by Jaime Horio
“Shit! Run!” I turn back inside to see a zombie lunging at Lani.
Before I can get to her it is on top of her. I pull the thing off of her and throw it back into the dark. I hear it slam into a box of what must have been pins because I can hear them spilling out onto the floor. I can hear the sound of moans and footsteps outside the door coming toward us.
I pull Lani up off the floor and run toward the front of the building, pulling her behind me.
I shout back, “Are you ok?”
“Yeah, I don’t think it got a bit in. Didn’t have time before you pulled it off.”
We are at a full sprint by the time we reach the main concourse.
Julie and Carrie are waiting for us. “What happened back there? I heard a crash and shouting!”
“They’re coming in. That back door didn’t latch right. We’ve got to get moving.”
Julie is already in the room where we slept grabbing the bags of food and water. She tosses one to me and I sling it over my shoulder.
“OK, let’s get out of here.”
As we approach the front door, I glance back to see the undead making their way from the hallway to the main concourse. There’s definitely no going back now.
We jog down the street, which is fortunately not too heavily filled with the undead. There are small shops all along this part of the road, but most of them have smashed in windows. The work of looters I imagine. No matter the reason, these places are no good to us.
We reach an intersection where two cars appear to have been in a fender bender. Both doors are open and no one is around. They must have had their accident and got out of their cars then been attacked. I run to the car in the front and the keys are still in the ignition. I try to start the car but get no reaction. Following my cue, Lani runs to the rear car and tries it. I can hear the engine trying to turn over. She gives it a couple more tries and the engine comes to life.
“Just in time, they know we’re here now!” I should as I hop into the car. The car sputters a little but keeps running as Lani backs it away from the other car and starts to drive.
“Where should we go?”
“I don’t know, anywhere but here. Maybe we should try to get out of the city.
Lani starts forward and heads in the general direction of the highway. This car is smaller than the truck we had before, so it maneuvers a lot easier. Unfortunately it doesn’t handle hitting zombies as well, so Lani has to be a little more careful when she sees them in the street.
And the noise the car is making is starting to draw attention. I can see the undead on the side streets already starting to turn in our direction. Soon I can see that they’re already moving toward the main road where we are driving.
“Shit, Lani watch it. I think they’re going to start flooding the street.”
“Then we better get moving,” she responds, and puts a little more gas into the car. We’re flying down the street at this point. The zombies are definitely staring to fill the street, but she is managing to avoid most of them. We round a curve, following a sign that is pointing toward the highway entrance.
Lani slams on the breaks and shouts, “Hold on!” The tires squeal, followed by a loud crunching sound as we slam into the back of a large SUV. In front of us is the remains of a gridlock heading toward the highway. I stagger out of the car and pull the back door open. Julie and Carrie spill out, a little bruised but able to walk.
I look back to the car and see Lani hunched over the steering wheel. I reach in for her but she doesn’t answer. I look closer and see a deep gash in her forehead where she slammed into the steering wheel. I shake her arm but she doesn’t respond. “Lani! Wake up, Lani!” Still no answer.
I reach for her neck but can’t find a pulse. Maybe if I can get her out of the car I can try CPR. I start to reach for her when I feel a hand pull me back. It’s Julie.
“She’s gone. I saw you check her pulse, we can’t help her.”
She points to the street behind us and the undead are making their way toward us. I try to say something but Julie just shakes her head.
I lean back into the car. “I’m sorry, Lani.” I pull a gun from my belt and hold it to the side of her head. “I’m sorry.” And I pull the trigger.
I get out of the car and I can see that the zombies are coming from every direction now, not just from behind us.
“On top of the cars! Be careful not to slip!”
I hope onto the hood of the car and from there climb on to the back of the SUV in front of it. Julie and Carrie follow. From there we lower down to the hood of the SUV and leap into the back of the pickup in front of it.
We continue like this for what seems like hours, but probably wasn’t actually more than fifteen minutes. From hood to car, from car to hood and so on. We’re nearing the front of the line of cars and I can see why everyone was held up. There is a large wreck in the middle of the intersection leading to the on ramp. There must be half a dozen cars involved in the main wreck, along with plenty more piled into the backs of the car in front of it leading away from the wreck.
We leap down from the last of the cars and jog up the ramp. The undead are attempting to follow us, but the uphill walk is difficult for them. They are advancing, just very slowly.
“OK,” I get out between pants, “I think we can slow down a little now. Try to catch our breath.”
We are walking down the highway, and I can see that there are a lot more cars on this stretch of road than we’ve seen outside of a city in a while. To our right is the city and the ocean. To our left is a field full of trees. They must thrive in this area.
I start to think about the possibility of heading through the trees, but I don’t like the idea of losing this 360 degree openness where we can see anything coming at us from any direction. We go about a mile down the road when the trees clear and there is a school. I can’t tell if it’s a large high school or maybe a small community college, but the road is starting to head up into the hills, and we decide to go toward the school. We can at least find a spot to sleep for the night before we head up into the mountains.
We take the walk down a slight hill to the campus and hop the fence.
“Where should we go?” asks Julie.
“How about there?” I ask, pointing to the football stadium at the end of the campus.
She gives me a look like I’m crazy.
“No, I’m serious. This could be a good spot, at least for the night. Look, there’s a press box up at the top, so we have shelter, and there are tons of steps leading up to the top. You know those things are terrible at going up a slight incline, let alone actual stairs. We should be safe for the night, and we can get some rest, and then head up into the hills in the morning. We should be a lot safer from them if we’re up high.”
She thinks about it for a minute, and then shrugs her shoulders. “Beats sleeping out in the rain I suppose.”
The ground heading out to the stadium is wet so we can’t move too quickly. Fortunately it is also very open, so we have a wide open view of everything around us. We reach the fence and climb up and into the stadium grounds.
The end of the stadium is open, so we walk out onto the field. It’s a strange feeling walking out onto a full size football field in the middle of a stadium, but what is even stranger is that it is completely empty. I’ve been in a stadium before a game before, and even a few hours before the game starts, there are still employees walking around, or grounds keepers making sure the field is ready. But this is completely still, no one is around at all.
We walk out to around the fifty yard line then turn and head for the stands. We climb the stairs to the top of the stands and find the entrance to the press booth. Naturally it is locked, but I really don’t want to go shooting another door handle off.
“Man, we could really use Terry right now.” I look to Julie and she smiles.
“Yeah, he always knew how to get into something like this.”
I search around, but there is no othe
r way in. I realize there’s no option, but at least now we are at the top of the stadium where those things can’t reach us. I shoot the door handle off and we head in.
“We’re going to have to really start watching the ammo now,” says Carrie. “We’re starting to get low.”
I nod in agreement. The booth looks to be spacious enough for us. There is a permanent desk with chairs lined up against it. We clear out the chairs and stack them to the side. This leaves plenty of space for sleeping.
Once that room is clear we do a sweep of this upper level of the stadium. All of the doors are locked, including the bathrooms, so if anything is up here, it’s not going to get at us.
We’re all tired, but I volunteer to take watch. Even though we are up above the ground, I don’t like that we were attacked in the bowling alley. I know that even if we did have someone on watch, we probably wouldn’t have been able to know that those things had come in. That building was big, and we wouldn’t have heard that door open. But who knows, maybe it blew open with a bang. Maybe if someone had been awake and sitting out in the main room we would have known.
But it’s too late to do anything about it, and I’ve learned that thinking about the “what ifs” is the best way to drive yourself crazy while you’re on watch. The time goes slow, but if all you do is think about how you could have saved someone, then the night will continue to drag and you’ll just feel worse and worse.
So I choose to banish the thoughts about that door, but then they immediately turn to Lani. I feel terrible about leaving her behind. But we had to in order to survive. I just wish that we could have helped her. She was the one that navigated us out of that town, she saved us, and we just left her behind.
I’m sitting up on the table, looking through the glass down to the field. I sigh and breathe out a little “thank you” for Lani.
Looking down, I can barely make out the field. The sky is full of clouds, and there is no extra light. But I think maybe there’s some movement down on the field. I squint to look harder.
No, it’s just a shadow. Must be a cloud moving and there’s just enough moonlight behind it to cast that shadow.
My thoughts drift back to Ben. I wish I knew when we lost all his stuff. I always got a little glimmer of hope when he would check the cell phones. Maybe we would just find the edge of a signal this time and we would know that we were approaching some part of civilization that was still working.
There’s that shadow going again. I try to ignore it, but my eye just keeps getting drawn back to it.
Then I think about Greg. That poor kid never even got to finish college before all this happened. And then he found someone he cared about in Carrie, and then he was gone. I think about that situation, how it could have gone differently. The only thing I can think is if we had more people. Ideally, we would have had three or four people watching the outside for us, but these damned zombies took everyone away. Thinking about how everyone who died was a direct result of these creatures makes me furious.
Where did they come from? My mind drifts to movies, and conspiracy theories. Maybe it was the government, maybe it was a terrorist, maybe it was some alien virus. No matter what it is, this is someone’s fault. And there’s that freaking shadow again. Why does it keep moving around?
I head over to the door and slowly slide away the chairs that we have blocking it to keep it closed. I pull the door closed behind me, but it won’t stay completely shut. I walk around the little structure and look down to the field. Maybe from here I can get a better angle. But no, I can’t see any better.
So I start to walk down the steps. There are about thirty rows of benches between me and the field. I cover ten of them when I stop. That’s no shadow. Shit. The field is covered with the undead. They must have been shuffling in here over the last couple of hours. But from where?
I climb the stairs back to the top of the stadium and look around. I can just make out the outline of an opened gate. The gate must have been opened or not closed properly when this whole thing started. And now the undead have shuffled in.
The clouds part just enough to let a little bit of moonlight through and the full scene makes my breath stop in my throat. The field is covered with hundreds of them. And they’re not shuffling around. They are all standing perfectly still, staring straight at me. No, that can’t be right.
They are staring in my direction, but there is no way they can be looking right at me. But it can’t be just chance that they are all facing this way. They know I am here.
I hurry back to the press box and wake up Julie and Carrie.
“I don’t know what we should do. Should be go? Do we stay?” They both look just as confused as I am.
“How late is it?” asks Julie. “I think if we can, we should wait until we get some sunlight. That way we can at least see what is happening. If it was clear, I would say we make a break for it tonight, but we can barely see a hundred feet when the moon is covered.”
Julie is right, we need to hold our ground and take off in the morning.
I’m not even sure how many of them there are right now, or where they are besides the field.
We go and lock ourselves back in the press box. There will be no sleeping for the rest of the night, but we hunker down, trying to save our energy. But I can’t help but keep watching those things outside.
It was something about the way they were all watching me, almost like there was some intelligence in there. I’ve encountered enough of them to know that that’s not the case, but maybe it was just some sort of herd reaction. One of them realized I was there, and the others just followed its lead.
“Why weren’t they trying to get up here?” asks Carrie. “It doesn’t make sense. They always attack, trying to feed. But they were just standing there.”
“I don’t know, maybe they just knew that something was here, but they weren’t sure. You saw them in the rain, they just kept turning around and around trying to find the source of the sound, but they couldn’t find it. They weren’t attacking the air in circles. Maybe they only attack when they’re sure it’s something they want to eat.” This explanation seems to satisfy Carrie.
“Yeah, they probably heard the gunshot when we got the door open, and that drew them in. But they got here and just forgot what they had come for. So they just stood there.”
It made sense. As we traveled, we saw many of the undead just standing around, waiting for something to catch their attention again.
The hours seem to drag on. We’re all anxious about what the morning will bring. Before the sun started to rise, I made sure I was out of the window. Sitting down on the floor we try to come up with a plan.
“Let’s just get out there and run,” says Carrie.
“But we need to get at least a general idea of where to go. Maybe we can sneak out and get a peek at what areas are clear.”
Julie, being the smallest of us, volunteers to check. We slowly open the door, and she crawls out, dragging herself to the edge of the building. She goes around the corner and disappears. Carrie and I just sit and wait for her to return.
A few minutes later she returns.
“Well,” she whispers, “that field is full. But maybe if we head to the end where we came in and go down the steps there, we might be able to hop over the side near the bottom of the stands. I think if we get over there, we might be able to make it to the fence. It’ll be close, but there are a lot fewer of those things over that way.”
I’m not sure that I like this plan, but it seems like our best shot. Our only real option is to go toward the field to escape. The edge of the stadium is just a sheer drop off, and it is much too tall for us to try to jump.
“Are you ready to do this?” I ask. “Remember, try to conserve your shots. Make them count if you have to take a shot.”
“Wait, I have an idea,” says Carrie. “You two head to that end of the stadium. I’ll throw some of these chairs down into the stands on the other end. That will make a ton of noise and dr
aw their attention. They don’t react that fast, so I should have time to run and catch up with you over on the other side.”
“I don’t know that I feel comfortable letting you put yourself in danger like that, Carrie,” says Julie.
“Don’t worry. I’m a track star, remember?” She gives Julie a little wink.
Julie can’t help but smile a little at this comment. “OK, let’s do it.”
The chairs have metal frames, and all of the seating in the stadium is aluminum benches, so Carrie’s plan should work great. We help her carry four chairs over to the edge of the building then we sneak our way across to the opposite end of the stadium. I look toward Carrie and start a countdown on my hand going from five down to one then I turn and go around the corner. Behind me I hear Carrie yell out then I hear the sound of the metal hitting the chairs and bouncing its way down the seats. I hear this repeated three more times, and by now we’re near the bottom of the stands.
I pause for a moment and glance back. Good, Carrie is already at the top of the stands and making her way down. The undead seem well distracted by the sounds of the metal rolling down the stands. But the creatures nearest to us are already aware of our presence. At the bottom of the stands I leap down onto the grass and put the put of my shotgun into one of their faces. The zombie is knocked off balance and it sprawls back, knocking down two others in the process.
Julie leaps down behind me but lands awkwardly and falls. She cries out in pain and I can see that her ankle is twisted. I reach down and try to act as a crutch, holding her under the arm.
“No, leave me!” she shouts.
“No way,” I respond and pick her up in a fireman’s carry. I’m slowed down but heading toward the fence. There is an employee entrance up ahead. I try to aim the shotgun at the lock, but I can’t get a shot off with one hand. I need to set Julie down but I can’t just drop her.
Fortunately, Carrie has caught up with us and sees the same gate I do. She takes the shotgun from me and blasts the gate open.
