It was a huge subdivision, with hundreds, if not thousands of homes. If there was any lesson learned from the end of the world, it was subdivisions, especially in this country, either lived or died. There was no in between. Given this was Joslin, I knew that subdivision was dead, and nothing lived there. That gave us about three thousand potential zombies coming our way if things really turned against us. I hoped they had all drifted to the east when things had gotten bad, and had completely forgotten the way home.
Jake worked his way through a lot of broken driveway, and across a field that may have once been a parking lot, but it was hard to tell. In the distance, a huge building sat amid the trees and bushes, half of one side had completely collapsed, giving the building a lopsided look.
“Please tell me we don’t have to try and dig through that mess,” I said, unbuckling my seatbelt as we came to a stop.
“Hang on.” Jake looked at the map he was holding, and then up at the building; then at the map, and then at the building. I was starting to get a bad feeling about this.
“Nope, we’re good. It’s supposed to be on the fifth floor of that building right in front of us.” Jake put away the map and started putting his gear together. Julia pulled out her spear, and was about to belt on her knives and gun when she suddenly left the truck and walked through the tall grass of the parking lot. She went about twenty paces, and then suddenly stabbed down into the grass. Walking back, she wiped off her blade and smiled at us.
“Saw some grass move when it shouldn’t have, and when I went over, I found a legless zombie working its way towards us. That would have been a nasty surprise when we came back to the truck,” she said.
Nasty indeed. It was one thing to face a zombie head to head, no distractions. It was another to open a door and have one fall on you. That tended to darken your whole outlook for the day.
We loaded heavy after that, each of us taking our melee weapon and one of the secondary rifles we kept in the trucks. These were just .22 rifles, but they allowed us to carry a lot of ammo. Between the three of us, we could take on over fifteen hundred zombies if we had some good cover. Julia and Jake had Ruger 10/22s, while I had a Winchester 9422.
“All right, according to the information, there is a stairwell that takes up all the floors, and it should be right inside,” Jake said.
“Let’s go then,” I said, feeling like this might be easy for a change.
“After you,” Julia said brightly with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. I knew that look, and she was not about to be first.
Jake nodded, flicked off the safety of his rifle, and headed for the doors. The grass had taken over most of the parking lot, but it ended at the concrete steps towards the building. We looked around once we reached the top of the steps but did not see any more creepers in the tall grass.
The doors to the building were smashed in, and we carefully made our way around the broken glass. That was a good way to get infected, since the dead never worried about things like that and often cut themselves silly on broken glass. The virus lasted a long time in the open, and you could get infected by getting cut on zombie glass.
Inside, it was dark and musty. Mold grew all over the place and we quickly covered our faces with our bandanas. We tried to avoid stepping on any of it, because it was nasty when it was disturbed. Administrative offices were to our left if the fading signs were to be believed, but one look into the weird jungle that was growing there put our curiosity to rest. The high ceiling had a lot of spider webs all over the place, and as we got deeper into the building, I swore I could hear the spiders as they scuttled from place to place.
“Over here,” Julia called us to the stairwell doors. Jake and I were surprised to find the doors not opening. We pushed, but they were stuck. I tried a final time, and managed to get the door to move an inch, which told me there was something on the other side.
Jake and I pushed again and this time the door slid open enough for Jake to get his head and a flashlight in to look around and see what was blocking it.
“Oh, man,” Jake said, and managed to squeeze himself through the door. Julia and I waited on the outside and heard a lot of strange noises. Julia took the moment to try and sneak in a quick kiss, but our gear got in the way and we wound up giggling at each other.
Suddenly Jake opened the door and motioned us inside. We stepped in and saw a pile of corpses on the landing between this floor and the one below us.
“What the hell?” I asked.
“Just a pile of dead people blocking the door. Don’t look like they were zombies, so I’m guessing they got trapped in here and chose to just die instead of being eaten or making a fight of it.” Jake said.
That made no sense to me. If you were looking at death anyway, why not take out a few of your killers. That’s what I always told myself I would do, anyway.
“Well, at least they weren’t zombies when you stuck your head through the doorway,” I said.
Julia tapped me on the arm. “Don’t be silly. Jake wouldn’t make a mistake like that.” She winked and added. “He would never forget to lock the exit doors to keep the zombies from following him and wind up spending twelve hours in a women’s bathroom.”
I chuckled. “That’s true. He would never, ever, think of not trying to arouse dormant zombies and get chased for three miles by the slowest group of ghouls we’ve ever seen. Not Jake.”
Jake gave us both an evil stare before heading up the stairwell. It was dark as night in the enclosed space, and our flashlights weren’t much help. The stairs were wide, and on a few steps, we could see old signs of trouble, like a splattering here or there, or some dark stains over the banister and doors.
Chapter 38
We reached the fifth floor without incident, and Jake opened the door with Julia and me at the ready with our rifles. Zombies that had been around for a while were decayed up to a point, and their bones weakened significantly. So much so that a little .22 was effectively able to kill a zombie given the weakness of their skulls. Fresher zombies needed a little heavier firepower.
The fifth floor was the library, and it had a huge wall of windows that allowed a lot of light in. That helped a great deal.
“Where’s the thingy?” I asked, moving around a couple of tables to a map cabinet. Maps were extremely valuable, so I wasn’t going to let this opportunity go to waste.
Jake looked around and spotted a glassed-in room with a lot of computers in it. “Over there, I’ll be right back.”
Julia wandered off to find some books of her own, while I dove into the maps. There were big road maps for all the states, plus a couple of county maps for Will, Cook, Dupage, Kane, and Kendall counties. These were a huge find, and I quickly rolled up the maps into a big tube. I tied off the two ends with a string and slung the whole bundle over my shoulder.
Julia came over a little while later, and she was holding about five books, all of them romance. When I gave her a lopsided grin, she just shrugged.
We waited for Jake, who took fifteen minutes to get back to us. He was holding what looked like it was another computer tower, only thicker.
“I think I got it,” he panted. “I’m not one hundred percent sure, but it fit the description better than any of the others.”
“Did you grab the power cord?” I asked. “I’m not coming back here for that.”
Jake looked sheepish. He handed the server over to me and scooted back into the computer room. He came out with a small chord that he put into his backpack.
“That would have been embarrassing,” he said.
“Especially since you’d have to come back alone,” I said.
“What’d you find?” Jake asked, pointing to the rolls on my shoulder.
“Maps, including county maps,” I said with a smile.
“Nice.”
Julia had already tucked her books away, not giving Jake the pleasure of teasing her.
“Ready to go?” I asked.
“Right behind you,” Jake
said. He would have to be in back, since his hands were occupied with the collection. He couldn’t just drop the thing and fight. That would defeat the purpose of this trip. We had a computer at home that we used from time to time, but this thing was something different. I found myself wondering what they were going to do with it, but it wasn’t my worry.
We started down the stairs and immediately knew something was wrong. There was a lot of noise a couple of flights down and some banging, as if something was running into the walls. Julia shone her light down the stairwell and lit up about a dozen zombies. They must have been on levels we passed, and got into the stairs to chase after us.
“Back! Into the library!” Julia called out, causing a series of groans that echoed up and down the stairwell.
We dodged back into the library and closed the doors. I secured the handles with a big zip tie and hoped it would hold long enough to find another way down.
“Search the two sides, there has to be another way out of here,” Jake said, heading off into the stacks. Julia and I split up, and I went over to the magazine section by the opposite walls.
About a minute later, there came a pounding on the door and a surging that stretched the zip tie. The zombies were groaning something fierce, and I could have sworn I heard answering groans, although it could have been an echo.
I found nothing, and I was running into Jake back at the center when Julia called out.
“Over here!”
We followed the sound of her voice and found her along the back wall next to a fire door. She was smiling as if she just got away with something, although neither Jake nor I felt like smiling back.
The door was tucked away behind a couple rows of books, and next to a small study booth. It would have taken us an hour to find this door and she walks right up to it. I had to ask.
“How did you find this door so fast?”
Julia didn’t answer, she just pointed at the ceiling. Above us were exit signs that conveniently marked the way. Cute.
We stepped through the door just as we could hear the other door breaking open. The groans and moans got suddenly louder as the zombies, desperate for prey, began hunting through the aisles of books and materials. Just as the door was closing, I heard a sound that chilled me to the bone. It was the high-pitched wheezing of a child zombie.
Nothing was more dangerous than a little kid zombie. For whatever reason, they were fast, vicious, and smarter than your average zombie was. If you had one stalking you, you needed to find some open space really fast, and hope it wasn’t right on your ass. No one knew why they were so different, but it didn’t matter. They were and we had to be ready for them.
Chapter 39
We moved down the fire escape as quickly and as quietly as possible. If we were lucky, the little bastards wouldn’t find the fire escape until it was too late. If we were very lucky, we would be out of here in a few minutes.
At the bottom of the stairs on the first floor, Julia halted by the door and looked out the little window. She shook her head, indicating she didn’t see any zombies. Jake was sweating his ass off; apparently, the server was heavier than he had anticipated. I didn’t offer to take it from him, and I knew he would be too proud to ask. It was amusing to see him make himself suffer like this.
Julia opened the door and I followed behind, with Jake bringing up the rear. We were at the end of a long balcony, with several small offices positioned on our right. On our left was open space, and the light coming in from the huge windows showed us an enormous hall, with dozens of large tables scattered about. I guessed that this was where the students to the college got something to eat when the mood hit them.
It was also the place where about fifty zombies were hanging out, and they groaned loudly as they made their way under the balcony to reach up in frustration at us. A large stairwell that I could see that went under the balcony on the other side and came out in the middle of the hallway in front of us. Several zombies were making their way to the stairs, and we didn’t have much time.
“Let’s go, let’s go!” Julia urged Jake and me, although we had no plans for sticking around.
We ran across the balcony, and we were turning the corner to head out the front when Julia stopped dead. I ran into her trying to stop, and Jake ran into me. A corner of the server jabbed me in the back to add injury to insult.
I didn’t ask why Julia had stopped. A big horde of zombies had come out of the dark and had been looking for us to return when we came at them from behind. Had we come down the stairs we had gone up, we would have walked right into the middle of them before we knew they were there.
“Follow me!” I said, turning around and running for the surprisingly well-lit bridge that linked this building with another across a small valley. We ran past the cafeteria stairwell that was becoming crowded with ghouls, and onto the bridge. The first section wasn’t very bright, but that was because it looked to be a sitting room where students could watch the television that was mounted on the wall.
The next room was a big lounge area, with lots of small chairs and desks for work. The windows on this section of the bridge were clear, and it was as bright as day in that area. The next section had two little pits that went into the floor about five feet and more chairs and cushions were scattered about. There was also a large party of zombies headed our way from the other side.
“Watch yourself!” I yelled as I jumped into the pit, running across and leaping up the other side. I was hoping the other side of the bridge was unoccupied and I breathed an internal sigh of relief when I saw that it was.
I looked back to make sure Julia and Jake made it across, and Julia leapt up with a great deal of grace. Jake was doing well, but on his jump up, his foot caught the edge of the step and he went down. The server flew from his hands, past my startled head, and through the window. The glass seemed to fall for a long time as I watched the server drift away into space before landing at the bottom of the valley. Imagine my surprise when the valley floor splashed up as the server disappeared beneath the surface of the water down there.
I didn’t say anything, I just looked through the big hole in disbelief. Jake got up and joined me at the hole.
“Where did it go? Can we go get it?” he asked.
“No,” I said, ignoring the wave of zombies headed our way.
“Guys?” Julia asked.
“Why not? It’s not that far. It probably landed on something soft.” Jake argued.
“Guys?” Julia asked again.
“Soft like the pond it fell in?” I asked, pointing to the edge of the water that could be seen further out from the bridge.
Jake visibly deflated. “Well, dang.”
“Guys!” Julia yelled.
“What? Oh.” We finally paid attention and realized the zombies were closing in behind, the side, and in front.
I whipped up my rifle and fired once, sending a hot round through the brain of a zombie, tumbling her to the floor. “I got the back, Jake, you take the front, and Julia, the side’s yours. First one clear, we go that way.”
We fired carefully, and some of our targets required more than one round, but we had enough ammo for a decent fight, as long as we took our time and made the shots count. .22s worked well on zombies, but you had to hit them straight it. Any angle made it risky to need a second shot, and if they were close enough, it was going to be tough.
After I had dropped fifteen zombies, I paused to reload. I had created enough of a barrier that the zombies were delayed tripping over their fallen comrades. I had a tubular magazine, so it wasn’t as quick as using a semi-auto’s magazine, but I could reload faster than they could reload their mags, so it evened out.
Suddenly, Julia shouted. “Clear!” We wasted no time in bolting across the lounge space one more time and heading right, moving towards the second building again. Behind us, dozens of zombies were in pursuit, and I stopped to shoot two of the others to try and trip up the rest to buy us some time.
Julia fire
d twice, killing a couple of ghouls that stumbled out of the doorway to the main area, and then we were clear.
“This way!” Jake said, running down a huge corridor. On the left were floor to ceiling windows, and this allowed us to see very well as we moved past tables, chairs, and a mess of used supplies. Apparently, someone in the past has used this place as a safe zone against zombies. With dozens of doors and huge windows, that was probably a mistake.
On our right were two floors of classrooms and several alcoves of lecture halls and experiment rooms. As we ran past room after room, I was struck with the size of the damn place. You could effectively house a big community here and have room for everyone. That is, if you could keep the zombies from smashing your windows in.
“Come on!” Jake was running towards the far end of the hall, where a set of doors looked like they would lead us to the outside. We didn’t need motivation, as zombies poured from the doorway to the bridge into the main hall. If there was one there was a hundred, and they all moved in groaning desperation for flesh.
I looked back and saw what I feared most. Several little zombies were outrunning their peers and were moving up on us fast. I stopped suddenly, firing once, and managed to put one of them down.
Jake looked back to see what I was doing and cursed. “Damn. Just keep on running Aaron, we’ll get them outside!”
I spun around and caught up to Jake and Julia, and we put on an additional burst of speed to get away from the little ones. At the doors, we nearly broke them in an attempt to get through, and I tied the interior doors with a zip tie. The exterior doors got the same treatment, and we moved away from the building and into the parking lot.
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