Dead Last, Vol. 3

by Quaranta, Marc

  I shook my head and wanted one last look into the eyes of the guy that took everything from me.

  I punched him as hard as I could in the stomach and then tossed him over to the side toward the stragglers.

  “You’re on your own, mother fucker.”

  I didn’t watch them tear him apart. I just assumed they were going to. I sprinted back up to the house and shut the door. I locked it and fell to the ground.

  I looked around the house. Elyse was gone. Everybody else had left me. I sat with my head against the door staring forward into the kitchen at the lifeless body of the woman I loved. That was when I realized Scott wasn’t the only one on his own.

  42

  Kurt Elkins

  Q uite frequently, WTIX would cover stories about schools. It could have been a superintendent press conference, a scandal, a new superintendent, a sports team, a standardized test gone wrong, in worst case scenarios it was a school shooting, or even as something as simple as a report on school lunches.

  Being the one that patched in the live shot for the news, I was always able to watch the monitors before anything went live. I got to see the behind the scenes stuff, if you will. I’d get to see teachers and students interacting in the background of the cafeteria, or walking up and down the halls, or walking around outside the building.

  I always wondered one thing while I was watching those shots. I even wondered this when I was back in school. I always wanted to be the one that started it but knew that nobody would join in with me and that I’d get into trouble.

  What if the students rebelled? I don’t mean in a violent way or even a physical way. But what if a teacher was standing in front of the classroom and asked the students to complete page twenty-one in their vocabulary book, and the students didn’t? What if they refused?

  The biggest school in Indiana has almost five-thousand students. There is a nineteen to one ratio. That means the school might have a dozen or so more than two-hundred and fifty teachers or faculty. That is a ridiculous ratio.

  So, if a class of nineteen, and I went to that school, there were about thirty students per class, refused to do anything, what could the teacher do? What if every student in that school just decided not to work? Not to follow the instructions. Again, it wouldn’t be anything violent, there just wouldn’t be any participation. No zeros or detentions or any other threats could get the students to budge. They just stopped. There was nothing we could do.

  That was the most PG way of thinking about what was happening in District 7-1. Because this was not PG. This was violent. This was beyond PG.

  We watched gate after gate explode and guard after guard drove trucks onto the premises only to release hundreds of stragglers. There was nothing we could do. Glen didn’t know the exact guard to citizen ratio, but he said if every single member of the security unit was in on this, we would be outnumbered. Badly.

  We left the Hub, but I didn’t know where I was driving. I was speeding back to the house, but another two trucks of stragglers blocked out route and we had to go on a detour. It was the first time I was seeing the whole place. I had no idea where I was going.

  “Where are you going?” Ryan asked me right on cue.

  “I have no idea,” I said.

  “We have to get back to the house,” Haylea said.

  “Slow down,” Heather implored.

  “No, thank you.” I was a fine driver. I kept my eyes on the road and foot down to the floor. “We need more weapons. We need guns.”

  “Glen, you need to snap out of it,” Haylea said.

  “Glen, where can we get more guns?” He didn’t respond to me. “Ryan?”

  “The Armory.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. He’s right,” Glen finally said. He was heartbroken. He had just lost the most important thing in the world to him. He’d built 7-1 from the ground up, as much damage as it caused the world, he still loved it. Even if the kid you raise is a screw, you still love them.

  “The Armory?” I repeated.

  “It’s got guns?” Haylea asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Glen, I need a fucking direction.” I dodged a few loose stragglers along the road.

  “My place. It’s in the basement.”

  “Will the others go there?” I asked very well knowing we’d lose a gunfight.

  “No. They can’t get in. Only I have the combo,” he said.

  “Which way?” He was staring out the window again. “Glen! Which way?”

  “Left. Right. Left again,” he said as we drove along the roads. “It’s the big one over there.”

  We pulled up to a large mansion that vaguely resembled a governor’s mansion in the middle of town hall. We hopped out of the car and sprinted up the stairs. The adrenaline was flushing through my body and making it easier to move with my wounds.

  Glen stopped on the stairs and looked out into his town. We could hear gunshots. Hundreds of them being fired from what sounded like the automatic rifles the guards had been carrying. There was smoke all around us, which had to be from the fenced perimeter. Some of the houses were on fire, too.

  “They’re destroying the town,” Glen said.

  “We need to go, Glen.”

  “Oh, my God. Kurt,” Haylea said. She grabbed my arm and pulled me over to the side.

  We looked out down the road and watched as members of the security force were dragging people from their houses. They were shooting their houses up and tossing in small grenades. They were absolutely burning the place down.

  A few guards were pulling people out and throwing them into the middle of the road. I watched as people were being shot and killed, but others were being shot in the arms, the shoulders, or the legs to just slow them down. The guards were feeding the people to the stragglers.

  “Oh, my God.” I couldn’t believe my eyes. I couldn’t believe what was happening.

  “Look,” said another voice from behind me.

  I turned around again and Ryan was pointing off down the other direction. Down that road was the jailhouse that I had gone to earlier in the day.

  A small group of guards, four or five of them, I don’t know they were moving quickly, were storming out of the jailhouse. Zach was the last one there. He held the door open and out came Darren Kendrick. Zach had broken him out.

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I said. Haylea and I looked at each other. A look we’d never given each other. We’d been down before and in some pretty bad positions, but this almost looked like she knew it was going to end tonight. I was giving her the same look.

  “Kurt, what the hell do we do?” she asked me.

  I turned back to Glen and grabbed him. “We need to go! Now!”

  Glen finally opened the front door and we sprinted after him. We turned around a long spiraling staircase to the back door. It led us down into a basement directly to a big heavy door like a bank vault.

  He twisted and turned the lock until it finally opened up. We pulled the heavy door open and inside was a small room, no bigger than a backyard storage shed. The walls were covered with guns. The table in the middle had guns on the top and drawers with guns.

  “Holy shit,” I said.

  “I’ve never actually seen this place,” Ryan said. “I wasn’t sure it exists.”

  “It exists,” Glen said. He started pulling guns down from the wall and handing them to us. “Heather.” He handed her a small handgun.

  I held an assault rifle similar to the gun the guards were carrying, but mine was a little bigger. I looked up and down the walls for something Haylea could carry, but when I turned to her, she’d already put a handgun in her waistband and was carrying a small automatic machine gun.

  I followed her suit and put a handgun in the back of my waistline. I threw the strap over my shoulder and smiled at my fiancé. She smiled back at me. At that moment, I wasn’t so sure I was going to be marrying her tomorrow.

  “We need to get everyone else,” I said. They looke
d at me with a bit of a curiosity, but I knew they knew we had to get everyone. “We have to.”

  “Who?” Heather asked as if everyone she cared about was in that room.

  “Frank and Reggie. I’ve got to make sure they’re okay,” I said. I grabbed some ammo on the table and started throwing it into a small bag.

  “Kurt.”

  I looked at Haylea and she was leaning like she wanted to say something she shouldn’t be.

  “We need to get Jack,” She said.

  “I know,” I said.

  “What’s the problem?” Ryan asked wondering why we were upset at the thought of Jack.

  “There’s not enough time to do all of this. The place is going to be destroyed and overrun in minutes. It probably already is.”

  “Shouldn’t we just get out of here? Drive away?” Heather asked.

  “No, Heather. We’re saving our people.”

  “You think they’d come back for us?” she asked.

  “Yes. They would. We’re going.” Haylea grabbed a magazine for the rifle and put it in her coat pocket.

  “Haylea,” I said softly. “We need to split up.”

  “Kurt,” she said.

  “You just said there isn’t enough time to get everyone,” I mentioned.

  “No, you’re right.” It was the first time since the outbreak that going separate ways was something she agreed with. “I’ll get Jack.”

  “Ryan, will you go with her?”

  Ryan was fastening a belt around his waist and putting a handgun in the holster. He looked up at me and then at Haylea. I could see he was scared, but he wasn’t backing down. I had respect for him there.

  “Yeah, then what?”

  “Then we meet back here?” Haylea wondered aloud.

  “Yeah. What are you going to do?”

  “I’ve got to find my sister,” Glen said.

  “What? We’re not leaving here,” Heather said.

  “She’s my sister.” It was the first little spat Glen and Heather had and Glen was finally going to see what kind of selfish, prissy girl Heather was.

  “Fine,” she said like a little brat.

  “You can stay here. I don’t care, but I’m going out to find her.”

  “I can keep the doors locked until you get back.”

  “Alright,” Haylea said.

  “Okay.” I set my rifle on the table and took Haylea’s from her. I set it down and wrapped my arms around her so tightly that I could have snapped some bones. I kissed her on the side of the head and then the top of the head and then kissed her lips. I looked deep into her eyes so that she knew I loved her without having to say anything.

  “I love you so fucking much,” she said.

  “You know I love you.” I held her face and kissed her one more time.

  “Make sure you get back here,” she said.

  “Take care of Ryan, okay?” I laughed and Ryan looked somewhat offended by that comment.

  “Wait,” Glen said. “I’ve got two of these.” He pulled a vest from the small cabinet and held it up.

  Four of us were going out there, but only two vests.

  “They’re bulletproof?” Ryan asked. Glen nodded. “Give them to Haylea and Kurt.”

  “What?” I was pleasantly surprised by his selflessness.

  “No,” Haylea said.

  “Haylea, just take one.”

  “No! Look, Ryan and I are going together. We can watch each other’s backs. You take it.”

  “Haylea, you’re not going out there without one,” I said.

  “Watch me.” She stared at me and a smile was growing on her face. I wasn’t going to talk her out of it, and there wasn’t enough time. So, Glen and I both quickly ripped our shirt off, strapped the vest on, and threw our shirts back over.

  Glen kissed Heather on the cheek and was then the first one out the door. The three of us followed behind and then I looked back as Heather was closing the door to the armory.

  We went out the back door and scurried off into the woods behind Glen’s house. Glen went one way and after a long moment of holding each other’s hands, Haylea and Ryan split off in the other direction leaving me to go it alone.

  43

  Scott Daugherty

  R ocky Balboa didn’t take as bad a beating as I did. Rocky IV was nothing compared to Scott VS Jack in District 7-1. I could already feel my eye swelling and there had to have been a crack in my cheekbone. Blood didn’t have an awfully bad taste until there were Dixie Cup amounts in your mouth.

  Jack left me for dead. I knew we didn’t have a great relationship. He hated me and thought I was a monster for what I’d done. I didn’t love him. I couldn’t even tolerate him, but I don’t know if I could have thrown him to a bunch of stragglers and walked away.

  He beat me within an inch of my life, but luckily something inside of me was keeping me, not only alive but, conscious and aware. As soon as he walked away, I got to my feet and limped away from the herd of stragglers coming for me.

  My head was pounding and with every step, it felt like a bone inside of my cheek was hanging loose and bouncing up and down and grazing the inside of my mouth.

  I slipped around the back of the house and started sprinting through the woods. Sprinting is an overestimate of how fast I was going, but I was still quicker than those dead things.

  I needed to get to the bar. It was probably a safe place to be. My apartment was up the stairs and I could barricade the place. I could throw boxes down the stairs and furniture and build a wall of trash so nobody could get through it. Whether they were alive or dead.

  I also needed to make sure Sarah was alive. She was probably never going to speak to me again, but I needed to get to her. Perhaps I save her, a bunch of us get out of 7-1 with our lives, find another place to live, and in a year or two Sarah and I are able to reform our connection and grow old together.

  I could hear gunshots in the distance. There was a mixture of things being torn apart, stragglers moaning, people screaming, bullets firing. It all blurred together into a disorienting echo.

  Of all the sounds, sticks and twigs snapping and leaves crumbling were the loudest sounds I heard. Someone was charging at me. It was starting to get dark and everything was happening so fast. I should have been killed or eaten, but when I turned, I was greeted by a familiar face.

  “Kurt,” I said happily.

  “Scott, Jesus, what happened to you?” He was out of breath. He had been sprinting, actually sprinting, through the woods.

  “Oh…Jack.” I fanned at my face.

  “Jesus. You weren’t bitten or anything? Are you okay?”

  “No bites. I’ll live. Where are you going?” I mumbled. I tried to speak clearly, but something in my face was definitely broken.

  Kurt looked all directions. He was internally battling with himself over something. Was he really avoiding telling me where he was going or what he was doing? Was he the same as Jack? Was he going to leave me out there to die? No, Kurt was better than that.

  “Look, we went out and are going to find our people. I’m heading over to Frank’s place.”

  “I need to find Sarah,” I said.

  “Okay. Where’s she at?”

  “She’d be at the bar. At my place.”

  “Okay.” He nodded. He decided he couldn’t leave me out. I was the worst part of the WTIX family, but I was still family. “Look, go get Sarah and then head to Glen’s. We’re going to hold up in the armory until things calm down.”

  “Glen’s house?” I asked for clarification.

  “Yeah. You know where it is?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Alright. Good luck, Scott.” He reached out and shook my hand aggressively as if it was the last time he’d be able to.

  “I’ll see you soon.”

  Kurt took off like a bat out of hell. I watched him for a second whether it was to cherish the last moment I’d ever see him or to watch in awe at how fast he could move. And then I took off, not so bat-o
ut-of-hell like.

  When I got to the bar, everything was still standing. There were a few stragglers wandering down the road, but it didn’t look like this section of District 7-1 had been touched yet. There was still time. I walked inside with hope.

  There were people in there and one of them screamed when I entered. I was happy that nobody had a gun because seeing that I was in a guard uniform, somebody probably would have shot me.

  “It’s okay! I’m not here to hurt you. Is everyone okay?”

  Some people said they were fine, others nodded. I could see how scared they were. Everybody’s life was being turned upside down. For us, this wasn’t as big of a shock. We’d only been here a few weeks and were used to this kind of terror. But these people weren’t.

  “Where’s Sarah? Has anyone seen Sarah? I got to find her.”

  “She’s upstairs,” some random woman in the back shouted.

  “Okay, hold tight. I’ll be right back and then we’ll get out of here. I’ve got a way.”

  I ran up the stairs asking myself if I was really going to save the dozen or so people downstairs. Kurt told me to grab Sarah. He told me to go back to Glen’s house. Could I really make that happen with a dozen people following behind me? Would it draw too much attention? Would the army find us?

  I walked into my apartment and Sarah was there. However, when she heard me, she turned sharply and pointed a gun right at me. My entire life flashed before my eyes and I was up in heaven. Of all the people I’d been with in my life and all the people that touched my heart, I was sitting by a light with Marissa and Sarah.

  “Woah! Woah!” I threw my hands up. She didn’t shoot, but there was still a chance she would. “It’s me.”

  “What the hell are you doing here?” she asked.

  “It’s my place.”

  “Get out. I will shoot you.”

  “Sarah, please, listen to me. I’m sorry. I should have told you the truth.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have done what you did. You’re sick!” She shook the gun. It could have accidentally gone off with how careless she was being.