We had a hard week in Montreal

Marjolaine
Montreal Quarantine - Olympic plaza
Day 130 after isolation
Rain today

Hello everyone! I am so glad to see that there are so many of you, around the world, still surviving.

Your stories give me hope.

I've had precious little hope lately.

It's been, a hard week, my follow survivors. I can't talk about it with members of my camp, moral is bad enough as it is. People around look up at me for reassurance. I've always been someone rather unfazed by things, who keeps a cool hand under pressure, who is supremely logical. For their sake, I can't let that mask crack. Because mask it surely is.

I've been weeping, strangers. I've been weeping and yelling and hitting things, in secret, far from everyone. I am not as hard as I project. I am not the girl of stone cold intellectualism even my friends see. I am not the ice queen unkind lovers have thought.

I've killed again this week. Again and again. I joke that I don't remember how many, that there have been too much.

There has been to many to count. I remember every single one.

My armor is cracking, and I can't afford a nervous breakdown I wish I could have. I can't sleep this plague away.

Montreal has had a very cold winter. Very cold. This was very difficult for the survivors, but our quarantine area, in the Olympic plaza, or rather UNDER the Olympic plaza, is geothermal-heated, much to my surprise. They really thought of everything when they build this bunker in the 70s.

The cold was very bad for the Montrealers that didn't spend the winter with us. Survivors have been pouring in for a week, many of them with scars of frostbite and hallowed cheeks. The empty look in their eyes almost made the guards shoot the first ones that showed up 10 days ago. But we brought them in and locked them in a room for a few days, which proved to the guys ruining the quarantine that they weren't sick. That they weren't coming to spread the plague. How they are sure, I don't know, they won't explain to me when I pester them.

So far, about 50 news arrivals have joined, emerging from the thawing city. They weren't the only ones.

I guess I have to be thankful for the time we had to prepare. I realise now that the winter didn't kill off the sick, these "Groaners" that you call them. They were just frozen in place. But now, summer is coming, spring is here, with a vengeance. I think that may be following us back to camp. We may have been careless. The outsiders may have been careless as well. But they are coming for us now.

When I ran, when all of this started, I had barely any contact with the sick. I made to the Olympic safe camps without getting our group into trouble. Then, winter settled in, and we waited for rescue.

We hadn't realized then that the city had been left for dead. I've had no contact with the outside world till early April, when I tried this blog.

I see now you are all as trapped as we are. What happened to our governments?

When we started to be low on food, in late December, I approached a few of the older men and women who seemed to have taken somewhat charge of the camp. I had a proposal. I've already been foraging around, and wandering through the underground Metro tunnels. I've always been restless, and the nervous flittering in the camp was wearying. The Metro Green Line: the darkness and chill like the great cavern of a beast, a labyrinth under the city, leading to many unexpected places. During my rather recent hooligans years, I acquired two things : an understanding of these great many tunnels, and a handful of keys. One of those keys, acquired quite legally I might add, led to the Biodome, and the vast freezers used to store all of the food for the animals in that indoor zoo. I knew for a fact that there were thousands of tons of fish, because I had helped bring in the crates near days before the first outbreak of the plague. I knew how to get that food. One of the men, Jérôme Tremblay, was in favor of a leading a retrieval group.

He told me he used to be a police officer, and he handed me a handgun. I don't believe he was, but you don't question a man with weapons. The thing was heavier then I imagined, and I couldn't quite hide my nervousness when I fastened it to my belt, because he laugh and just told me to point in the direction of any sick.

"You want me shoot at the plague victims?" I asked in alarm. At that time, even after everything that led us to hide in a quarantine camp, I was still under the impression that those afflicted were still to be cured, to be saved. Aren't they working on a cure right now, in the rest of Canada or the States or Europe? Fuck was I naive.

Tremblay turned serious at this. "You don't hesitate. It's you or them, and better be ready to face that truth. Or you'll be dead en tabarnak" I nodded grimly. But then, I still didn't think I'd have any cause to fire on anyone. How I wish that was true.

The first thing I remember is the smell. A sickly, sweet smell, like rotting flowers, tinged with a strong metallic element that tasted like rust in my mouth. At first, we thought it was the zoo itself, that was already starting to decay in the absence of caretakers. But around a corner, she surprised us. It surprised us, I should say. It was slumped against the wall, bathed in shadow. The beige of its uniform stained and frayed. One moment, we thought it was a bundle of rags, the next instant she, it, sprinted in our direction. I had barely the time to notice the gleam from our headlamps, a weeping, crimson wound from her neck and left shoulder. I shot. The recoil hurt my arm, but the pounding of my blood through my ears was all I could feel. I damn lucky shot, it hit her in the hip and she topple to the ground. Tremblay and another man named Simon were quick to bash its head in with the broken broom handles they carried. A bit of scalp and hair stuck to the wood. The hair was short and gray. I knew who she was. Who it used to be. I have to remember that they are not human. I'm sorry Anne.

(We wore face masks, but really, are they necessary to protect ourselves from the plague, I ask you? I don't think so.)

Anne was my first kill, but not my last. With the thawing of the city, there have been a lot of Annes, lately. A lot of monsters. I've grown a reputation as someone who doesn't falter at the trigger. If only they knew how the death pains me.

I can't talk to Paul, psychologist he may be. I don't need reassurance that I am doing the right thing. This will never be the right thing. God, please, if you are out there and you are able to help us, please come and save us. I can't take more killing. I can't take more death.

Summer is coming. They keep coming.

J'espère que vous restez vivant un peu plus longtemps.

Jo



P.S. Dan, your quarantine is using runners to divert the monsters away from camp. I don't know if it will work here, but I'll suggest it. Seems like a good idea, if it's working.