Born In The Apocalypse

by Joseph Talluto

  Lucy just stood there for a minute, then it seemed like family duty called, and she started heading back to her house. I figured she’d be okay since there was only one Tripper and there were several fully grown adult males at her place. In all likelihood, she’d arrive just in time for cleanup.

  Chapter 7

  Trey and I walked over the road to the woods and slipped in pretty easily. We’d been in here hundreds of times, and our trap lines were just to the east of us. We’d check them when we got back, assuming we had any luck whatsoever in our hunt.

  The brush was thick, but we’d made trails through here before. The trees were only about twenty years old, to hear my dad talk about it, and so there was a lot of space between the bigger trees. A little to the south was a more formidable tree line, and Trey and I headed right for it. The deer we were looking for wouldn’t be in this area, but if we headed further west, we might get luckier.

  “Creek is down,” Trey said as we jumped over a foot-wide stream that wound its way through the woods. The banks of the creek were steep, and if they ever filled, we’d see three-foot deep creeks that were about ten feet wide. We’d never get across without help if that happened.

  “Good for us to cross, bad for us to find meat,” I said, swinging on a branch. We crossed the creek and worked our way south, trying to see if there were any tracks worth a look.

  Trey was the better tracker between the two of us, and I wasn’t about to argue the point. I could track something well enough, but Trey had a knack for figuring out where the game went. He seemed to read the land differently than me, and I didn’t stand in his way. I figured he’d get us meat, and the best I could do was shut up and follow along.

  After circling a bit, Trey settled into a line and followed it for a few feet, then it went off in another direction. He followed that one for a time, then went another way. He was so focused on reading signs that he completely missed the fact that we had left the woods and were nearly at another road.

  “Trey!” I called, spooking any game nearby.

  “What? What’s the…oh.” Trey looked around and saw we were well out of the woods. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that any large game would have spotted us easily by now and were long gone.

  “C’mon, let’s head west,” I said, walking at the bottom of the ditch that paralleled the road.

  Trey nodded and fell in behind me, his crossbow slung over his back like my recurve. I held onto the arrow that had killed that infected woman since I didn’t want to put it in my quiver, and every once in a while I would use it to hack down a particularly large weed. We passed an old church on our right and then a couple of schools. Dad said a lot of people died in those buildings thinking they would be good places to fort up against the Trippers. Problem was, the people inside didn’t get along, and it all fell apart. Rumor had it the places were haunted, and if you were around at night you could hear voices and see lights go on and off. I never stuck around for the show, thank you very much.

  “Think there’s anything in those buildings we could use?” Trey said, somehow reading into what I was thinking.

  I shook my head. “Doubt it. What would be left?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s go take a look!” Trey said, leaving the ditch and walking across a small field. An unusually shaped fence sat sentry in a corner, and Trey walked around it carefully. It was shaped like a quarter of a sphere, and I couldn’t imagine for the life of me what it was intended to keep in or out.

  “Trey! We have hunting to do! Come on!” I shouted, trying to get him back on track.

  “If you’re scared, stay there. I’ll come back for you later,” Trey taunted.

  Well, that did it. Trey knew there was no way I was going to let him go somewhere and claim I was too scared, so I pulled my bow off my shoulder and nocked the arrow I was holding. I don’t know why I did it, I just felt better for doing it.

  Trey watched me with an amused grin on his face, and if I were so inclined, I might have smacked him for it. But we tripped onto a sidewalk very quickly, and our banter became silent as we approached the big buildings.

  In reality, there were two schools here, joined by a long connecting section. I had seen the buildings before, but always from a distance, and I never had the urge to go see what was inside.

  The front of the building closest to us was kind of scary. The entrance was under an overhang which darkened everything. The sides of the entrance came out about twenty yards, and they curved slightly inward, like they were going to drag you in if you came to close. I didn’t like the look of it at all, but Trey was not to be denied.

  “Look, there’s a place we can get in.” He pointed to a large section of glass that had been broken which was a bottom panel of a door. It wasn’t completely broken through, so no animals or anything else had been through there.

  “Maybe we should try the doors first before we go crawling through glass,” I suggested with just a touch of sarcasm.

  “Picky, picky,” Trey said. But that didn’t stop him from trying the doors.

  I took extreme satisfaction from the fact that the door he was going to crawl through actually opened when he pulled on it.

  Trey held the door open. “After you,” he said.

  “Oh, no. This was your idea. You go first,” I insisted.

  Trey shot me a withering look. “Baby.”

  “What was that line mom taught us about fools?” I asked innocently.

  Trey frowned as he got my point. He checked his crossbow and slowly walked through the door. I was a good two steps behind him, and that was just so I didn’t accidentally poke him with my possibly poisoned arrow.

  The front part of the building was clear although there were some papers on the floor. To our left was an area that looked like an office, and my suspicions were confirmed when I saw a sign on the door that read ‘Office’.

  I didn’t see anything of interest in there, so I just shook my head at Trey who walked down a small hallway that passed in front of the office. We crossed an opening that looked like it led into a large area, but it was very dark and not very inviting. We could see across the opening thanks to light coming in from another hallway in the back, but it was still pretty dark.

  Trey kept moving down the hall, and he stopped in front of a door. If I had to guess, it went into a classroom, but it wasn’t easy to tell. Trey tried the handle, and it was locked. There were dark stains all over the place down here, and I couldn’t think of anything good that could cause such stains.

  “Let’s try the other side,” Trey said quietly.

  I didn’t say anything, I just shrugged. This was Trey’s show, and I wasn’t going to jump in anywhere.

  We walked back across the office and over to the other side of the foyer. There was a larger opening on this side, and it also led to the very dark area in the middle of the school. Trey walked along the wall while I circled wide. My dad had always taught us to spread out as much as we could when we were hunting anything, and I figured it was as appropriate here as it was in the woods.

  The area in front of us was dark, but there was nothing in it except for a bunch of benches and tables. If I had to guess, I’d say this was where everyone came to eat when they were here. There were more papers and garbage on the floor, but nothing of interest.

  “What’s in there?” Trey asked. He pointed behind me to the big set of double doors I didn’t know I was standing in front of.

  “Beats me. Help yourself,” I said, stepping away from the big doors.

  “Dang, you gonna make me do all the work?” Trey said, frowning.

  “You wanted to come in here to see what was what, you can see what is what,” I said, sounding somewhat stupid.

  Trey shook his head and pulled on the handles. Neither of them worked, so we walked along the wall until we came across another set of double doors. These didn’t work either, and I was beginning to figure we weren’t going to get in. The last set of doors opened, but only slightly. We c
ould barely make out that they had been chained together on the other side.

  “Well, that tells us one thing,” Trey said.

  “Do tell,” I prompted, looking around at a huge eating room which seemed to be big enough to have a stage on it.

  “There might be some stuff worth recovering if no one else has been able to get in there,” Trey said.

  I tossed that around in my head for a second. “Maybe it’s full of sleeping Trippers, too.”

  Chapter 8

  Trey just shook his head and moved down a very dark hallway. It was dark enough that we stopped for a minute and pulled a candle out of his pack. I had the lighter, so we lit the candle, throwing weak but welcome light into our area.

  As it turned out, we were standing next to a flight of stairs that would take us to the second floor. Trey didn’t even ask before he started up the steps. I had to follow since he was carrying the candle.

  The second floor, as it turned out, wasn’t as scary as the first. There was a lot of light coming in from the huge windows at the end of the hallways, and there were a few skylights that helped a great deal.

  Trey looked in the first room we came to and shook his head. I walked over to the other side of the hallway and checked a room on that side. It was cleared of anything useful as well. I don’t know who we were kidding. Unless it came up to us and told us what it would be useful for, we wouldn’t really know it. I told Trey the same thing.

  “You never know,” Trey said. “That’s what my Daddy always says. You never know.”

  “You may be right about that,” I said as I ducked into a room. Trey waited in the hallway, and I popped out quickly, showing him my prizes.

  “I’ll be damned. You looking to make points with your Mom, or what?”

  I grinned. I had pulled out a couple of history textbooks, but I couldn’t be sure of the grade level. In any case, Trey and I had something other than the books my mom had scrounged up for teaching. I think I may have helped our education by leaps and bounds, not to mention our attention spans.

  The next rooms in the hallway didn’t have anything of worth, and I was thinking we were wasting hunting time when we crossed over to the other side. Right away we could tell things were different. There was a feel to the air that wasn’t there before, and the big windows on the end of the hallways were covered up with big drapes. They almost looked like bedsheets.

  “Something’s not right there, bro,” Trey said.

  I nodded my head in agreement. Since I didn’t have to hold the candle, I kept both hands on my bow, ready to fire at a second’s notice.

  “Let’s get that sheet off; see what we can see,” Trey whispered.

  I personally thought that was not the greatest idea because I wasn’t sure I wanted to see what I could see. But I walked carefully over to the sheet and gave it a yank. The sudden brightness blinded us for a second, and when we could see, it wasn’t a good thing.

  The Trippers had been here, no doubt about it. There were a lot of dark stains all over the floor, and bloody handprints streaked the walls and doors. There was a strange smell in the stale air, and the candle was burning slightly brighter for some reason.

  “I don’t like the looks of this,” Trey said, walking slowly down the hall.

  “Little late, don’t you think?” I said, bringing my bow forward and adjusting my fingers on the string.

  “Let’s just check a couple rooms, and get out of here.” Trey said.

  I personally thought that wasn’t a better idea than walking around this hallway, but what did I know?

  Trey went to a room and tried the door. The handle moved easily, and we took a look inside, gagging a little from the stench that greeted us at the door. The room was decently lit since the window was uncovered, and I really wished it hadn’t been.

  There were four people still in that room, and they looked terrible. There was a young man in a curled up position near the door, and he almost looked like he was sleeping except for the huge dark stain under his head and shoulders. If we pushed him over, I’d bet my bow his throat had been torn out.

  Another body was on the ground, and this one was even more gruesome than the last. Its stomach had been torn open, and the guts had been thrown all over. Ropes of intestine hung from the desks and chairs, and something that looked like a liver was off to one side.

  Two more small bodies were on the ground, and they looked like they hadn’t been torn open, but rather had their heads bashed in on one of the desks.

  I couldn’t help myself. “Gee, wonder what the next room is like?”

  Trey backed away with me and didn’t say a word. We had seen what Trippers could do when the rage was on them, and this was nothing new. I’d never seen it so up close before, and it was weirdly fascinating.

  “I think we’re done up here. Even if there was something here, I don’t want to get it. We’ll let our dads know after we finish hunting,” he said.

  I wondered about that. I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell my father about our little trip. I don’t think he would have approved.

  Trey led the way, and we backtracked the way we had come. It was a relief to get back downstairs and get away from the smell and the feel of death all over the place. Trey turned left when he exited the big double doors and headed down a long hallway which I thought took us east, but I was slightly turned around.

  The hallway was nearly without doors or windows, but there was a single door to the north as we ventured further into the gloom. Trey put a hand on it and looked back at me.

  I shook my head, figuring there was nothing here worth keeping, so just leave it alone. Trey silently agreed, and we moved on.

  About one hundred yards down the hallway, we found another set of double doors. By this time, I had figured out where we were and what it as we were standing in front of.

  “It’s a side door to the gym,” I said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because the name on the side says ‘GYM’.” I said, trying out my new sarcasm.

  Trey wisely avoided the trap and pulled on the door handle. It wasn’t very dark here since we were close to a side door, but since we didn’t know what was in the gym, we kept the candle lit.

  I stood off to the side, drawing my string back. If there was something on the other side of the door, I’d rather greet it with an arrow than my face.

  Trey peeked around as the door slowly closed and stopped it with his hand before it shut. “Looks okay. Let’s take a quick look inside.”

  I followed and we stepped into the gloom. The candle was not very bright, but it threw shadows and light all over the place. Trey held it high, and the light of the candle was barely able to get to the ceiling, and we could make out some dark opening at the other end of the room. Right next to us was a small hallway with a sign that said ‘GIRLS LOCKER ROOM”.

  Over by a tall wooden structure was a pile of clothing and supplies. When I stepped over that way, my foot struck something. It felt soft and stiff at the same time, and I really didn’t want to look down. As a matter of fact, I was doing everything I could, apart from closing my eyes, to not look down.

  “Trey?”

  “What?”

  “What’s on the floor?”

  “Hang on.”

  I saw the light shift as Trey brought the candle to the floor. My eyes had adjusted to the gloom, and I could see very clearly the body at my feet. I could also see the bodies all over the floor. They were everywhere, lying in various positions. Some were on their backs; others were in little balls. Some were face down and tucked in corners that were the made at the bottom of the wooden wall. The floor was dark and heavily stained in dried blood. The bodies were mostly dried-out husks with sunken cheeks and exposed bones. Several seemed almost normal, and they looked weird to me.

  “Holy crap,” Trey said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Wonder why those ones are in better shape than the rest?” Trey wondered out loud.

  I didn’t
answer because I didn’t have to. Three of the corpses heads turned, and their eyes opened at the same time. There was a hesitation as they figured out what we were, and then they were slowly trying to get to their feet.

  Chapter 9

  “Go. Now,” I said, turning and running for the door. Trey was right behind me. The candlelight was coming from behind and below, having been dropped by Trey. We cast huge shadows onto the wall as we bolted for the exit. Behind us, the Trippers we had awakened were remembering how to walk, and were gaining ground.

  “Go, go!” Trey yelled as we hit the door. Thankfully, they opened outward, so we could just bolt through without stopping.

  “Which way?” I shouted as we made the hallway.

  “Outside, just go!” Trey yelled, bolting for the exit.

  “Move, OW!” I stopped suddenly as pain exploded in my face.

  “What the hell?” Trey yelled.

  “Just go, go!” I said, rubbing my injured forehead.

  We ran to the big exit doors and had to stop again. The doors were held together with some serious-looking chains, and we had no way of even trying to find the key to the big brass padlock that stopped us cold.

  Behind us, the gym door banged as the Trippers ran into it, and it was only a matter of time before they found their way out.

  I exhaled and adjusted my stance, angling my bow for a smooth draw. I was reaching into my quiver for a second arrow when Trey stopped me.

  “Come on! We can get out!” he said excitedly as he pointed to the doors.

  Trey pushed on the big doors, and there was enough slack in the chain to let a couple of skinny kids squeeze through the opening. I nodded and set my bow aside as Trey put his crossbow down. I pushed on the doors, holding them open while Trey wiggled through the narrow opening. On the other side, he held the doors open as I passed.through the bows.

  I was just about to start going through when Trey suddenly yelled.