by Joseph Zuko
“Fuck it. Let’s go,” she raises her blade bat, ready to kill.
“What’s the plan?” Frank spits his gum onto the grass.
“Move fast. Don’t get bit. Kill them all,” I speak the truth. Frank looks at me from the corner of his eye.
“Great plan,” Frank takes the lead. We move quickly across the park and into the baseball field. Frank guns down a couple out in the field.
They hear the gunshots and head our way. Their hero and princess backpacks flop around as they run. It is a parent’s greatest fear.
There is a covered basketball court that is connected to the school’s gym. The lights are still on in the building. I take a good look at the gym doors. They are steel and glass and the glass has wire mesh built into it. It gives me an idea.
“This way!” I run for the gym. Frank has gunned down another fifteen.
We get to the basketball court and Frank’s shots echo even louder with a roof overhead. I slam up against the door and look around inside.
“What are we doing?!” Sara yells. The gym is empty. I pull on the door and it opens.
“Get inside!” I tell them. Devon is first, followed by Sara. Frank empties his clip into the leaders. I grab him by his shoulder strap and pull him into the building. The door shuts behind us.
“Hold the other door,” I hold on tight to the handle. Devon and Sara grab and hold the other door. Seconds later the little bodies and a few of the big ones crash into the gym doors. Frank flips around his clip and he is ready to go. It does not take long and there is thirty plus crammed up against the doors. Their own bodies have locked the doors and now they can’t get in.
“Alright Frank.”
“What?”
I point out the window, “This glass isn’t bullet proof.” I step away from the door. He slowly walks up to the window and raises his gun. Little fingers claw at the window. He is slow to pull the trigger. The muzzle of his gun is right next to the glass. He opens fire and his rounds rip a hole through the window. It doesn’t take him long to get through his clip. When he is done there are still a lot of them out there but the hole in the glass is large enough I can fit my spear through it. I pat Frank on his shoulder. He steps to the side and I raise my spear up to the hole. Frank walks over to a wall, backs up to it and slides down to his butt. I make sure the lanyard is wrapped around my wrist, take aim and quickly take down the stragglers. The bodies pile up by the door with each strike of my spear. I have taken down ten before I feel the tears stream down my face. There are more than twenty left out there. They stumble and trip over their fallen classmates and students. There are so many bodies they can’t get close enough to the door for my spear to reach them. Frank unzips his bag and pulls out another box of ammo. He reloads slowly.
“Let’s take five,” Devon says as he gets down next to Frank. I wipe my eyes on my sleeve. There is a lone basketball on the floor of the gym.
“Wanna shoot hoops?” I ask. I get a few chuckles out of them. The kind of laughs you get when someone says something funny but very inappropriate. I feel a madness growing inside. In a handful of hours I have seen so much destruction that I feel changed. I could take a hundred showers and never feel clean.
“Let’s see if we can make it through the school and pop out a door close to the apartment.” I take a sip of water.
“What about the rest of them?” Sara has a new nail in her mouth and she works it to the quick. There is a noise at the window. One of them made it up to the door. It reaches through the window.
“There’s only a couple left. We’ll deal with them out there.”
“Almost done,” Frank flips the clips over and works on the last one.
I jog over to door on the far wall and press my ear to it. A few good taps against it and I do not hear anything. I pop the door open and look around. It is a hallway. The lights are out but it is clear.
“You guys ready?” Frank pops his clip back into the rifle. I prop the door open in case we have to run back this way.
The hallways are lined with papier-mâché projects and colorful construction paper, flowers and trees mostly. Their names scribbled down on the works of art. Ashley, Kristin, Zack, Gunner, Heather, so many little boys and girls that never had a chance. We pass a series of classrooms and get to a wide, empty hall. It is the main entrance into the school. The outside glass doors are spattered in blood. There are still a handful of them out by the buses.
“Look,” Devon points outside. The inside of the buses are what caught his eye. Little hands paw at the windows. Both buses are full. Every seat has a dead child in it. I try the next door to let us into the backend of the school. It is locked.
“Crap. We’ll have to go this way,” I point at the main doors. “We’ll take down the ones right outside and head for the apartment.”
“Yeah,” Frank agrees. I push open the first of two doors that go outside.
“Save your ammo. We can take them.” I push open the last door. The door clicks and screeches, it lets them know exactly where we are. They charge straight for us and the three of us hammer the little infected and remaining staff. Frank hangs back to make sure we do not get surrounded. We are down to the last couple infected. A few more swings and this is over.
BOOM!
The gunshot did not come from Frank. Devon is on the ground. Blood seeps from his leg. The shot came from a man on the other side of the parking lot with a large revolver in his hand. He is covered in blood.
“Stop killing them!” the man pleads. Frank has his gun up and trained on the man’s chest.
“We have to! If they bite you you’ll turn!” I yell back at him as I move to Devon’s side. Sara takes down the last infected child. The man runs across the parking lot and aims at Sara.
BOOM!
He misses.
“Hold your fire!” I put pressure on Devon’s leg.
“They’re dead!” Sara yells as she ducks down.
“My baby’s here. Don’t kill them!” his voice cracks. Tears and snot run down his face. He has lost his shit. I lift up Devon’s leg the round passed through. Everything I know about gunshot wounds I learned from TV and movies. I can’t tell if it is better that it passed through or not. He has two holes in his leg but at least I will not have to dig around for the bullet. The man looks up at a bus and he falls to his knees.
“Oh, God no!” he found who he was looking for.
“AM I GONNA DIE?!” Devon grabs me.
“No, you’re not! You’re gonna go into shock, but you won’t die! I promise.”
The man is on the ground, screaming at the top of his lungs.
“What should we do?” Frank keeps his gun aimed at the man.
He gets up from the asphalt and heads for the back of the bus. “Teagan!” he grabs the release lever on the emergency door and pulls it down.
“What are you doing?!” I look up from Devon.
“My baby!” he swings the door open and they pour out onto him. Frank fires and downs a couple but it is too late. They have him. Their little mouths and hands tear into his flesh. Frank fires off a few more rounds and then his gun stops firing.
“It’s jammed,” Frank works the bolt on the SKS, but it is not clearing the casing. The bus is packed with kids and they tumble through the rear emergency exit. There must be forty blood thirsty infected kids. The man is smothered in bodies. His screams become thick gargles as the infected tear out his throat. The rest of them have set their sights on us. Frank works at his gun. Sara pulls on my backpack for us to leave. Devon tries to keep me close and I do not know what to do. I can’t leave Devon. I won’t leave him. I can see my actual apartment. H7. Is right there. So Goddamn close.
Chapter 17
Frank lets go of his SKS and the shoulder strap swings it back under his arm. He pulls both Berettas out and takes down the first bunch of infected. More and more dead children fall from the back of the bus. They land hard on the ground. Some of them break their limbs as they fall. Their little f
orearms bend backwards as they tumble to the ground. I grab Devon’s wrists and pull him to his feet. He makes a hell of a lot of racket as I move him. He dances around on his good leg until I get my shoulder down in his mid section and toss him up into a fireman’s carry. Thank God he is skinny.
“Grab his spear!” I bark at Sara. She clobbers an infected ten year old with her blade bat and then grabs the spear.
We race. The final sprint home. After hours of running scared I will finally be home. We are minutes from walking through my front door. There is a field of grass that separates the school from my apartment complex and a fence separates the two. No way I can climb it with Devon so we have to run to the end. Of course the end of the fence sits at the far corner of the field. It is three football fields long. I need a break. An hour or two on my couch would feel great. To rest, breathe easy and try to forget today. If I sit down, I will not get back up. I will fall asleep. I can’t wait to hold my girls. All three of them. If it was possible I would never let them go. I love to hold them in my arms and feel the skin of their cheeks against my neck. Their little hands wrapped around my fingers. When I see my wife I am going to give her a good long kiss. Usually when I get home from work we give each other a peck to say hello. This time I am going in for a long one. Maybe try and turn it French. I know I am filthy and stink to high heaven, but I bet I can make it happen. I think she loves me enough to kiss this filth.
Devon is heavy on my shoulder and he throws off how I run. Instead of being light and running on the balls of my feet, I run flatfooted and my joints scream in pain. Devon’s gunshot wound pours blood. The back of his green camo pants has turned dark purple. If he bleeds out and dies while he is on my shoulder he might try and bite me. With every step my anxiety builds. My brain plays out awful scenarios over and over again. I am too late. They are not there waiting for me. Something terrible has happened. All these thoughts are repeated over and over again. Plus, the horde of hungry infected preteens does not help. They chase after us like it is a game. The most horrifying game of tag ever. I look back as I cross from the parking lot to the field. Sara is behind me. Frank is not far behind her. He holsters one of his Berettas so he can change out the clip as he runs. He gets both clips changed out for fresh ones and whips around and opens fire. He takes down another ten. His aim is off. He got the horde of kids down to about thirty. It is still too many to fight out in the open. They will surround us and we will be goners. We are halfway across the field.
There is a gate in the fence at the corner of the field. It is unlocked and wide open. Frank has caught back up with me.
“Sara, get the gate!” It takes everything I have to get the words out of my mouth. Devon’s weight on my shoulder crushes my lungs. She takes off and in a matter of seconds she is way ahead of us.
She gets through the gate and drops her weapons. It is rusty so she works it back and forth until she is able to get it to shut. Frank gets there first and I am right behind him. As soon as we are clear she has the gate shut and lever down, locking it. I lay Devon down on a patch of grass. His face has gone white. His eyelids flutter.
“Don’t go to sleep!” I give him a little punch in the arm. The infected are at the fence, but they can’t get over it.
“Okay.” Devon nods at me.
“I need a knife,” Frank gasps. I pull one from my hip and hand it to him. I pull my belt off and wrap it around Devon’s leg. My extra knives and machete fall to the ground. I get the belt tight around his leg.
“Get the medkit out of my pack.”
Sara steps behind me and unzips the pack. She finds it, pops it open and finds a couple large bandages and some gauze. We get bandages on both wounds and wrap it as tight as we can. I use my belt to hold everything in place.
“There we go!” Frank has worked out the jammed casing. He slides the bolt back and forth and his rifle is ready to rock. He empties the last of his clip into the monsters on the other side of the fence. Frank flips the banana clip around and takes care of the rest.
“Come on buddy. You’re doing good. We’re almost there. Take a drink of water,” I help him get his water line into his mouth.
“Can you toss the knives and machetes into my pack with the medkit?” I ask Sara. She tucks it and the knives into the bag. Frank picks up the machete and slides it onto his belt.
“I’m tapped out and need to reload everything,” Frank swings the SKS onto his back and picks up Devon’s spear. I take a look around the parking lot. My wife’s green PT Cruiser is in her spot.
“Jim!” Frank needs my attention. I look up and it is another nightmare. We go from the very young to the very old. The thing I feared earlier today. There is an old folks home on the next block and it looks like every single one of them has been turned and found this apartment complex. The one good thing about super old infected people is that they are slow. Imagine an old person, someone in their late eighties walking around. It takes them forever to get anywhere. Then add being dead and chewed on, and you got a group of deadly snails blocking us from my apartment. These poor old people are horrible to look at. Open robes and nothing on underneath. It is amazing how many of them have colostomy bags. It is a cruel prank Mother Nature plays on us. Seventy plus years with a normal functioning body and then everything falls apart the last two decades.
I pull Devon to his feet. Frank has his revolver and he puts down the first six old people.
“H7! Come on!” I wrap Devon’s arm over my shoulders and he hops along on his good leg. Frank and Sara lead the way. The two of them make a path. They decimate the retired old folks. I drag Devon. His eyes are shut.
“Don’t go to sleep! Wake your ass up and help me!” He pops his peeper’s open and tries to help carry more of his weight on his good leg. We get to the sidewalk outside my home.
“You gotta hop up!” Devon hops up onto the curb.
Each building is made up of four apartments. There are two on the top floor and two on the main. My place is on the first floor. The door is tucked back into the building. A flight of stairs to the second story takes up half of the entryway. At the top of the stairs someone has blocked up the landing with two by fours and plywood. I have lived here almost two years and I barely know my neighbors. There is a deaf guy across from us. A deaf neighbor is great because he does not make any noise. Above us is a young pothead couple. At almost the same time every night we will hear them cough like crazy on their back porch. Then the smell of weed creeps down to our place. Kitty corner from us is a young family like mine. Husband, wife and three kids. I can never remember their names, but I think he works in construction. He must have built the blockage at the top of the stairs. There is a group of bodies outside my door.
I don’t recognize any of them. There are a few old people mixed in with a few men in their late forties. I get to my front door and there are several bullet holes right below the peephole. They were fired from the inside. Something else I know from TV. Shotgun blasts are peppered across the wall next to my front door. Someone gunned down the dead bodies. The door to my neighbor’s is wide open. Blood covers the door, carpet and hallway leading into his place. My deaf neighbor’s body lies on the floor. It is torn in half. His torso lies in the hallway. He has turned. Once he sees me he drags himself toward the front door. His intestines pull tight and the bottom half of his body pulls around the corner into the hallway. He drags his legs behind him. Sara and Frank take down the infected close to the entry, but there are too many out there. Soon they will overwhelm us. I kick at the front door.
“Karen! Open up!” I kick it a few more times. “KAREN! KAREN!” my voice is hoarse with panic.
“HURRY UP! THERE’S TOO MANY!” Sara and Frank back up from the infected. We need to get inside right now. The deaf neighbor pulls himself through his doorway. He is an ankle biter. His hands slip in the blood that coats the entryway. One of his feet gets caught on the corner of the hallway. As he pulls himself though the doorway his intestines unspool from his torso.
“KAREN!” I give it one last kick. Nothing. I am going to lose my mind! When my kids were first born I would call home to tell Karen I was on my way. About two out of ten times I would call and she would not answer. I would call over and over and still no answer. My mind would go crazy with different horrible scenarios. Mostly that she was dead and the kids are now missing. I would get home and she would be fine. The kids were fine. They would be playing or sleeping like kids do. Her phone would be on vibrate so she could get the kids to sleep without worrying about it going off and waking them up. I would get myself all worked up over nothing.
I prop Devon up against the wall and dig into my pocket. I get my keys out. My deaf neighbor’s hands claw at my legs. I kick them away. It feels like a classic horror movie. The killer creeps slowly towards his victim as the young beautiful virgin fumbles with the keys. I stomp down onto the head of the infected. Its teeth crunch into the concrete. I didn’t kill it. I only gave it a disgusting jagged smile. Its top teeth have snapped in half. It still tries to grab my legs. I get the right key and the door pops open. I grab Devon and push him in.
“COME ON!” I call to the others. I whip around and slash at the infected on the ground. My spear finishes the job and my poor, deaf neighbor is put to rest. Frank and Sara follow me into my place and I slam the door shut, lock it.
I drop my spear and push passed my guests to get to my bedroom. Frank and Sara help Devon to the couch.
“KAREN? KIDS? VALERIE? ROBIN?” the bedroom door is open, but nobody is there. Our laptop is on the bed. A video game prompts me to click continue. I check the closet. Nothing. The case to my handgun is open and the gun is gone. I look over the rest of the closet and Karen’s boots are gone along with some of her clothes. I know they are not under the bed. We use an old queen box as a bed frame so we do not have to worry about someone hiding under there. I leave the bedroom and check the computer room. It is a junk room really. My hands shake. They are not there. There is another dead body I do not recognize on the floor. A large puddle of blood surrounds its head. I move back down the hall. They are not in the bathroom. I get to the living room and see that my sliding glass door is broken. Glass covers the floor and there is blood everywhere. A dead body lies outside on the back porch. Inside is another mound of bodies. They sit by the sliding glass door. All senior citizens. Someone has blasted this door and these bodies to pieces with a shotgun. There are empty shells all over the floor. There are also shells from my Ruger everywhere. Bullet holes pock the sheetrock in the kid’s playroom. My family is not here! I fall to my knees, sobbing. I failed. Everything I did was not enough. All the horrible things I had to go through added up to nothing. No. No. I didn’t make it home in time. I can’t see. My eyes are blurred with tears.
