. Basically, he was waiting for death. And then fortunately deliverance came, in a most unexpected form. Marlene Thompson and her pals came in, armed with a rifle and a cutlass, and they made short work of the twenty or so zombies surrounding Bashir's hideaway.
"Thanks for saving my life, ma'am," Bashir said, and he looked at the tall, skinny, tattooed, blonde-haired and green-eyed gal with the permanent scowl, awed by her sheer toughness. For some reason, she reminded him of the tough lady in the movie Terminator 2. Marlene looked at him through unblinking eyes and shook his hand, then told him to move his ass.
"We need to get the fuck out of here," Marlene shouted, and Bashir suddenly noticed a small but growing group of zombies converging on their position. The young man dutifully followed Marlene and her pals Joey and Marty to their pickup truck. That night, they left the suburb of Nepean. Since then, they'd been through a lot together. Joey and Marty were gone, and he and Marlene were on their own. All those thoughts flashed through Bashir's mind as Marlene came limping out of the damn warehouse...
"Shit," Bashir said, and Marlene flashed him a brave smile. Tall and broad-shouldered, with dark brown skin, a thick beard and a smooth shaved head, Bashir looked a lot older than his twenty three years. Once upon a time, he played football for Carleton University in the City of Ottawa, Ontario. Slinging his rifle over his shoulder, he carefully approached her, and almost flinched upon seeing the bite mark.
"Yeah, that's what I thought," Marlene whispered, and Bashir looked at her, and shook his head. Without another word, he helped Marlene grab a seat, and then grabbed the medical kit. The zombie virus was poorly understood, but in those rare cases where someone survived being bitten, it was only because fire was used to cauterize the wound. Bashir reached for the blow torch, and Marlene nodded and gritted her teeth.
"I'm sorry about this, it's your only chance, Mare," Bashir whispered, and Marlene shook her head and smiled, for she hated his annoying little nickname for her. Bashir applied rubbing alcohol against the wound, and then lit the torch. Glancing at Marlene, he steeled himself for what he had to do. There was a nasty bite mark on her thigh, and he pressed the torch against it, wincing as Marlene howled in sheer pain. For a long time, Marlene thrashed about wildly, and then she actually passed out from the pain...
"Where am I?" Marlene asked, as she came to. She found herself covered in blankets at the back of the truck. Bashir was driving. The road ahead was strangely empty, save for the occasional abandoned vehicle, what they'd come to expect in a world where zombies roamed the earth. Briefly turning around, Bashir looked at Marlene, and smiled.
