The Darkest Part of the Night

by David Spell

  The resource officer reached and managed to get his collapsible baton off his belt. With his broken hand, he couldn’t flick the baton to get it open. He could barely even grip it, but he was able to drive the tip of the metal baton into his attacker’s mouth and pry his teeth loose, breaking several of them in the process. When his arm was free, hands grabbed at the officer and pulled him back to safety. The attacking student, growling loudly, lunged at the next closest victim, a young girl with red hair, a freshman, wearing a skirt. He managed to sink his teeth into her calf. She screamed but could not get her leg free. She slapped ineffectively at her assailant as his teeth dug into her flesh.

  Jeffrey Bell, a big offensive lineman for the football team, had gotten to school late. The high school junior was rushing to get to class. He knew that if he got suspended again, he would get kicked off the team. If he got kicked off of the football team, he would have to face his father and he didn’t want to even think about that.

  He heard yelling in the hallway ahead. When he turned the corner, he saw the crowd. The injured police officer was being helped to his feet. Jeffrey saw that one of the officer’s hands was dripping blood. The floor of the hallway was coated in the red liquid. Directly in front of him on the floor, a student appeared to be dead. His throat was ripped open and he was lying in a growing pool of blood. A teacher continued to press on the jagged wound on the boy’s neck.

  A girl was screaming and other students were trying to pull a male student off of her. He was biting her leg and Jeffrey could see the blood seeping out of the wound. He quickly accessed the situation, dropped his book bag and stepped up to the girl.

  “Get off of her!” he yelled at the attacker.

  Jeffrey hated bullies. He had been bullied when he was younger and much smaller than he was now. He didn’t really understand what was going on but he could see that this guy had hurt several people.

  “Hold onto her,” he said to those around the girl. “I’m going to try and kick him off.”

  He aimed a kick at the attacker’s ribs. The force of the blow to the body broke two of the the zombie’s ribs and got it’s attention. He released his grip on the girl’s leg and started to stand up. Bell grabbed the crazed student by the collar and the back of his belt, easily lifting him off the ground.

  The infected boy tried to bite Jeffrey on the arm but his teeth only connected with the material of Jeffrey’s football letter jacket. He saw the guy trying to bite him and he threw the growling attacker face first into the concrete wall. The sound of the impact of his head on the wall sounded like a melon being smashed. The blow fractured his skull, sending several pieces of bone into his brain. His body slid down the wall onto the bloody floor. With its brain damaged, the zombie was now really dead.

  Jeffrey suddenly felt the weight of what he had just done. A ball of fear landed in the pit of his stomach. Sometimes he didn’t realize how strong he was.

  “Is he ok? Somebody see if he’s ok,” he said, motioning to the kid he had just thrown into the wall.

  Another student spoke up, “No, everybody stay away from him. I think this is the zombie virus that we’ve been hearing about.”

  The student with his throat ripped open began to move. His eyes opened and he grabbed at the teacher who had been trying help him. His mouth was moving but with his voice box damaged, no sound came out. The teacher wasn’t sure what was happening. Should he try and help the boy to the clinic? The now infected student got a hand on the man’s tie and pulled him down to his mouth. He missed the throat but sunk his teeth into the teacher’s cheek.

  The students in the hallway backed even further away. They had all just watched this young man murdered in front of their eyes and now he was alive and attacking a teacher. The students began to flee in different directions. Jeffrey watched as the teacher tried to free himself but felt paralyzed by fear. Then, he started running, too.

  The SRO and the girl who had gotten bit had been helped to the clinic near the front of the school. The officer managed to give the police dispatcher an update and tell her that instead of just being a fight between two students, they had a homicide. He had not seen the murdered student reanimate as a zombie, so responding officers had not been alerted to this new threat.

  By now, multiple calls were pouring into the police 911 center. One call came in of a teacher attacking a student. Another caller said a male student had attacked a female teacher and was killing her in the classroom. Still another said that two teachers were attacking a third one near the teacher’s lounge. It looked like they were chewing on her throat. These calls were all coming in from different parts of the school.

  The next two police cars were on the scene within five minutes. The two young officers rushed into the school to assist the resource officer. But, when they got inside, the principal met them and said he needed them in the library. A student was assaulting the librarian.

  When they reached the library, the principal opened the door and pointed inside. The officers could hear growling and chewing sounds from behind a wooden counter in the middle of the room. They moved cautiously, one with his taser and the other with his pistol in hand. As they rounded the corner, a male student with shoulder-length hair, wearing a long black coat, was on top of an elderly black woman. She was obviously dead and he was chewing on her throat. Blood covered the young man, the victim, and the floor.

  “Police! Don’t move!” one of the officers challenged.

  The boy turned, blood dripping out of his mouth, and threw himself at the two officers. The one with the taser fired. The two prongs struck him in the chest but didn’t slow him down. Both police officers started backing up, trying to create some distance. They could see the blood on the boy’s face, clothes, and hands. He was just about to grab the officer with the taser. The other officer fired his pistol.

  It’s a misconception that police are trained to shoot to kill. In reality, they are trained to shoot to stop the threat. Police and military are trained to shoot at the center mass of their targets, the chest area. It is the largest area, it contains the most vital organs, and shots to that region usually stop the person. Unless that person has been infected by the zombie virus.

  The officer fired two, three, four times into the young man’s chest. The shots slowed him down but did not stop him. Instead, he changed directions and launched himself at the officer who was shooting at him. He managed to get off one more shot to his chest before the boy was on top of him, clawing at his face. He managed to sink his teeth into the side of the officer’s face.

  The second officer reached for the attacker before he could bite his partner’s throat. He grabbed the back of his long black coat and spun, throwing the boy across a table. As the zombie student got to his feet, the officer quickly holstered his taser and drew his pistol. He put the front site on the young man’s face and fired one time as he lunged forward again. This time he fell to the floor with a bullet hole in his forehead and did not move.

  Additional police officers responded to the high school, including the shift sergeant. He quickly grasped that this was becoming a major incident. There were reports from inside the school of at least six dead and multiple injured. He asked that the SWAT team be mobilized. Students continued to flee the school with horror stories of what was going on inside. Some of the students who began to fill the parking lot had bite wounds to a hand, an arm, or a leg. Some of these stayed for treatment, while many other injured teens simply got in their cars and drove home.

  Even though there were no reports of armed attackers, the police treated this like an active shooter situation. Teams of four officers were sent in to try and locate and neutralize attackers and rescue the wounded. Paramedics were escorted in as the ambulances began to arrive. The biggest challenge that the police faced was that they were dealing with multiple attackers so they weren’t sure where to start in neutralizing the threats inside the school.

  Even though local police departments were starting to wake up to the
serious threat that the zombie virus posed, it was still tough to go against one’s training. The idea of shooting unarmed people goes against everything that these officers had been taught. This was intensified even more because they were confronting teenagers. These were someone’s children.

  The first team of four officers who entered the school were told that several students were attacking others near the cafeteria. The officers made their way cautiously down the hall. The noises of a struggle and growling sounds were coming from around the next corner. The police approached cautiously and peeked into the hallway.

  Six teenagers turned zombies had five victim’s bodies pinned to the floor. Blood covered the bodies, the zombies, the walls, and the floor. Two of the creatures were ripping apart a woman, probably a teacher. The other four each had a student that they were working on. All of the victims were obviously dead.

  The first officer gasped. “Oh, my God!” he exclaimed. “Everybody, down on the ground,” he ordered. “Now!”

  As one, the six zombies got to their feet and charged the four officers. Their hesitancy to shoot unarmed people cost all four of them their lives. Only one officer managed to get off a shot, catching one of the zombies high in the leg. The shot broke his femur and dropped him to the floor. The zombie behind him, though, managed to get his hands on the officer’s head and his teeth on the officer’s neck. The one with the broken leg crawled forward so that he could feed as well.

  A police radio broke squelch asking if the officers were ok. There would be no answer.

  CDC HQ, Friday, 1030 hours

  The two Atlanta CDC Response Teams sat in the briefing room watching the drama unfold at Peachtree Meadow High School. The large television monitor on the wall showed scenes of unprecedented chaos. At this point, their help had not been requested but they knew it was just a matter of time.

  They were watching a live split-screen of the events. On one side of the monitor was the feed from a local news station. The reporters and cameras had been cordoned far enough away from the school that they could not see anything. Their news helicopter, however, was flying overhead and the cameras were running.

  The other side of the television monitor was a live feed from a Department of Homeland Security drone. It’s cameras provided a much clearer picture than the news cameras. And what they were showing was America’s worst nightmare.

  The floor plan of the school filled the screen of one of the big computer monitors in the room. The men and Rebecca had been looking it over, trying to get a feel for what it was going to be like going inside. They looked at entrances, rally points, and fall back areas inside the building. If they were called upon to assist the local police, they understood that they were going to be vastly outnumbered.

  They would be going in to conduct rescue operations for those who were injured and for those who were hiding from the zombies. They would also be trying to eliminate as many of them as they could. With a school that large, though, there could be hundreds of infected by the time they arrived.

  Rebecca’s phone vibrated. The local police were now requesting federal help. That request had gone to the Department of Homeland Security. Several federal agencies were notified and would be involved but the CDC Response Teams were the first federal responders for anything related to the zombie virus.

  She stepped out of the room to make a phone call as the men readied their equipment. For the first time, they would be wearing their heavy body armor. They also had their soft body armor on underneath their uniform polo shirts. Even though there were no reports of shooting, their armor would add another layer of protection. Their chest rigs could hold six extra magazines for their suppressed M4s. Each officer also shoved a couple of extra mags into their cargo pockets.

  “Are you sure you guys are feeling up to this?” Chuck asked Andy Fleming and Scotty Smith as they were slipping their body armor on.

  They had both been shot in the attacks the week before. Fleming had gotten hit in the side by an AK-47 bullet fragment. The doctor had removed the fragment and patched him up. Smith had an AK-47 round rip across his left shoulder. It had taken out a chunk of flesh but didn’t hit anything vital.

  Both men laughed. “There’s no way that we’re going to miss this, boss,” said Smith. Scotty, a bearded former Army Ranger, turned firefighter/paramedic, turned federal law enforcement officer was a muscular six foot five and weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds.

  “Plus, I hate teenagers,” he said. “This will allow me rid the world of a few.”

  “We’re good to go, Chuck,” said Fleming. He was a lean, wiry five foot eight. Andy had been a staff sergeant in the Marine Special Operations Command, the Marine Corps’ version of special forces. “I think that we’re going to need every gun that we can get on this one.”

  Smith pointed to Estrada. “And with Hollywood here killing a zombie with a knife, I believe that’s just a bit of showmanship on his part. I’m going to try and kill one with a pencil once we get inside that school.”

  All the men were laughing as Rebecca walked back in. The serious look on her face lifted the levity from the room.

  “Sorry, guys, to break the mood. We need to get going. The police over there are getting torn up. They lost contact with a four man active shooter team. The SWAT Team finally got there and sent in a team to locate those officers. They found them but they were all dead, and then two of them woke up as zombies and attacked the SWAT guys. SWAT put them down but had two guys get bit in the process.

  “As SWAT was pulling back, they got overrun. It’s sounding like they may have lost an entire eight man assault team. When I got off of the phone they were getting ready to send in another team. They’re getting phone calls from inside classrooms from students who are trying to hide. It sounds like there are a lot of kids that need to be rescued but the number of infected is growing by the moment.

  “Several kids have gotten out to the parking lot and then turned. Now, they’re having to shoot some of these student zombies outside where the news chopper can film it. Two officers have gotten bit outside near the command post. What’s making matters worse, is that now parents are showing up and rushing into the school. The police are trying to stop them but, you know, parents can get kind of crazy.”

  “Great, so we’re looking at zombie teenagers, zombie teachers, zombie police officers, zombie SWAT officers, and now zombie parents. Did we miss anybody?” said Jimmy Jones.

  Now Rebecca smiled. “No, Jimmy, that about covers it.”

  “And now that the locals have requested us, do they know what we’re going to do?” asked McCain. “They do understand that we’re going to shoot as many of these things in the head as we possibly can?”

  Rebecca nodded. “I told them that our rules of engagement were that we would shoot any aggressive, violent infected person that we came across. Non-aggressive, non-violent injured we would try and help. And, of course, we’ll try and rescue as many as we can.”

  Eddie said, “Well, gang, its a long drive. We better get going.”

  “We aren’t driving,” said Rebecca. “A DHS Blackhawk will be landing on the roof any minute now. Let’s go load up.”

  “A Blackhawk? I get to ride to work in a Blackhawk?” said Luis García. “And my ex-wives said that I wouldn’t amount to anything.”

  As the teams filed out, Chuck hung back. Rebecca noticed and slowed down. Soon it was just the two of them in the briefing room.

  “I guess this means I get a raincheck for dinner if this thing takes all day?” she said.

  McCain had finally gotten the nerve up the previous week to ask Johnson out for dinner. They were supposed to go out that night.

  “Definitely. Do you have any plans for tomorrow night?”

  She laughed. “You certainly are persistent. I’ll have to check my calendar. I don’t think I’m scheduled to kill any zombies tomorrow night.”

  “That’s a relief,” he said. “Well, let’s go catch our ride.”

 
; Peachtree Meadow High School, Friday, 1100 hours

  Jeffrey Bell understood fear. He was always scared before a football game. No one else knew it, but he threw up before every game. After the kickoff, he was ok, but the fear and stress right before the start almost paralyzed him. And this fear that he was feeling now was worse than anything he had felt before.

  He still felt bad about throwing that kid into the wall. He was pretty sure that he’d killed him. He never wanted to hurt anybody. As the morning had progressed, though, he began to understand that the zombie virus had visited his school. A couple of times he had started to run for an exit. Get out. Get to where it was safe. Other kids had managed to do that. No one would criticize him for running away from what was happening inside the school.

  Jeffrey felt guilty for running away while that teacher got attacked. He’d gotten to an exit but didn’t go through it. Something inside of him, an inner voice, a sense of duty, something, told him that he needed to help his fellow students. The fear was still there but now there was something else. A feeling that he needed to try and protect those he could protect. Just like he had tried to protect that girl earlier.

  As the numbers of infected grew, many groups of non-infected looked for places to hide. Many students had tried to escape but were caught by the zombies and killed before they could reach the exits. This latest strain of the zombie virus produced infected people who were quick, strong and deadly.

  Jeffrey had heard the gunfire. There had been a lot of it from different directions. The police were there. Now, they just had to wait. He knew that they would be rescued. He was just worried about how long it would take and if they could remain undetected until then. The screams of the victims had finally died down. There had been so many people screaming and yelling in the corridors. Those screams had been horrible and had imprinted themselves on Jeffrey’s mind.