When the sun rose this morning we were so close to reaching the goal we’d been striving for. Mere hours from Waskaganish. Short, short hours away from Sven Kanelstrand and the freedom the cruise ship promised. We were all in good spirits, thinking about the possibility. While we might have been somewhat preoccupied with those thoughts, we were still ever vigilant in our guard against the Undead. There was no reason to come this far only to lose the battle at the very end.

The road to Waskaganish seemed somewhat more alive. The Undead were far more prevalent and appeared to be moving in the same direction as us. At times, they would reach out their putrid arms for our moving SUV, perhaps hoping that their paltry strength was enough to stop our forward motion. The fact that the Undead were moving in our same direction was both promising and frightening. Promising in that it meant that other survivors had been through here previously, leading the Undead along with them. Frightening because it meant that Waskaganish could be teeming with the Undead.

With a fair amount of driving, we finally got to a point where we couldn’t see any Undead figures shambling ahead of us and the major mass of the horde was behind us. Maybe, just maybe we would beat them all to the port. Beat them to freedom.

Arriving in Waskaganish was somewhat anticlimactic. There wasn’t much of a town to speak of. More of a collection of Quonset huts. There was one thing that the port had going for it at this point though; it was free of the Undead. It was also full of other survivors. There must have been about three hundred or more other people, living people, all waiting for their chance at freedom.

The only problem was that freedom was sitting in the water, long kilometres off shore in Hudson Bay. The captain still hadn’t returned my email from the other day so we had no way of knowing if and when the ship would come into the harbour. In all honesty, we didn’t even know if the ship could come into the harbour. It was entirely possible that the water was too shallow in the port. Perhaps there was a ferry system that was taking the survivors a group at a time. Whatever system they had in place I just hoped that someone was taking the time to check each and every survivor for possible infection. No use getting ourselves on a floating sanctuary only to be confined on it with a growing army of mindless Undead.

We parked the Escalade on the side of the main street, and got out. It was the first time that we felt somewhat safe in leaving our vehicle for a few moments. We still brought our guns of course, no need to be stupid about things. There was a definite feeling of camaraderie among the survivors. The unity of the shared experience. Nothing needed to be explained. Some of us may have had to endure more but it didn’t take away from the fact that we all had a common enemy. The Undead.

We asked around to learn the procedure for getting to the cruise ship, assuming that something was already in place. No one really seemed to have any idea. One man had made it all the way from Columbia (that’s South America) and had been in Waskaganish for 2 days. He relayed that he had yet to see any action from the ship since getting here. While the news was startling and didn’t sit well, I chose to believe there was a reason for it. Perhaps, they had run into some trouble with their navigation system, or their engines. Even their communications could be out. One thing was for certain, if the gentleman from Columbia had not seen any action on the outer decks trough his binoculars in 2 days it meant that at least the ship wasn’t inhabited by the Undead.

In the small amount of time that we were able to gather information from people, it looked like no one else had any kind of communication devices that were serviceable. No laptops with mobile internet, no cell phones with Wi-Fi or internet access, nothing. They had all come to this place with no way to communicate with the ship once they got here. There was one transport truck that had a CB radio but so far no one knew how to use it. Max offered to give it try and he was lead off to the truck.

I reveal to any of the other survivors that I was able to keep in touch with the outside world. I did this because I was afraid that I would be inundated with requests to check Facebook or email accounts. That was the last thing I needed at this point; to have someone accidentally break my lifeline because they needed to harvest some crops or check to see if their on again, off again boyfriend is still out there. I had already stopped checking my personal accounts weeks ago knowing that my parents are probably dead. Likely Undead too. My husband is dead. My friends are pretty much all dead, likely drafted into the army of the Undead… The only email address I use is the one attached to this blog. So if one of you is out there in the crowd and keeping a lifeline secret, I understand. I won’t tell, if you don’t tell.

When Max returned, he let us know that the CB in the truck was useless. He couldn’t reach the ship and wondered if the unit on the ship had either been destroyed or turned off completely. There was also the distinct possibility that it didn’t even have one. CB radios aren’t exactly high end communications equipment. Our only way to get a hold of possible salvation was to contact them through the address that the captain had used. And the sooner the better. It wouldn’t take the Undead all that long to get here. In the meantime, Max and a few of the other men and women started to plan a strategy for the moment the Undead came shuffling into town.

I snuck away to work on my computer in the privacy of one of the Quonset huts. I needed to get through to Captain Kanelstand. To find out what we were supposed to do. I already knew that the port had three motor boats that could act as ferrying vessels but did anyone else know how to pilot a motor boat? Was there enough fuel and enough time to get all of the survivors across to the cruise ship? We had to consider that without knowing what situation we would encounter on the ship, it was foolhardy to send survivors to their potential demise.

I knew from the map that there were 3 other ports towns along the coast of Hudson Bay: Eastmain, Wemindji, and Chisasibi. It was entirely possible that each of those ports could be free of the Undead. Would it buy us some time if we diverted many of the survivors to those little settlements?

God Sven, where are you?

The Next Day