Preservation - 03

by Phillip Tomasso

  She sounded as aggravated as I felt, and did nothing to hide it from her tone of voice.

  “How much ammo you have?” I said.

  Kia clapped a hand against her jeans. “Two more clips.”

  “Okay. Should be good. We’ll do this together. On three. Ready? One. Two…”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “…three!”

  We rounded the corner and I counted eight zombies. They stood pressed against the glass wall of the cafeteria. Their flat palms left muddied prints on the glass. It baffled me how they’d staged and carried out such an elaborate attack. Somehow, the things figured out how to gain entry to a locked-down school, find the Mechanical Room and cut power to the generators, twice. It was like they knew that doing so would divide the group into two, and yet now they struggled with pulling on the door handles to enter the cafeteria.

  If Charlene was correct, and I suspected she was, they had gained advanced animal-like survival instincts. This filled me with renewed fear, and meant we still didn’t know our enemy, didn’t have a clue what we were up against.

  “Spread out some,” I said. “But not too far.”

  “We’ve got this,” Charlene said.

  “Are you a good shot, Kia?” She shrugged. “With them that close, I can hit them.”

  “Head shots?” Charlene said.

  “I can only do the best I can.”

  It might have been an honest answer. It wasn’t a comforting one. “Okay. You are going to concentrate on taking them out. Head shots. Once you fire, the element of surprise is gone. If they’re the fast ones, they are going to come at us without much time for reloading. Have your clips handy, okay?”

  Kia immediately moved one clip to each pocket so that they protruded slightly. She checked her weapon. “We’re good.”

  “Gene, Char, we’re going to start toward them. Just a few feet out. Skirt the walls, okay? Char and me on this side. Gene, you’ve got that side.” I wasn’t separating myself from my daughter, and he didn’t question it. “We don’t want to get in Kia’s line of fire, but we’ve got to be ready to take down the ones that get to close. Kia -- don’t you shoot us, got it?”

  “I won’t,” she said.

  The tension was tight. Thick. I smiled. “I’m going to need you to cross your heart.”

  “I do. Cross my heart, and hope--”

  She stopped, looked away. Killed the mood I’d tried to set. “It’s okay. I believe you,” I said. “I’m gonna give you the honors. I want you to start the melee for us.”

  Kia held the hand gun out, arms extended. She lined up her shot. Closed one eye. Her finger rested on the trigger, about ready to fire.

  “No!” It was Gene.

  Kia fired, but had jerked her arm. The shot went wild. I spun around.

  The hallway was filled with zombies. They were down a ways, but closing the distance.

  “Where did they come from,” Charlene said.

  The eight by the cafeteria heard Gene, heard the gunshot, and knew we were there. Did they also know we were sandwiched between hordes? Of course they did. Their strategy appeared flawless. They’d outthought us all. Son of a bitch.

  We were nearly cornered.

  “They’re fast,” Charlene said.

  It wasn’t the approaching flock behind us. I looked at the cafeteria again. Those eight moved with agility I’d not seen exhibited before. If they had rigor mortis in their animated corpses, there was no visible sign of it negatively impacting their speed.

  “Kia!” I said.

  She let out two, three shots. She hit nothing. Wasn’t completely her fault. The things ran, but normally. Their balance was askew. Heads bobbed up and down; wobbled side to side. We didn’t have time for this.

  “Back the way we came,” Gene said.

  “No,” Charlene said. “The cafeteria.”

  There was no time to discuss it. Charlene wasn’t waiting for a vote. I couldn’t argue anyway. She, again, was right. If we went back the way we came, our two groups might never reunite. Our safety was in numbers. Even the zombies knew that.

  I followed my daughter.

  She ran at the first zombie and dropped to her knees. She swung the blade as she slid on the floor. She let out a howling cry as she cut the legs out from under the creature, severing above the ankles and below the knees. The thing dropped. Its mouth had been open. Teeth slammed into the tiles and skidded across the floor and left a splooging trail of dark, thick blood. The zombie was far from dead, the brain was unscathed. Rattled, but secure inside a decaying skull. The immediate threat, however, clearly had been neutralized.

  With the hilt near my ears, the sword’s blade pointed toward the drop ceiling squares, I swung and chopped off a woman’s arm. I was unable to easily free my sword and thought it might be lodged in its ribs. I let go of the long sword, and snatched the hunting knife from the sheath on my hip. I grabbed a fistful of the woman’s hair and yanked her head forward and down. I buried the serrated blade into the back of her neck, felt steel saw across the spine. She collapsed at my feet.

  The gun fired. A zombie close to me jumped back several feet. The bullet hole in its face bled. It opened its mouth and moved toward me.

  I stepped on the woman’s back for leverage and pulled my sword free.

  Another shot took the approaching zombie down. The front of its skull exploded. Bone and brain fragments sprayed around me. I closed my eyes, and shielded my mouth and nose with my forearm.

  To my left, Charlene held the sword in one hand, and with the twenty inch machete, she cut free the bowels of one zombie, and then swept out its feet with a kick of her own. When it fell, slithering around on its own intestines and guts, she planted a foot on its skull and pounded the tip of her sword into its ear.

  If we were not in the middle of some crazy battle, I’d have laughed at Gene. He handled the machete I’d given him like he was French and in the midst of a duel. With one hand on a hip, he stepped and back stepped, and swung the blade out in front of him, cutting into and chunking away pieces of the creature’s flesh. It might be his style, but we had no time for technique.

  “I’m out!” It was Kia. She held her gun up in the air. Not sure why she did that. I could not recall her firing off more than a handful of shots. Somehow, I’d managed to miss three clips worth of ammo being used.

  “Chase!” Allison was at the cafeteria doors. She held it open, waved us over. “Come on!”

  “Go, guys. Go!” I said, ordering them to push past what was left, ignore what came at us, and just get to the cafeteria.

  Charlene ran to Kia, “Go,” she said.

  Kia was out of ammo, and my daughter had the sword ready to defend them both. The two ran for the door. Gene and I were right behind them.

  I heard the other zombies, the ones that had been coming down the hall. They sounded enraged. Their screams and moans echoed and filled the hallways. The only saving grace, the only thing that kept this from becoming a slaughter instead of a minor victory, was that the other creatures were slow. Very slow.

  As Allison closed the cafeteria doors, Melissa wedged a mop through the handles.

  A mop.

  That was what had kept them at bay before we’d turned that corner. A mop.

  “They came out of nowhere,” Dave said. “As soon as you guys left. It was almost like they were waiting for you to go check out why the lights malfunctioned.”

  “They were,” I said.

  “What?” Andy said, standing between Michelle and Robert.

  “Those things fucked with the generators,” Gene said. He wrapped an arm around his wife.

  “There’s got to be thirty, forty of them, Dad.” Charlene stared at the wall. “That glass won’t hold them.”

  I remembered going to a rock concert, when being on the floor as opposed to in seats was cool. Only once, did I venture to the front. The stage was set off by a waist-high rail that worked as a fence. Security stood between the two sections; the audience an
d the performers. Once the main act hit the stage, the force of thousands of people was crushing. There was nowhere to go. My waist was pressed into the rail and felt like circulation was cut off to the rest of my body. Breathing became difficult and I wasn’t the only one. A girl by me passed out. Security had to physically move people away. They pulled her under the rail and ushered her away to paramedics standing by. The band actually stopped several times and asked everyone to take steps back, so they wouldn’t crush the people up front. While the idea was thoughtful, the safety concerns were lost on the fans.

  That’s what was happening now. We, the eleven of us were the rock stars. The zombies, our biggest fans. They didn’t care that the people against the glass were being flattened. It didn’t keep the ones being crushed from still licking and trying to bite through the glass.

  “We don’t have long. Charlene’s right. The glass, it won’t hold,” I said.

  “It’s Plexiglas. It should hold. They shouldn’t be able to break that,” Gene said. “Holy shit.”

  “Holy shit, what?”

  “Gregory. It’s Greg.”

  I looked around. I did not see anyone new in our group. “Gene, what the hell are you talking about?”

  Gene walked up toward the lunch tables, around them and right up to the glass, all the way at the right of the wall. He pointed a finger at the flattened nostrils of a man whose face looked like a dog had attacked him. The skin on his cheek had peeled back and hung loose toward his own throat. “That, this guy, he’s Greg. Gregory,” Gene said. He shook his head, smiling.

  “I guess I’m missing the funny here, Gene.”

  “The generators. Greg did it. He’s the one --this guy right here-- that’s my partner. You know what I mean? We worked together. Day in, day out, the last several years. If anyone was going to know how to screw around in the mechanical room, how to do some real damage, it would be him, Greg. That son of a gun,” Gene said.

  “He’s a not human anymore, he’s one of those things,” Melissa said.

  The monsters had organized. They’d plotted an attack, and pulled it off. If it didn’t scare the shit out of me so much, I’d be impressed. “We need to find a way out of here. Out of the cafeteria.”

  “And go where?” Dave said.

  “We should get my bus,” Gene said.

  “Where’s a window?” Allison said.

  “In the kitchen, back here,” Megan said. She ran, taking Allison.

  “Got a door back there, too,” Kia said. “They use it for deliveries. Take out the trash. That kind of thing.”

  Allison returned. “We’re surrounded. I mean--surrounded.”

  “They are in and all around the building,” Megan said.

  Dave, Charlene, Allison and I had our weapons. I saw a few rifles. “How much ammo do we have?”

  Gene shrugged. “A lot.”

  “Here?” I said.

  “Yes. It’s there, stacked in the corner. There’s more in the gymnasium, and some by the front office, too. Tried not to keep it all in one place,” Melissa said.

  “That was good thinking,” I said. “What we really need is a plan. Because right now, I can’t see a way out of this room. I mean, other than making a run for it, I have no idea what to do next.”

  Allison walked in a big circle around the room. She chewed at the skin on the corner of her thumb. I hated when she did that. “They breached the school,” she said. “As much of a haven as this place seemed, that’s gone now. I know I was looking forward to staying here, but we can’t.”

  “We could push through the doors,” Robert said. “Shoot a path to the gym. Collect up the rest of our stuff…”

  “Not going to work,” Andy said, took off his baseball cap and scratched at his head. “We have the fast ones in that hallway. It’s one thing if they chase after us, and we have time to run, but pushing through all of them stacked right there, it’s a death sentence. I don’t see a way of getting through them without some of us at least getting bit. I don’t know about any of you, but I don’t want to get bit.”

  “No one wants to get bitten,” Michelle said.

  No one was arguing. Voices were loud, though. Getting louder.

  “We have backpacks,” Megan said, “gathered them earlier from lockers and left in the hallways. Dumped the books and stuffed them each full of supplies and stuck them in the dry storage room. Maybe we should hand those out?”

  “That’s a good call,” Kia said. “I’ll grab them.”

  “What’s in the backpacks?” Charlene said.

  “Each has basic First Aid stuff, band aids and alcohol and gauze with tape. Some granola bars, couple cans of food, and other nonperishables. Perfect to hold you over for a few days, not much longer,” Gene said. “Why don’t you and Melissa go and grab them?”

  “I have one idea,” Charlene said. She spoke softly, as if unsure anyone would take her idea seriously.

  “What have you got?” I said.

  “Gene, you said your wife was on her way to pick you up from work here at the school, right? So where is her car?”

  “Right out back,” Gene said.

  Charlene told us the rest of her plan. It wasn’t the best idea, but might prove the only plan plausible enough to work.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It looked like it might come down to a vicious game of Rocks, Paper, Scissors. Gene was an automatic because it was his car, and his bus we were going to retrieve. Initially, Robert called shotgun, but Andy wanted to go, too. Seemed safer if all three went. We figured the rest of us would be safe in the school until they returned.

  “You be careful, okay?” Melissa said. She hugged her man tight. I knew she wasn’t comfortable with him going on this quest without her. “If those roads are bad, you drive on lawns, you got me? No getting out of the car, at all.”

  “I’ll be gone and back before you know it.” He patted her back and rested his chin on top of her head.

  “I love you.” She looked up into his eyes and kissed him.

  “Love you more,” he said.

  I felt odd watching the exchange. The cafeteria was only so large. I turned away, but it was after the fact, and shook hands with Andy and Robert. I planned to do the same with Gene, but he pulled me in for a hug.

  “If we don’t return, you watch over these people. You take care of my Melissa.” He pulled out of the hug and clapped me on the shoulders.

  I nodded, letting him know I understood. There was no use in telling him not to worry, that he’d return, and we’d all be reunited. In truth, the chances of them returning with the bus were not good. Not good at all. He knew it. I knew it. Everyone here knew it. I still had to say something. “You just hurry back. No joy riding with that crazy bus of yours. I’m anxious to see this thing.”

  “You got it!” Gene laughed. “And you’re going to love it. Tell him, Melissa, tell him how much he’s going to love it.”

  “You’re going to love it,” she said. Her words were not convincing. She barely made eye contact. I didn’t think it had anything to do with the bus.

  # # #

  Kia and Michelle held rifles. They sat perched on the sink counter in the kitchen, just under the small rectangle windows.

  “This is going to sound so damned obvious, but when I give the word, you two start shooting. Hit as many as you can in the head. The gunshots are going to attract more to the back of the school over here,” Dave said. He made a gun with his fingers and aimed it at his own skull. “Don’t stop until there’s either none left as a threat, or you’re out of ammo. Got it?”

  I wished there was more I could do. We only had the two windows over the sink. They were small. Rectangle. Wasn’t room enough for more than one person stationed at each.

  Charlene stood at the back door, her hand on the knob. This was her idea. She wanted to be part of the execution as well. I couldn’t blame her.

  “Then, when I say so, Charlene, you pull open the door.” Dave pointed at Gene, Andy and Robert. �
��You three run like the fucking wind to the car. Gene, you have the keys?” Dave said.

  “Yes.”

  “Check,” Dave said.

  “Sorry,” Gene said. “Check.”

  “No,” Dave shook his head. “I mean, check. Physically check.”

  Gene held up a key ring. “Check.”

  Dave took a deep breath, held it and sighed. He nodded toward Kia and Michelle. “Ladies, start shooting…now!”

  Kia and Michelle fired their rifles. The recoil kicked their bodies back after each shot fired. They didn’t stop or complain. They kept shooting. I hoped they were hitting targets. I could hear the creatures. The moaning and groaning was loud, hollow. It ate through me, pierced my skin. I couldn’t take much more of it, of them, of all of this.

  “And, Charlene, now!” Dave said, and she pulled open the door. “Run Gene, run!”

  I watched Gene, Andy and Robert flee out the doorway. Kia and Michelle fired more rapidly. Megan and Melissa loaded secondary rifles with ammo.

  “I’m out,” Kia said. She held out her rifle. Melissa swapped the empty out with the one she’d just loaded.

  “Me, too,” Michelle said. Megan gave her a loaded rifle, too.

  “They’re at the car,” Kia said, and resumed firing.

  I needed to see what was happening. Events being fed to me was not cutting it. It was like listening to a ballgame on the radio when there was a TV right in the next room.

  “Robert!” Michelle said.

  “I got him, I got him!” Kia squeezed off shot after shot. She leaned back, shook hair out of her face and fired again. “Robert!”

  “Dad?”

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” I said.

  “Charlene, no!” Allison said.

  Dave reached for my daughter as Char opened the door and disappeared outside.

  “What the fuck is she doing?” I ran around the register, past the ladies perched on the sink, and followed both Allison and Dave outside.