Pontypool Changes Everything

A family is cross-country skiing out on the snowfields of Caledon. They stop and look to the north. They see four people in brightly coloured parkas climbing down a cliff face. One falls and lands with a bone-breaking snap on a large boulder. The family topple off their skis in an attempt to run toward the fallen climber. By the time they are standing again, on skis directed toward the cliff, the three remaining climbers have reached the ground. They run at the skiers with wild eyes and bloody ski masks.

A gathering of farmers, assembled in protest on the lawn of Queen’s Park, is blown to bits from the front steps.

A businessman at King and Yonge reaches for his pager and is fired upon. Eighteen hollow-point bullets perforate him, and he falls in pieces.

Three teenagers prying open a garage door down an alley at Landsdowne and Bloor are surprised from behind by two men with baseball bats who club them to their knees.

At the edge of Grenadier pond sixteen people lying beside fishing lines are stabbed by as many knives and rolled into the water.

A theatre in the woods, back up in the trees of High Park, is a coordinating centre for military personnel. Volunteers in T-shirts are ordered to stack weapons and then kneel beside them. They are shot in anger by officers with handguns.

In the Sky Dome three women are ambushed by gunfire from beneath a van. They topple over on feetless legs and are dragged between tires and strangled.

The entire Don Valley, deemed to be a hotbed of cannibal activity, is sprayed with a molten plastic.

The Toronto Islands, which have reported only rare cases of the disease, are carpet bombed.

In Hockley Vailey, one hundred and twenty cannibals are rounded up. Soldiers discover that if a bullet is grazed across the tops of zombie heads, they dance in seizure while squirting blood into the air. Informal contests are held to see how many zombies can be made to dance at once.

Just outside Sudbury, troops succeed in getting sixty-three zombies to die jigging. The same is attempted on the bridge over Owen Sound Harbour and it backfires. Eight soldiers are dragged to their deaths beneath the hull of the docked Chi Chi Man. Two more soldiers are killed by friendly fire as bullets ricochet at the waterline of the ship.

A helicopter descending on Ceasarea by Lake Scugog encounters over a thousand zombies in a cannibal frenzy. They have discovered an enclave of healthy citizens hiding in the post office. The helicopter circles until its panicking pilot, his face streaked purple with anger, dives his aircraft into the centre of the orgy.

A lighthouse in Gravenhurst catches fire. A nurse is hiding four elderly people in its lookout. She crosses herself and makes praying hands as the smell of burning gauze stings her nose.

In Barrie a defiant population takes to the streets to embrace their cannibal brothers and sisters. An emotion-choked voice blares from a megaphone, pleading for people to return home. The snapping of compassionate necks can be heard clicking through the town and army personnel descend with guns blazing under tear-streaked faces.

A convoy of heavily laden trucks snakes along Highway 7 toward the Elora Gorge, where bodies are dumped by the thousands from a great height into blood-oily water.

A hidden coyote population joins with packs of agitated wolves to roam through ditches snapping at hands and feet.

An arsonist in Orangeville kills his family in their sleep and slicks himself down with gasoline.

A throng of looters in Scarborough greets the new day smiling and empty-handed. They are all shot through the head.

A couple who have been holed up in a cottage on Rice Lake light a fire in their front yard to attract the attention of rescuers. They are shoved backwards onto flames by the giant hands of haunted people.

In a farmhouse near Orillia a widow sneaks out at night and drags corpses through her front door. The scene is lit eerily from within by a flashlight held in its place on the table by a sugar dispenser.

A zombie in Havelock leaps onto the back of a cow and looks up laughing as a farmer drives a pitchfork into its back.

In Angus a group of men lash a suspected pedophile to a raft, then send him off down the freezing Notta-wasaga river. A helicopter is dispatched to save him. As it swings along a river in the sky, men shake their fists from below.

A schoolteacher hides his Grade Twos in a grain silo, only to become a predator himself by midnight.

Four people stand under the Dufferin Gates, remove their clothes, and pass a straight razor back and forth on unspeakable dares.

A prisoner in the Kingston penitentiary slams his back up against the bars in a sexual passion that will end in the death of the man he has loved for six years.

A garage mechanic in Sarnia is shot by a stranger as he pulls down the rattling bay door.