"Get the air freshener!" Vik yelled, pulling his hoodie up over his mouth and nose.
Jim ran out into the hallway and saw a zombie-like person about ten feet away.
"Hey!" he yelled at the ghastly man.
The man turned around. Jim recognized him from a writing class. His eyes were bloodshot. His nose looked broken. His clothes were torn and he had several bite marks on his arms. He narrowed his eyes and growled. Then he started staggering toward Jim.
Jim raised the pry bar in anticipation. When the ghoul came within range Jim struck him in the chest hard with the flat side of the pry bar. The man staggered back about five feet, seemingly uninjured. Jim struck him again and while he staggered back again, he showed no signs of pain or injury.
"Okay, let's escalate this," Jim muttered. The man stepped toward him again and Jim swung the flat side of the pry bar up into the man’s chin. He fell backwards as the cold steel produced a sickening cracking noise in his face. Jim deduced he had just broken the man’s jaw.
The man stared up at him for a moment and then climbed back to his feet. He seemed unaware of any pain or injury. He staggered toward Jim, hands outreached. Jim looked down at the pry bar. It was black with the prongs painted a bright yellow. There was now a little blood on the tip.
"Try puncturing his chest!" Vik yelled from the open door behind Jim.
"Why aren't you out here?" Jim asked, noticing a group of around a dozen more individuals like this man slowly shuffling down the hall toward him.
"I figured I'd let you be the guinea pig!" Vik said, laughing. "I figured I'd jump in if you needed my help."
"Thanks," Jim said, swinging the pointed end of the pry bar into the man's chest, to the right of his sternum. Reddish black blood splashed out of the horrific chest wound Jim had just created. The man staggered backwards, but appeared to not feel any pain. Jim wrenched the pry bar out with some difficulty. Blood splattered on the floor as he stepped back.
"I guess you have to try the head next!" Jeff yelled.
"And the peanut gallery speaks again!" Jim yelled swinging the pointed end of the pry bar down into the man's skull. He let out a grunt as his skull made a horrible splitting sound and he fell to the floor motionless.
"I guess they are zombies," Jim said, disturbed by what he had just done.
Vik jumped out into the hallway and ran ahead of Jim, planting the claw end of the hammer into the forehead of the first advancing zombie. It collapsed to the floor.
Jim moved forward over the now dead zombie and stepped ahead of Vik, swinging the pry bar down into the skull of the next zombie, a history major he had taken on a date once.
They worked their way down the hall until they reached the spot where the dead co-ed had been. She was gone. Both men were panting when they reached the end of the hall. Jim turned and saw that he and Vik had killed more than a dozen zombies. He looked and saw that all of the doors in the hallway had been opened.
"How do you think those doors got opened?" Jim asked, between breaths.
"I don't know," Vik replied. "Wait, do you see that sticking out of the elevator?" He pointed down the hall.
A camouflaged leg was sticking out of the partly open elevator doors.
They walked down the hall, stepping over dead zombies. Jim peered into the elevator. The light inside flickered. A dead soldier lay on the floor; he had apparently killed himself. He had several bite marks on his leg.
"Whoa," Vik said.
"Yeah," Jim stepped back, looking up and down the hall. After a moment he walked back to his dorm. Jeff and the others were waiting.
"So, I guess we need to determine what we are going to do," Jim said.
"What do you mean?" Jeff asked.
"Well, we have more than a dozen dead bodies out there. It's going to get to smelling pretty awful up in here before too long."
"It looks like the rain is letting up," Connor said. "Maybe the police will show up soon."
"There's a dead soldier in the elevator. I'm not sure rescue is coming. I mean, how long has it been since we heard from anyone outside of this building?" Jim asked.
Vik walked back to the dorm holding the soldier's pistol. "I thought this might be useful. Any of you guys have experience with a gun?"
"I do," Connor said. "My dad's a cop."
"Cool," Vik said, handing the pistol to Connor. "Be careful with this."
"Yeah, I know," Connor replied.
"Okay, here's what we can do," Jim said, clearing his throat. "I don't know about you guys, but I am worried about my family. I have dozens of missed calls from every member of my immediate family from the night all of this started. We are going to wait for the rain to taper off and give it a day. If there is no sign of rescue I'm going to leave this place. My brother lives to the south of here, at the old New York Central Terminal Tower. He may be okay, he may not be. I don't know, but I must find out."
"I'll go with you Jim," Jeff said.
"Me too," Vik said.
"I guess we will too," Connor said, looking at Giselle. She nodded.
"I don't know what awaits us out there, but it must be bad. It's not even raining that hard and we haven't heard anything from Campus Services or the police or the National Guard or the news. I mean, they've been looping that same video on the quarantine rules since at least yesterday with no interruption," Jim said.
"Dude, we're your friends. You're like a brother to me. We have to stick with you," Jeff said. "You know, in those zombie movies, things usually get bad when the main characters go off on their own."
He has a good point, Jim thought.
Later on, the afternoon of the 30th, it quit raining. The streets were still quiet though. On Halloween Jim and his friends only saw a few zombies shuffling down the street. They spent the evening packing. The power also went out that day. On the morning of November 1st, everyone awoke at dawn. The power was still out and by now Jim was the only one whose cell phone still had juice.
He packed a couple of changes of shirts, socks and underwear in his backpack. He also packed a metal water bottle along with a pocketknife, a compass and a vintage Dist-o-Map, all of which had been given to him by his Grandpa Fred when he graduated from high school.
The Dist-o-Map was probably the coolest thing Fred had given Jim. It had 6 pages with maps corresponding to each region of the United States with a 7th page that showed the whole country. Each major city had a little hole punched in the page next to it. At the top of each page was a dial one could turn, each major city was marked on the dial. The way it worked was, one would spin the dial until the name of the city they were starting in was lined up with an arrow marked at the top of the page. Then, the mileage to each major city was shown in the little window next to the cities. Jim thought it was an ingenious idea. Plus, it seemed more reliable than GPS.
He led the way out of the dorm into the hallway where the smell of decay was nearly overwhelming. Some of the dead zombies were bloated. The group carefully stepped around the corpses as they walked to the stairwell. It was warm in the hallway.
Jim walked to the metal door blocking the stairwell. He peered through the reinforced glass window and saw a couple of zombies staggering around in the stairwell. He looked back at the others, taking stock. He had his pry bar, Vikram had a hammer, Jeff had a baseball bat, Connor had the soldier's pistol and Giselle was unarmed.
"Alright, there are zombies out there. Here's what we'll do. I will go first, followed by Jeff. Next will come Giselle and Connor and Vik will bring up the rear," Jim said. "Okay?"
Everyone nodded and took their places.
"Let's go!" Jim said, opening the door and walking into the stairwell. He planted the pry bar in the skull of the closest zombie to him while Jeff bashed the head of another with his bat.
They walked down the stairs from the sixth floor. Thankfully, they only encountered a few more zombies along the way. When they exited into the lobby of Clement Hall, Jim was startled to find it zombie free. The group
walked through the darkened lobby and exited to the driveway.
The sun was still hugging the eastern horizon, behind the golf course that was across Bailey Avenue. They started walking.
"It's kind of warm for this time of year," Giselle said.
"Yeah, it is," Jim replied. "Hey, Connor didn't tell us much about you. What were you studying?"
"International finance," she replied. "You guys?"
"Film," Jim replied.
"Film," Jeff said.
"Mechanical engineering," replied Vik.
"Oh, that's cool! I always tease Connor for being a chemical engineering student! You know, I call him a nerd and stuff. I hope this isn't offensive, but I see that he keeps good company."
Everyone laughed.
"No offense taken Giselle. So, where are you from originally?" Jim replied.
"Miami, you?"
"I'm from New York City."
"Me too," Jeff said.
"I'm from India, actually," Vik said.
"Wow, that's cool," she said. "Any of you guys have girlfriends?"
"They always kid with me that my girlfriend must live in a textbook because I am so studious," Vik said, laughing.
"Ha, no, I don't really have time for one," Jeff said dismissively.
"What about you Jim?" she asked.
"Well, I'm currently single," he replied. "There was this one girl who was in one of my classes that I asked out a couple of weeks ago, but she just got engaged, so yeah."
"Huh, that sucks," she said.
"Yeah."
"Plus he just got out of a relationship with a crazy lady!" Jeff said, laughing.
"Yeah, Alyssa was pretty crazy," Jim said sheepishly.
"Alyssa Horn?" she asked.
"Yeah, you know her?"
"Know her? She had the dorm room next to mine freshman year. Talk about a drama queen!'
"Yeah," Jim said awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck. "She was an endless source of drama."
"Remember how she told her friends you tried to poison her?" Vik asked. "That was terrible."
"Yeah, it was. She backed down when I threatened to sue her. I mean, she acted like she was the only one who got food poisoning from that Greek restaurant up in Amherst," Jim said angrily.
“Zorba’s?” Giselle asked.
“Yeah.”
They walked past the VA hospital. Zombies stumbled around in the plaza in front of the building.
"Look alive guys," Jim said as several zombies turned and started advancing toward the group.
Vik raised his hammer, let out a war cry and ran at a zombie. He struck its head and it crumpled to the ground.
The others quickly dispatched the zombies with disturbing efficiency. They continued on in silence.
As the group crossed under Kensington Avenue, Jim saw people ahead exiting their homes, looking around.
"Excuse me!" a short Hispanic lady asked as she approached Jim and his friends. "Do you have water? I am very thirsty."
"I'm sorry miss," Jim replied, looking at the others. "We don't have any."
She looked disappointed. "Okay, thank you anyway," she said as she walked away.
Jim looked at Connor as they walked further on. "Don't pull the gun out unless we are in a position where we need to use it, okay?"
He nodded.
The people exiting their homes looked disheveled and hungry. Jim wondered how long the power had been out down here. He shook his head, wondering why the police and National Guard had failed so miserably. What happened?
Jim heard gunfire and screaming behind him. He spun around to see zombies attacking people who had left their homes about a hundred yards back. They were attacking men who fell weakly as the women and children behind them screamed and turned to run.
Jim and his friends didn't have water to offer these people, they didn't have food and they didn't have shelter. They did have crude implements with which to save the people from the snapping jaws of death though.
With that thought in mind Jim raised his pry bar and yelled, "We have to go back there and save them! Let's crush some zombie skulls!"
Jim heard Vik, Jeff, Connor and even Giselle let out aggressive cries. He ran forward through a wave of screaming women holding crying babies and planted the angled prong of his pry bar in the forehead of the first zombie he came to. It collapsed with a grunt.
Jim heard the others engage in similarly visceral combat. Vik's hammer found its targets with precision. Jeff's bat crushed zombie heads with devastating speed. And as Jim heard gunshots ring out, he learned Connor was a dead eye with a gun.
The group killed at least four-dozen zombies in just a few minutes, striking down the hellish monsters before they could devour the widows and orphans. By the time Jim killed the last zombie, the women and children stood in stunned silence behind his friends. Dead and dying victims of zombie attacks lay on the pavement all around Jim, the wounded moaning in agony.
"What do we do with the people that got bitten?" Jeff asked.
"I don't know. It looks like five of them are still alive," Jim replied, turning. He looked at the survivors he and his friends had saved. "Are any of you doctors or nurses?"
A few raised their hands.
"Okay, there are wounded men and women behind me. They need your help," Jim said.
He noticed Giselle hugging a woman who was weeping softly.
"Can you handle this?" he asked the volunteers.
They all nodded.
"Alright, this is your neighborhood. Remember, the zombies came unexpectedly, but now you can prepare. Barricade yourselves in your homes."
"And then what?" a woman with messy hair asked. "We've barricaded ourselves in our homes for the last three days!"
"Ma'am, I don't know if you realize this or not, but we just saved your lives!" Vik said.
She put her hands on her hips. "Go back to India! Why are you even in this country?"
"Ma'am, my parents brought me here when I was a little boy so that I may have a better life than they had in Mumbai. Do I assume correctly that your ancestors came here for the same reasons?"
She narrowed her eyes. "We don't need your help! In fact, if you all were just passing through, then get going!"
Jim cleared his throat. "We will be going now. My friend is right though; if we hadn't come back you'd be some zombie's happy meal. But, we will be going now. Have a good day!" he turned and nodded at his friends.
They continued on, pushing past the surly woman. As Jim and his friends passed her, she glared at each of them and when they had all passed her, she spat on the ground.
They walked on for a while.
"Some people are so ungrateful!" Vik said later, as they passed a payday loan building.
"Yeah, ignorant too," Jeff said.
"They probably won't be the last ones we'll meet," Jim said.
Sometime later Giselle approached him. "So Jim, you said your brother lives just to the south of here. What about the rest of your immediate family?"
He shrugged. "My mom and stepdad live in Manhattan, over in the Upper East Side, but they were in Seattle for Game Seven of the World Series when the quarantine was declared, so I have no idea if they're okay or not. I have an older sister who lives in Chicago with her husband; they have two little kids. I have another older brother who lives in Alabama with his wife; they have a little boy I think. And then my dad lives in Detroit. He works for the Detroit Tigers."
"Wow. How long have your folks been divorced?" she asked. "Wait, that's probably too personal."
"No, it's okay. They got divorced when I was three. I was the youngest, so I think it hurt my brothers and sister more. My mom discovered that my dad had several mistresses, and that was the last straw. He took a job with the Tigers and moved to Detroit shortly after the divorce was final. I had to visit frequently, so I saw my dad as I was growing up, which was nice. Steve, the guy my mom married a couple of years later was a tool. He never really paid any attention to me. They had a
kid of their own, Tyler, about a year after they got married, and of course he showered Tyler with all sorts of attention.
"Andy, my oldest brother, moved as far away as he could as soon as he could. Vicki, my sister, moved away as soon as she could. Phil, my other brother, did as well. And then, of course, I skipped out and moved here."
"That sucks," she replied.
He shrugged. "Nothing that can be done about it now except avoid making the same mistakes my mom and dad made."
"You seem like you turned out alright."
He laughed. "Only because of people like my grandparents and Jeff's parents."
"All those years I thought you just liked my mom's cooking!" Jeff said, laughing.
"I did! My mom could barely boil water!" Jim shot back.
By the time they reached Broadway, the sun was starting to descend toward the western horizon. They turned right on Broadway and continued southeast. Most people in this area of town were still heeding the quarantine, but a lot of houses had red sheets or red towels hanging in the windows.
"You suppose those houses have zombies in them?" Vik asked nervously.
Jim nodded. "Probably."
Every now and then they would hear an explosion in the distance followed by gunfire.
Soon Jim saw the tower Phil lived in to the left, in the distance. They passed under a railroad bridge and turned on to Memorial Drive. The sun hung near the horizon to the southwest when they reached the New York Central Terminal complex.
The whole facility had once been a bustling train station but had been abandoned and left to the elements sometime before Jim was born. Around the time he graduated from high school though, a real-estate firm began renovating the whole complex and had converted the tower into apartments and the terminal into a shopping area. The last time Jim had been there, a few weeks before, it had looked cool. It had a nice vintage feel to it.
As they walked up the road toward the complex though, Jim’s heart sank. It didn't seem likely that Phil was still alive. Dozens of zombies shuffled about in the plaza in front of the terminal. Broken windows ringed the tower, and dead bodies lay on the ground at the tower's base. Jim couldn't see Phil's twelfth floor apartment from his vantage point but he realized it was likely Phil was now a zombie.
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