by T. L. Walker
At first no one said anything, but finally Mike whispered,"Promise," and within moments the others followed suit.
"Mike, you and I lead the way. Virginia, Daniel, keep an eye on our backs as we move." With that I gestured to Mike and turned to his left. We jogged this time, our feet seeming to slap the floor in an offbeat staccato that was far more loud than I cared for, but the noise of what we were running toward soon drowned out any sound we made. The hall was slick with blood in places; I almost slipped once but Virginia grabbed hold of me and helped me regain my balance. I could see a turn up ahead, light flowing around the corner and highlighting our first true obstacle.
Bodies. Nearly a dozen, from what I could see. Mike skidded to a halt, and when I looked at him, his jaw was trembling. I laid a hand on his arm.
"Make sure the zeds are totally dead. If they’re still alive – really alive – find out if they’ve been bitten. If they have, take care of them. No matter who they are." No one deserves to turn into one of them, I told myself, but another part of me whispered, Not even Bobby? Not even Jia?
It was Virginia who moved first, Daniel on her heels. I followed, pulling Mike with me."You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to,"I told him."Just help me figure out what’s what, okay?" He nodded stiffly; knives in hand, we each headed toward a body. I was disgusted with myself when I felt relieved that mine was a zed, and already gone, at that. Mike’s must have been as well, because he didn’t say a word or do anything before moving on to the next one. Virginia and Daniel were ahead of us, and I heard the sickening sound of one of their knives taking care of someone. Or something, I reminded myself.
The next body I found was a young kid, younger even than Mike, I guessed. He was already gone, but I forced my knife through the base of his skull anyway.
I had to make sure that he didn’t come back.
I heard a groan. By now Virginia and Daniel were beyond the bodies, poised for movement but waiting for Mike and I. It was Mike who’d groaned, Mike who was bent over a body but not moving.
Zed or human, it was someone he knew. I stood, wiping my own knife on my pants before kneeling next to Mike."I’ve got it," I told him.
It was a teenager, a boy shorter and stouter than Mike, with a shaved head where Mike had kept a short crop of curls the entire time I’d known him. But they looked about the same age."Your class?" I asked.
"A friend," he admitted.
I reached under the boy’s head. He was unconscious, breathing shallowly, but he’d been mauled. There was no life after what he’d been through – no alive life, anyway. I was about to push my knife through the base of his skull when Mike stopped me.
"Please," he murmured. I let him push my hand aside. I saw his knife. I knew what he meant to do. I rested my hands on my legs, keeping my own knife at the ready – but I didn’t need to. Mike took care of his friend, stood, wiped off his own blade, and moved forward without me. It took me a moment to follow, but finally I forced myself to my feet, dodged the rest of the bodies, and just barely caught up with my friends, who were pressed against the corner of a sharp turn in the hallway.
What just happened...it’s nothing compared to what lies ahead.
At some point, there’s no turning back.
*******
I turned the corner and the first thing I noticed was that the front entrance to the school was clearly the biggest problem. The ceiling was high, the wall all glass doors and windows, and the sun was reflecting off the hundreds – possibly thousands – of glass shards that littered the floor, almost making the mob of people and zeds fighting each other glitter as they moved.
And then I realized that many of them were coated in tiny bits of glass and wet with sweat and blood.
Everything in the grisly scene before us shone.
All of us had stopped again, staring at the dozens of bodies on the floor and the fighting happening no more than a hundred yards away."Jesus," Mike hissed.
"Capture them if you can. Kill them if you have to," I ordered.
I rushed forward into the fray.
Zeds were still pouring in from outside, and I had to fight my way through the mob to reach the small group of people who stood in a circle with their backs to each other. I came face-to-face with the mousy girl who’d remained at the zoo’s gate with Virginia mere days ago. I didn’t know her name, but I knew her allegiance – I rushed at her and shoved one of my knives up through her eye without thinking twice. I spun to my right, weapon at the ready, but this time it was Dominic who I faced. We both stopped just short of attacking, and there was a moment when time stood still. Finally I inclined my chin just slightly, and we turned away from each other. I never knew what he did next, but I myself was faced with a group of zeds, a mix of new and old that moved so sporadically I couldn’t even keep count as I slashed with my knife and swung my bat one-handed, merely hoping that it would do the damage I needed it to.
I saw Virginia fall, scramble, get back up. She was bleeding from her side, so heavily that the zeds were already turning towards her."Run," I mouthed, but she shook her head and plowed forward. I had to turn away when I heard a loud whistle. It was Daniel, beckoning me toward the far corner of the entrance hall – and Mrs. Downing was by his side. I ran, then, shaking off everyone – everything – that touched me.
"He’s tied up, shut up in a room with Monika guarding him,"the nurse hissed at me as Daniel and I pretended to hold her down."’Round the corner, two doors down on the left. Jia took some people outside to try to thin out the pack, but she could come back any moment."
I nodded my thanks and followed her without a thought for my friends. They could handle themselves...but I needed to take care of Luke. Daniel had turned away, turned back toward the handful of fighters and zeds left behind us. He and Virginia and Mike will have each others’ backs.
I ran then, dodging kids and zeds, sparing the time to take two of the latter down as I went. Mrs. Downing could barely keep up with me even then, and so I rounded the corner alone, swinging preemptively with my bat, which thankfully met with nothing but air. The noise and mayhem in the front entrance was obviously keeping the zeds from roaming the school, but even here there were bodies on the ground and blood – both human and zed – coating the floor and speckling the walls. I slowed to check the first body I saw, but Mrs. Downing grabbed my left wrist and pulled me toward the door she’d mentioned."We took care of these,"she hissed."Now get in here, quickly. There will be noise, and it will draw more soon enough."
She cracked open the door and dragged me through it behind her; I didn’t even have time to steel myself against what I would see. The classroom had larger windows than the nurse’s office, windows that looked out into a small courtyard. All of the shades were wide open and for a moment the light from them blinded me; I saw only a tall person standing with their back to me."Luke?" I said softly, hopefully.
But then the person turned, and my eyes adjusted to the light behind her. Monika."He’s in the teacher’s closet,"she said, her chin trembling, her gaze mistrustful, angry."What have you doneto us?"
"What we had to,"I snapped, making for the closet at the back left corner of the room. I could hear the noises now, and my stomach turned. I jiggled the handle, but it was locked from the outside. I turned back to the two women, young and old."Give me the fucking keys," I ordered.
Mrs. Downing looked up at Monika."Give her the keys, dear."
"Don’t call me dear.Who left that door open for him? You think we don’t know how you and some of the others feel?"
In one swift movement I dropped my bat and pulled my gun, pointing it at Mrs. Downing’s head."Give me the keys, or I kill your nurse."
Monika stared me down."She betrayed us. What do I care if she dies?"
"She betrayed Jia,"I insisted."And maybe some of the other assholes who follow her around either because they’re shitty people too, or they have some awful form of Stockholm Syndrome. You know what that is?"
She nodded, but
still didn’t look at Mrs. Downing."Say what you want, but Jia keeps people alive."
I laughed."But she’s no nurse. Who’s going to take care of the people who actually survive this if I kill Mrs. Downing, here?"
That gave Monika pause. She finally looked over at the nurse, who spread her hands out in an apologetic gesture."If I die, I die knowing that I tried to save you kids from Jia. She’s not right, Monika. You of all people –"
"Don’t talk to me about Jia,” the girl hissed. She turned away, stalking back and forth, but after watching her for a few moments I knew I couldn’t let her think this through any longer. My people are out there, in danger. Other good people are, too. Kids, and not all of them like Bobby.
I clicked off the safety."You have to decide, Monika. Save this woman, or don’t, but know that if you let me kill her, it’s likely that far more of your people will die than if you choose to let her live."
The girl took a deep breath and faced me."You’re the one who chooses if she lives or dies," she said, but then she reached into her pocket and took out a small key ring with a single key on it and tossed it into the air. It hit the floor and skidded to a stop just a few inches from my foot.
Still, I didn’t put away my gun. I bent to pick it up, my eyes on them the whole time, then stood slowly."Thank you. Mrs. Downing, keep a hold on her, please."
"But –"
"Do it! Do you think I was kidding about killing you?"I wasn’t even sure if I was lying anymore. For a moment there I’d really thought that I would need to pull that trigger."Do it for yourself, if not for anything else. I could still kill both of you."
Neither of them seemed to be thinking about the fact that if I shot my gun, especially more than once, it was likely to draw attention. Or maybe one or both of them did understand that and simply didn’t care. What I knew was that they were both afraid of me. I think I probably would be, too.
I fumbled to unlock the door, my neck craned over my shoulder so that I could watch them. Mrs. Downing had taken hold of Monika’s hands behind her back, but I knew that the girl could probably wrest herself out of the nurse’s grip quite easily. Finally I felt the handle move smoothly under my hand and tore the key from it, shoving it into my pocket and only turning away from the others to pull the knife from my right boot.
"Either of you come near me, and I’ll let him loose," I said over my shoulder as I opened the door, holding my gun awkwardly in my left hand. I fumbled again, trying to turn the knob with a knife in my hand, but the only noises I heard were from Luke struggling on the other side of the door. For those few moments, I had to believe that Monika was not Jia and that Mrs. Downing was more trustworthy than I ever could have expected.
As it turned out, they weren’t what I really had to worry about, because when I finally saw what was in that closet, it wasn’t Luke.
Not anymore.
The thing that stumbled towards me was a zed. It still looked like Luke, for the most part; other than some new scratches on his face and neck he appeared to be whole. His arm was even still mostly bandaged, but his veins were almost black, stark against his now-dull skin, and though he was too newly turned to move very fast, his mouth was opening and closing as he tried to approach me, his teeth clacking together in an odd beat, an airy growl sounding from his throat.
No. Its arm. Its veins. Its mouth. Its teeth. Its throat.
I stepped back out of the closet, shoving my gun into its holster and scooping my bat up off the floor."If either of you move, I willkill you," I promised Mrs. Downing and Monika. They merely stared at me with wide eyes. I spun back around to face Luke and shoved the bat between his teeth – the zed’s teeth – as it opened its mouth again. I pressed it toward the back of the closet, feeling its hands grab at me, catching on the seams of my leather jacket. It couldn’t to scratch me, and it lacked the dexterity to take hold. It still took all of my strength to keep the bat between its teeth as I pressed myself against it – against him, some part of me screamed – and pressed the tip of my knife up into the base of its neck. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, hating the tears that streamed down my cheeks. “I loved you, in my own way.”
I braced myself and shoved the knife up through Luke’s neck, deep into the base of his skull. There were a few seconds of struggle, and then he went limp in my arms.
It took everything I had to not start sobbing. Instead I released the body and let it fall to the floor, knowing there was a chance that I’d never see it again. When I turned to face the nurse and the girl, they were still standing in the same spot, watching me fearfully.
"Do either of you have any weapons?"Both of them nodded."Hand them over."This time they hesitated, but when I moved forward, zed-blood-coated knife in hand, they moved fast, each of them setting several knives on the closest desk. I picked up the knives one by one, shoving them into my boots and belt – wherever they would fit."Stay where you are, and don’t hurt each other," I told them, heading back toward the classroom door. I knew what Monika had given me – the master key. No wonder Jia had everyone under her control; with this, she could go wherever she wanted, lock or unlock any room. So I shut the door and locked it behind me. I knew there was a chance that Monika would go after Mrs. Downing, or vice versa, but I had to continue hoping that neither of them was that stupid – or that horrible. Not everyone can be as cold as I am. As cold as Jia is.
Most of the fighting was still contained to the entrance hall, but a few zeds must have heard some of the noise we’d made. They’d rounded the corner and were making their way toward me, but there was nothing of me left anymore, really. I took hold of my bat with both hands, my knife pressed against it, a useless close-range weapon in circumstances like these. The first few zeds were fast; I spun and swung and spun again, sending them to the ground but not truly killing them. It didn’t matter – there wasn’t enough time. I took out two more of them, slower ones, before rounding the corner, where a large semicircle of people was fighting off the zeds that continued to stumble through the broken doors and windows. The ones still left were a mix of newer and much older zeds, zeds that had been at the back of the horde, and this group of people working together took them down almost easily. I saw Daniel and Mike and Virginia still fighting, and for a moment I felt almost elated.
And then Jia appeared, leaping into the fray, tumbling expertly across the floor and then springing to her feet in a perfect gymnast move. Several of her people were right behind her, and though they were still working to take down zeds, I knew that this sort of peace wouldn’t last.
I raced forward, dodging between two kids I’d never seen before, cracking my bat against a zed’s chest hard enough to send it reeling backwards into someone. I recognized Allie in the brief moment before she was pinned down, and I made the split-second decision to let the zed go as I sprinted toward Jia, Allie’s screams echoing behind me.
Jia saw me coming and spun away, out of the range of my bat, ducking under a zed so that it tripped over her and went sprawling to the floor. When she stood, everything seemed to move in slow motion. Her teeth were bared in a feral grin as she pulled a gun and tried to aim it at me. But I was fast, too; I dove to the ground, my hip slamming into the blood-slicked tile flooring. I slid several feet, pulled out my knife as I rolled over, and stabbed upwards almost blindly. Jia dodged me again, but not quickly enough – my knife sliced along the back of her left knee and she fell hard, the gun flying out of her hand. Still, she somehow had a knife in the other one before I could do any more damage, and even though those tendons in her left leg were ruined, she performed an awkward backwards flip to escape me...
And ran right into a zed.
At first I thought that Jia even had this under control; she recovered herself quickly, rising to her knees, her hand whipping up to stab the zed in the face – but then I heard something whizz by my head and Jia jerked forward, her arm automatically falling to her side.
There was a knife implanted in the middle of her back. I spared one lo
ok over my shoulder and saw Daniel lowering his arm, staggering backward as a zed threw itself at him.
And then there were screams, male and female both. I almost turned back to make sure that it was Jia screaming and not some other girl, but something pulled me toward Daniel instead. I knew he was being mauled, and I was angrier about that than I was about Jia.
Apparently there’s still some human left in me, after all.
Saving Daniel – truly saving him – was out of the question; I knew that before I jumped to my feet and ran towards him, throwing myself on top of the zed and slamming my knife into the soft spot just below its right temple. It still took all of my strength to finally hit some part of the brain that would actually render the damn thing inert, but finally it went limp beneath me. I rolled away, pulling the body off Daniel as I went, and then scrambled over it to be back by his side.
"Ch-Charlie," he choked out. The zed had been shorter than Daniel, short enough that it had very likely been a recently turned school kid – there was a shallow bite, probably the first one, taken out of his bicep. But when he’d fallen, the zed had taken to his neck. There was blood everywhere – I was drenched in it up past my wrists as I tried to hold my hands over his wound.
"I’m sorry," I said, and I meant it.
"Just...end..." He choked again, leaving things unsaid...but I knew what he wanted.
Everything around me was red. I couldn’t hear anything but Daniel’s labored breathing and his words –"Just end" – echoing in my head.
I wiped my blade on my pants, cleaning it as much as possible, and then leaned down, placing the point of my knife at the back of his neck."Lauren and Mabel will be cared for,"I promised him, trying to force back the tears that were pricking at the corners of my eyes."You are one of the best men I’ve ever met. Goodbye, friend."
Still pressing on his wound with my left hand, I leaned into my right and drove my knife through the base of his skull. I felt sick, being thankful that there were no horrible death throes – that I’d done it right, that I’d ended his suffering as quickly as I could.
