by Tom Calen
Mike appreciated his concern—he was not fully keen on the idea of investigating the hall alone—but he knew that with just the one weapon, any that followed him would be unarmed and vulnerable.
“We only have the one gun, Derrick,” Mike began to explain, but was interrupted by Jenni.
“The table,” she said simply.
Everyone turned to the table, then back to her inquisitively.
“The table legs. Take them off and use them as clubs.”
Before Mike had a chance to object, the students flipped the table and used a pocket knife multi-tool to unscrew the table’s legs from its top.
“You have a knife at school?” the history teacher said to the tool’s owner, Blaine Grimson. Mike realized the absurdity of the comment, having slipped easily into school official mode.
With his usual sarcasm, the senior with the military crew cut looked towards Mike Allard and replied, “Big picture, Mr. Allard, big picture.”
Within minutes, the table was disassembled and Derrick, Blaine, Jenni, and another student with whom Mike was unfamiliar, stood armed with their makeshift clubs. Secretly feeling guilty, he relented and agreed to accept their assistance. Three other students cautiously moved the vending machine from its spot in front of the door, careful to make as little noise as possible.
“As soon as we are out, I want you guys to block the door again,” he instructed those that were remaining behind. Taking a deep breath in a failing effort to still his nerves, Mike motioned for one of the students to slowly open the door.
Fearing the same onslaught he had so narrowly escaped, the five stepped out into the hall. The doors to the other classrooms in the pod were closed, and no lights shone from the rooms. The circular hallway was deserted, walls and floor covered in blood were the only evidence of the things that had chased him. Placing a finger to his lips to instruct silence, Mike began to lead them towards the staircase at the opposite end of the pod. The halls in the school were not long, but crossing them now seemed an eternity. The four students were fanned out behind him, with Blaine and Derrick diligently watching behind them.
Upon reaching the top of the stairs, an unfamiliar stench quickly overwhelmed them. As they made their way down, the group recognized the lifeless form of Sheriff Cartwright at the foot of the steps.
“Oh, my God,” came the whispering voice of Jenni. The others followed her gaze and saw the horror at the end of the long hall leading to the front office. Mutilated and dismembered corpses of students, faculty, neighbors and officers filled the space before them. The stench was attributed to the disembowelment that coated the once-gleaming floors.
Before continuing onward, Mike reached down to the sheriff’s body and quickly searched it for more rounds, finding them in a small pouch secured to the man’s belt. Unfamiliar with guns, having fired his first shots that very day, he had to rely on the skills of the teens with him that regularly hunted with their families. He cringed slightly when Blaine snapped the action back into place and returned the fully loaded gun to him.
Scanning their surroundings, Mike was relieved that the sound had not attracted unwanted attention. Further down the hall, they found the remains of the three officers that had tried in vain to hold back the crushing wave of attackers. Two of the boys, Blaine and Derrick, retrieved the firearms from among the bodies as well as four full magazines of ammo.
Forcing himself not to get sick, and seeing the others fight the same internal battle, Mike carefully maneuvered his way through the carnage to the main office. As expected, the phone lines were down, thus eliminating the easiest route to a rescue. Through the large glass-less window that faced the parking lot, he saw the three patrol cars that sat idly outside the building’s front doors.
“Blaine, your dad’s a reserve deputy, right?” Mike asked the boy.
“Yeah, why?” replied the tall, well-built eighteen year old who intended to enlist in the Marines immediately after graduation.
“Those patrol cars have shotguns and shells in them, don’t they?” Mike continued his questioning, an idea taking shape in his mind.
Understanding his point, Blaine confirmed the assumption and informed them that there were usually a few rifles and shotguns in each cruiser. The weapons, however, could only be unlocked from their storage with a key—a key that Blaine would recognize easily.
As he and Derrick made their way back to the slain officers to search for the keys, Mike went to the front doors and surveyed the front courtyard. Before him, the lawn was littered with the corpses of the infected the officers had managed to kill before being forced to retreat inside. Walking aimlessly among them were several bloodied figures, heads severely cocked to one side. He counted seven within sight, but worried how many others remained unseen. It might be too risky to go out with guns blazing, he thought.
The two youths returned, their smiles signifying a successful search of the bodies. Mike quickly detailed the plan he had formed. Blaine, Jenni, and the other boy—who he learned was a freshman named Josh Sorenson—would make for the cruisers and retrieve the weapons, while Mike and Derrick would provide cover fire.
Now armed with two guns apiece, they kept a vigilant eye on the infected, as the others crouched low to the ground and headed for the cruisers. Mike could feel the nervous beads of sweat falling down his face. The sun hung low amidst the clouds, coloring the sky with faint tones of pink and red. Each of the three students had reached their respective targets, and he could see them unlocking the weapons from the center consoles of the cruisers. With a hesitant sigh, he hoped that the mission could continue without raising the interests of the infected that milled about in the courtyard.
As the three scavengers made their way back, arms heavy with the stolen weaponry, they struggled to remain crouched and hidden from view. The broken glass that scattered across the pavement caused Josh to misstep and fall to the ground with a loud clatter. Almost in unison, the creatures turned towards the break in the late afternoon silence. The same growls and screams that had chilled Mike’s bones preceding his barely survived attack now echoed off the brick walls of the school.
Derrick wasted no time in firing at the infected that now bore down on them. An experienced hunter, his shots hit their intended targets with much greater success than Mike’s own inexperienced aim. Within seconds, Derrick had brought down three of the figures.
When Blaine and the others reached the relative safety of the school, the future Marine quickly began blasting the pump-action shotgun he had retrieved from the cruiser. Eventually all seven of the infected had fallen to their wounds, and Mike hurried the students back through the hall. As feared, the gunfire had alerted the infected that still remained in the building. The stairs leading to their safety were blocked by a dozen infected that had begun making their way to the sound of the shooting. Without pause, the quintet met their attackers with the full force of the arsenal they now carried. Blood and bone ripped away from the bodies of the infected as bullets tore through them.
Mike was no longer in control of his movements as instinct and the primal urge to survive took over. The revolver was spent, but the semi-automatic from one of the officers still responded to his trigger finger. Aiming ahead and behind, he whirled about with the determination of a warrior. The others with him appeared caught in the same frenzy as they cleared a path up the stairs. Reaching the top step, they turned and began aiming downwards at the infected that followed. Shot after shot felled those that pursued them.
As the proverbial smoke cleared, so too did the adrenaline-induced haze of their fight-or-flight reactions. They quickly made their way back to the shelter of the faculty room, its door already opened when those inside heard the shots in the hall.
Safe, they dropped their weapons to the ground. With the ecstatic relief known only by soldiers in war, they began to hug and congratulate each other. Their victory was small, but it was amplified by the horrors that had defeated them in the last twenty-four hours. The teens regal
ed their peers with details of the endeavor.
Only Mike remained apart from the celebration of survival. He did not interrupt them, nor admonish them in anyway; he watched them, a crush of pity and sadness swept through him. He knew that, unlike soldiers in a foreign war, those before him would soon realize that the enemies of which they now spoke were friends and neighbors. He worried that their youthful minds would be unable to reconcile what they had been forced to do that day, that their youthful minds would be unable to reconcile what they would be forced to do in the days ahead.
For now, though, he thought, let them be kids one last time.
Chapter Six
They drove through the night in silence, no man in the truck willing to put voice to the loss of Tim Cornell. The suddenness and brutality of the attack left them each in a stunned stupor, those crazed moments endlessly replaying in their minds.
The truck lights lit the abandoned road before them, and they kept their eyes alert for any signs left by their missing companions. As dawn crept over the mountains behind them, Mike forced himself to compartmentalize Tim’s violent death and focus on the task ahead. There had been a time, in those first days of the outbreak, that such a loss would have crippled his emotional control. He had learned to accept his role as leader of the camp; by force of the world that now existed, he had grown hard. With each death, with each attack, Mike Allard drifted further from the man he had been in his youth. What remained was a war-weary, reluctant soldier that sacrificed his own emotions for the sake of those that followed him.
As the sky brightened, the passengers could see the darkened outline of the powerless city some miles in the distance. The original plan had been for the lieutenant to escort Michelle and her team to the southern outskirts of the city to scavenge for canned goods and medical supplies. Having seen no sign of them thus far, Mike knew that whatever had caused their delay in returning occurred somewhere in the next twenty miles. He issued curt commands to recheck weapons and prepare to search on foot once they reached their destination.
Over time, it had become clear that urban environments proved to be the most hazardous to the uninfected. There were too many buildings, abandoned cars, and alleys in which the Tils could build their dens. Mike recalled with a shudder the first den he and the refugees had stumbled into. Less than half of the twenty-two with him then had survived to see the following day. It had been a costly mistake, a mistake he had ordered and one that still brought him screaming out of his sleep most nights.
The truck rolled to a stop in an intersection of what was once a booming business district. Guns at the ready, the five men stepped onto the cracked macadam of the street. They quickly formed a passable military diamond formation that, at least in theory, would protect them in all directions. A small grocery store, their intended target, lay a block north of their current position. Proceeding with caution, the team made steady progress towards the store. The street was littered with bones, the only graves the fallen would ever know. Though the scene was gruesome, Mike was relieved that there were no fresh bodies to indicate a Til presence.
The glass door entrance to the market was shattered and Mike stepped gently on the fragments as he led the others into the store. The shelves were mostly bare, having been scavenged by other survivors many times over the past six years. He had learned some errant cans usually remained if one looked diligently enough. Aisle by aisle, the team found no sign of their fellow refugees. They did, however, find the rotting remains of infected. Paul made a quick inspection of the corpses and surmised that they had been killed within the past few days. The casings on the floor matched the ammo that supplied the camp’s arsenal.
“Best I can tell,” Paul said, “they made it this far, which means they probably headed over to the hospital.”
Mike agreed with Paul’s conclusions and ordered the team back to the truck. The hospital was four blocks to their east and should have been the last destination of the scavenging mission. The drive took longer than it would have before the outbreak, as he was now forced to weave the truck through a maze of haphazardly abandoned vehicles.
A block from the hospital Mike eased the truck to a stop.
“Jeez,” Paul said, fear and awe clear in the tone.
The front entrance to the hospital was surrounded by a seething mass of infected. Some threw themselves at the thick glass doors, while others howled with rage, pacing like caged lions.
“There’s gotta be two hundred of ‘em,” Andrew spoke from the back seat.
“Our guys must be pinned down inside. No way those Tils are that worked up unless they know there’s a meal in there,” said Shane.
“We have to assume those are our people in there. Any suggestions on getting them out?” Mike asked.
A few moments later the sound of gunfire tore through the air, accompanied by the blaring of the truck’s horn. The Tils, already in a hunting frenzy, abandoned their attack on the hospital and charged down the street towards the truck. When the distance between the infected and the vehicles was less than one hundred yards the truck reversed its direction and began to cruise back the way it had come. The Pavlovian Tils, snarling as their new prey attempted to escape, hounded behind the rear of the Chevy, and within minutes, the entrance to the hospital was cleared of infected.
The truck, driven by Shane with Erik in shotgun, was receding from view with the Tils still in pursuit. Mike, Paul, and Andrew crept from the sanctuary of one of the many abandoned store fronts and hastily ran to the hospital entrance. The glass doors were locked, but shattered easily with shots from Mike’s side-arms. Once inside, the three risked detection by calling out for the missing. They crossed the lobby, its floor covered with papers and files long since discarded, and pushed through the double doors into the first of many long corridors. With nothing but their own echoes as a response, Mike signaled for a stop.
“Shane and Erik will be back in twelve minutes. We need to find our people and get the hell out of here. Once they pull up, we won’t have much time to load in. Andrew, you search the first three floors. Paul, you’ll take the next three. I’ll head up to the tenth and work my way down. Whether you find them or not, I want your asses back down here in ten minutes. Clear?”
Paul was clearly against the idea of splitting up, but, as expected, he took the orders without question and the trio headed to their assigned detail. As Mike climbed the stairs to the top floor, the exhaustion of no sleep in over twenty-four hours warred with the adrenaline needed to reach the top. His legs burned with pain and his breaths came in short gasps by the time he reached the door to the tenth floor.
The corridor was a sea of upturned gurneys and wheelchairs. Deep red flakes of dried blood splotched the walls. Mike ranged his arms before him, the twin Glocks in his hands having long since become a natural extension of his own body. He called for his fellow refugees knowing that in doing so he risked attracting more Tils. With minutes fleeting by, the usual caution with which he operated had to be temporarily suspended. As with the lobby, his calls were met with no reply from the missing. He raced through the halls relying on what little they had learned about those infected with the virus. In most cases, Tils shied away from the upper floors of buildings, preferring the lower places where prey was plentiful. No sign of the others, Mike looped back to the stairs and began his search of the floor below.
The ninth yielded the same result and within minutes he headed to the eighth. The digital watch strapped to his wrist indicated that he only had five more minutes before he needed to return to the lobby. Despair began a slow but steady march in his heart as the minutes rolled by without a sign of Michelle and the others. As he reached for the door to the eighth floor, Mike heard Paul call to him from the stairs below.
“Mike, we got ‘em!”
Pivoting swiftly, the refugee leader took the steps two at a time as he made his downward retreat to his companions. Over the railing Mike could see six or seven heads racing down the stairs. A half minute passed i
n a blur before he reached the lobby. Immediately, he took stock of those gathered. Michelle Lafkin leaned against the lobby desk, her arm in a splint. With her were two others from her team of foragers. On the floor before them rested the prone body of the lieutenant. His side was wrapped in thick layers of blood-soaked gauze. The visible skin of his face and hands were sallow from obvious blood loss. Tending to him was Lisa Velazquez, one of the handful of female members of the camp’s security team.
Paul was midway through briefing Mike on the situation when Andrew joined them from his search of the hospital.
“Lisa was able to take down the Til before it bit him, but the glass from the window went in deep. They’ve done what they could here, but, Mike, if we don’t get him to the doc soon, he’s not going to make it.”
“And the others?” Mike asked.
Shaking his head, Paul replied, “The team got separated during the attack. Michelle and the others managed to get inside the hospital, but no one has seen the others since.”
Still missing were two from security and one from the foraging team. Glancing at his watch, Mike cursed silently realizing that he would be forced to make the decision to abandon the three unaccounted for in order to save the lives of the ones now under his protection. Three blasts of a car horn indicated that Shane and Erik had returned.
“Load up!” Mike commanded.
As the group exited the hospital, they found the Chevy waiting outside, doors ajar. Further down the street was the seemingly tireless horde that had followed it. Quickly placing the backboard carrying Lieutenant Olinder into the rear hatch, the others piled into the now cramped SUV. When Mike gave the all-clear, Shane threw the car into drive and sped down the street, once again weaving his way through the obstacles.
The Tils had been able to keep pace with the deliberately slow moving truck before, but now at top speed, those that chased the refugees vanished in the distance. Two miles into the drive, Mike ordered a halt.
