by Bryan James
A man lay directly in front of the truck, face upturned to the sky, bullet wound marring the chest of his pink polo shirt.
No sign of infection, no gray skin, no bloodshot eyes, no gaping, half-chewed wounds. To his immediate left, a pretty woman in a pink sweater and jeans, maybe his wife or girlfriend, face turned to his, stomach soaked in blood, eyes vacant. I scanned the road to either side. Equal parts zombie and living humans, exterminated at the gates to this pissant village.
It took only moments of surveying the carnage to comprehend what had happened here. What would happen again.
“You’re murdering uninfected people!” Kate yelled from the passenger side, rolling her window down two inches so that her voice would carry. “You’re monsters!”
The bastard smiled. “Now how do we know whether or not they’re infected? News said that people don’t present sometimes until hours after they’ve been bit. All you folk are coming from the expressway, ain’t ya? We know it’s heavy round there.” He spit, companions on either side of him nodding. A shot rang out from the far side of the wall, and a triumphant yell sounded. I flinched, my eyes closing and reopening to check the windshield for a spider web bullet hole. Another crack, another shout. I realized they were shooting creatures behind the truck.
“These folk here tried to get in when we told ‘em to leave, and they got what’s coming to ‘em. We’re not letting anyone in. We’ve gotta look after ourselves, seeing as we haven’t seen the police or the national guard since this thing started, and we’re gonna protect our families and our property.” He turned to the side, spit again.
“The government will be out here sooner or later; you will be held accountable for this. It’s only a matter of time,” Kate said, the tone of her voice indicating that her statement was equal parts hope and determination.
He smiled again, his lower lip pulled in to hold his spittle. He looked amusedly at his compatriots then back to us. “You must be out of the loop, sweetheart!”
“Government,” he spat that word out like he had expelled the last two globules of spittle, “is already pulling back. Can’t handle this… situation. I’ve got five different HAM radio operators from Vermont to Georgia tellin’ me that the feds are drawing a line around the damn East Coast. Anything south of Maine and Northeast of Louisiana and Mississippi is considered no man’s land.”
I recoiled at the news. In three days? It was exactly like that Internet program-fast and almost impossible to get ahead of.
“Shit, they’ve already chalked up the initial sites as goners. New York City is full of these things, so is Philly and DC. Half of Congress likely got eaten-can’t say I object to that-and the President’s a no show, been flyin’ around in Air Force one for almost 72 hours straight. Even the fuckin’ Canucks are shootin’ people at the border. You think they give a shit about what we do here,” he gestured to the bodies before the barricade, “in our little slice of heaven?” Shaking his head.
Another shot from the barricade, another yell. The sound of a beer can opening and laughter.
“Bottom line folks: we’re on our own here.” He raised his gun. He wasn’t pointing behind the truck. “And you folk are too. Now, I’m going to ask you nicely one more time - ”
I shifted the truck into reverse, not waiting for the end of the sentence, and not even checking the mirrors as I turned us around. A thump from behind could have been a zombie or a Kia; either way, we moved back the way we had come.
We needed to get somewhere safe with thick walls, and some locked doors. We needed to get somewhere that we could put some distance between Earl and us. Maybe lock him out or in a different room or something. I didn’t know, but I knew he was going to pose a problem really, really soon.
I thought for a moment, finally turning to Kate.
“Where’s the closest school?” I asked, surreptitiously looking to Earl. His eyes were closed and he was drawing deep breaths. We couldn’t drive around with him in the truck, and we needed some time to regroup, maybe find another way to the marina. Besides, that pump hadn’t been on that long before we had to bug out, and we were going to be short on gas again in the near future.
Why couldn’t we have absconded with a hybrid?
She looked at me quizzically, and I shifted my gaze to Earl and back to her. She mouthed “what?”.
I looked at Earl, his eyes were still closed. I brought my arm to my mouth and mimed biting my wrist, a fake grimace of pain, and a blank stare, looking back to her and then nodding toward Earl. Her eyes widened in understanding, hand instinctively tightening on her pistol.
Speaking, she betrayed none of the visual concern. “It’s actually a half mile from here. Turn right at the second intersection and go about a quarter of a mile.” She looked at me, and back to Earl. His eyes were open again, and as he turned to me, I noticed some redness in his gaze. He was very, very pale.
“What the hell you want with a school? You wanna try for your GED?” He smiled, pleased with his little joke, and laying his head back. He laughed to himself and suddenly coughed wetly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“We need to get to the water. Go trolling for dates on your own time.” His voice was weak as he laughed again at his own cleverness.
Not much time, I thought, as we turned at the intersection. Woods surrounded the road on either side, wind stirring the branches in the gray morning air.
A station wagon sat on the side of the road, doors open, vacant. A bloody handprint on the driver’s side windshield was the only evidence of foul play. In the field past the wagon, movement from the woods, and bodies could be seen passing between the trees. A deer bolted in front of us, passing out of sight into the opposite line of trees.
It was a small brick school, located across the street from a housing project and a small strip mall of some sort. A football field sat to the side of the gymnasium, a tall tower capped with an old cupola overlooking the front stairs. No sign of people, but the parking lot was mostly full. I pulled the truck up off the road, parking on the front lawn. Turning the truck off, and snatching the keys, I jumped down, ax in hand, and sprinted to the doors, pulling them toward me, hoping for the best.
They were unlocked.
I turned toward the truck and gestured to Kate, who grabbed Fred and their bags, and leaped from the cab. I could see Earl moving slowly out of the driver’s side door. Kate and Fred reached the doors, and went inside.
The polished tile of the floor was a brilliant white. The neon lights reflected fitfully off the whitewashed cement block walls. Kate and Fred moved into the hallway, checking both ways. Kate nodded to me that it was clear for the moment. I turned back to the doorway, where Earl was reaching the open entrance. Grabbing the door and pulling it closed, I inserted my ax through the door handles.
Earl looked at me sharply, suddenly alert. He tried the doors, realizing too late what I had done. He slammed both hands against the glass. Kate moved to my side.
“What are you doing?” he screamed, looking over his shoulder, clearly scared now. From the woods we had passed coming toward the school, a virtual herd of creatures appeared. They moved en masse across the road, toward the school. Fuckers must have followed the sound of the truck.
“You’ve been bitten,” I said through the glass, “You’re going to turn, and you know it. How are you feeling? A little woozy?”
His hand went instinctively to his brow to wipe sweat from his forehead. “I’ve got the flu, you bastard!” he yelled, “And this wasn’t a bite from one of those things! I have a nephew who bit me two days ago at the park!” He looked over his shoulder again, back to me, very scared now. Eyes bulging, he slammed his fists against the doors. “Open the god damned doors! Those things are getting closer! I’m not a fucking zombie! Listen to me!”
Kate’s hand was on my arm, and I turned to her.
“Are you certain?” she asked softly, her eyes searching my face. The problem was, I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t certain at all. B
ut I know what I saw.
“No. I’m not certain. But I know that the infection, the sickness, whatever you want to call it, I know that if you’re bitten, you get it. And you can give it. He may be telling the truth, but he may be lying. He had one of those things on top of him for God knows how long before I got there. Are you telling me you believe his story? Enough to let him in here?”
She looked to Earl, who was now focused on the creatures coming from the forest. There were at least a hundred, mostly teenagers. Looked like half of the school. Looking back to me she shook her head.
“I can’t leave him out there to die. If he turns, we can end it. If we leave him out there, he’s going to get ripped up by those things whether he’s destined to turn into one or not. I can’t condemn him to that.”
I looked at her for a long while before cursing once and lifting my hand to the ax handle.
“Come on, man, open the door!” Earl pleaded, no longer aggressive. Just plain scared.
They were on the lawn, passing the truck, and had reached the bottom stair before I could get the ax handle loose and manage the door open. He stumbled past me as I slammed the door closed again, threading the ax handle through, and moving back as the first creature hit against the thick glass. It was a young man, maybe all of fifteen. He wore a tee shirt bearing the name of a band in crazy cursive lettering. Vacantly staring eyes rimmed in red followed my progress as we moved back toward the hallways. Muddy leather sneakers shuffled in place as his hands moved against the glass, sliding on the surface as if it were ice. His mouth was a snarl, broken teeth evidencing his transgressions of the day.
Suddenly, a blinding pain in the back of my head and I was on the ground. Another blunt impact to my ribs, and more angry shouting.
“Mother fucker! Gonna leave me to die out there?” Another impact and I tried to roll away, a second kick grazing my calf.
“You can’t get away from me, you stupid bastard!” I tried to push myself up and saw his leg moving toward me. I grabbed the foot and twisted it, catching him off balance and send him sprawling onto the stairs, left leg twisting awkwardly under his contorted frame as he screamed in pain. A jagged white splinter protruded from his pant leg, blood covering the site of the compound fracture.
He rolled over, screaming, as I pushed myself onto my feet, dizzy from the blow to the head. At my side, Kate was staring at the doors, mouth open.
“There’s too many of them!” I looked to the left, and the ax handle was splintering, doors bowing inward from the immense pressure outside. Suddenly, from behind Kate, Fred sprinted forward, frying pan a silver blur as he slammed it against Earl’s head, sending him spinning against the glass doors.
“Fred, no!” I yelled, my own voice painfully splitting my skull, ears still ringing. Fred jerked himself upright, stumbling back up the stairs in reverse, as Earl moved against the doors.
Blood streaming profusely from the deep gash in his head, Earl pushed himself back against the wall, trying to get up, trying to fight the pain in his broken leg.
Rising slowly, my vision blurred, I somehow managed to stagger up the stairs into the hallway just as the ax handle shattered, splinters of wood showering the floor. Earl tried one final time to get up. But hampered by his shattered leg, he was forced to the floor again by the weight of the incoming flood, bearing him down and burying him under an avalanche of gray, writhing flesh. I caught one final glimpse of him, writhing in agony as a teenage girl grabbed the splinter of bone in his leg and casually ripped it from his bleeding calf.
Several creatures that were unable to reach him through the rest of the crowd chose instead to shamble clumsily forward toward the stairwell, the progress of the crowd outside temporarily bottlenecked at the one open door.
As Earl screamed in pain, Kate backed up into the main hallway, arm crossing Fred’s chest protectively, forcing him back with her. I stumbled toward them, doubled over as I tried to catch my breath. Kate must have felt Fred tense, as she suddenly tried to grab at Fred’s shirt, shouting at him in anxious excitement. He bolted forward toward the first few creatures, frying pan aloft.
“Pancake” he screamed, as his frying pan whirled into the skull of the closest zombie, it’s head whipping to the side as the stainless steel shattered the cheekbone and the strength of the blow forced it into the bodies of the creatures behind. Even as he cocked his arm for another attack, Kate balled his shirt in her hand, pulling him back as we ran to the stairwell. He protested briefly, but allowed himself to be pulled, frying pan ever at the ready, face red and livid.
We sprinted upstairs, our shoes sounding hollowly in the empty stairwell as shuffling bodies followed close behind. Earl’s screams echoed continued to reverberate against the tinny lockers lining the hallway until they ended abruptly in a wet, tearing cough. Then there was nothing; nothing but the sound of our running and the shuffling pursuit.
Chapter 12
We raced up the stairs, taking them two or three at a time. Fred followed Kate as I, by necessity as well as choice, played rearguard, still woozy from Earl’s blow. Barely pausing to snack on Earl, the horde had followed us down the hall and to the stairs, haltingly jerking their collective legs over each step, slowly but consistently giving pursuit. Shoes and boots and bare feet and sandals, all shuffling and squeaking on the slick commercial grade tile that an industrious janitor had recently polished to a mirror-like sheen.
Reaching the second floor, I scanned the hallway, gaze flickering past rows of lockers, abstinence posters and a faded banner advertising a long-past dance. To our right was a set of restrooms, to the left a doorway to a janitor’s closet. We moved down the hall, searching for access to the roof. From below, the moaning and shambling corpses followed us up the stairs.
This school had not been spared the violence that had marred the rest of the town; bloody smears and indiscernible patterns of brown fluid covered the wall to my left, seeming to converge on a dark spot further up the hallway. A water fountain covered inexplicably in blood and gore stood out from the wall and a forgotten backpack lay torn open below, books scattered in the red mixture of fluid and solid that spread out from the scene of the mutilation.
I began to get concerned as the first zombie, a teenage boy with a large, gaping red socket where his left eye should be, reached the top of the stairs. He tripped forward as the rush of bodies from behind forced his feet out from under him on the smooth floor. His single eye never stopped watching me as he was trampled slowly from behind until his face was pushed from view.
These things are certainly determined, I’d give them that.
Not that they know that they’re determined, or intended to be, but you gotta give ‘em props for following that instinct.
“Uh, I’m starting to feel a little like that last lobster in the lobster tank,” said Kate, looking over her shoulder at the creatures shuffled forward along the hall, mutilated extremities leaving more blood and refuse streaked along the whitewashed cinder blocks as they moved toward us.
“What, appreciated?” I joked half-heartedly, even as I spotted the last door in the hall adjacent to another restroom a doorway marked “No Student Access” with a picture of a stick figure man scaling stairs to an open doorway.
“More like I’m sitting in a glass cage with my claws rubber-banded shut waiting to have my ass plucked out by the next middle aged balding guy with expandable pants and 19.99 in his pocket,” she said dryly, moving past me into the stairwell. Fred passed me next, eyes busy searching the hall behind us. In his flickering look as he moved by, I thought I caught a hint of concern.
Jesus, we must really be in deep shit if Mr. Nonplussed is showing anxiety.
We reached the roof, sprinting out as Kate shut the door and peered through the chicken wire and glass window in the steel frame.
“They’re following us in,” she said, face glued to the glass.
I looked around, searching for something to reinforce the door, remembering the ax handle downstairs a
nd the barricade at Target. It’s amazing what a group of hungry, determined, flesh-eating zombies can do to a barricade these days.
“Is there a lock on the handle?” I asked, looking frantically on either side of the stairwell housing.
“Yeah, but it’s a deadbolt and it’s on the other side,” Kate responded. “They’re at the last landing and they’re gonna be up here soon. If you’ve got a way to keep them inside, now’s the time…”
“I left my duct tape and baling wire at home, cut me some slack,” I said, searching wildly for something to bar the entrance.
“They’re here!” she screamed, and turned around, backing against the door and bracing herself for their onslaught. Fred joined her, lending his slight frame to the temporary wall, legs clearly straining as the first hit slammed the door into their backs, a crack of space appearing behind them.
“Hurry up!” she screamed, composure lost, eyes wild, as Fred whimpered, door bulging against their backs.
There! Not perfect, but better than the alternative.
“Let it go and run toward me! Behind the stairs!”
They jumped away from the doorway as it flew open behind them, the darkened stairwell yawning into the bright light of day and virtually vomiting the creatures onto the roof, even as Kate and Fred sprinted to me. I pointed to a ladder attached to the side of the building that led to the cupola overlooking the front lawn. It was the highest point on the school, and only accessible by ladder. It also lacked another escape route.
In other words, once we were up there, we had nowhere else to go.
“This is it?” Kate yelled unbelieving, looking over her shoulder in anxiety as they appeared from behind the stairwell.
“This is your solution? How the fuck are we getting down from there?” Her face was flushed as she pointed to the white dome, her eyes blazing. Her hair, tied behind her head in a simple ponytail, shook behind her rapidly moving head as she looked first to me, then to them, and back to the ladder.
