by Jaime Horio
She doesn’t appear completely sure what to think, but she apparently believes me.
I explain to her that there are others outside, and that we’re trying to find some help. She tells us that she only has a little bit of food left, but invites us to all come inside. She shows us the cafeteria, which looks like it’s just two classrooms that have had a wall torn down. It is on the opposite end of the first floor from her room. It takes her time to open up, but she explains that she was a teacher here, and when the infection hit, it spread very quickly through this community. Most of the students were already gone, but many remained. I asked her about the classroom upstairs.
She said it was a fellow teacher who had holed up with her here. They had managed to trap the students in the classroom, and they seemed pretty unaware of what was going on. But the other teacher was younger, she had only been teaching for a few years. Obviously no one had been through a situation like this, but she hadn’t even faced any other stressful situations. She convinced herself that the children were ok, and one day she just walked into that classroom and decided she was going to continue with her math lesson. The woman telling the story had just sat in her room downstairs, hearing the screams echo through the hallways. They only lasted a few minutes, but she knew the creatures had to be feasting on the body after the woman was dead.
She had spent days locked away in that room, before she realized she had to at least get out and get some food. She had come to the cafeteria and opened a couple can of food and emptied them completely. She debated with herself, and eventually made her way upstairs to see what had happened. And she described the same scene we had seen. The children are all sitting at their desks as if nothing had changed, and the other teacher’s dead body torn apart at the front of the room.
It dawned on me that we didn’t know this woman’s name, so I asked her. “Oh, I’m sorry, I haven’t had to do any formal introductions in so long. My name is Mrs. Miller. But I suppose you aren’t children, so you can just call me Anne.”
“Well, Mrs. Miller, I guess I have to ask, was there anyone else here?”
She looks sad, but then gets a small smile. Maybe it was the feeling of being called “Mrs. Miller.” again. But the smile quickly fades and she points to the back wall of the cafeteria, toward the back of the school. We all go to look out the back window, and we’re amazed by what we see. There is a pile of bodies in the middle of the asphalt basketball court, completely burned.
“Oh my God, what happened here?”
She sags a bit and explains that she and the other teacher had managed to kill some of the undead, and they burned the bodies as a precaution. They had been the only two who hadn’t been infected or killed by the creatures, and in the first few days after the first infection, they had managed to clear out all the infected.
I was amazed that this older lady, working with a younger teacher had been able to fight off that many infected. There had to be 100 bodies out on the asphalt. There were four of us going through those houses, and even when we got Don back, we couldn’t take down 10 of them without one of us being killed.
The day was getting late, so we secured what supplies we could in the vehicles and setup a little camp in the cafeteria. Although the area seemed to be secure, we decided to keep at least one person on guard all night, just in case.
Mrs. Miller was very welcoming, but she seemed a little unstable. She had seen a lot of carnage, and hadn’t been around many people for quite a while, so we thought it would be best to play it safe.
After a couple of hours Ben woke me up to let me know it was my turn on shift. I took a seat at one of the tables near the door and pulled out one of Ben’s cell phones. We still had no power, but I had found a copy of “The Call of the Wild” on one of the shelves and figured I’d pass the time by reading the book. It wasn’t long before I heard some movement behind me, and I saw Maria quietly getting up out of her blankets.
She told me she just couldn’t sleep. That the images of all those poor kids being infected were stuck in her mind. She wanted to take a little walk, but I told her to stay close. She promised she would, and I gave her one of the phones to use for light.
I only read through another three pages when I heard the scream. I went running out into the hallway and flicked on the flashlight that was attached to the end of the shotgun. I didn’t have to look far. Right in the middle of the hallway stood Mrs. Miller, a large knife in her hand, dripping with blood. At her feet lay Maria, with several stab wounds in her body. She gulped in a last breath, her body shuddered, and she went limp.
I pointed the gun at the crazed woman standing before me. “What the hell happened?” By this time the other came running out into the hall, and Carrie screamed at the sight and ran back in. Julie followed her. Terry went to follow them both, but Julie motioned that he should stay.
“That bitch was out here trying to steal my food!” The calm, quiet demeanor that Mrs. G. had earlier was completely gone. “She snuck out here and wanted to take my food, just like those stupid kid. Always crying about how they were hungry! But I had to eat, otherwise who would take care of everyone?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Terry had his shotgun fixed on the woman as well.
The woman ignored him and reached down to Maria. “Great, now I have to drag you out there too and find some more matches. She tried to grab Maria’s legs but Ben shouted at her.
“No! You leave her alone! What the fuck is going on!?”
But the whole thing started to dawn on me.
“Wait a minute. There were no zombies, where there? All those bodies in the back, those were just kids, weren’t they? Weren’t they!?”
Mrs. Miller looked a little confused at the yelling. “Well, yeah. I was stuck here with that useless teacher, and all those kids. They were constantly crying, and always hungry. But there was only so much food, and I had to make sure to ration it out. But they just kept crying all day and all night. And finally I realized that we couldn’t feed them all. We had to do something. But that stupid teacher wouldn’t let me. So I killed her and through her in that classroom with those creatures. They deserved a meal, they had just sat there so quietly, not begging and crying constantly.”
“But that just made those other kids cry more. I told them they had to be quiet or they would be punished, but they just didn’t listen. So I took them and-”
“Wait!” Terry cut her off. “I don’t want to hear this, all that matters is that you murdered all those kids out there.”
She looked confused at this anger. “But I had to. To survive. And then you all showed up, and you want to take my food too!” She lifted her knife and went running at Terry. He started to raise his gun when the door to the cafeteria banged open and hit the woman. She fell sideways and Carrie came running out of the room with a baseball bat in hand.
“You evil bitch!” she screamed and brought the bat down on the woman’s head. She raised and lowered the bat repeatedly, until Terry managed to get in and hold her hands back. Carrie collapsed into his arms, crying. Julie came running out behind her and went straight to Carrie. They had both heard everything through the door.
Julie dragged Carrie away from Terry, both of them wracked with sobs.
“We’ve got to get moving.” Ben was looking toward the stairs, where we heard the echoes of the children in the upstairs classroom banging on the door. The door was solid, and the kids were small, but with the weight of thirty of them pounding against the door, it wouldn’t last long.
“Grab what you can!” Carrie and Julie pulled themselves out of their sadness for long enough to run into the cafeteria and pull whatever supplies they could carry onto their backs.
I was about to run out when I saw that Ben had stopped. He ran back over to where Maria’s body lay and pulled out a pistol. He paused for a moment, and then put a bullet through her head, ensuring she wouldn’t come back.
We ran out and through everything into the back of Terry’s truck and hopped into the m
inivan. Greg stopped and hopped back out of the van. “Hey, where are you going?” He ran over to the truck and found a small gas can that we’d found with a lawnmower. He ran up to the front of the school and dumped the contents out at the door. The contents spread quickly over the tile floor, and as he ran away, he tossed a lit match back. The gas quickly ignited and spread across the floors to the walls.
The floor may have been tile, but the building was old and the walls quickly caught fire.
Greg hopped in the van and we took off, Terry sending his big truck through the gate, not bothering to stop and open the latch.
As I followed behind Terry, I look in the rear view mirror to Greg. “What was that?”
“I didn’t want anyone else to see that ‘alive’ banner and try to go in there. Plus there were those kids who had been infected. We couldn’t go end their suffering individually, but this way I was at least able to get them all.”
I hadn’t heard anyone refer to the zombie’s suffering before, but it made sense. They didn’t appear to have any emotion, but we didn’t know for sure. And we had been sure to make sure Don and Maria didn’t come back. They probably wouldn’t have had any awareness, but we still felt like we had to help them.
We nodded our understanding and I looked to Ben. I reached over and put my hand on his shoulder and squeezed. I didn’t say anything, but he just whispered, “Thanks.”
We followed Terry back to the highway and drove a few miles before he slowed down. I pulled up next to him to discuss our next move.
“Well, what next? It’s still the middle of the night.”
“I don’t think any of us are going to sleep tonight. How about we just move along slowly for a while, and try to find a secure spot to stop. We can try to rest during the day.”
We roll up the windows and follow Terry down the highway once again.
A few more miles down the road, we find a rest stop. It’s not raised up, which we’d prefer, but it is in the middle of a large open area. And there are only two buildings, just a men’s bathroom and a women’s bathroom. So we won’t have much ground to cover, and if any zombies come toward us, we should see them really early.
The sun is starting to creep up as we pull the vehicles to a stop. Ben and Greg agree to take watch as the rest of us head for the restrooms. They’re about as clean as I would expect from a rest stop bathroom, but there is running water in the sinks. It’s been days since I’ve really been able to clean. We had used water from buckets to wipe down in the house since there was no running water. But here I could practically bathe, although the water was pretty cool. After washing my face and arms down, I head to the truck and find a couple of large pots. I fill them with water as best I can and set them out in an open area on the asphalt. The sun is starting to come up, so the water should heat up over the next few hours. I also fill some canteens with water and put in a couple drops of the water disinfectant. The instructions say to let it sit for a couple of hours, so I let everyone know that these canteens are off limits for the time being.
We still have water in some of the other containers, so there’s no sense in rushing this and having someone get sick.
We sleep in shifts throughout the day and clean up using the now warm water. Everyone is feeling as good as we can, given that we just lost one of our friends at the hands of a psychopath. At the end of the day, Ben remarks that the smoke from the school seems to be fading. There were no other buildings near it, so the school had probably burned up all on its own, and as long as none of the burning zombies had stumbled out into the surrounding area, the fire should have just been constrained to that one area.
We hadn’t seen any signs of zombies all day, so we risk a small campfire. We drag one of the metal trashcans to the middle of the cement and light it up. The trash burns pretty quickly, but we’ve gathered wood from the surrounding bushes and trees to keep it going. We don’t have enough fuel to make it last long, but it is long enough to heat up some canned vegetables and beans.
Since none of us really go to sleep during the day, we decide to stay the night and try to rest a little more. Once again, my dreams turn to Don. I am looking down on his body, he is gasping for breath. He mouths the words, “It’s OK,” and smiles. I don’t know why my mind keeps taking me back to this moment. Maybe it’s my subconscious trying to ease the guilt that conscious self is feeling. The only thing I do know is that this dream plays in my mind every time I try to sleep.
But maybe it is working. I’m getting numb to the pain of it, which just makes me feel worse. I feel terrible that I shot Carrie’s father, even though I know it was something that we had to do.
The next morning I wake up with the sunrise. Sleeping in the van isn’t very comfortable, and I’m stiff everywhere.
We clean up a little and pack up the remaining pots of water that were sitting out.
I talk to Terry while Ben and Greg top off the fuel in the vehicles.
“Have you noticed that we haven’t seen any cars on the road since we left? You would think that someone would have broken down, or there would have been accidents in the panic.”
Terry just shakes his head. “I don’t know. That’s got to be either a really good, or a really bad sign. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see which it is.”
We hop in the van and are about to leave when Carrie runs over. She hops into the back with Greg. “I feel bad, like Terry and Julie haven’t had any time alone, so I’ll ride with you guys for a while.”
I can see on her face that she has been crying, and I think she just wants to give Julie and Terry a break. I know that Julie loves this girl like a daughter and wants to be there for her, but Carrie is smart enough to know that Julie needs a little time apart. Maybe just some time alone with Terry so she can unload her emotions.
We pull the vehicles forward and continue driving. Ben starts turning on the various cell phones he has charged to see if he can get any signal. Still nothing, so he starts playing a game of “snake” on one of them.
It’s sort of surreal to be driving down the highway with Ben playing a game on his cell phone. It’s something we’ve done dozens of times on trips, but it just seems out of place in the midst of a zombie apocalypse.
Carrie looks to have fallen asleep in the very back, and Greg is sitting in the middle seat, looking out the window, then looking back at Carrie, and going back and forth.
We pull to a stop. This section of highway is only two lanes in each direction, without much separation between the two, and we pull across into the northbound lanes. There is a news van pulled to the side. Ben recognizes it immediately. “Hey, that’s the station that Lani West works for! I wonder if that’s her van.”
We stop the vehicles about a dozen yards back and get out. Greg stays behind with Carrie, who has woken up, but looks too nervous to get out of the vehicle yet. Terry and Julie both get out, Terry with a shotgun in hand and Julie with one of the pistols. Lately we’ve become less concerned with the noise of a firearm, as the area is very open and we haven’t seen a single zombie.
The front seat of the van is empty, so we go to the back and pull the doors open. Everything inside is smashed and it looks more like it was done intentionally than in a struggle. Like someone came in and wanted to destroy whatever was inside the van.
We look at the papers strew about. Some phone numbers, addresses, notes that don’t make any sense. But Ben finds one thing of interest: Lani West’s press badge.
“So this was her van. I wonder if she’s still around here somewhere.” Ben has formed, at least in his mind, some sort of a bond with the reporter. I think he is truly concerned for her safety. She was his connection to what was happening, and he started to feel like she was someone he could trust, and he wanted to help her.
The surrounding country looks pretty deserted, so she probably isn’t nearby anywhere.
We’re heading back to the van when I see a glint of light. I look across the field, and about a half mile away there is a sm
all barn or some sort of storage shed. At first I dismiss it, but the flash of light comes again. And again. Someone is there, flashing a mirror into the sun. I call the other’s over and point it out. It continues for a few more seconds, then stops.
We cautiously make our way across the field. It seemed too deliberate to be just something randomly flashing. I’m sure it’s a person.
We point our guns toward the shed, not really sure what to expect. We stop about twenty feet from the structure. No one seems sure what the next move should be.
I’m nervous, and it’s hard to get it out, but I call out, “Is anyone there?”
A faint, weak voice comes from inside the shed. “Help me!”
At first I’m sure I imagined it, but then it comes again.
“Help me!”
After our last encounter with another survivor, we’re not sure what to do. I move forward and quickly pull the door to the shed open.
A woman who had been leaning against the door slumps over and hangs halfway into the field. She’s barely recognizable, but lying on the ground before us is Lani West.
She is covered in dirt and has scratches all over her face and arms. She’s weak and can barely roll her head toward us to mouth something.
Julie runs toward her, but Terry grabs her arm and pulls her back. “Wait,” he says to her. Then he turns to Lani. “Have you been bit?”
Lani’s eyes roll in his direction.
“Have you been bit?” He’s almost yelling now.
A look of comprehension crosses her face, and she slowly shakes her head to say, “No.”
Terry let’s go of Julie’s arm and she moves forward and kneels down next to Lani.
“I think she’s dehydrated. Do one of you have some water?”
Ben does, but he seems too dumbstruck to react. Julie asks again and Ben shakes his head, stops then grabs the container of water strapped to the back of his pants. He hands it to her, and Julie slowly pours just a little bit into Lani’s mouth.
I tap Ben on the shoulder and signal for him to follow me. We hustle back to the vehicles and grab a section of the canvas covering. We’re already jogging back through the field when Greg yells to ask what has happened.
