“So you weren’t conscious enough to bitch them out like you did us,” I said. “Gotcha.”
To my surprise, she smiled a little at that. “Yeah, that was part of it. It’s not like I was saying, ‘yay the government has saved me.’ We had a long time where I didn’t buy into their shit. But they were organized and fought well together and pretty soon I had to respect them.”
I shrugged. “I can see that. Honestly, Dave and I were a mess when we started. If you wanted organized, you probably went with the right group.”
She didn’t answer, but made a motion with her hand. There was a painted “3” on the wall as we passed it. Three was the top floor of the HUB.
“According to the plans, prior to the outbreak this was mostly meeting rooms and admin for the university,” Lisa said, back to business again.
Too late, though, I already “got” her a little more thanks to all this new information. Still didn’t trust her.
“The outbreak started during the day, when they would have still had people up here,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, and our recon team wasn’t able to get up this far, so be careful.”
Lisa traded her machine gun for a shotgun and cocked it with one smooth motion. I reloaded my handgun and nodded to her when I was ready to move.
“We should go as far back as we can,” I suggested. “Block the stairwells as we go.”
She nodded, though she seemed impressed I could come up with even that basic a plan. Seriously, it was like she thought I was an idiot despite my whole involvement in the saving the world thingy that she was oh-so-impressed by. It was super annoying.
The rooms farthest from the stairwells we’d come up were admin offices. Back before this had begun, it had been the place to come to ask about fees or make payments. I remembered it well from my days on campus what seemed like five lifetimes ago. Now, as we walked into the big back office, it was obvious what had come here.
Hell.
Dead bodies were strewn everywhere, laid out in dried pools of blood, hunched under desks. The smell of death and rot was overpowering and I fought back bile and was happy for the filter of the mask and whatever protection it gave me.
“They never had a chance,” I murmured, my words echoing in my helmet. I sighed. Until we were done with the building, I wasn’t taking it off, I didn’t care what Lisa said about five minutes.
“None of them ever did at the beginning,” Lisa said with a shrug. “We all survived by luck and circumstance. Theirs was just…” She shivered as she stepped over a big pool of dried blood. “Different.”
Still, there were no zombies. The ones who had come here, had gone in search of others to eat. There had been plenty. We were about to declare the rooms clear and close them up, when I noticed one door way in the back. It was closed.
Lisa noticed it the same moment I did and our eyes locked. Closed doors… bad. I motioned toward it, making all kinds of military sort of hand signals. Finally Lisa rolled her eyes.
“Shit, just say it.”
“I’ll open the door, you be ready for whatever is in there,” I said. “Sheesh, don’t you know what waving your fingers around and pointing means?”
She shook her head without answering and lined herself up so that when the door opened she’d be ready. Only when I turned the handle it was locked.
“Kick it,” Lisa said with an impassive shrug. “Probably it’s empty.”
I moved back and did exactly that, kicking the door once, twice, three times. On the third, the door splintered (yeah, I’m a badass) and I was able to shove it open.
I expected an empty room, someone’s office who hadn’t been in the day of the outbreak, or had been out to a meeting or something. I did not expect to see a woman, sitting at her desk, slumped over dead.
She was thin, her skin leathery as it barely clung to her bones. Her fingers were curled around the headset of a phone, holding it for dear life.
“Zombie?” Lisa asked.
I grabbed for something to poke her with and settled on a ruler off the desk. I reached out and tapped at her hand. No response. Another tap on her head and it lolled to the side, revealing that the woman was dead-dead, not zombie-dead.
“Shit,” Lisa said, lowering her gun. “Look at her emaciated frame, the way her nails are bitten to the quick. She… she starved to death.”
I nodded. That’s what it looked like to me, too. “She must have seen what was happening and locked herself in. Then she was too scared to leave.”
“Or thought someone would eventually come to get her.”
“Poor woman,” I said as I turned away from one of the few dead bodies we didn’t have to worry about. “It would have been a horrible way to die.”
“Let’s lock her up,” Lisa said with one final glance at the dead body’s twisted, pained face. A mask frozen in utter despair. “And move on.”
I nodded. Walking on from death was about all we could do anymore. Maybe one day we’d walk far enough to escape the horrors of what had happened here and all over half the country. At least I kept hoping that would happen. Especially now when I had to start thinking about the future in a whole new way. The future wasn’t just mine anymore.
At least, I hoped it wasn’t.
We shut the remnant of the woman’s office door, checked any remaining rooms in the admin area and closed it. The rest of floor three was actually pretty quiet. It made me wonder if they had done an evacuation on campus when the shit really started to go down. Of course, the people who had left would have walked straight into the nightmare on the lower floors.
We were quiet as we blocked the stairwells with furniture and other crap spread all over the third floor. We blocked the last one and as Lisa climbed over the top back onto the stairs leading down, we exchanged a quick smile. There was nothing better than that feeling of accomplishment of clearing a room or building of zombies. You could say, “hey this place is safe, go me” and move on.
Of course, we had the second, first and ground floors, as well as the basement to go. I’d been in awesome Montana so long, not having to deal with this shit that I just wanted to sit down and take a nap. Which I’m sure Lisa would have been all judgy about. So I sucked it up and followed her down to the second floor of the HUB building.
“What was this floor?” I asked, scrambling my brain to remember my college days.
“Um, ballrooms and some student activity offices,” Lisa said as she flattened against the wall and peeked around the stairwell into the main hallway. “Huh, don’t see anything.”
I pursed my lips. “You know, I keep thinking maybe there was some kind of evacuation set into motion. As the top floor people moved down, they bumped into the student zombies that were waiting for them.”
“Could be. After all, the first, ground and basement floor had a lot more come and go with their banks and restaurants and services,” Lisa admitted. “So let’s clear this fast and get to the floors that are going to make us sweat a little more.”
I nodded and the stupid gas mask shifted on my head, conking my nose on the front. “Shit, this thing is annoying,” I muttered as I followed her into the first ballroom. Empty.
“You look awesome,” Lisa offered. “Straight out of a video game.”
I shuddered to think which one, but didn’t argue as we moved into the hallway and secured the door behind us. We moved on to what were labeled ‘pre-function’ rooms, warming rooms (whatever the hell those were), the bathrooms, securing doors and thanking our lucky stars that we weren’t finding anything ‘interesting’ to contend with.
Finally the only room left was an international student office. I cracked the door and we peeked through the spot we’d made.
“Looks dead, quick clear,” Lisa said as she pushed inside. She took one side of the room, I took the other, checking under desks, clearing corners. We were almost back together in the middle of the room when Lisa paused behind a desk.
“This is the easiest floor clear I’ve e
ver made,” she said as she opened a couple of drawers and looked through them.
“What are you doing?” I asked, peeking into a storage cupboard. “There aren’t going to be zombies in the desk.”
“Once we clear the area and fence it off, another team comes through looking for any useful items. If I can make a note for them on where to look, it helps.”
I shrugged and was about to respond when the vent behind Lisa burst outward. She spun toward it, but before she could fire off a shot or even bolt out of the way, a zombie arm darted out and grabbed her, yanking so that she flipped backward and landed hard on her back. Her gun flew from her hand and out of reach.
“Fuck!” she squealed as the zombie dragged her toward the vent, growling and snapping its teeth at her ankles.
I dove over the furniture to her side. The zombie in the vent was ragged, skinny and obviously underfed. Except now it had dinner and was progressively hauling Lisa into the vent with it, despite her kicks and attempts to hold herself back.
I looked for a shot, trying to get around Lisa’s kicking feet, but every time I lined one up in the tight spot, she moved and blocked it.
“Girl if you don’t want me to blow three of your toes off, hold the fuck still.”
She glanced up at me and I saw the fear in her eyes. The disbelief that I would be able to help her. But she did as I asked and froze, clinging to a desk leg and pulling back against the zombies super-strong grip, but not kicking her legs anymore.
“And…” I said, lining up the shot.
I pulled the trigger. Perfect shot. I hit the zombie between the eyes and it slumped forward, its mouth on the steel toe of Lisa’s boots where it drooled out black sludge into a pool on and around it.
For a long moment, she just stared at the zombie still shoved in the vent, then she looked up at me. “Do you think there are more up in there?”
I motioned her to move aside. “Only one way to find out,” I responded and yanked the zombie out of the vent.
Behind him… her? It was hard to tell, the thing was so rotted and broken down. Anyway, behind it was an old fan that circulated the air in the building. Nothing could fit behind it.
I wiped my hands off on my jeans. “It probably climbed in here after it was bitten, while it was still human and just never had a reason to come out until it smelled you. Aw, you denied it its first meal as a zombie.”
“You denied it that,” Lisa said as she shoved to her feet. She collected her gun from across the room and glanced over at me. “Um, we’re even.”
I blinked. “Huh?”
“I saved your life the day we met,” she explained. “So we’re even now.”
“Do you take back all your implications that I’m an idiot who could barely tie her shoes, let alone get through the apocalypse?” I asked.
She considered that for a minute. “Maybe. Your shoe is untied, by the way.”
I glanced down and she laughed. “Made ya look. Come on, we still have the next two floors to do.”
I shook my head as I followed her out of the room and toward the staircase that would take us to the main floor of the HUB. The one where all the zombies had been waiting for us earlier. Now we would see how great that grenade and its cocktail of zombie killing chemicals was.
Chapter Ten
The most important thing when dealing with kids is consistency. Same is true with zombies.
When we got to the bottom of the stairs back on the first floor, I have to admit, I was ready to fire off a million shots to kill a bunch of zombies. And yet, as we peeked out into the main floor, mostly silence greeted us. Silence and a shit ton of bodies.
“Are they dead?” I asked, looking at the piles of zombie corpses draped all over, including ones that were reaching toward the stairs as if they’d died trying to chase us up the first time.
“Should be,” Lisa said. “But we’ll check anyway. Stay sharp. Sometimes there are some stragglers.”
I watched as she started nudging corpses with her rifle, finger on the trigger and ready to blow a head off if anyone dared to move.
Obviously this was a girl who didn’t get caught unaware twice. I shrugged and started doing the same, poking at the zombies with the greatest of care.
Lisa waved to catch my attention and motioned toward a zombie over on the other side of the room. It was half on the ground, but kept trying to get up only to fall on its face again and again. It muttered to itself constantly, making those gurgling sounds they sometimes did. Only these were a little more… coherent.
“What is it doing?” I muttered.
“The closer they are to being a fresh zombie, the more human they get when exposed to the chemical,” she explained as she motioned me closer.
“It’s human?” I repeated in shock as I stared at the struggling creature in horror.
She shook her head. “No. Once you’re fully turned into a zombie, we don’t have a way to come back. The serum can only prevent turning from a bite, whether administered at the point of a bite or as an inoculation. The brain damage done after a turn is instant and permanent. It’s still more than half a zombie and it’s dangerous.”
I flinched as she raised her gun and fired, dropping the poor thing in a pool of blood. Not goo. Blood.
“Good thing is, that sound will bring any other stragglers.” She reloaded and smiled at me. I couldn’t return the expression and her brow wrinkled. “You okay?”
I shrugged. “It’s just different if there’s even a tiny bit of something human left in them, isn’t there?”
Lisa pursed her lips. “That thing I just shot? He was one of our guys, taken because he wasn’t paying close enough attention about three weeks ago. I didn’t like killing him, but you have to set your mind, Sarah. They’re already dead. Just like when you got over killing the zombies the first time. This is no different.”
I glanced at the man-zombie laying there a few feet away. His face was bloated, but the grey tones weren’t as dark as a zombie corpse, his eyes were glassy, but clear, not red.
It sure felt different.
But there was no time to debate as a few of Lisa’s stragglers did, indeed, come at the sound of the dinner bell that was gunfire. Again, these were clearly fresher zombies, damaged by the serum bomb, but not completely wiped out thanks to whatever small part of them retained their humanity. Lisa shot them down while I stood there, staring and filled with discomfort and a sick feeling in my gut.
Finally there was only one left and she glanced at me. “You have to do it, Sarah. Get it out of your head.”
I flinched. “Right now?”
“It’s a zombie, look at it.”
I did look. The last one was a woman, dressed in fatigues, boots all cockeyed since her ankle had been broken and now stuck out at a weird angle. That was definitely zombie of her. Her skin was grey, her teeth were black with sludge, she reached toward us with clawing hands. Zombie, zombie, zombie.
The difference was that somewhere deep in her red, blood-lusty eyes, I saw something. I saw… pain. Pain inside the levels of zombie rage that made her want to eat my brains.
An animal in that kind of pain used to be put down for its own good. And as I lifted my gun and fired off a shot, I realized I was doing the exact same thing. I couldn’t fix that girl, so it was best to put her out of her misery. I certainly wouldn’t want my humanity retriggered in any way if I had been zombie-fied. I couldn’t think of a worse kind of hell, honestly.
“Good.” Lisa reloaded. “Let’s clear the basement and get back to the base before it gets too dark, okay?”
She walked away and for a moment I hung back, still looking at the poor dead zombie I’d just shot between the eyes. She had the same color hair as David’s sister, who I shot almost a year ago as she turned into a zombie.
“Come on, Sarah,” Lisa said, her voice sharp as she blocked the stairs and climbed over to the basement floor side.
I shook my head and followed, trying to swallow back my discomfort
and my concerns with every step. The basement stairwell was way darker than the others had been. There was less sunlight downstairs, fewer windows and the afternoon was starting to wane, adding a bit of desperation to our charge. Nighttime in the world of zombie infestation was terrifying and super dangerous. You just didn’t want to risk getting caught off guard.
It was as if my thoughts triggered a reaction because Lisa’s spine straightened and she started walking faster toward the bottom of the stairs and our last duty for the day.
“All right, I’m going to throw a grenade,” she whispered. “We’ll let the gas dissipate and cover the stairs like before.”
I shrugged. Seemed like as good a plan as any, though I didn’t look forward to the remnants of more human-zombies, thank you very much. Still, it was preferable to a roomful of zombie-zombies.
She pulled the tab and tossed the grenade. We both backed up and readied our weapons as the metal canister clanked along the linoleum flooring below. There was a pop and I held my breath as the hiss of gas filled my ears (though muffled by that stupid, sweaty helmet).
“How long do we have to wait?” I asked. “Last time we sort of went and took care of some errands, so is it a minute, ten minutes?”
“Gas will clear in about five and that tends to wipe out the general population pretty well,” she said. “We’re still working on the timing, to be honest.”
“Great,” I muttered as I leaned against the bannister.
There wasn’t to be any thumb twiddling, though. Out of the fog below us, a zombie appeared at the bottom of the stairs. It was making a wheezy noise and had a bowling ball still attached to its swollen fingers. It swung the thing around, crashing into the wall and leaving a huge hole in the drywall.
Lisa sniffed and fired off a shot that dropped the thing.
“Oh yeah, the bowling alley,” I said as I fired another shot at a zombie that peeked its head around to look up into the stairwell at the noise.
The Zombie Whisperer (Living With the Dead) Page 8
