"Where was I before all this? Let's see, when the Zombie Apocalypse began, I was in the safest place anyone could be, the Grand Valley Institution For Women," Yasmin Wardeh said with a smirk, and the Lebanese-born and Ottawa-bred ex-con looked at her fellow wayfarer with a mischievous gleam in her brown eyes. Such a conventional and normal guy underneath it all, Yasmin thought, grinning at his discomfort.
"What do you mean by that?" Jean-Louis Yvon asked, and Yasmin noticed a look of uncertainty creeping into the six-foot-three, burly and broad-shouldered young Haitian-Canadian man's handsome face. Still wearing the same military fatigues he had on the day his unit at CFB Trenton got the call to report to Ottawa to help local law enforcement deal with the Zombie plague, Jean-Louis seemed to be having a hard time adjusting to his new reality.
"Exactly what I said, sweetie, I'm an ex-con, and you are an ex-soldier, none of the things we were in the old world matters because the old world is dead," Yasmin snapped, rolling her eyes. Jean-Louis frowned, but said nothing. There was a contemplative look on his face. He looked past her, at the street below. Crowding in front of the Rideau Shopping Center, there were Zombies everywhere. As far as the gaze could see, and more were coming.
"That's a lot of rotting ambulant creepers," Jean-Louis mused, and the hefted his rifle, and shook his head. Closing his eyes, he tried not to think of how many of his fellow soldiers died defending the City of Ottawa, Ontario, before it fell to the Zombies. The Canadian government totally underestimated the Zombie menace, and the hundreds of troops summoned by the Prime Minister hadn't made much difference. Ottawa, long thought to be a boring city, was now a dead city...
"They're Zombies, sweetie, so, call them Zombies," Yasmin said, and Jean-Louis looked at her and shrugged. Shaking her head, Yasmin thought of her former cell mate, Sarah, whom she'd had to kill with her bare hands after she'd gotten infected, bitten by a reanimated corrections officer. Sarah and Yasmin had been cell mates for two years, ever since Yasmin got sent to the all-female prison in the City of Kitchener, Ontario, for robbing the local BMO. They'd been friends, and more, but in the end, Yasmin did what she had to do.
"Dammit," Yasmin whispered, still haunted by what she'd had to do. Driving that icepick through Sarah's brain hadn't been easy, even after Sarah reanimated and came back as one of them. The Grand Valley Women's Prison had been overrun but Yasmin and a few other survivors fought their way out of it.
Yasmin's plan had been to make her way to the U.S. border, but that plan fell through when the Canadian government implemented martial law and the roads became surcharged with people fleeing the Zombie plague. Thus, Yasmin stole a car and made her way to the City of Ottawa, Ontario, intent on reconnecting with her brother Yassin, who was a survivalist nut with a ton of guns.
Yasmin and Yassin were born in the City of Zahle, Lebanon, and moved to the City of Toronto, Ontario, with their parents Ahmad and Mariam Wardeh in the late 1980s. The Lebanese siblings took radically different paths in life. Yassin joined the Canadian Armed Forces, served for twelve years and then got an honorable discharge at the age of thirty six. He married his Filipina sweetheart Yolanda, got a job as a manager at Walmart and settled into a quiet life right outside Ottawa.
Yasmin Wardeh on the other hand, never had patience with the system, or the rules of society. And she wasn't a loveable rogue either. Yasmin was indeed trouble with a capital T. Six feet tall, curvy and sexy, with long black hair, dark bronze skin and light brown eyes, Yasmin had killer good looks and a cunning, ruthless mind hiding behind a pleasant façade. A natural-born grafter lacking in the scruples department, Yasmin was determined to 'make it' by any means necessary.
In 2011, after dropping out of the University of Toronto at the age of twenty five, Yasmin became a confidence woman, a trickster of sorts. She did everything from credit card fraud to money laundering, working for low-end criminal organizations. Yasmin made quite a bit of money, until she got hooked on drugs. At her lowest point, Yasmin got herself a gun and robbed the local branch of the Bank of Montreal. That's what got her locked up in the first place. And she'd been locked up since 2012...
After escaping from Grand Valley Women's Prison, Yasmin had no idea returning to the City of Ottawa would prove to be pointless. Yasmin never met with her brother Yassin and attempts at reaching him proved fruitless, for the telephone networks went down, both landlines and cellphones. To add to the nightmare, there was a national communication blackout. Yasmin watched as the living and the dead fought one another in the streets of Ottawa, and the living were not winning. Finally, she made her way to the military offices at the Rideau Shopping Center and holed up there with a few soldiers, Jean-Louis Yvon among them.
"We've got to get out of here, this place will be overrun soon," Yasmin said to Jean-Louis, one of five surviving soldiers out of a unit of twenty, as the Zombies poured into the Rideau Shopping Center. The young black soldier was terrified and indecisive, and Yasmin had to shout some sense into him. Yasmin, aided by Jean-Louis and a security guard named Mohammed, made her way to the roof of a nearby building and sealed all access to it. Now, here they were, running out of time, out of supplies, and out of everything else...
"Thanks, Captain Obvious," Jean-Louis all but hissed at her, and Yasmin blinked in surprise. Jean-Louis had been quiet and almost demure throughout the day, and she'd been the decisive. Hell, when their fellow wayfarer Mohammed got bit by a Zombie, Jean-Louis wanted to tend to his wound even though it was an exercise in futility. Yasmin shot Mohammed twice in the head, for she couldn't take the chance that he'd reanimate and then come after them. Jean-Louis called her cold-blooded for doing this, and Yasmin shrugged coldly after doing what had to be done...
"Hey, bud, if it weren't for me, you'd be dead, and as for Mohammed, whom you didn't know, if I hadn't shot him, he would have turned into one of those things and eaten us," Yasmin said angrily, and Jean-Louis glared at her. The young soldier looked like he wanted to say something, but then he bit his lip and shrugged. Yasmin smirked, although she was growing more and more annoyed with Jean-Louis...
