The lunatic walked briskly behind her, his footfalls echoing through the hallway like loud claps of thunder. He lowered the blade and dragged it along the floor, a persistent scratch sounding through the halls like nails on a chalkboard.
She became lost and disoriented in the maze of tunnels, the sounds of her stalker folding into one sound that came from all around her. She rounded another corner and saw him standing in front of her, the blade swaying by his side. He shielded himself from the blinding light and stumbled back a couple steps.
Her heart jumped and she turned and ran the other way, her legs getting tired. She lost more feeling in her wounded leg and it began to drag along the ground a little. She reached the end of a long corridor and stopped, feeling like she was going to collapse at any moment. She shone the light down the corridor behind her and saw him move through the dark at the end of it. He marched halfway down then stopped, looking into a room next to him. She could see a hideous smile paint the corners of his lips as he disappeared inside the room. The sound of him dropping the blade jangled through the basement and it sounded like he picked something else up. She could hear sloshing, like liquid moving around in a jug. Something was unscrewed and dropped to the floor, light and plastic.
Then he stepped back into the hallway, his face delirious under his goggles, holding a stainless steel container. He marched toward her again, the liquid crashing around inside. She could smell it from down the hall, so pungent and unmistakable, an ancient smell from long ago. It was gasoline.
"I'VE GOT A GOOD DEATH FOR YOU!" he shrieked. "I'LL BURN YOU! PEEL YOUR FLESH FROM YOUR BLACK BONES!" He was absolutely hysterical. "COME BACK HERE!" he yelled and broke into a run.
Sarah screamed and ran away. She rounded one corner and then the next, trying to lose herself and the lunatic in the labyrinth.
The liquid sloshed and splattered behind her, like he was splashing gas along the hallway.
She made it halfway down another corridor and her legs gave out completely. She hit the floor and her body exploded in pain. She crawled uselessly across the cement as he came into view.
He stood at the end of the corridor holding the gas can, his crazy grin glued to his face. She rolled onto her back and pointed the flashlight at him. He shielded his eyes at first but then simply turned his head away as he started splashing the hallway with gas. He advanced on her slowly, splashing a little bit as he went, taunting her.
She crawled backward along the floor, her heart pounding. She knew there was no escaping him and she was terrified.
He heaved the gas can forward in his arms, a jet of gas hitting the floor by her feet. She screamed and he laughed. She tried to crawl faster as another stream of gasoline splattered against the floor, spraying her feet in a mist. Another volley landed on her ankles and she burst into tears.
"I don't wanna die," she tried to say, but it came out in a choked squeak.
He giggled as he haphazardly splashed gas all around the hallway, getting a little on his own arms and legs.
She pushed herself across the floor and came to a big room next to her. She crawled into it as he maintained his steady pace in the hall, his boots slapping against the slick cement.
It looked like a boiler room with big cylindrical tanks and furnaces in it. The floor was especially grimy, with dirty rags and junk littered all over the place, and cobwebs spanned between all the machinery.
She crawled behind one of the tanks and turned off the flashlight. Something bumped into her and she stifled a scream.
She flicked the flashlight back on and saw David crouched down next to her, his eyes wide. He pointed the gun at her and almost shot her in his surprise. He lowered it and tears streamed down her face, so relieved that he was okay.
The splashing outside got closer and closer. "I'M COMING FOR YOU!"
She took the gun from David and put the flashlight in his hand.
"Take this," she whispered into his ear. Her voice was shaky and barely audible. "Hide over there behind that big machine," she directed him, "then turn off the flashlight. When the man comes in, turn it on and shine it right in his face. Keep it on his face."
He nodded his head and scampered across the floor, hiding behind a big furnace on the other side of the room.
She leaned her head back against the tank and held the gun pointed up at the ceiling with her finger on the trigger. She had no idea how many shots were left in the gun, but she hoped it was enough. It had to be.
The footsteps came around the corner and the man entered the room holding the gas can above his head, shaking it around.
"I'M GONNA FRY YOU AND YOUR LITTLE PIGGY TOO!" he screamed.
"David, now!"
David jumped out from behind the furnace and turned on the flashlight, shining it in the lunatic's eyes.
The man raised an arm to cover the blinding white light from his vision.
Sarah leaned out from behind the tank and took aim. She squeezed the trigger and fired multiple shots into him.
The bullets pierced his torso, arms, and shoulders. Big sprays of blood splattered on the furnace behind him. He staggered backward into it, spilling gasoline all over himself before dropping the can onto the floor, the gas pouring out and pooling by his feet.
The deranged smile on his face faltered and he looked down at his chest, wiping a hand across the blood coming out. He looked at her and started to tremble, futilely trying to shield his eyes from the blinding light that David was still shining on him. He stumbled toward her and reached out.
She fired three more shots at him. The first two hit his chest and his neck and caused him to stagger back into the furnace. The third bullet struck the furnace directly behind him, creating a tiny spark as it ricocheted. Like a little snowflake on a beautiful winter morning, the spark drifted down through the room before igniting the gasoline he was doused in.
Flames consumed his entire body, igniting the puddle on the floor, too. He became a towering inferno, the vague shape of the man engulfed in fiery hell. He screamed louder than Sarah or David had ever heard anyone scream before. His arms began to flail wildly and his eyes bulged, peering through the flame. He turned and lumbered toward David, holding his arms out as if embracing him and taking him to Hell was his final wish.
Sarah ran and pulled him out of the way, and the two of them retreated and huddled in a corner.
An intense orange glow bathed the room and the heat was incredible. The man's body suddenly convulsed and he started to run around the room, bouncing off walls and machinery before falling to the ground, dead.
Sarah and David skirted around the room away from his charring corpse and went out into the hallway. They ran as far away as possible before she suddenly collapsed.
He stopped and checked on her, trying to shake her, but she was unconscious, and for all he knew, she was dead.
13
School's Out
For a long time she was shrouded in darkness. It was like a constant fog that enveloped her and wrapped its arms around her in a tight hug. She felt herself floating aimlessly through it, lost in its endless mass. Her mind was soft and she felt like she lost the capacity to think like she used to. It was like being in a dream where you had to run and finding out that your legs didn't work like you wanted them to. Periodically, bright light came to her, and she thought she was being pulled to the afterlife. After an uncertain amount of time being trapped in this hellish nightmare, her eyes fluttered open.
She found herself lying on a worn bed in a classroom of the school. Sunlight spilled through the windows and warmed her cheek. Her whole body hurt. She felt sluggish and tired. It was a little painful to breathe, and slowly all the events of what happened to her and David in the school came back to her. She felt each and every wound that the lunatic had inflicted upon her, letting her know there were still there. She put a hand on her ribs, which felt bruised, and she winced as she breathed in and out in long intervals.
David came up to her, excited. "Mom, are you
awake?"
"Yeah," she said, "I'm awake."
"Finally."
She couldn't help but laugh, even though it hurt. "Why?" she asked. "How long was I out for?"
"Three days."
"Three days?" she repeated in shock as she sat up on the bed. Her eyes fell to her wounded leg and saw that there was a bandage wrapped around it. "Did you...?"
"Yeah," he said. "I found a first aid kit and I patched you up."
She gently patted the dressing, inspecting his work. "What did you do?"
"I gave you stitches," he said.
"You what?" She was shocked.
"It had instructions in the kit. I read it before I did it."
Her heart rate increased, a wriggling fear in her that he did something horribly wrong. She peeled back the dressing and to her surprise the wound was sutured up tightly with even stitches and looked okay, no sign of infection. "Did you disinfect it?" she asked.
He nodded. "The instructions said to."
Her heart settled a bit and she lay back down on the bed. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. For apparently having slept three days, she still felt exhausted. But she realized she must have lost a lot of blood from her leg. The fact that she survived was miraculous.
As she stared at the trees outside she suddenly realized that the windows weren't covered with boards anymore.
"Did you do that?" she asked, pointing to them.
"Yeah," he said. "It was too dark in here in the daytime. I couldn't see anything."
"How did we get here? This room, I mean."
He put his hands on his hips. "That took a while," he said. "I tried dragging you up the stairs from the basement, but you kept falling back down. I finally did it, though."
She raised her eyebrows in disbelief, finding herself constantly surprised from every new bit of information he was revealing.
"It's okay!" he assured her. "I wrapped you up so you wouldn't get hurt." He still got the feeling from her that he did something wrong, so he continued. "I got some food for us, and some water too! There was lots of it!"
"David!" she said suddenly. "Were you wandering around the school?"
He didn't want to answer because he knew that she would be upset, and he just lowered his head.
"Are you kidding me?" she cried. "Do you know how dangerous it is in here?"
"I'm fine, Mom, really. There were some more traps, but I was careful. I promise."
"It doesn't matter if you promise," she said. "All it takes is one false move and that could be the end of you. Do you know what would happen to me if you got hurt? I can't believe you would be so foolish."
"It's not all about you," he said defiantly.
She was indignant. "What did you say to me?"
"I said it's not all about you!" There was anger in his voice. "You would've died if it wasn't for me!"
Her hard gaze faltered, and she felt herself wilt under his argument. It wasn't easy to admit he was right, but she knew he was. The anger faded inside of her and was replaced with sadness. He had been through so much, he'd seen things that she never wanted him to see, and yet here he still was, making sure she was okay. And he did save her life. The last thing she remembered was running away from the fire and then... blackness. She thought that was the end for her, she thought that was death. But it wasn't; her son had been her angel. In a way, he always had.
"I'm sorry, honey," she said. "You're right."
He looked surprised. "I am?"
"Yes. You really did save my life."
He slowly let down his guard and felt his anger fade away, too. He tried to hide the tears forming in his eyes as he went up and hugged her. She winced at the pain, gentle as he was, but hugged him too.
She rolled off the side of the bed and David helped her up to her feet. Her wounded leg still ached, but she was okay. She took a few steps forward, holding onto the desks in the room in case she fell. She was a little shaky, but she could walk. He was thrilled to see her progress after being unconscious for so long.
"You can walk okay?" he asked.
"Yeah, I think so."
Excitement beamed across his face. "Okay, I'll get everything ready and then we can leave!" he said. He started to leave the room, but she stopped him.
"Hey, hold on a minute," she said.
He stopped by the door and turned around. "What?"
"We're not going to Noah's Ark," she said.
All the color drained from his face. He just stood there and remained silent.
"I know how you feel about this, but there's no way," she said. "Haven't you seen what we've already been through? We were only on Day Two and we're both lucky to be alive. Now I'm sorry, but I had no idea things were this bad out here. We can't keep going like this."
Anger flushed through his face and he turned and stormed off.
She called his name and shuffled after him, making her way toward the hallway. She saw a length of fishing line hanging from the doorknob on one side of the door and a thick gash in the doorframe and realized she was in the classroom that the two of them had tried to enter when they were ambushed by the blade trap.
She looked around carefully for traps as she entered the hallway, worried sick that David might get hurt. Sunlight lit the school, and it looked like he had pulled quite a few boards off from the windows. Even the thought of him doing that turned her stomach, imagining him putting a nail through his hand. The hallway stretched left and right, with another one in front of her, leading past the reception desk and offices to more classrooms on the other side. She called his name again, looking around, and before she could decide which direction to go, he came out from behind the reception area and walked toward her, holding something. He still looked a little angry, but his face had gotten softer.
"Don't run off like that!" she scolded him. "What did I say about running around in here?"
His face became plain and he simply held out a small book to her.
"What is that?" she asked.
"It's a diary," he said.
She was confused.
"It was the man's diary."
"Who?"
"The man here in the school who attacked us. He didn't used to be crazy. He used to have a son like me. But the bad guys killed him."
"David, that doesn't matter."
"Yes it does."
"Why?"
"Because those bad guys we saw in the road killed his son, and all his son wanted was to be happy like me. But he never got the chance."
"That's why I want to keep you safe," she said. "That's why we can't keep going to North Carolina."
"No," David said, "that's why we have to keep going. They stayed in this school and hid from the zombies like we did in the townhouses. And they were safe for a while, but then one day the bad guys came in and stole his things, and they killed his son. That's why he went crazy and set up all those traps. He didn't want anyone coming in ever again. We could've stayed in the townhouses, but maybe one day the bad guys would come for us, too. That's why we need to go to Noah's Ark where it's safe. I know it's scary out here, but living in the townhouses was scary, too."
"Did you really think someone was going to come hurt us?" she asked.
"No, I was afraid you were going to kill yourself."
"What?" She was shocked. "Did you really think that?"
"Yeah. You were sad all the time, and you were getting sadder. I didn't know what to do. I knew we had to get out of there, because I thought you would've done it."
"Oh, honey, I would never do that. I would never leave you all alone like that."
"I know it's dangerous out here," he said, "but it's dangerous back at the townhouses, too, isn't it? Just in a different way. That's why my dad died, right?"
"What do you mean?"
"He died so that I would be born, didn't he? To make sure I would be okay, even though it was dangerous. And we have to go, even though it's dangerous, because it's the right thing to do. It's what my dad would've done,
right?"
"I don't know, honey."
"It's what that man did. Him and his son were stuck in an apartment building for a long time, and his son tried to kill himself because he was sad. So they left and tried to find somewhere better, even though it was dangerous."
"Were you ever thinking of..." she trailed off.
He shook his head. "But I thought you might. And that's why we can't go back."
"David, I told you I'm never going to do that."
"But if we stay in the townhouses, maybe we should."
"Don't say that."
He shrugged.
She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed, thinking about what he said. All this time, she thought he had been the one becoming depressed, but she never took a step back and looked at herself, never realized that they had both been spiraling down in their own ways. Maybe he was right about what would happen if they stayed in the townhouses, but she didn't think they had much of an alternative anymore.
She led him back into the classroom and they went to one of the windows that overlooked the front of the school grounds. They could see the parking lot and saw that there was still a sizable group of zombies stumbling around the school. Most of them had wandered off over the last three days, but many still remained. There had to be at least twenty of them that they could see. No matter what they decided to do, staying in the school indefinitely certainly wasn't an option, and they would have to get past the zombies outside.
"It sucks that all the cars are out of gas," David said, staring longingly at the anachronistic steel shells sitting in the parking lot.
It hit her.
"The basement," she said.
"What about it?" he asked.
"He was pouring gasoline everywhere. Maybe there's more."
His eyes lit up at the revelation.
The two of them carefully made their way down into the basement. The flashlight still worked and they wormed their way through the dark labyrinth, Sarah trying to remember where she was when she saw the lunatic pick up the gas can. They passed the hallway that connected to the boiler room where he had met his demise, and they could see the black soot and scorch marks that remained coming out into the hallway, but they tried not to look at it.
The Fall of Man (Zombie Apocalypse Series Book 1) Page 12
