by Calen, Tom
Travelling down the stairs was more difficult than the day before as the bodies of their attackers lay in a congested mass on each step. As they passed the front office, Mike made note that while they might not have encountered any hostility thus far, the front courtyard was once again filled with roaming figures.
A corridor to their left led to the Math pod, and was the first of the seven pods the group planned to search. The hall was lined with trophy cases displaying past glories of the school’s athletic teams. Their reflections in the glass startled Mike as he saw himself fully for the first time since this nightmare had begun. His clothes were stained with blood, one shirt sleeve torn where the sheriff had grabbed him. The back pockets of his jeans bulged heavily with the magazines he had stuffed into them. His face was drawn and haggard, which was perhaps the biggest shock to him. Twenty-four hours earlier he had looked similar to those his age. Now, though, it seemed he had aged greatly overnight. His jaw was held tight, the scruff covering it thicker now with two days of not shaving.
The mathematics pod had its walls covered with displays and posters students had made earlier in the semester. Some explained the quadratic formula, while others showed the various geometric computations for height, width, and volume. Silently, he opened each of the five doors, quickly scanning the rooms for signs of life. The classrooms appeared to have been untouched by the attack of the infected. Can they not open doors? Mike wondered to himself. Within minutes, he concluded that no one had sought refuge in the pod.
“Alright, guys. One down, six more to go. Let’s hit the English pod next,” he instructed. With remarkable bravery and determination, the others nodded their silent assent and followed him back out of the pod.
An hour had passed, and the search of the English and foreign language pods had yielded no positive results. The rooms in each showed no sign of survivors or infected. Mike began to allow himself to hope that all the others had managed to escape to safety. That hope mingled with a selfish disappointment that there would be no one else in the school to help him and the students in his care.
Immediately upon entering the hallway leading to the science pod, the signs of the infected were apparent. White walls were splashed with blood and gore and the floor grew increasingly slick beneath their feet. The now familiar stench of death and decay wafted towards them with each step nearing the classrooms. Mike could feel the building tension in his muscles as he gripped the guns he held out in front of him. Of the five rooms in the pod, one had its door open. The threshold into the class was blocked with an unrecognizable torso. Feeling the bile rise in his throat, he swallowed hard and willed himself forward.
The scene in the room was far worse than that which he had prepared himself. Desks and chairs were carelessly tossed around the room. The walls, floor, and ceiling were almost completely drenched in crimson, but his eyes focused solely on the carnage that filled the room. The dismembered limbs of the occupants, arms and legs gnawed down to the bone, lay scattered amidst the debris. Behind him, Mike could hear the sound of Josh Sorenson emptying the contents of his stomach. Easing his way into the room, it was clear that the infected had not left one body intact.
Anger welled up inside him as he stood silently among the devastation. As best as he could tell, some thirty to forty victims had lost their lives within the walls of the classroom. With a sickening irony, he felt grateful that none of the faces were recognizable after the savagery. Turning towards the door, he saw Jenni comforting the trembling freshman while the other three young men were struck still with shocked horror, the tears evident in their eyes. He could offer them no solace, for what comfort could be found in such a thing? Rather, he just stood before them as their stares eventually met his own. No words were spoken; any utterance would have fallen far short of its intent. As their eyes locked with his, Mike willed them what little strength he had left, through the gaze he offered them the resolve he now felt. We will not become them, he said to them silently. We will live.
A slight shuffling noise behind him caused Mike to whirl around, his feet barely maintaining a grip on the slippery floor. Derrick and Blaine were immediately to his sides, their weapons once again raised. The room was silent again and had the two teenagers not rushed forward, Mike would have thought he had imagined the sound. A tense moment passed as three sets of ears strained to locate the source of the noise. Finally, after a seeming eternity, the shuffling sound came again. Prepared for it, the three armed males quickly directed their sight to a small cabinet in the far right corner of the room. With steady, deliberate steps they approached the cabinet. Signaling for Blaine to open the door, Mike and Derrick took aim. Nodding slightly, Mike braced himself for whatever lurked unseen as the door was pulled open.
Within the cabinet huddled a small figure, arms wrapped around tightly drawn legs. Long, brown hair framed green eyes that were filled wide with pure terror. Taking a shuddering breath, Mike lowered his weapon, the two boys following his action, and rushed to the girl. Amanda Piper, a recent transfer student from Kentucky, threw her arms around him with desperation. Uncontrollable tears and gasping breaths poured from the sophomore as he held her. Turning her quickly so that her eyes were not directed to the room, he tried his best to calm the frightened child.
“Shh, it’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay,” he told her, hoping his words rang with a truth in which he did not believe.
Lifting her gently, Mike brought her out of the room as the others took point around the pod. In hurried, broken sentences, the young girl explained that some time yesterday Mrs. Holigan from the front office had come running in screaming about the devil. Before she had a chance to speak further, boys from the class were shouting and trying to push the door closed as people covered in blood forced their way in. Someone had pushed her towards the cabinet and closed the door. Amanda told Mike of the horror she had witnessed through the small crack of the door as dozens of people streamed in and attacked the class. Her tears flowed anew as she recounted hiding in the small space as the infected tore bodies apart and consumed flesh and muscle.
Knowing that the girl was in no state to continue the search with them, Mike declared an end to the task. Jenni helped the shaking girl to her feet and the group made a somber retreat. He was reluctant to skip the search of the kitchen, but he told himself that he could not risk the further blow to sanity that another gruesome scene might deliver. Upon reaching the secure confines of the faculty room, those that had remained behind sighed with relief and scrambled to embrace them.
Mike entered the bathroom and turned on the hot water tap. He quickly knelt before the toilet, no longer able to fight the bile that had threatened him earlier. With the heaving subsided, he steadied himself as he stood and cupped his hands beneath the faucet and brought the warm water to his face. Lowering his hands to grip the sides of the sink, he raised his head and stared into the small mirror. Several moments passed before he heard a knock at the door.
“Mr. Allard, are you all right?” asked Michelle, voiced muffled through the door.
Turning off the water, he dried his face with the small hand towel that hung damply on a bar next to him. He stepped out into the faculty room, closing the bathroom door behind him. His eyes took in the entire room as he opened his mouth to speak.
“We’re leaving tomorrow morning.”
Chapter Eight
Having lost power years earlier, the city street was lit only by the faint illumination of the waning moon. When clouds obscured the silver sliver, vision was limited to but a few feet. The four refugees carefully picked their way down the wide avenue; a task increasing in difficulty as they drew closer to the hospital building. The black macadam was covered in the skeletal remnants of the city’s former populace. Bags stuffed with clothing and personal belongings, now tattered from several years of weather exposure, lay scattered about. These obstacles paled in comparison to the other, far more deadly, hazards of the street.
Sprawled sporadically across the
refugee’s path were the still forms of slumbering Tils. Each step the four members of the search team took risked waking one of the infected and stirring them all into ravenous frenzy. With bated breath, Paul led the others, weaving his way through arms and legs. Mimicking each placement of his foot, Mike, Lisa, and Andrew followed closely behind the ranger. Their destination was still some five hundred yards in the distance, and over two hundred unconscious Tils made the trek painstakingly slow.
Mike was beginning to feel the first signs of self-doubt as beads of sweat rolled down his face in the cool night air. Back in the bank, Paul had tried to dissuade him, knowing that walking among sleeping infected was wildly imprudent even in the best of circumstances. Being outnumbered fifty to one, making the journey in almost complete darkness, and having no means of a quick escape made it idiotically suicidal. All this, he knew, but he continued to remind himself that the alternative was even worse. Who am I trying to convince? he thought and laughed internally.
An hour had passed since the group set out from the bank.
Lisa Velazquez, a daughter of Mexican immigrants, had spent two years in the military before the Tilian Virus outbreak. Like Paul, she had initially objected to the night mission on the grounds that the potential for deadly failure was too immense. Andrew, however, had remained quiet and once Lisa agreed, he willingly followed the others into the darkness.
It felt odd to Mike to walk among the Tils. He had spent so many years shooting, burning, and killing them, that to be silently creeping through a Til-congested avenue forced his mind into an unfamiliar paradox. Instinct burned in his trigger fingers, but rationality forced him to hold that instinct at bay. The stench of disease and defecation that clung to living infected further increased the desire to remove their threat. Now that the four new world soldiers walked among the sleeping bodies, he knew that any such action would be met with assured death. Or worse, he thought, we could survive to become like them.
There existed an unspoken pact among the survivors. They had seen too many of their companions fall victim to the poisoned blood of the infected. Through his experiments, Dr. Marena had discovered that while many had seemingly been immune to the airborne outbreak, the virus quickly mutated inside a host. While not only altering the infected, turning them into vicious predators, the same occurred to any that were bitten by a Til. Those that now survived had silently agreed to do whatever was necessary to spare others from the horrifying change. On several occasions, Mike himself had to deliver a killing blow to those who only moments before had been friends and allies. He had hesitated only once—six months ago—and the decision had proven more costly than he dared to admit. He often wondered, during those long nights as he lay awake in his cot, if the price had yet been fully exacted.
The night wore on and after two anxiety-riddled hours, the team noticed that the number of infected that rested on the pavement was beginning to thin. It came as a shock to Mike that the hospital was now behind them, and the first building he believed the missing might have sought shelter in, stood only feet from their present location.
The twelve-story edifice, an office building that once bustled with the hectic pace of business, towered before them. Its dark windows, most still unbroken, showed no sign of the missing. Mike felt uneasy operating under assumption, but he signaled for the others to move on to the next building. If the others had survived, their training would have demanded that they light a signal. The three sides of the building that the team could easily inspect had no such illumination, so they pressed onward.
It was the third building, about a half mile from the hospital, which allowed hope of success to plant its seed. On the top floor, in a window on the eastern face of the structure, a dim glow emanated. A cautious but hurried climb up eight flights of stairs brought Mike and the others to a typical office space. Cubicles filled with desks, chairs, and computers formed a maze at the center of the floor; while the sides were lined with doors leading to executive offices. Quickly getting their bearings, the four fanned out and proceeded to the east side of the floor. The urge to call out to the three missing refugees had to be forced down with some effort. While the light they had seen in the powerless building was clearly man-made, they could not be sure that it was set by their fellow refugees.
In the wake of the viral devastation, bands of marauders with no ties to civility or morality, had installed themselves throughout the country. Much like the British boys surviving on a deserted island in the Lord of the Flies, after the outbreak societal norms eroded with a speed that surprised Mike. His education in history, studying ancestral mistakes that destroyed civilizations, had not prepared him for such a rapid decay in his own time. He had learned quickly, though, just six days after the virus first took hold, that once driven to the extremes, some did not recover.
The door they sought was easily found. Desks had been stacked in front of it before the door had been shut. Paul extended his left hand cautiously, his right hand gripping his firearm, and rapped gently against the hard wood of the door. Though muffled, the sound of shuffling could be heard from within the room. A brief moment passed, and again Paul repeated the soft tap.
“Who’s there? State your name,” a strong voice demanded.
“Paul Jenson.”
Once Paul offered his name, the sound of shuffling grew louder and it was clear that objects were being dragged away from the interior of the door. When it finally opened, Mike could see the weary face of Joe Connelly. Within minutes, both barricades had been disassembled and relieved greetings were exchanged.
“Where are Sara and Pete?” Mike asked, breaking into the joviality.
Joe explained that after the initial attack days earlier, the three had sought refuge in the building. They had made several attempts to return to the hospital, but the Tils had prevented that action. Running low on ammo, they were forced to make the strategic decision to wait for a rescue. The tone in his voice made it clear that their hopes of a rescue had dwindled greatly over the ensuing days. Upon exploring the building for food and water, the trio had made a remarkable discovery in the basement floors of the complex. Like many such buildings in the state, a tornado shelter had been installed below ground. What made this one unique, Jon declined to say. He offered no further details as he led them down, saying only, “You have to see it to believe it.”
* * *
“Nearest we can tell they left a little over a year ago, most likely right after the winter.” Pete Marshall spoke from a small desk which was surrounded by stack of maps and other miscellaneous documents. The seven refugees now occupied a large room five levels below the main lobby. Unlike the rest of the building, Sub-Level 5—as it was marked on the thick steel doors that guarded the entrance—was well lit from solar panels on the roof, feeding it power. A cursory tour of the complex revealed a massive room lined with dozens of cots, a few smaller rooms that had clearly served as storage and cooking areas, and a working bathroom facility complete with hot water showers.
“They had to be pretty sure about it to leave,” Paul commented. He was referring to the papers the three had discovered during their wait for rescue. The well-organized notes detailed the years of survival since the outbreak, the names of those who sought shelter, and lastly, the radio message that had inspired the former occupants to leave. It was the last notations upon which Mike focused his thoughts.
November 18, 2015: Ken L. discovered radio broadcast. Coordinates in broadcast indicate the island of Cuba. Message claims island is secure and free of infection. Instructions to rendezvous at a port in Miami, FL for transport to island.
Further entries detailed the repetition of the broadcast through late December and the preparations undertaken to prepare for the journey south. The last entry was dated February 23, 2016 and simply stated: Waiting for weather conditions to improve before leaving.
The group discussed the broadcast and the notes at length. In days past, the assumption had always been that an island, isolated from a
ny mainland, would be the best place to eradicate any infected and attempt to rebuild a society. The refugees had spent the years since the outbreak searching for radio broadcasts, though as battery resources dwindled, that task soon became impossible. The camp had decided that flashlights and other battery-powered necessities were more essential to survival than vainly listening to static.
Mike and the others talked for hours before their stomachs and physical weariness got the best of them. After hot showers—the first the four members of the rescue team had had in years—and a meal prepared with left-behind provisions, everyone soon settled into cots and drifted off into a relaxed sleep. Everyone, that was, except for Mike Allard. His mind raced with the implications of the log entries. Could it be possible? Could the broadcast be true? Could salvation be so close? The questions danced through his thoughts.
“You were pretty quiet before,” Paul spoke from the neighboring cot.
“What do you mean?” Mike replied, knowing full well to what the ranger referred.
“Cuba. What’s your take on it?”
Mike searched for words to express the doubts that filled his mind.
“I don’t know, to be honest. It’s a helluva risk. Miami is, what, like a thousand miles away? And the broadcast, if it is genuine, is over a year old. A lot could have happened between then and now,” he finally answered.
“You don’t think we should go?” Paul asked the question Mike had dreaded.
“I’m not saying that. It’s just that right now the camp is relatively safe. We have food and water. To risk all of that on something unknown…I just don’t know.”
“That’s because you’ve given up.” Paul’s voice was flat, yet the words held meaning and cut Mike deeply.
“How have I given up? I’ve spent the last six years making sure we all survive this thing,” anger tinged Mike’s words as he replied.
