by Gayle Katz
The moment we enter the building, the walkie-talkie clicks. It sounds so loud. I guess that’s because it’s so quiet in here.
Jack answers, “Hey, Wyatt. What’s up?”
“I just got a call from a girl in Jefferson Hall. That’s in the Arts & Sciences Quad, not far from where you’re headed on North Campus. She’s clearly part of the crew who doesn’t pay attention until something is thrown in her face. Anyway, she went to class and so did her professor. That’s when things went to pot.”
“Jefferson Hall? Yeah, we’re not far from there. We’ll make our way there now. Where is she in the building?”
“She says she’s in the basement. She's totally freaking out. Her name is Laura.”
“OK, we’ll find her.”
“She’s really scared.”
“I don’t blame her. Jane and I have seen some things that would make you shit your pants.”
“I hear ya. It’s a party over here too. How is Jane?”
Jack hands me the walkie-talkie.
“I’m OK. Jack is taking good care of me. How are you?”
“Hanging in there. These things seem to have quieted down so all the banging on the doors and windows has pretty much stopped, at least for the moment. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. Just be safe and find help.”
“Will do. We’ll be back as soon as we can.”
“That’s what I want to hear, but please be careful out there. Laura said those things are running around. You don’t want to run into them if you can help it.”
“We get it.”
“OK. Wyatt out.”
“Bye.”
I sigh. I’m worried about Wyatt and his decision to stay behind. He was probably a Boy Scout when he was younger.
“I hope we can get back to him in time,” I say.
“Don’t think about it. Let’s keep moving. Let’s find that girl who called in.”
As we’re walking up the foyer steps to take refuge in the building, I get to thinking about the military presence I saw on campus earlier. The guys dressed in fatigues were talking with my professor and that girl from class. What happened to them? Not only does it seem like all the people are gone from campus, but the military is gone too. If something were that wrong, wouldn’t the military stay on campus?
We finally make it to the top of the steps and go inside the building. The lights are on, but where is the heat? It’s frigid inside. Jack must have been cold too. He turns to me to ask, “Are you warm enough?”
“I think so” I shiver. My body movements are doing a lousy job backing up my words.
“Are you lying to me?” he asks playfully.
“Not at all.”
I guess he wants to make sure I’m bundled up and not freezing to death. He takes the hat from his head, pulls back my hood, and places it on my head.
He caresses my face and looks into my eyes.
“That doesn’t block your peripheral vision or anything, does it?”
“No, I’m good. Thanks.”
He replaces my hood. I hug him and smile.
Just then my phone buzzes again.
“Again?” I say. “God damn it.”
“Gimme the phone,” Jack says.
I hand it over to him, and he reads the new message.
“Interesting,” he says.
“What does it say?”
“It says, I see you’ve decided to take my advice and come see me, you and that news guy from the radio station. I didn’t think you’d make it this far.”
Jack frowns. “That’s odd. How does this person know where you are and who you’re with?”
“I don’t know.”
“Only the guys and the zombies we’ve run into know where we are. Who’s leaking our location? God damn it.”
“Logan and Bill?”
“Maybe, I don’t know. If that’s the case, I don’t know whom we can trust.”
“Do you think we should ask the guys about it? Maybe we should check in with them to see how they’re doing? Ask if it’s as slow going for them as it is for us?”
“Nah. Not yet. The walkie-talkies use power, and we really don’t know how long we’re gonna be out here. We should conserve power right now. Let’s only use them if we have to, OK? Plus, how would we ask that question without sounding like we don’t trust them or without sounding all conspiracy theory-like?”
I shrug my shoulders.
“Let’s keep going,” he says.
As we walk through the main hallway to get to the other side of the building, a horrible smell invades our nostrils and soon we see blood smears on the floor.
“I think I’m gonna throw up. Look at that,” I say as I point to the mess.
“That’s weird. If those blood stains came from a body, where’s that body now? We should get out of here. Fast.”
He picks up his pace, grabs my hand, and pulls me toward the exit.
“We might not be alone. Let’s keep moving.”
As we continue down the hallway to the exit on the other side of the building, we hear a familiar moaning sound, just like the sounds Jayce and Abigail made. And it seems like it’s getting louder, closer. I can feel my whole body tense up. I hold onto Jack’s hand tight.
The walkie-talkie clicks again, and it’s perhaps the loudest click I’ve heard in my entire life. After that, we hear the guys chattering a little on the other end. Jack goes to grab the walkie-talkie as we walk toward the exit.
As he puts the walkie-talkie to his face, four zombies stand in front of us, blocking our original escape route.
“Oh shit,” he says.
He puts one arm in front of me to prevent me from walking any further. He also clicks the button to talk.
“Um. Bad timing, guys. We’ve got company. Gotta call you back.” He grabs my hand and starts taking steps backward.
These zombies smell and look worse than the other ones. They are even more disgusting, if that’s possible. They’re dirty, probably from the dried blood caked onto their faces from whomever they killed. One is missing an arm. How you walk around missing an arm is beyond me. Another has a gash, like a hole, in its chest. Maybe someone tried to kill it by impaling it on something like we did with Jayce. I guess those things don’t work. How are we going to kill any of them if we need to? I guess that’s a question for another time.
“OK. We can’t go this way anymore. Go back.” Jack says.
“Go back?”
“Yes. Yes! Back! Go back to the stairwell. Where we entered. There’s a staircase.”
He quickly does an about-face and changes our direction. As we whirl around, he slips. I hold onto him tight and manage to help him up so he can regain his balance.
“Thanks for that,” he says. “We’ve gotta move.”
Not looking back, we sprint as best we can back to the center of the building and the staircase.
“Up or down? Up or down?” I ask.
“Down. If we go up, we might be trapped with no place to go. Plus, I don’t think we have any more rope so we can’t make our way down. At least, not easily.”
We begin our sprint down the stairs.
“If we can make it to the basement, we may be able to wait it out. These guys aren’t pursuing us. At least not quickly. Maybe we can hide out until they lose interest and forget about us.”
As we wind our way around, we hit the first floor.
“Keep going.”
There are no more stairs. We finally come to the bottom.
“I guess this is the basement.”
“Can zombies use the stairs?” I whisper.
Jack shrugs.
We take cover behind some large desks. After a few minutes of silence, Jack grabs for his walkie-talkie. “Bill, we’re trapped in McKinley Hall. In the basement. The infected are right above us."
“Crap! Do you need some help?”
“Yes, but we’ll figure it out. Focus on your mission.” Jack replies.
“We’ve run into some of the inf
ected down here too. We’re not far from the sheds where they keep the snowplows,” Bill says.
“That’s music to my ears,” Jack says.
“Did you say you’re in the basement in one of the classroom buildings?”
“Yeah, McKinley Hall.”
“Do you know about the tunnels?”
“Tunnels? No.”
“Yeah. Tunnels. It’s just a theory I have from knowing the history of the school. The weather is so brutal up here sometimes, and I guess that’s the way it’s always been. I’ve heard rumors that the original builders created these tunnels for maintenance. When they first started construction on the buildings, they dug tunnels for the workers to take cover from extreme weather. It’s a safety thing, and I guess a productivity thing. It’s just a rumor, of course, but if you’re stuck you might want to search for what looks like a maintenance entrance. If they haven’t been used in years, they might be buried behind whatever clutter is down there.”
“Do you know if these tunnels go all the way through to the next building or do they stop midway?
“No clue. You’re gonna have to see for yourself. Sorry.”
“Thanks for the tip. We’ll take a look around.”
Jack releases the talk button. We look at each other. He didn’t sound like someone who is out to get us, but you never know.
“Maybe the zombies gave away our location?” I ask.
“That sounds awfully strange to me, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yeah, but what other possibilities are there?”
The basement is pitch black. We pull out our flashlights.
“It doesn’t look like they’re following us. At least, not yet. I mean, they would have found us by now, right? Look for a door. It might be hard to find. Like Bill says, after all these years it might blend into the walls since no one has used the tunnels in years, if they even exist.”
As I shine the light around the room, all I see is old junk: beat-up desks, broken chairs, old blackboards. Our flashlights are going strong, but I still manage to stumble over something. The object crashes to the floor. Damned sleep deprivation is not helping my coordination. I’m scared to death, but look over to Jack for reassurance and stand still.
We listen. Nothing. Whew.
“The next building we want to get to is over on this side. Let’s try looking around for something that resembles a door frame.”
Luckily it only takes us a few minutes to find it.
“I can’t believe we found it.” I said.
We pull on the doorknob, but the door is stuck. We try again. It isn’t opening. We can’t get a good grip. Our hands are still wet from the snow and sweaty from dealing with our new “friends” who surprised us in the hallway upstairs.
“How are we gonna get it open?” I ask.
“Hm. I don’t know. We need to get a better grip on the doorknob.”
“Maybe we should tape up our hands again? It might be enough friction to move the doorknob.”
“Remove the old tape first and then let’s try it,” he says as we tape up again.
Some additional elbow grease and a couple tries later, the duct tape does the trick. We’re able to free the door. It opens with a loud creak.
Door open, we both look inside at the inky blackness of the tunnel ahead.
Chapter 10
________________________________________
6:00 p.m.
“Uh. Are we supposed to go in there? It’s really dark. Did I mention I’m afraid of the dark?” I say.
“Afraid of the dark? I don’t believe that for a second. You walk down to the station in the middle of the night, right?”
“Yeah, and it isn’t fun.”
“Well, think of it this way. It’s getting dark outside now, so it doesn’t matter which way we go. At least this way we’re somewhat protected as opposed to being completely vulnerable outside,” he says as he holds my hand, reassuring me.
“Sure. Sure. You make a good point.”
“We’ll be fine. Everything will be fine. Maybe there’s a light switch. Grab your flashlight and start looking.”
After a few minutes of our dueling beams of light climbing the walls and the archway of the door, we finally find the light switch.
Jack clicks on the lights. The tunnels are dark gray-walled corridors. Nothing fancy about them. Even with light, it’s dank inside and somewhat musty, according to my nose.
“There they go. They’re dim, but they’re on.”
“Wow. I didn’t know having the lights on could make something scarier. At least before, I couldn’t see anything. Now all I see are shadows everywhere. Maybe we should continue using our flashlights?”
“Sure. We can if it’ll make you feel better.”
We keep our flashlights out and close the door behind us. We pull out our homemade desk legs for protection just in case we happen to run into anything or anyone unexpected. With one hand on a flashlight and the other on our weapons, we start to walk down the long corridor.
After a few more yards, it starts to get colder.
“Are you cold?” I ask.
“Nah.”
“I just got a chill.”
“You might just be cooling off from having the shit scared out of you earlier. Here, let me see if I can warm you up a bit,” Jack says as he gets close.
Jack wraps himself around me. It feels nice and safe in his arms. I close my eyes and hope this is all a bad dream and the two of us are far away without a care in the world. But when I open them, no, the nightmare continues.
“Is that better?” he asks.
“Yeah. Much better. Thanks.” I smile.
“OK, then. Let’s keep moving and hope this tunnel goes all the way through. I don’t want to think about going back right now.”
We come to the end of the passageway and see the exit. We push against it, but it doesn’t move.
“It’s probably old and rusted like the first door. We’re gonna need to put a little more work into opening it. Let’s try it again. Push as hard as you can.”
We push with all our might, and the door makes a creaking sound. Giving it all we can, the door flings open and bangs against the wall with a loud clang.
We hear a loud scream.
After we hit the lights in the basement, we see a young girl about my age frightened and huddled on the floor amongst the usual college trash, such as used corkboards and broken desks. She’s got what looks like black mascara smudges under her eyes, and she’s shaking. She covers her face with her hands and turns her head away from us.
“Sh. Laura? We’re not gonna hurt you. Are you OK?” I ask.
She seems to calm down a little.
“Do you remember the guy you spoke to on the phone? He told us you needed help,” I ask.
Still breathing heavily and shaking, she says, “Yes, I remember. He said to call if I needed help.”
“How did you wind up down here? What happened?” Jack asks.
“I ran down here when those, those things crashed my class. One minute, I’m learning the difference between convex and concave, and the next minute those things explode into the room going crazy. They were all over the place. In the hallways. Outside. They attacked the professor and all the students. There was blood. So much blood.”
I watch her as she tells her story, shaking and getting upset.
“I—I didn’t know where to go or what to do, so I came down here. I was quiet. I don’t think they saw me. I put on my headphones to listen to some music and try and calm myself down. That’s when I heard the guy on the radio. He said he’d send help, and you’re here.” She smiles at us.
“They didn’t follow you?” I ask.
“I don’t think so.”
“Did they bite you?”
“No, I don't think so. I’m fine except for being really scared. What’s going on, anyway?”
“We don’t know, to be honest. We thought you could tell us something,” Jack says.
“No. N
ot really. I already told you everything I know. Where did you come from? I didn’t know there was a door right there in the wall.”
“Yeah. That’s a long story. We’ll explain later. Right now we have to keep moving. That’s the only way we’re gonna find help and learn what’s going on here,” Jack says.
“Can I come with you?”
“Sure. Of course, but I have to ask, how long have you been down here?”
“Just a few hours. In the beginning, I heard them running around up there, but I haven’t heard anything in a while. Maybe it would be OK to go upstairs now?”
“I’m not sure about that. Is there anything you can use as a weapon down here? A metal desk leg, a 2x4, a baseball bat, anything that you can easily swing? There’s tons of old stuff down here.”
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s look.”
The three of us search around the basement. As we scavenge, I feel like we’re making more noise than we should, but so far so good. We’re still in the clear. We find lots of things we can use, mostly big pieces of metal from old desks and chairs, but we don’t have Bill’s bolt cutter to break any of them apart.
Just then Jack produces one of the metal pieces from the antenna Bill had chopped up earlier.
“I packed them in my bag. I thought we might need them at some point. Take a piece of the antenna. Wrap the handle with duct tape so it’s easier to grip,” he says.
“I didn’t see you pack those,” I tell him with a smile.
“I like to have a few aces up my sleeve when I can.”
“If you’re coming with us, you should tape yourself up too.” I tell Laura.
“Tape myself up?”
“Yeah. You’ve seen those things bite, right? Well, the tape should prevent them from making direct contact with your skin, even if they do bite you.”
“OK,” Laura says.
“So? Should we risk going upstairs or continue through the underground tunnels?” I ask Jack.
