Viral Dawn

by Skyler Rankin

  Chapter 2

  “I can’t be certain without an x-ray,” Nurse Hoffstedder said as she carefully examined Harley’s ankle.  “But I think it is broken.”  Harley rested on the cot in the nurse’s office near the gym.  Fortunately, the nurse kept lots of supplies on hand for athletic injuries.  She went to her storage room and returned with a splint and some pain meds.  “You’ll need to stay off of this and keep it elevated.  It really should have a cast, but this is the best we can do for now.”  She fitted the splint around Harley’s ankle and foot.  Harley drew in a sharp breath in pain.  The nurse handed her two pain tablets and a bottle of water.  “Take two of these every four hours,” she said, handing her the medicine bottle.  “Get the wheelchair out of the closet, Casey.  She can use that as long as she needs it.”

  I pulled the wheelchair out of the closet and unfolded it.  Kyle and Jordan helped lift Harley off the cot and placed her in the chair.  The nurse extended the leg brace on the chair and placed Harley’s leg in it.

  By the time we wheeled Harley back to the gym, it was dark outside, and the storm had cleared.  The zombies had begun their nightly ritual of banging on the gates.  Although they weren’t really intelligent, they weren’t completely unaware of what was going on either. They seemed to know there were humans inside the school building, and they remembered it every night.  I watched them through the window in the moonlight, clamoring over each other to get to the gate.  Several of them started fighting and clawing at each other, vying to get closer.  One of them was pummeling the lock on the gate with its fist from between the bars.  Bits and pieces of its hand were falling off, some landing inside the gate.  It freaked me out when one of them did something unexpected like that.  It was as if they were learning.

  Now that Harley was taken care of, it was a good time for me to get a shower.  I felt dirty and gross from the zombie attack, and I wanted to be sure every last drop of blood was washed away.  I was still wearing Kyle’s shirt.  “I’m going to take a shower,” I told the others.  We had fallen into the habit of telling everyone where we were going as a safety measure.  I walked through the gym and down the back stairs into the basement locker rooms.  We were fortunate that we still had running water, if you could call it that.  It was more like trickling water, and it was bone-chilling cold.  I stepped into the shower stall and undressed. I laid my boots onto the floor.

  I turned on the water and stepped under the puny stream, thankful at least that it was clean water.  I washed carefully and inspected myself for any cuts or scratches. Fortunately, there were none, but it had been a close call.  Too close.  I knew too well that Kyle had saved my life.  I had been careless.  It wouldn’t happen again.  I dried myself off using some scratchy brown paper towels and walked over to the lockers to look for some clothes.  Beside the lockers, there was a large box filled with track uniforms, shorts, and t-shirts.  They were still packaged from the laundry service.  I found some shorts and a shirt that fit and got dressed.  I rinsed Kyle’s shirt as well as I could in the cold trickle of water and scrubbed it with a sliver of soap.  I wrung it out and hung it to drip dry over a drain. I looked through the lockers, hoping to find better shoes for running. I found a pair that looked a little big and a pair of tube socks. I put them on, and walked around the room to try them out. They weren’t perfect, but they would work.

  Back in the gym, Harley told me that Jordan, Matt, and Kyle had taken the bags of canned food that Kyle carried in to the kitchen to prepare for dinner.  I walked down the hallway, through the cafeteria, and into the kitchen where I found them taking inventory of the stock left on the shelves.  It wasn’t much, but I was glad to see that we had scored some soup from the diner downtown.  It was nice to have some variety.  There were also several cans of beans.  I was sick of beans, but at least they were filling and provided protein.  A group of older adults joined us to prepare the evening meal.  To conserve food, we had restricted ourselves to two meals a day; one in the morning, and one at night.  We all went to our usual work stations.  I began opening the large cans of beans using the industrial sized can-opener mounted on a large, stainless steel work table.

  “I see you found some clothes,” Kyle said. “You look really different without your biker chick clothes.”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” I said, really missing my old clothes. “I washed your shirt, and it’s drying in the locker room,” I told him. I couldn’t help noticing his well-defined muscles as he stood shirtless.

  “Thanks,” he said.  He looked around, surveying the jobs everyone was doing.  “Is there something I can do?” he asked.

  “Sure, we can always use more help with cooking.”  I lead him to the commercial sized stoves in the back where several of the men were pouring the beans into large pots and placing them on the burners.  The gas stoves were fueled by two huge tanks of propane that sat outside the building.  We also used the stoves to boil drinking water because Nurse Hoffstedder insisted on it.  She said the water would be safe as it was for showers, but she felt that boiling it for drinking would protect us in case the virus contaminated the city’s water supply. We had been lucky for sure, but there was no telling how long the propane would last.

  Kyle jumped right in to help the cooking crew. The men appeared anxious. Word had spread quickly about the zombies coming out earlier, and they looked worried. I began filling the sink with water for washing the dishes after the meal.  It would take that long to fill it up because the kitchen water was a trickle as well.  I poured some bleach into the water to sanitize it for cleaning the dishes.

  People began coming into the dining hall to be served, and I drafted four of them to operate the serving line. It was late compared to “normal” dinner time, but we found that eating late gave us something to do and it took our minds of the zombies’ incessant screaming and pounding at the gates. The noise of people scooting chairs, talking, and rattling dishes almost covered up the sound of the zombies. For an hour or so, we could pretend that everything was normal again. After everyone was served, the kitchen crew served themselves and went into the dining hall to eat with everyone else. As usual, we shared a table. Harley wheeled her chair up to the end of the table. She looked as if she were feeling better. The pain meds must have kicked in.

  I sat down and began eating the beans. Brown beans this time. It had been baked beans last night. Tomorrow it would probably be navy beans, or maybe I could talk them into fixing the soup. One of the cooks, a man everyone called Walker, was talking about the food situation. He appeared agitated.

  “Looks like we’re using a lot more food that we’re bringing in,” he was saying. I looked at Kyle. He was the only one of us who made it back in with bags of food tonight. Usually we did better. We could check in the morning to see if our other bags of food were still outside the gates where they were dropped. It was unlikely that there would be anyone else out there alive to take them, and the zombies would probably take no interest in them.

  “All I’m saying is we need to do something soon,” Walker continued. “We need a plan.”

  Some of the other cooks nodded their heads in agreement. Walker gestured toward Matt and Jordan. “Didn’t you all see or hear anything out there today?” They shook their heads. “What about you?” he asked, turning to Kyle. “You were military living out there. Was there any news of a rescue operation or a plan to get us out of here?”

  Kyle gave me a knowing look. I could see that he was reluctant to tell Walker about the military’s actions downtown. “No,” he said simply. “My communication system went down, and I heard nothing about a rescue mission.”

  “But they will come for us, won’t they?” Walker asked, sounding apprehensive. Kyle didn’t answer.

  Walker stood up and leaned across the table. “Why didn’t you answer me?” he asked menacingly. “What do you know soldier boy?” Walker reared back to take a swing at Kyle.

  Kyle grabbed Wa
lker’s arm and twisted. In the blink of an eye, Kyle jumped over the table and had Walker down on the floor. Several of the other men ran over to pull the two apart.

  “Calm down, guys,” one of the men said. “We’ve got enough problems without fighting.”

  The men ushered Kyle and Walker to different sides of the room. Matt and Jordan exchanged nods and looked at me accusingly. See, everything was my fault. I left the table and went to talk to Kyle.

  “I’m sorry I lost my cool back there,” Kyle said to me as I sat down beside him.

  “It was a natural reflex,” I said. “When someone throws a punch at you, you react. Everyone here is just so on edge. Some of us take it better than others.”

  “Yeah, and I need to get used to being around people again, living people I mean,” Kyle said.

  “How long were you hiding out there alone?” I asked

  “It’s been about a month. I don’t know for sure. I lost track.”

  Seeing that the fighting situation was diffused, the men who had broken up the fight began making their way back to their tables, leaving us alone. Kyle visibly relaxed. “So what do you do for fun here?” he asked, regaining a sense of humor.

  “How about helping me with the dishes?” I asked as I stood up and started walking toward the kitchen.

  “Gee that sounds great,” he said sarcastically but followed anyway.

  There was little scraping to do on the dishes because everyone had adopted a kind of bunker mentality that made them practically lick their plates clean. But still, doing the food trays by hand for a crowd like this was quite a job. Harley usually helped me, but given her condition, she was unable to assist. Instead, she sat in the kitchen with us and chatted. Well, actually she just sat and watched us work. Every now and then she giggled or made some off the wall comment. The pain medicine made her loopy. I washed, and Kyle rinsed and stood the trays in drying racks on their sides on a work table. They had to drip dry because we had no towels. I was just finishing up the last trays when I noticed Kyle was staring out the window.

  “Something wrong?” I asked.

  “Walker was right you know,” he answered. “We need a plan. We have no more than a few days’ supply of food here. With all of these people, we’ll have a crisis on our hands when it runs out.”

  He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. Matt, Jordan, Harley, and I had discussed it daily, and between us, we still had not managed to come up with a solution. With no television or radio, we had no idea what was going on out there. Cell phones weren’t working either. As far as we knew, no one knew we were trapped here. For that matter, we didn’t know how far the virus had spread and whether or not anyone else was still alive to come looking for us. “Hate to break it to you Kyle, but we have analyzed the situation over and over and have come up with nothing.”

  Kyle ran his hands through his blonde hair, which was an unruly tousle, having grown out from a military buzz cut during his time hiding out at the diner. “I could try to get to the safe zone,” he said.

  “What safe zone?” I asked. There had been no news of such a place.

  “That last order I received…”

  “The one where they told you to kill everyone?” I asked.

  He looked down and swallowed. “Yeah. They also told us to pull back to a safe zone a couple hundred miles to the west. It’s an area outside the blast zone far away enough that the gas cloud would dissipate and the virus would die out before reaching it.”

  “Two hundred miles away?” My heart sank. I had been hoping for an easier solution. “And just how do you think you will get there?” It was a terrible idea. He would have to walk as far as he could by daylight and then find a safe place to hold up before nightfall. If he was lucky enough to find a place to hide, and that was something he couldn’t count on, he would still have to carry food. My rifle wouldn’t help because it was jammed. “You would never make it on foot,” I said.

  “If I can make it back to the diner, I have an assault rifle and ammo hidden in the freezer,” he said.

  “Wait…” I said rolling my eyes. “You had a rifle back there and didn’t bring it with us?”

  “You had a gun on me, remember?”

  “You could have said something,” I countered.

  “Like you would have trusted me?” he shot back.

  “You guys get a room!” Harley giggled, obviously still feeling no pain.

  “It may be our only chance at surviving this,” Kyle reasoned.

  I didn’t want to admit it, but he had a point. “Let’s talk about this with Jordan and Matt to see what they think,” I said.

  It was Kyle’s turn to roll his eyes. “I don’t need permission to do this,” he said, looking irritated.

  “No, you don’t need our permission,” I said, “But our lives are at stake here too. You owe it to us at least to listen to what they may have to say.”

  We wheeled Harley back to the gym and found Matt and Jordan playing a game of checkers we had found in the library.

  “King me!” Jordan said to Matt as he moved his checker into Matt’s back row. From the looks of the board, Jordan had this game in his pocket.

  “Listen up guys,” I said, interrupting them. “Kyle has an idea to get us out of here.”

  “I’m all ears,” Matt said, perking up.

  Jordan looked skeptical. “Something we haven’t already thought of and shot down?” he asked.

  “Just listen,” I said.

  “I’ve heard there’s a military safe zone about two hundred miles west of here,” Kyle explained. “I’m going to try to make it there and send back some help.”

  “Run by the military?” Jordan asked. “I thought you said they were shooting everybody.”

  “They were,” Kyle said. “But I’m in uniform. They wouldn’t shoot me unless I was infected. Maybe I can get through and let them know there are uninfected survivors here.”

  “You’ll never make it,” Matt said. “It will take you several days, and you may not be able to find shelter along the way.”

  “It’s a dead man’s plan,” Jordan said.

  “Staying here and doing nothing is a dead man’s plan,” Kyle said. “I’ve made up my mind. I’m leaving tomorrow at daybreak.”

  The next morning, I retrieved Kyle’s shirt from the locker room while he packed a backpack with the several smaller cans of food that we had stashed in the kitchen. I tossed in a small can opener. I handed him the shirt. It was stiff and wouldn’t be very comfortable, but at least it was clean and virus-free. “Are you sure about this?” I asked him.

  “It’s the only way,” he replied in a steady tone that made it sound like he was just going out to mow the lawn. He slipped on the shirt and hoisted the backpack onto his shoulders. Once again, he looked more like a soldier.

  I rounded up Matt and Jordan to go with me to look outside the gates see if we could pick up the remaining duffle bags of food that we had dropped the night before.

  As we all left the building and walked toward the gate, Harley wheeled along behind us. “Take me out with you,” she said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I chided. “We’re just going down the street, and we’ll be right back.”

  “You need to stay here and take care of that ankle,” Matt said.

  Harley looked disappointed, but she didn’t push it.

  “Lock the gate behind us, Harley,” I told her.

  We left the grounds, and Harley managed to pull her wheelchair up sideways beside the gate so she could reach the lock and click it closed. Then she turned and wheeled back toward the building.

  “We’ll be back in about ten minutes,” I yelled after her. “Have someone come to let us back in.”

  “Will do,” she answered and then wheeled inside.

  We walked back down the street through the Carver neighborhood toward the place where we had fought with the zombie the nig
ht before. As we reached the area, I saw the rotting zombie carcass glistening with slime in the morning sun. The bags would be just a bit further down the street. When I saw them, I stopped short. Jordan and Matt looked at me, puzzled. Kyle looked in the direction I was looking and stopped as well. The bags were neatly stacked in a pile in the middle of the street instead of being strewn onto the pavement where we had dropped them.

  “Something’s not right,” I said.

  “Something is definitely not right,” Kyle said in a low whisper.

  Matt moved forward, “Come on, let’s get them and get back to the building.”

  I reached to stop him, but he sprinted away from my grasp and ran toward the bags. When he reached the bags, from behind a nearby house, the wailing began. I looked around us. There were zombies in front of us and on both sides. “Run,” I yelled.

  We all ran back toward the gates. The zombies were running right behind us. I could hear their breath coming in raspy gasps. Their horrible cries filled the air. As we drew near the gates, I could see a man standing there waiting for us.

  “Open the gates! Open the gates now!” Kyle yelled.

  But the man just stood there. As we drew closer, I could see his face. Walker! “Open the gate, Walker!” I yelled. Unbelievably, he smiled and walked away.

  Panic gripped my stomach. “To the bus!” I yelled over my shoulder to the others.

  We ran toward the broken down bus just beyond the gate. I banged on the door, and it opened. Kyle pushed me inside, grabbed Jordan, and practically threw him up the stairs. Matt was coming toward us with a group of zombies right behind him. One lurched forward and grabbed his arm. Matt struggled to get away, but the zombie sunk its jagged, rotting teeth into his flesh. Matt screamed and faltered to the ground. The zombies flew into him, tearing and ripping his skin. Matt disappeared under the pile of ravenous zombies.

  There was no way to save him. “Get in Kyle!” I screamed. For a second Kyle looked as if he was going to try some fool-hearted rescue. “Get in! You can’t save him,” I cried.

  Kyle looked back at the zombies one more time and then climbed onto the bus, slamming the door closed behind him.

  More zombies pounded on the sides of the bus, wailing and screaming. “What the Hell is going on?” I yelled. “What are they doing out in the freakin’ daylight?”

  “They set a trap for us,” Jordan said, mystified. “They piled the damned bags in the middle of the street and waited for us to come!”

  “They came out earlier last night,” Kyle said catching his breath. “They’re out today. Something’s changing.”

  “Like what?” Jordan asked, hysterically.

  “Well, the virus mutated once. Maybe it’s mutating again. That could be why some of the zombies can tolerate daylight now.”

  I sank to the floor of the bus and buried my face in my hands. Hot tears burned my eyes. Matt was dead and I felt responsible.

  “We’ve got to get back into the building somehow,” Kyle said.

  “We can’t get back in. Not while that idiot is at the gate,” Jordan said angrily.

  “How could Walker do this to us after all we’ve done for the survivors?” I asked.

  “It’s his fault,” Jordan said, pointing a finger at Kyle.

  “Stop it Jordan!” I yelled, shaking off my grief over Matt. “This is no time for accusations. “We need to think!” But thinking wasn’t easy with the dozen or so zombies wailing and beating on the sides of the bus.

  “If I can get this bus going, I could make a break for the safe zone,” Kyle said. He sat down in the driver’s seat and started searching through the papers on the dashboard.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Looking for keys,” he answered.

  “We already looked and there aren’t any,” I said.

  “Then how do you know the bus is broken down?”

  “We just assumed it was because it’s still here. All the other vehicles that worked are gone,” Jordan explained.

  Kyle lifted a panel up on the floor and withdrew a toolbox. I smacked my forehead. Why hadn’t we looked for tools before? Kyle positioned himself under the steering column and began removing the metal cover from the shaft. Jordan and I watched him working furiously. He pulled two wires from the back of the ignition switch and began stripping them with a stripping tool from the toolbox. He twisted the bare wires together. He pulled two more wires from the ignition tumbler and touched them together quickly. The engine started.

  “Finally we got a break!” I cried. Even Jordan looked just a little impressed.

  “I’ll pull the bus up close to the gate, and you guys can climb out the emergency door in the roof. You should be able to climb over the gate and jump down on the other side,” Kyle said. “Tell the others what Walker did. He can’t be trusted.” He looked at the fuel gage. “I probably don’t have enough fuel to get to the safe zone, but at least I can make it out of the city. I’ll drive as far as I can and then either find another vehicle or walk.”

  I looked back at the high school and realized there was no hope for us there. Even if we jumped over the gate and landed without injuring ourselves, there would be Walker to deal with. He may fight us. Others may fight us as well. It was only a matter of time before a riot broke out over the food supply anyway. “I’m going with you,” I said.

  “Me too,” Jordan said.

  “I can’t let you go,” Kyle said sternly. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “It’s too dangerous here too!” I insisted. You know the food situation. Jordan and I are the only ones who are left to do the food runs anyway. We can’t continue like this.” My only regret was leaving Harley behind. But we would be back soon with help.

  “She’s right, Kyle,” Jordan said, surprising me with his supportive attitude.

  Kyle looked doubtful at first and then gave in. “Okay, you can go with me, but first we have to go back downtown to get my gun.”