by Gayle Katz
“I don’t know. I’ll grant you the tunnels are scary as hell. And dark. But like I said before, at least we’re not out in open like when we’re walking outside. I don’t know. Let’s quietly go upstairs and see what’s going on. Maybe the bad stuff has gone away. Who knows, right? We can hope.”
We begin to climb the stairs. Jack goes first with me behind him and Laura behind me. As we reach the first floor, we look around and see those zombie things milling around. To me, they seem, I don’t know, bored? Sluggish? Disinterested?
We hear barking. I look out the door and see a dog running our way. I also see why the dog is running so fast. It has a whole crowd of zombies closing in on it. They don’t move very fast, but there are a lot of them, and they seem to pop up out of nowhere. That’s not good. With all the commotion, all the sedentary zombies are now on the move again, toward us.
“Change of plan. Go back down the stairs. Go. Go. Go!” Jack commands.
We rush back down the stairs. The dog follows our lead.
“Are they following us? Are they coming?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Keep looking for the door. I’ll check it out,” Jack says. “Find the door to the next tunnel so we can get to the next building. We have to find it fast.”
I shine my flashlight all over the wall, feeling for the door. We find it in a jiffy. It’s pretty easy to find now that we know what we’re looking for.
I turn to check on Jack. As he’s looking up the stairs to make sure the coast is clear, a zombie falls down and almost knocks him over.
“Ah! Shit! We gotta open it now. We can’t screw around. Put everything you’ve get into it!” I shout.
I turn around and see a few more zombies fall down the steps. They’re shrieking and slow to get up, but they are getting to their feet and making their way over to us. The dog starts growling as a futile deterrent to our pursuers, crouching into a defensive stance as it slowly backs toward us.
“Pull!” With several grunts, the door swings open. We rush inside, and so does the dog.
“Close it!” I yell.
The door sticks a little, and we pull harder. It certainly isn’t closing as quickly as it had opened. Pulling with every ounce of strength I have to close the door, I feel a zombie hand grab my arm through the opening.
I scream.
Chapter 11
________________________________________
6:30 p.m.
The dog jumps up and chomps down on the zombie’s wrist. At the same time, we muster up enough strength to finally close the door with a loud thud. We can breathe a sigh of relief, and the dog is plenty happy to have his new zombie hand chew toy.
“Ew,” I say.
“What’s he doing?” Laura asks.
“It looks like he’s gnawing on that bloodied hand.” Jack says.
“Yeah. Not the first thing I would want to put in my mouth,” I say.
For a minute, all three of us are staring at him. Finally, the dog loses interest in the hand and drops it to the floor.
I stoop down.
“Thank you,” I say to the dog as I search for his tags. I smile and pet him on the head.
“Good boy!”
The dog wags its tail.
“I can’t find any tags.”
“Well, he seems happy enough for now. He can come with us if he wants. Just don’t let him lick your face.” Jack laughs. “You know where his mouth has been.”
I turn back around to the dog, stoop down, and pat his head again.
“Do you want to come with us, boy? I bet you do. Are you hungry? Here’s a treat.”
I toss him a little piece of meat jerky from our supply. He catches it and keeps wagging his tail as he enjoys his grub.
“I guess that means he wants to come with us.”
With our new friend beside us, we start to walk down the next tunnel, and it doesn’t seem so scary this time. Looking back at the door behind us and thinking about the monsters on the other side, I wonder, “Do you think the door will hold?”
“It’s pretty solid. We should be fine,” Jack says.
“’Cause the last thing we need is those things breaking through. That won’t be good for any of us.”
“It’ll have to do, and we have to keep moving.”
Jack flips on the lights just like we did in the last tunnel. These lights here are dim too. We pull out our flashlights again.
As we start to put the excitement behind us, Laura begins to have some trouble.
“I think I’m having a panic attack or something.” Laura starts hyperventilating.
“Try to calm down a little. Take it easy. We’re fine right now. Nothing to worry about,” I say, offering her a bottle of water from my backpack. Maybe she’s just a little dehydrated?
“Why don’t we take a minute to rest and catch our breath?” Jack says. “We should check in with Logan and Bill anyway and see how they’re doing.”
Jack clicks on the walkie-talkie.
“Hello? Bill? Logan?”
Bill responds, “Everything OK over there?”
“Yeah. Sure. Everything is fine for now. Thanks for the tunnel info. We’re moving from building to building right now. Every time we try to surface, those zombies know, and all hell breaks loose.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“You two OK over there?” Jack asks.
“So far so good. We’ve turned killing these zombies into a game. We’ve been bashing them on the head and stabbing them. The best way to take them out is to hit them on the head. Hard. They’re completely disoriented for a couple of minutes, giving you enough time to get away. If you can decapitate them, even better. Right, Logan?”
“Hell, yeah!” Logan shouts in the background.
“I’ll admit it’s difficult to take their heads off with the blunt weapons we have, so disorienting them for a minute or two is gonna have to do,” Bill says.
“Glad you’re having fun. Have you met up with anyone else on campus?” Jack asks.
“Yeah. Wyatt told us about a few people who need help down here. We’ve talked with a few of them, but they’re so frightened, they just run away. We can’t make people come with us and, to be honest, there’s probably not gonna be enough room in the snowplow anyway.”
“Does anyone know what’s happening?”
“That’s a big fat no. No one knows anything.”
“Great.”
“Want the good news now?”
“Sure. I’d love some.”
“We found a couple of the snowplows,” Logan says.
“Awesome! That’s music to my ears. Great job guys!” Jack grins.
“I hear a ‘but’ coming,” I say.
“Yeah. Well. None of them is gassed up and ready to go. I don’t want to pull outta here with only half a tank. Plus, we still have to find the keys. How about you guys?” Bill says.
“We’re almost to the professor,” Jack says as I cut him off and take the walkie-talkie out of his hand.
“You OK, Jack?” Bill asks.
“We don’t know if they’re leaking our whereabouts,” I whisper to Jack. “Do you think it’s wise to tell them where we are?”
I hand the walkie-talkie back to him.
Jack nods and clicks the button. “Yeah. Fine. We found a young woman, and she’s having some issues. Back to the professor, we still have a little ways to go yet. Keep working on getting a snowplow. If things don’t seem to be going as you’d like, let us know, and we’ll see if we can snag the professor’s 4x4. Stay sharp, though. Those things can come outta nowhere.”
“Sounds good. Talk soon. Bye.”
“Bye.”
Jack puts the walkie-talkie away. “We gotta keep moving. C’mon.”
7:00 p.m.
The four of us continue to walk down the long tunnel between the two buildings when Laura trips. For a second, I don’t know what happened, and I’m startled. I kneel down to see if she’s OK.
“Are you OK? What
happened?” I ask.
“I don’t know, but I don’t feel so good,” Laura says.
She turns her head away from me and proceeds to vomit. The smell is putrid. Worse than anything else I’ve smelled. I guess the water didn’t help.
“She really doesn’t feel well,” I say to Jack.
“Maybe she should lay down?”
“Sure,” she says. “Maybe I just need a minute to rest.”
The dog starts growling and barking. Jack and I look around and don’t see anything that would warrant the dog freaking out. Then we notice the dog is barking at Laura.
“I have to tell you something,” she says.
Without saying a another word, she pulls up her pant leg and reveals a pretty deep bite mark. I shine my flashlight on her leg and see the bloody wound. I have to look away. It’s disgusting. It looks like a good chunk of her leg is missing. Jack and I look at each other.
“Oh no, no, no. Why would you lie to us? All we want to do is help you,” I say. “Not to mention that instead of turning into one of them, you might have just bled to death instead.”
“I didn’t know what to do, OK? It bit me, so what? I managed to get away. I thought maybe I’d be fine if I didn’t acknowledge what happened. If I stayed strong and focused on surviving, maybe I would be fine. It’s just blood after all,” she says.
“And now?” I ask, “How do you feel now?”
“And now things aren’t going as I planned. I can’t fight it anymore. I don’t know what’s happening to me.”
I shine the flashlight on her face.
“Look at her,” I say as I turn to Jack.
“Her eyes are changing and the color is fading from her skin just like Jayce.”
“What do we do?” I say to Jack.
“Watch out!” He shouts as he tries to pull me away from Laura.
I feel something pinch my arm. I turn around to find Laura biting me. Luckily, I have wrapped and rewrapped my arm so many times with the duct tape, she doesn’t stand a chance of doing any damage.
She starts making the same gurgling and hissing sounds as the others.
“Not this again. What do we do?” I ask again, pleading, “We don’t know who or what’s going on around us. The last thing we need is something announcing to every crazy infected where we are.”
Jack doesn’t have any answers, so I hit her in the head with my metal desk leg. She falls to the floor. Her chest is still rising and falling so it looks like I didn’t kill her. We take our opportunity and wrap her mouth up with the duct tape so she can’t bite us any longer or make any noises. We also decide to bind her arms and legs.
“We can’t have her going anywhere right now. We know where she is, and we’ll be back to help her if we can.”
“You reacted quickly there, Jane. I’m impressed! Way to take charge!”
“Yeah, well, she bit me, and I’m tired of people trying to bite us.”
“Gotcha. Remind me not to get on your bad side. Let’s keep moving.”
Leaving Laura or whatever she is now behind, the three of us pick up the pace in order to get to the end of the tunnel. We’re almost at my professor’s building.
“This is crazy,” I say, “What’s going on here? What are we doing? This is a nightmare! When am I gonna wake up? Pinch me, OK? I want to wake up now.”
“C’mon and stay strong. Look at how far we’ve come. We only need to go a little further to grab your professor’s car and meet up with the guys. You’ve been so brave, and you totally rocked it back there. We have to keep doing what we’re doing. We gotta watch each other’s backs and move forward.”
“I know.”
“I promise we’ll get through this if we stick together, OK?” he says as he holds my face in his hands.
“Promise?”
“Yes. With my life, I promise.” He smiles.
I smile back at him.
“Ready to go?”
I nod.
The dog comes over and paws at my leg. I stoop down, and the dog licks my face and wags his tail. I guess the dog knows I need some reassurance too. Phew! The dog smells as bad as my hair did, and his breath is even worse. He totally needs a doggie breath mint or something. I open a bottle of water and wash my face off as best I can. Despite his offensive odor, I’m grateful and give the dog a nice pat on the head. I give the rest of the water to him too. Maybe it will help with his breath.
Feeling reinvigorated, I stand up, and we continue through the tunnel. After only a few minutes, we come to the end. It’s the door we’re looking for.
“OK, I don’t have much of a plan for when we walk through the door, except to ready our weapons and stick together,” Jack says. “No exploring alone. Don’t leave my side. OK?”
“OK.”
Jack stoops down to the dog’s level and says, “That means you too.”
We lightly push against the door, but it doesn’t budge. The door does feel warm, though, which is odd considering that all the other places we’ve been to are so cold.
We push the door harder and it barely moves an inch.
“We have to give it all we’ve got. Push again.”
We push as hard as we can, and the door flings open with a screech.
“That’s pretty loud,” he whispers.
We listen for anything coming for us, but all is quiet. But something else soon strikes our senses. Not one moment after we step forward into the building’s basement, we smell it.
“What is that smell?”
“Yeah. It stinks in here. Really stinks.”
“Breathe through your mouth if you have too, but we need to move.”
I try to move, but my feet are stuck to the floor.
“Oh, God. What’s that on my feet? I don’t even want to look.” I cover my eyes. “It feels so gross and sticky.”
Jack shines his light on my feet to see what’s on the floor.
“Well that’s gross,” he says. “It looks like some kind of red goo.”
“Red goo? That’s the best you can do? What is it?”
“I don’t know. Rotting something, maybe? I’m not sure. The dog seems to like it. Can you move?”
“Yeah, it’s just sticky. Like the floor in a frat house covered with beer.”
“Wait,” Jack says. “You were in a frat house?”
“Yeah. Once.”
“That’s hard to believe. You’re so... so...”
“So what?”
“So not the frat house type. You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?” He smirks.
“Chalk it up to peer pressure. Everyone was going so I tried to be adventurous. Going just reinforced the fact that I need to stand up for myself and go my own way. I’m just not a go-with-the-flow kinda woman, I guess.”
“I hear ya. I’m not a go-with-the-flow kinda man.” He smiles at me.
I smile back.
We both walk to the staircase in the middle of the basement and began to creep up the stairs.
“C’mon boy,” he says to the dog, but the dog isn’t going anywhere. He’s still sniffing the floor. I know dogs like strange smells, but ew.
“Be careful. Whatever that stuff is, it’s covering everything in here, including the stairs. What floor is your professor on?”
“Third.”
“That figures. Let’s keep moving.”
Chapter 12
________________________________________
7:30 p.m.
Together we reach the third floor. Tired from the sticky red goo suctioning our feet to the floor the whole way up, we look around to see what appears to be blood dripping from the walls. And the vile odor is relentless, sticking inside my nostrils. Disgusting.
“Which way?” Jack asks.
“The end of the hall. This way,” I say.
“OK, lead the way.”
“Jack.”
“Yes?”
“I’m scared.”
“Me too, Jane. Me too,” he says as he reaches for my arm.
“Aw. Yuck. Even the doorknob is covered in that red stuff. I’m not touching that,” I complain. “It’s one of the reasons I’m not going premed.”
It’s at that moment that we are swarmed by the infected. Quickly surrounded, we have no place to run, except into the professor’s classroom. This situation seems different from our other encounters. These monsters aren’t rushing to hurt us. They’re just standing there and slowly moving in as if encouraging us to go inside.
Without a word, I pull my coat sleeve down over my hand and open the door. Jack follows, and we slam the door behind us and hold it tight. The infected don’t even try to break the door down to get us. They seem to just guard the door. I find that quite odd behavior considering our previous experiences with zombies and doors. Thinking isn’t a quality that I associate with them. These infected guys and gals are more lowbrow, baser, and more emotional creatures. They are raw in every sense of the word. But these guys seem different.
Jack and I look at each other, perplexed. Why are these creatures acting differently from the ones at the station? Or even the other ones in the other buildings? What’s different about them? Their actions seem calculated, planned even.
OK. Enough. We don’t have any more time to waste. We turn around and see the classroom and everything in it: desks, chairs, and blackboards all covered in the same disgusting red goo. Quite different from the spick-and-span classroom from the previous day. We quickly go from the classroom to the professor’s office. Once inside, I see him slouched in his chair. Motionless.
There is blood everywhere in his office. Everything is covered and dripping.
“Maybe he’s just sleeping?” I whisper.
“I don’t see him breathing. Mourn later. Look around. Let’s see if we can find something that’ll tell us what’s going on here.”
I walk around his desk so I can open and look inside his desk drawers. Jack is looking around too, keeping a good survey of the area in case we have to bolt.
