by Bryan Smith
She opened her mouth wide and screamed a single word: “Wayne!”
16: BREAK ON THROUGH
The employee entrance door at the back of the building was standing open when Wayne steered Mark Cheney’s Cadillac into the small rear parking lot. Strange, given the lateness of the hour and the adverse weather conditions, but Wayne was too buoyed by this unexpected bit of good fortune to find anything about the situation alarming.
Steve threw his door open before Wayne had brought the Cadillac to a complete stop. “Let’s rock and roll!”
Then he was gone, out the door and dashing across the parking lot before Wayne could reply.
“Jesus.”
Steve’s words echoed in his mind: Let’s rock and roll.
Yeah, okay. Appropriate words, given the locale.
Wayne got out of the car and hurried after his friend, leaving the keys in the ignition and the engine running. The better to effect a rapid retreat on the way out. He hoped.
Steve came to an abrupt halt just outside the door, but before Wayne could wonder about that his gaze was drawn to a distant wedge of light at the far end of the building.
Holy shit, he thought. Another open door.
Okay, so the SIMRC was no maximum security kennel for hardcase murderers and rapists. It wasn’t San fucking Quentin. But it wasn’t summer camp either. He recalled the murderous guard’s vague account of a disturbance in the building and felt his stomach clench with fear again.
He was within ten feet of Steve now, his gaze still on the other open door.
“Dude, this is fuckin’ strange. It’s like open house night at—”
Then he was next to Steve and saw what had stopped his friend in his tracks. Bile filled his throat, too much to choke back this time. His cheeks puffed wide, then he bent forward and projectile-vomited the remains of his Wendy’s dinner, splattering puke all over the top of the cannibal girl’s head.
“Dude, gross.”
Wayne gagged again and clapped a hand on his friend’s shoulder to stave off a collapse.
“What the fuck, man?” He swallowed hard. “The hell’s wrong with her?”
Steve shrugged. “Kinda looks like a…zombie.”
“Bullshit.”
But this was said automatically, a rote, rational world knee-jerk response. Steve didn’t bother to refute it. There was the evidence of their eyes and that was enough. The girl was a zombie. No doubt about it. Not a cannibal, as he’d first thought. Nope, she was a walking, flesh-eating corpse. And she was clad in a perved-out porn movie version of a Catholic school girl outfit. A very short pleated skirt and a tight white blouse tied off at the midriff. Blond hair in pigtails. Would have been damned sexy on any halfway attractive chick not freshly risen from the goddamn grave. But there was nothing sexy about this creature. Its body was dessicated, once-white flesh turned dark with rot and crawling with maggots where it still clung to bone. More maggots writhed in the thing’s eye sockets. The creature was bent over the body of a guard, gnarled hands buried deep in the dead man’s ripped-open belly. The guard’s body was propping open the door. The zombie lifted its face from a mound of guts and looked up at them. Vomit streamed over taut features. It opened its mouth and a withered wedge of blackened tongue slithered out to lick at the bile.
Steve put a hand to his mouth. “Aw, shit.”
The dead girl’s face received another vomit bath a moment later
It didn’t seem to mind.
What was left of Kathy Russo, the last of Sybil Huffington’s victims to claw its way out of the ground, even seemed to enjoy it in some dim way.
Steve cast a sideways glance at Wayne. “Do me one favor, bro?”
Wayne stared at the dead girl, grimacing as she stuffed a sausage-like length of intestine between her cracked and blackened lips. “Ugh…what, man?”
Steve made a sound of disgust and wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. “Years from now, when we’re telling stories about this shit, what say we leave out the bit about the puking?”
“Why?”
“Makes us sound like a couple of pussies.”
Wayne nodded. “Okay.”
Steve pointed the gun he’d commandeered at the zombie’s head and pulled the trigger. The bullet blew the zombie’s moldering face apart and sent its body flying back through the open door, landing in a sprawl in the short strip of hallway beyond.
Wayne looked askance at him. “Why’d you do that?”
Steve’s grunted. “Dude, that’s what you do with zombies—shoot ‘em in the head. You’ve seen the movies.”
Wayne’s first impulse was to point out the obvious, that zombie movies were a bunch of made-up bullshit. And that when confronted with a walking, flesh-eating corpse in real life, you shouldn’t look to some cinematic pile of garbage for helpful hints on how to deal with them. But there was no arguing with results. The zombie was dead. Dead again. Double dead. Whatever. It was as still as a mannequin and showed no signs of getting up again. And shooting it couldn’t be called an act of murder. You couldn’t murder a thing that was already dead.
“Okay, zombies. They’re real, I guess. But in the movies, there’s always some vague cause for the undead uprising. Toxic waste spill. Voodoo. Some kinda shit like that.”
Steve nodded. “Right. Or my favorite, radiation from a comet.”
They looked at each other, eyes going wide.
“Dude.”
“That fuckin’ meteor.”
“Yeah.”
Wayne dropped to his knees and began to fumble with the dead guard’s belt.
“What are you doing?”
He found the dead man’s gun, slipped it out of its holster.
“Oh. Good thinking.”
Wayne stood up and returned his father’s unloaded.45 to his jacket pocket. Maybe more zombies were waiting for them inside. Maybe not. Either way, he meant to be ready. The unloaded gun bluff had been a good idea in theory, but things had changed.
Steve stepped past the guard’s corpse and entered the building Wayne started to follow him inside, but felt something snag his pants leg. He glanced down and saw the disemboweled guard looking up at him, eyes open and staring, some kind of awareness there. And something else. A need. Hunger, maybe. Fuck. The dead man’s hand slid up the back of his leg in a disturbing parody of a lover’s caress. Wayne flinched, but kept his cool, aimed the gun at the thing’s face.
A calm, slow squeeze of the trigger.
A flat but solid bang, a jolt that traveled the length of his arm and jarred his shoulder, and the guard flopped back to the ground, his existence as a reanimated corpse mercifully contained to a handful of seconds. Wayne stared at the sickening physical damage wrought by the bullet for a long moment. Then he felt Steve’s hand on his shoulder, turning him away from the grisly tableau. They moved past a deserted guard station and arrived at another door. This one was closed, but there was a small, wire-lined window set in its center. They took turns peeking through it. What they saw was a long,bland strip of hallway that appeared to extend all the way to the far end of the building. All the way, Wayne realized, to the approximate location of that other open door.
As Wayne watched, two men abruptly came barreling around the corner at the far end of the hallway, heads down and legs pumping, running flat-out, as if the hounds of hell were nipping at their heels. Which could only mean one thing. More zombies. More danger. The impression of a situation spiraling out of control became more firmly entrenched in Wayne’s mind. The men were SIMRC guards. One short and dumpy, the other lean and not as short. Somehow the short, fat one was outdistancing the better conditioned man, perhaps propelled forward by one mega-mother of an adrenaline blast. As the men drew nearer, terror was evident in their expressions.
Steve looked at Wayne. “Those guys are coming through this door in about ten seconds.”
Wayne nodded. “Yeah.”
He stepped back from the door and raised his gun to shoulder level. Steve did the same,
stepping back several paces in the other direction. Wayne stared at the door and tried not to listen to the hammering of his heart. Sweat beaded on his brow and his knees shook.
He drew in a breath, willed himself to be calm.
The door slammed inward and the two men piled into the room. Their eyes went wide when they saw the guns leveled at them. They screeched to a halt, breathing hard. One man instinctively dropped a hand to his holster.
Steve’s face screwed up as he barked a command: “FREEZE!”
The guard’s hand was still in motion, undoing the holster strap, fingers curling around the butt of the gun. A shot rang out, sharp like a firecracker report in the enclosed room. Only way louder. Blood bloomed from a hole in the man’s left shoulder. He cried out and fell back through the open door. Wayne saw the other man go for his gun and stepped forward, rapping the butt of his gun against the man’s nose. Cartilage snapped and blood rushed from his nostrils. The man dropped to his knees, wailing and blubbering like a baby. Wayne raised the gun again and delivered a knockout blow. He looked through the door and saw Steve kneeling over the man in the hallway, securing him with handcuffs. Wayne dropped to his knees and did the same with the man he’d knocked out.
Some distant part of him was appalled by his participation in these violent acts. But on another, more pragmatic level he recognized he was merely doing what was necessary. What was expedient. These were the civilized elements of his psyche weighing in on the situation. Another part of him, one not even all that distant, derived a primitive kind of exhilaration from it all. He was still shaking some, but he felt good, energized. Ready to fight some more.
Which was good, because it was looking like there was a lot of fighting left to be done.
A dim but high-pitched sound emanated from the far end of the hallway.
A scream?
He was on his feet and moving before he could event think about what he was doing. The sound came again and his legs began to move faster. Steve jumped up and hurried after him. That high-pitched noise came yet again, louder and shriller this time. Screams. Definitely screams.
“Dude. Fuck,” Steve said between pants as they began to run. “This shit has true bloodbath potential written all over it. You know that?”
Wayne didn’t answer. He knew it, all right. They were nearing a junction where the hallway dead-ended and turned to the right. They rounded the corner and the sounds of struggle grew suddenly louder.
Steve pointed to an open archway up ahead a bit on their left. “That way. In there.”
Then a voice he knew boomed out: “Wayne!”
Melissa!
He dashed through the archway and saw bodies dead on the floor. Some fresh, some showing evidence of graveyard decay. Blood was everywhere. Skull fragments, brain matter, and loops of intestine. Zombies crowded around another body on the floor, this one still alive, struggling and thrashing against them. The person on the floor screamed and Wayne knew at once it was Melissa. Still alive, but not for much longer if he didn’t do something. Gritting his teeth, he stepped up behind one of the zombies, aimed the gun at the back of its head, and squeezed the trigger. The executed zombie toppled forward, landing atop the struggling girl and causing a zombie on the opposite side of her to fall backward.
Wayne and Steve went to work, dispatching the remaining flesh-eaters with quick efficiency. Then Wayne hauled the first one off of Melissa, helped her to her feet, and drew her into his arms. She fell against him and sobbed against his neck for several long moments. He stroked her hair and made mindless cooing noises in her ear. He looked over her shoulder at Steve, who was standing at the archway, watching them with grim-faced solemnity. He glanced out at the hallway, then looked at Wayne again and pointed at his wrist, telling him they didn’t have time for this. Wayne mouthed the words ‘I know’ and began to gently disengage himself from Melissa. She clung to him fiercely for a moment, then relented, staring up at him with eyes brimming with tears.
“Oh Wayne…it was…horrible…”
Wayne glanced around the room again, taking in the carnage, allowing himself a moment to absorb the horror that had occurred here. His heart ached at the knowledge of what Melissa must have gone through, the desperation she must have known during her fight to survive. For the first time Wayne knew with absolute certainty he had done the right thing by coming to this place tonight. Had he allowed common sense to trump gut instinct, he would be at home right now, maybe eating some popcorn and watching a late-night horror movie. Talk about bitter irony.
And Melissa would be dead. No doubt about it. End of fucking story.
But she wasn’t dead. And he was with her again, at long last.
Something like triumph began to well up inside him.
He put a hand to her cheek and forced a smile. “It’s okay now. You’re okay. And we’re getting out of this fucking place right now.”
He began to steer her toward the archway, but she twisted away from him. “We can’t leave. Not yet.”
Wayne frowned. “What? Why?”
She made an exasperated sound and waved her arm in the direction of the archway. Wayne guessed the gesture was meant to encompass the entire building. “I want to burn this place to the ground.”
Steve came back into the room. “Whoa. You serious?”
Her nod was emphatic. Her eyes stayed on Wayne. They still glimmered with moisture, but a fierce determination burned beneath. “I’m serious. But first we get all the other kids out of here. This place is evil, Wayne. At first I just wanted out. One of the so-called teachers raped me in his office.”
Wayne’s breath caught in his throat. Emotions warred within him. Grief over what she must have felt while it was happening, the pure horror of the experience, and for what it must have cost her emotionally in the aftermath. And an incipient murderous rage. “Who did it? Tell me his name.”
“His name’s not important right now.” She swiped fresh tears from her eyes with an impatient gesture. “He did it and that’s why I called you. I just wanted out. But now…after all this…” She indicated the recent struggle with a sweep of her hand. “I can’t leave my friends here. I told you, this place is evil. It has to burn.”
“Okay. Shit.” Wayne ran a hand through his hair and began to pace the room, taking care to step around all the sprawled bodies as he thought about it. “We might even have time to do it. The guards are all out of the picture, far as I can tell. But how do we get everybody out? Aren’t they all locked up?”
A small, fragile smile tinged the corners of Melissa’s mouth. “Easy.”
She knelt next to one of the dead guards, snagged a ring of keys from his belt, and stood again. “There’s a key on here just like the one my friend David used to get me out of my room tonight.” Her fragile smile broke apart, gave way to an expression fraught with grief. “David died tonight.” She pointed to a body on the floor. “He put his ass on the line for me and now he’s gone. It’s my fault.”
Wayne frowned. “Melissa, no. You can’t blame—”
“It’s my fault,” she reiterated, voice louder this time, invested with powerful, undeniable emotion. “That’s the truth and that’s that. But we’re past that now. I’m not gonna let anybody else get hurt by this place. Not if I can help it.”
Wayne considered pointing out that the SIMRC hadn’t killed her friend. Zombies had done that. But he saw the steely resolve in her eyes and decided against it. Besides, she had a point. This place really was evil. Its sole function was to purge every non-conformist instinct from the psyches of rebellious children. To snuff even the slightest spark of individuality or creativity. To turn them into mindless, well-behaved automatons. A different kind of zombie.
So fuck it.
He smiled. “Okay.”
Melissa returned the smile and moved close to him. “I love you.”
Then she kissed him, throwing herself into it, her passion igniting his own. She felt so perfect against him. His senses tingled and every nerve-
ending seemed to explode with sensation. He grew hard as she pressed against him. Then she broke the embrace and grinned at him.
Wayne caught his breath and said, “Holy shit. I love you, too.”
Steve coughed. “A-hem. Okay, lovebirds. If we’re gonna torch this place and liberate the inmates, we best get to work. So let’s stop fucking around.” He winked at Wayne as he knelt to retrieve the other fallen guard’s keys. “There’ll be time for that later.”
Wayne sighed. “Yeah. Okay. So where do we go?”
Melissa moved through the archway into the hallway. “This way.”
Wayne and Steve followed her out of the gore-soaked break room. Out in the hallway, they turned left and followed her a short distance to a closed door.
Melissa paused with her hand on the doorknob. “The dorm rooms are all on the second floor. It shouldn’t take long to get everybody out.”
Wayne nodded. “Okay. Cool.”
Melissa turned the knob and pulled the door open.
Steve said, “Wait. I heard—”
A zombie appeared from seemingly nowhere. An Hispanic man in a janitor’s uniform.
It seized Melissa by the neck and pulled her through the opening.
17: FRESH FLESH
The thing that had been Sybil Huffington was not like the other zombies. The others were just eating machines on legs. Stupid monsters inhabiting bodies vacated by human souls. Sybil shared their hunger for warm human flesh. But the black, diseased thing that passed for her soul remained tied to its physical shell. Though zombified, she still had a vague conception of herself as a personality, as Sybil Marie Huffington, a respected woman in some position of authority. And she had retained a level of cognitive function. Her brain continued to process actual thoughts and ideas, and she possessed a basic ability to verbalize these things through rudimentary English. She was thus able to exercise a degree of cunning.
Watching from the second floor landing, she smiled as the dead janitor attacked the living things below. The screams of the female were especially pleasing to her ears. Three more zombies descended the stairs and waded into the melee. These were new recruits, kids she’d killed after entering their rooms with a passkey. She’d hoped to send a whole army of zombies against the living things, but she’d known there wouldn’t be enough time to create one. Instead, she’d guided this small contingent to the staircase, hoping they would deter her adversaries long enough to build a more formidable force.
