by Evans, Mike
“Right, but do you see the one where the shades are opening and closing.”
Joey said, “I didn’t know The Turned could do that?”
“They can’t.”
“So….”
“So, that’s where we are going, and we are going to go there right effing now!”
“You almost said the F word, Ellie?” Joey replied.
Ellie yelled, “There are people in the building across from us. Come on, let’s get over there. They must have that place locked down. We don’t have long before those doors are open.”
Joe hadn’t seen any of that, as he was focusing solely on the handles which seemed to be melting more than bending by the moment. He looked at the distant building, thinking about the speed of the Turned. If they didn’t get moving, they would be standing in their own graves. Joe prayed that they weren’t running to their deaths and that they weren’t going into some sort of unexpected trap.
The group took off as if their life depended on it...which it very much did. Yassa watched over his shoulder as everyone did. With every pulse of his heart he felt like the handles were bending faster and faster. A moment later they disappeared and were gone, pulled in through the door. The two doors seemed to explode open and the Turned fell out of the entrance, the darkness holding more of them than anyone had expected. When they righted themselves, they looked around, seeing their prey, and like any of the Turned, began leaping across the courtyard.
Ellie was thinking something very important and that was that they weren’t running fast enough. She didn’t like doing it and knew it was very irresponsible. She slowed down not asking for permission, no one was in charge of her and when they had a good twenty feet on her she pulled a grenade from her pocket, pulling the pin, and tossed it as high in the air behind her shoulder as she could, then turned on the gas, pumping her arms, feeling the gun bouncing on her side. Her legs burned as she pushed, and her stomach was rolling as she thought about what was happening and how she had but only a few more seconds.
Ellie yelled, “Don’t slow down, move faster! I threw a grenade!”
Joe wasn’t sure he heard her right and saw the small object in the air. It was coming down and he realized that he knew exactly what she had just said, it was definitely a grenade. He let the kids go in front of him, hoping if there was any sort of shrapnel that it would hit him and not take out one of the kids. Any time that he needed to go on a call related to that of a baby, kid, or teen it broke his heart. He knew most of the time it was the environment that he had to deal with and the way kids were brought up that was the worst. Ellie looked behind her seeing the grenade bounce once before the dirt beneath their feet became all that she could see.
The Turned who had been racing on their hands and feet, sprinting as long and hard as they could, were instantly thrown off balance. The Turned didn’t have many lost to the blast, but some were tossed to the sides. Having pieces of it, however small, shooting in every which direction could prove useful. The dead fell to the ground, trying to get up, unable to and confused as to why. The Turned didn’t realize that they no longer had the necessary items to be able to stand again.
Ellie tried not to smile. She knew there wasn’t any chance of getting all of them at once. Her biggest issue that she was dealing with at the moment was she could not hear and it was messing with her ability to run a straight line and was pretty sure her equilibrium wasn’t doing awesome at the moment. Ellie looked like she was going to fall flat on her face, and once she saw the ground giving out, she felt an arm that was not joking around keep her up on her feet and in one more solid movement she was up on a shoulder. She could tell by the size of legs and the football jersey that it was Joey. Joey didn’t slow down; he'd put on pounds of muscle over the last year, utilizing the Olympic style gym that Camp Dodge offered. Ellie was going to yell at Joey to put her down, but she trusted him with her life because he’d proven himself multiple times.
He raced past Joe and Yassa who both stopped firing off shots after they dropped the first ten who were in their way. The Turned were doing their normal run when they were trying to be as fast as possible; they looked more like wolves sprinting than humans.
When they took out those that were in front, they started sprinting again. Their lead was definitely shrinking with every leap of the Turned. When they got within ten feet of the door, they started worrying that they were just onlookers and not going to be helpers. When all hope was lost, two steel doors opened and a terrified group was standing looking like they weren’t sure about letting these complete strangers inside of the building.
They ran far past the door, not stopping until they were safe. They turned around guns up and ready to start squeezing triggers. A kid that looked like he shouldn’t even have been in high school was slamming the doors shut and attached a bar with two discs to each side. The strange objects began making a humming noise and the kid leapt into the air holding his arms up in the air. He had to shake the red curly hair from his face. The boy was pretty sure that he was going to be shot. He was doing his best to hold his bladder but having a gun pointed at him was a new and unenjoyable experience for sure.
“Don’t shoot, please. I’m not a zombie, don’t shoot me! I opened the door!”
Joe in about as much of a veteran police officer tone as possible yelled, “Get your asses out of the way, now! The dead are coming from the courtyard. They’ll be here any minute. Get out of the way before those damn things come through that door, move now!”
“That door isn’t moving, sir. Just stop pointing that gun at me, please. I don’t like guns looking this way...like when they are pointing in my direction.”
“Then step to the side, idiot, we aren’t going to take any more stupid chances.”
The boy walked over to the side slowly. He laughed, not thinking about how he might be coming off as rude or a smartass. He said, “If you’re in Des Moines at Drake then you’ve already taken some stupid chances.”
A girl who did look like she belonged in college said, “Pete, just get out of the way. Do you want to get shot?”
He was going to say something but realized maybe he just needed to get out of the way. He could prove to the new people that he was correct once the freaks outside didn’t make it in. He’d never seen this many coming at once, though. For the most part, he really just worried that there was going to be something in the door that couldn’t hold it steady.
Everyone from Camp Dodge watched the door in hesitation. They were milliseconds away from squeezing the trigger hard enough to send an endless supply of bullets into the Turned. The group would be perfectly able to drop magazines and reload in a second of time. The loudest and most satisfying thud that any of them had ever heard echoed on the inside. Ellie let out a breath once the echo dissipated and went away. She had to take an extra one so she didn’t pass out. She still felt like she was half dizzy from the blast and thought it might not be the most responsible thing in the world to be pointing an automatic rifle in any direction where humans were in the vicinity of everyone else.
Joey was as surprised as anyone and walked up to the door putting a cautious hand up next to it. He looked back, curious, and Pete said, “It’s powered by a magnet. We rigged it up when all this was first going down as the people eaters spread out further away from here in search of food I would guess. But after that was when we slowly gathered supplies and resources and all the food that we could and locked this thing down. Once in a while we see a new video on the internet having to do with these things. We keep watching diligently. If someone comes our way then we want to be ready to leave.”
The girl said, “We should try and keep it down. My name’s Bethany; you can call me Beth or Bethany, whatever floats your boat. You’ve already met Pete.”
Joey was looking all around the hallway when she was going to ask what he needed before Ellie, who definitely knew Joey, said, “There is no boat, Joey, it's a figure of speech. Don’t worry about it.”
; The girl smiled and said, “So I didn’t think you would be this young.”
“How old should I be?” Ellie asked.
“I don’t know. I thought that you would be older.”
“I’m not that old, sorry, I guess? What do you think we are here for exactly?”
“Duh, to save us, I mean that is why you are here, right? Why else would you be here?” Beth asked.
“Not to save you or anyone, for that matter. We already have enough people to take care of where we live.”
“Wait are you telling us that you came for something else?”
Ellie shrugged and pulled out the copy of her own list. She said, “When you were gathering things from around the campus did you happen to get anything that is on that list?”
“Oh, I get it now, I mean none of you really look the type, except maybe him,” Bethany said pointing over to Yassa, who looked the part and was the only one who got what she was implying but didn’t care.
Joe said, “And what part do we not look like”
“Meth cookers, right? I mean that’s what you are here for. You just don’t look like you take a sample for yourself.”
Joe walked forward, letting the rifle sling down off his shoulder. Pete, who was unaware of course, who he was talking to and didn’t know that drug dealers were the second most hated criminal. His first was any crime, of any type against babies, children and teens. But right now, he was walking forward without a question of what he wanted to do. The boy, Pete, looked around him, hoping to God that he wasn’t going to be what this large, angry, and violent looking man was headed for.
Pete shook his head no and Bethany yelled, “I’m sorry for Pete. He’s smart, but it doesn’t go any further than that, zero street smarts, borderline stupid.”
Joe dead lifted the boy up, slamming him against the door. The teen’s feet dangled off the ground a foot in the air. Joe wasn’t even trying to hold back at this point. Joe said, “Look, you little shit, I really appreciate you guys opening the door. But you don’t know the shit day that I’ve had. We rolled up in a three doored Humvee. You know why? They don’t come that way. We had one of those things tear off the door and rip a fucking teenager out of the car after tearing into his neck. Once we get here, we can’t seem to pick the right door to save our fucking lives.”
Pete wasn’t smart enough to shut up. But what he said made absolute sense. Pete whispered, “That’s why we put chains on the doors. We are pretty impressed that you were still alive in the first place. I'm sorry I assumed anything.”
Bethany gripped onto his bicep, pulling it away from Pete’s shoulder and letting him fall awkwardly down to the ground. She said, “He’s right, we tricked them into that building, but it doesn’t matter, they just keep coming. We decided it was best to lock down this place and we haven’t really left since then. We kind of hate this place at this point.”
Joe let his other hand off of Pete and took a step back, making sure he was out of reach of this annoying ass kid. He didn’t want to feel bad if he lost his shit again and went back after him if things continued looking like this. Ellie said, “It is the cure. Something that potentially could end all of this, that could get everything done. That could give everyone their lives back. We aren’t drug bakers or cooks or whatever you think.”
“We’ve seen these things running around without arms, hobbling with legs. You name it, we’ve seen it,” Bethany said, not knowing that they hadn’t really seen shit. Ellie had seen everything and wished every night that she could sleep through just one. It hadn’t gotten any better since Shaun had left, the thoughts of him coming back time and time again as a zombie ready to eat her face. Those were the worst nights.
Yassa said, “Well, this is a really invigorating conversation and all, but uh, we still have those out there. We also still have a shopping list we need to take care of. I mean if that is still important to anyone.”
Ellie handed the list over to Bethany, “You have any idea at all where this would be, Bethany? We grabbed a map but I’d say that they didn’t have an updated version after a zombie apocalypse happened. You guys seemed to have had a few plans going for you that had worked. I mean you’d be dead if not, right?”
Pete who was trying to regain his composure said, “Well, not all our plans worked. We had a lot more of us. The buses were already lined up; we just let the air out of the tires. We didn’t realize that those things weren’t just strong but that they smelled blood, that they could jump higher than anything I’ve ever seen. I mean once I saw…”
Joey said, “So did you get the stuff on that list? What about the vending machines?”
Bethany said, “Look, we didn’t take everything on campus. There’s a lot of stuff going on here. I can’t even pronounce half of that stuff.”
“Neither can we,” Ellie replied, “But we still need it. If you didn’t mess with your science department, do you know if it is safe? It wasn’t one of the buildings you locked down to keep the zombies from getting out, did you?”
“No, after the first building, we realized what the chances of us getting all of them in one place were. But what chances do you have of stopping all of these things?” Beth asked.
Ellie shrugged, there had to be twenty or more people in the hallway by now and she wondered how many people there really were around? Not just at the college but in general, globally, she wondered. She replied cautiously, “I don’t want to say yes, but I’ve heard from a very reliable person that it is going to take care of these things. It could be a real game changer that could put the ball back in our possession.”
Bethany asked, “How reliable, I mean what are we talking about?”
Ellie was going to tell him someone who knew these things better than anyone but Joey cut in first. He said, “Her boyfriend left a year ago and came back on a plane as long as this whole building. They said that they killed a bunch of the Turned, that’s what we call zombies. See, they came back so that they could make a huge batch of the cure. I guess it isn’t really a cure, it is more like the opposite.”
A girl who just barely had purple left in her hair said, “So you are going to commit genocide on them? You don’t think they have a right to…”
“You’re an idiot, kid. Just shut up please, I can’t be held responsible for what I do next,” Ellie warned.
Bethany looked over her shoulder saying, “Really, Claire, you really needed to bring that up. Have you ever had anyone not call you an absolute idiot when you said that? No, I know that because you’re the only one who says stupid shit like that.”
“I don’t have to take this,” Claire replied.
Yassa was smiling ear to ear and said, “You know if you’d like to, we could take you up to the second floor and lower you down. I mean if you think they have such a right to live then I’m sure that you’ll be just fine with them.”
“They’d rip my face off, psycho.”
“But you’re okay with them living,” Yassa replied.
Claire’s shoulders sunk and she took a few steps back, disappearing into a crowd of college students who were shaking their heads in disgust. Ellie said, “Okay, Pete, if you don’t have any of these things then can you tell us if the building we are going to is safe, or did you use it as a small prison for the dead like the first building that we entered?”
“You’re probably okay. We didn’t lock it down, we don’t know if there’ll be anything in there, but we can hope that there isn’t. Some of the kids used ladders to get across the buildings, there still might be some up there that you could use to walk across the buildings.”
“Isn’t that like twenty feet across?” Joe asked.
“At least,” Pete replied, doing little to make anyone feel more confident.
Yassa said “I’ll take heights over the ground if we got a choice.”
“Just be careful; a fall like that could kill you.” Pete said, his words not needed.
“Thank you for that, Pete,” Yassa replied.
&nb
sp; Joey walked over, awkwardly leaning into Bethany’s ear and asked, “So, when you say that you raided everything, does that mean you hit the vending machines and food supplies?”
“Yeah, we are getting very low on everything.”
“So...you don’t have any cookies or anything like that?”
“Uh, no, we ran out of meat months into it, all the sweets are gone and we have been surviving on giant cans of vegetables. No one is looking forward to their next meal.”
Joey, in true Joey fashion, walked forward wrapping his arms around her saying, “I am so sorry. I feel really bad that you are having to be a vegetarian with crappy canned food. We are going to try and not go die and see if we can make it back to our base.”
“Can we come with you? I mean to the base?”
Ellie said, “Why don’t you let us see if we can manage to not get ourselves killed. After that, maybe we can try and come back for you. A life without meat sounds like a sad one.”
