by Thomas, Jack
“The windows! We can use the windows to get out of here!” the heavier set guy said, he was still watching the chaos unfold through the window.
While the classrooms in the higher floors had railing behind the windows to protect people from a fall to their death out of their own stupidity or being thrown out by some violent encounter, the windows on ground level didn’t require this safety measure. This would allow us a safe exit from the school; it wouldn’t force us to go through hallways filled with death and more infected people.
I looked out the window and by comparison if we took our chances on the campus. It would be a walk in the park next to an attempt through the cramped halls of the school.
“He’s right. We can make a run for it if we time our exit. We have a better chance to outrun anyone infected and get off of the campus if we’re in a wide enough area to move freely in. We won’t have that opportunity in the hallways.” I agreed with the guy. Why not go with the safest plan and make our escape while there was still a chance?
“Who made either one of you two losers boss? I’m not going to die because of some stupid plan you idiots came up with. I’m staying right where I am and wait for the police to arrive and handle it. You two and deaf girl over there can go wherever you want, but Max and I are staying alive in this room where we can keep those people out and keep ourselves alive. Thank you very much!” The wise words from the guy at the TV enlightened me as he walked over to Max (AKA the other douche bag) and pulled him away from the window.
I wasn’t aware that the rocker girl was deaf but this didn’t list her under stupid. I just needed a method of communication so she could understand what the proposed plan was, she could then choose whether to join us or stay behind with those two jock-asses.
“She can read lips; she does go to a school for the hearing you know.” The heavyset guy said while I was trying to figure out a way to talk to her, deep in thought.
I’ll never be able to stress enough how this oversight was caused by the pressure of the moment, I wanted to stay alive and all. Otherwise, I would have put two and two together and realized a deaf girl at a normal college might read lips. We’ll go with that.
“Yeah… I guess you’re right. Thanks.” I walked over to the girl and tapped her on the shoulder to get her attention. Her eyes were fixed on the school campus ever since we made it to the classroom, but she broke eye contact with the outside and turned to face me. “We are going to leave through the window and then we’ll run through the clearest path we can find so that we could get off campus. Will you come with us?” I made sure to pronounce every word as carefully as I could to avoid any form of confusion while I got the message across.
She stared at me for a few seconds and nodded.
“Lead the way,” she said with a strange accent in her voice. I’ve heard it before from other deaf people. Because they couldn’t hear the sound of the word they tried to say, they would go off of the lip and tongue movement and add their own sound later based on how they thought it should be said, resulting in a deaf accent.
I smiled at the girl and turned to the big guy. “Alright, let’s get this over with.” The girl was still focused on me. “What’s your name?” I asked her.
Shy of her own voice, she answered my question. “My name is Melissa.” She hid her fear well; everyone else was horrified! I kept composed and together but I was scared out of my mind too.
“Okay, Melissa. You need to stay close to us so we can be safer as a group. As soon as the window is open we’ll get out and make a run for.” I took one final glance at Max and his keeper then turned to face the heavy set guy. “What’s your name? And lead the way.”
“My name is Edgar.” He opened the window and lifted himself over and out of the opening. Melissa followed him outside and I went last and closed the window behind me.
The other side of the window was like a different world, more space in between the infected and the people that chaotically ran to avoid an attack. The school’s parking lot was the area of the campus with the most infected. Everyone that became stuck when all the cars shut off were either still hidden inside their cars or trying to get out of the parking lot through the mess. The street that the parking lot was connected to was overrun as well. Since none of the cars worked it wasn’t practical to steal one, so we ran our way out of the campus to stay alive.
Edgar took off and ran straight ahead while Melissa and I followed close behind. He ran towards Cruise Street, the street connecting the school to the rest of the town. He tired quickly but fear brought out the perfect amount of adrenalin so he wouldn’t even notice his fatigue and pushed through. Some of the infected noticed us when we ran by them and chased us with an extremely slow stride. They eventually became distracted by other people who ran by us and focused on them or would join in on the feast of someone already taken down. Because so many buildings made up the college, to see anything but the part of the street directly in front of us was impossible unless we reached the street, which we did.
Edgar stopped ahead of us and stared in shock. We soon realized the reason for his shock was the sight of the whole street overtaken by the infected as far as our sight allowed us. It went straight into town. Cars were crashed into trees and people; they were everywhere. People screamed and ran all over the place getting attacked.
Melissa tried to get Edgar to snap out of his shocked state, she shook him and spoke to him so we could keep moving and avoid the chance we’d get caught by the infected, but he wouldn’t come back to reality. He zoned out from the intense surreal emotions that overwhelmed him. I tried to get his attention too, I snapped my fingers by his ears and shook him like Melissa did but he wouldn’t respond. Some of the infected were closing in on us, and they were coming from every direction. We couldn’t afford to stay there any longer. My nerves went crazy. They were closing in on us fast and we couldn’t get Edgar back. Melissa and I stared at each and held eye contact. We knew he had to be left behind. We made our distance from Edgar and walked away, down the middle of the street. I glanced back seconds later to Edgar buried under a pile of the infected. We left him for dead.
Springfield: Uptown
It’s impossible to know for sure what happened or even why it happened, the only thing we knew for sure is it did happen. Melissa and I headed through open areas of the street; we walked the whole time to avoid wasting any energy we might need if a reason to run came along. The street made the college campus look like a safe haven by comparison over the course of a few minutes. The number of crashed cars on the street was so extensive; it was difficult to safely maneuver on the street. Up ahead, there was a fire and a car pileup in front of a gas station. The closer we made it to the gas station the less infected there were on the street, they were gathered up by the gas station. The fire or sound was attracting them and allowed us to safely get closer and get a look at what was taking place there. After we walked a mile, both Melissa and I realized the infected were harmless if they weren’t aware we were near. This information became most crucial when we were no more than two or three buildings distance from the gas station. We hid behind two cars crashed into each other and looked through the windows at the gas station, hundreds of infected were present. Some walked around with no destination; they just circled the same areas, while others stood in one spot and did nothing, the rest ate dead bodies thrown on the ground and inside of cars. By this point the number of uninfected people became so low we would come across ten to twenty minute gaps of infected only before watching someone else run by or get caught by the infected.
Regardless of the reason all of those infected gathered, we weren’t going to be able to continue straight on the street without the chance we would attract them to us the moment we walked by. We had to head back and make a turn onto another street to keep moving. I faced Melissa, she was still staring at the wreckage ahead, but she must have seen me look her way from the corner of her eye because she turned to face me immediately.
“W
e have to go back. If we go through here we’ll probably get caught by them and not make it.” While I told her this fear filled her eyes and her expression became the same as Edgar’s when he went into shock. “Are you alright?” I asked when I realized her stare wasn’t on me but rather right pass me to something behind. Movement reflected off of her eyes. I turned around to face whatever it was. One of the infected somehow crept up on us.
Melissa panicked and yelled out without much thought “WATCH OUT!” she said and grabbed my arm to pull me away from the infected man that lunged at me. The infected man hit the ground thanks to her reaction. I toppled over her and onto the ground, we both scrambled to get back up while the infected man dragged himself over to us, he struggled to lift himself up off of the ground. We backed away and looked over the cars to find almost all of the infected in the gas station walking together in our direction. The scream stole their attention. I grabbed Melissa’s hand and walked away from the gas station.
The further we made it the faster the mob of infected behind us would walk, but they never did more than just walk. Groans and growls came from the infected, alongside the stampede sound of their march toward us. Ahead of us, more of the infected came out of buildings and from out of alleyways. Melissa and I increased our pace to avoid the mob behind us but the quick movement and noise we made to get away attracted more of them. Before we knew it, there was a crowd almost as large as the one behind us coming from the front and the sides. We were surrounded.
“Look!” Melissa yelled out. She pointed at a nearby building with the front door open but no infected coming out. I nodded at her and we ran towards the entrance. The crowd from the front was closer to the door than we were, but they walked which was the only thing going for us at the time. If we didn’t make it, we would be stuck between all the infected and die. They came from every direction around us except from where the buildings we ran alongside were. We reached the door almost at the same time the crowd from the front did. I pushed Melissa into the building the moment one of the infected tried to swing at her but missed and fell over to the ground. I stepped over the infected man and followed Melissa up the stairs. We didn’t have time to close the building’s front door and that allowed the whole group of infected behind us to chase us inside. Moans, groans and footsteps from the mob behind us echoed through the building’s stairwell and all of the infected inside of the building were stepping out of apartments and out of dark corners they blended into. Melissa and I noticed an open apartment and ran inside; we slammed the door behind us. As soon as the door was shut, Melissa turned all locks on and I walked around the apartment carefully to be sure there was nothing harmful inside. Melissa, now leaned against the door to catch her breath, slid down and put her hands to her face and began to cry.
It didn’t take long before all of the infected outside gathered behind the door. A few of them tried to scratch at the door and others tried to hit it, but by the sound of it, most of them had no clue where we went. I came back to the hallway where Melissa cried against the door and I sat next to her.
“I don’t want to die here. I want to leave and see my family and know they’re okay…” Melissa whispered. She wiped tears away from her cheeks and from under her eyes. She could have been reading my mind as far as I knew. I was worried of the same thing, but there was no way we were going to survive against another crowd of infected. We needed to arm ourselves.
I stood off of the wall and took a knee in front of Melissa. I put my hands on both her cheeks and looked her in the eyes.
“Look, we are going to get out of this. Let’s search the house for anything sharp or blunt with some range. As long as it could be used as a weapon, get it and bring it back to this hall. I’ll start in the living room.” It was the best plan I could come up with at the moment to get her mind off of the nightmare going on outside. I tried to reassure her with a fake smile, but I had no idea what was going to happen to us. I was as lost and confused as she was.
Melissa relaxed a bit, smiled, nodded in agreement and stood up. She left to the kitchen, a good sign. I went into the living room.
By the looks of things, the residents of the apartment took off in a hurry. The place was a mess. Clothes rested all over the floor, furniture knocked down, family photos and frames broken. The light in the living room came entirely from the windows but didn’t make the search for a weapon any easier with the mess still in the apartment. I looked under some furniture and through the random things thrown on the floor but could not find a single thing I’d call useful in the living room. I walked over to the only door in the living room which was open and I looked inside to be sure it was safe. It was a bedroom, and it was just as much a mess as the living room. I walked inside and looked around, scanned the room and kicked over things on the floor, moved things on the dressers and the bed, but the bedroom was just as useless as the living room. Mostly clothes were thrown around the apartment. If I wanted a new outfit, I now had the perfect location to find it. But my Need-A-Weapon problem found no resolution any sooner just because I had a wide selection of sweaters in all sizes and colors. The best this apartment offered was a fashionable death. On my way out of the bedroom, I noticed the closet. I didn’t even notice the closet in the bedroom at first. The closet was invisible behind the mess.
I walked over to the closet to dig through it, moved things around, but still I found nothing good. I turned my attention to the shelf at the top of the closet, and surprisingly my day became a little better. A wooden, full sized baseball bat awaited my warm and comforting grip. I picked it up and swung it around with my left hand for a few seconds and continued to search the shelf. I didn’t find anything else, but I didn’t plan on complaining. The baseball bat was a million times better than ‘nothing’ will ever be.
I left the bedroom and made my way back through the living room and into the kitchen. I spotted a fire escape through one of the living room windows before I went back to Melissa in the kitchen. She took all the knives, a crow bar, a broom stick and a large steel frying pan, and laid them out on the dinner table. She sat on the kitchen counter; she ate some cereal she prepared for herself in a bowl she found. This is approximately the time I’d normally assume she was crazy, but with all the mind-blowing, unbelievable crap we witnessed, she had the most composed reaction by comparison to everyone else thus far. She looked my way and smiled at me. “The hallway was too small to put it all.” She said with a smirk on her face when I presented my one lame find.
“I didn’t believe this place was going to have anything else that we could use, aside from this bat. What do you think we should take?” I made sure I spoke only when she watched me so I wouldn’t talk to myself.
“I’d do well with the broom stick, it has a long reach! I’m sure I’d feel safer if I kept them at a distance.” She said and put another spoonful of cereal in her mouth.
“Let me know when you’re ready to leave. I saw a fire escape we can use to get out of here.” I walked over to Melissa and sat by the counter, next to her and rested my head against the counter. The whole time I held the baseball bat I picked out of the room. I pictured the fire escape in my head and walked my imagination through an escape route. Most of the buildings on the block we were on were connected, but connected only by their roofs. “Like most of the buildings in the area.” I told myself. If this information turned out to be accurate, we’d be able to use the fire escape to reach the top of the building and work our way to the furthest building from that point. We’d get the distance we needed from the infected, go down through whatever building it was that we ended on, and finish when we made a clean get away from the large crowd outside. Maybe we could finally get to our families and find out what the police and military planned to do to contain all the attacks that took place.
Melissa finished her cereal and put the spoon and bowl in the sink and came over to sit next to me. She rested her head against the wall behind us. “Okay, we can leave now.” She said with an innocent smile o
n her face. She stood and grabbed the broom stick and moved it around a little to test the weight and range by swinging it around similar to how I did with the bat. She grabbed one of the kitchen knives and put it in between her belt hooks on her jeans. I couldn’t help but find amusement in that she was so much more prepared for a fight with one of the infected than I was, and it took her less than half an hour to build up the courage to suck it all up. I still was processing so much of what happened outside that a backup knife didn’t even cross my mind till Melissa took one.
I stood from the chair and took a knife, put it between the belt hooks on my jeans; the girl was onto something and the idea was not going to be wasted.
“Alright, follow me.” I laid the baseball bat over my shoulder and led the way out of the kitchen to the living room window. The fire escape we planned to use waited patiently for us to be ready and use it. I opened both the locks on the window,being extra careful just in case there was already someone on the fire escape ready to jump out at us, I peeked out, checking both the fire escapes over us and below us and made sure it was safe. I glanced back at Melissa and gave her a nod to assure her it was safe and I went ahead. I climbed out of the window and went up the stairs on the fire escape. Melissa was close behind. At the top of the fire escape there was a ladder that led to the roof of the building, I climbed to the top but didn’t immediately get on the roof. I looked over the edge first; there was nothing up there so I climbed the rest of the way to the roof. Once up there, I helped Melissa climb up. Just like that, we were ready to move again.
