It was a small brick school, located across the street from a housing project and a small strip mall of some sort. A football field sat to the side of the gymnasium, a tall tower capped with an old cupola overlooking the front stairs. No sign of people, but the parking lot was mostly full. I pulled the truck up off the road, parking on the front lawn. Turning the truck off, and snatching the keys, I jumped down, ax in hand, and sprinted to the doors, pulling them toward me, hoping for the best.
They were unlocked.
I turned toward the truck and gestured to Kate, who grabbed Fred and their bags, and leaped from the cab. I could see Earl moving slowly out of the driver’s side door. Kate and Fred reached the doors, and went inside.
The polished tile of the floor was a brilliant white. The neon lights reflected fitfully off the whitewashed cement block walls. Kate and Fred moved into the hallway, checking both ways. Kate nodded to me that it was clear for the moment. I turned back to the doorway, where Earl was reaching the open entrance. Grabbing the door and pulling it closed, I inserted my ax through the door handles.
Earl looked at me sharply, suddenly alert. He tried the doors, realizing too late what I had done. He slammed both hands against the glass. Kate moved to my side.
“What are you doing?” he screamed, looking over his shoulder, clearly scared now. From the woods we had passed coming toward the school, a virtual herd of creatures appeared. They moved en masse across the road, toward the school. Fuckers must have followed the sound of the truck.
“You’ve been bitten,” I said through the glass, “You’re going to turn, and you know it. How are you feeling? A little woozy?”
His hand went instinctively to his brow to wipe sweat from his forehead. “I’ve got the flu, you bastard!” he yelled, “And this wasn’t a bite from one of those things! I have a nephew who bit me two days ago at the park!” He looked over his shoulder again, back to me, very scared now. Eyes bulging, he slammed his fists against the doors. “Open the god damned doors! Those things are getting closer! I’m not a fucking zombie! Listen to me!”
Kate’s hand was on my arm, and I turned to her.
“Are you certain?” she asked softly, her eyes searching my face. The problem was, I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t certain at all. But I know what I saw.
“No. I’m not certain. But I know that the infection, the sickness, whatever you want to call it, I know that if you’re bitten, you get it. And you can give it. He may be telling the truth, but he may be lying. He had one of those things on top of him for God knows how long before I got there. Are you telling me you believe his story? Enough to let him in here?”
She looked to Earl, who was now focused on the creatures coming from the forest. There were at least a hundred, mostly teenagers. Looked like half of the school. Looking back to me she shook her head.
“I can’t leave him out there to die. If he turns, we can end it. If we leave him out there, he’s going to get ripped up by those things whether he’s destined to turn into one or not. I can’t condemn him to that.”
I looked at her for a long while before cursing once and lifting my hand to the ax handle.
“Come on, man, open the door!” Earl pleaded, no longer aggressive. Just plain scared.
They were on the lawn, passing the truck, and had reached the bottom stair before I could get the ax handle loose and manage the door open. He stumbled past me as I slammed the door closed again, threading the ax handle through, and moving back as the first creature hit against the thick glass. It was a young man, maybe all of fifteen. He wore a tee shirt bearing the name of a band in crazy cursive lettering. Vacantly staring eyes rimmed in red followed my progress as we moved back toward the hallways. Muddy leather sneakers shuffled in place as his hands moved against the glass, sliding on the surface as if it were ice. His mouth was a snarl, broken teeth evidencing his transgressions of the day.
Suddenly, a blinding pain in the back of my head and I was on the ground. Another blunt impact to my ribs, and more angry shouting.
“Mother fucker! Gonna leave me to die out there?” Another impact and I tried to roll away, a second kick grazing my calf.
“You can’t get away from me, you stupid bastard!” I tried to push myself up and saw his leg moving toward me. I grabbed the foot and twisted it, catching him off balance and send him sprawling onto the stairs, left leg twisting awkwardly under his contorted frame as he screamed in pain. A jagged white splinter protruded from his pant leg, blood covering the site of the compound fracture.
He rolled over, screaming, as I pushed myself onto my feet, dizzy from the blow to the head. At my side, Kate was staring at the doors, mouth open.
“There’s too many of them!” I looked to the left, and the ax handle was splintering, doors bowing inward from the immense pressure outside. Suddenly, from behind Kate, Fred sprinted forward, frying pan a silver blur as he slammed it against Earl’s head, sending him spinning against the glass doors.
“Fred, no!” I yelled, my own voice painfully splitting my skull, ears still ringing. Fred jerked himself upright, stumbling back up the stairs in reverse, as Earl moved against the doors.
Blood streaming profusely from the deep gash in his head, Earl pushed himself back against the wall, trying to get up, trying to fight the pain in his broken leg.
Rising slowly, my vision blurred, I somehow managed to stagger up the stairs into the hallway just as the ax handle shattered, splinters of wood showering the floor. Earl tried one final time to get up. But hampered by his shattered leg, he was forced to the floor again by the weight of the incoming flood, bearing him down and burying him under an avalanche of gray, writhing flesh. I caught one final glimpse of him, writhing in agony as a teenage girl grabbed the splinter of bone in his leg and casually ripped it from his bleeding calf.
Several creatures that were unable to reach him through the rest of the crowd chose instead to shamble clumsily forward toward the stairwell, the progress of the crowd outside temporarily bottlenecked at the one open door.
As Earl screamed in pain, Kate backed up into the main hallway, arm crossing Fred’s chest protectively, forcing him back with her. I stumbled toward them, doubled over as I tried to catch my breath. Kate must have felt Fred tense, as she suddenly tried to grab at Fred’s shirt, shouting at him in anxious excitement. He bolted forward toward the first few creatures, frying pan aloft.
“Pancake” he screamed, as his frying pan whirled into the skull of the closest zombie, it’s head whipping to the side as the stainless steel shattered the cheekbone and the strength of the blow forced it into the bodies of the creatures behind. Even as he cocked his arm for another attack, Kate balled his shirt in her hand, pulling him back as we ran to the stairwell. He protested briefly, but allowed himself to be pulled, frying pan ever at the ready, face red and livid.
We sprinted upstairs, our shoes sounding hollowly in the empty stairwell as shuffling bodies followed close behind. Earl’s screams echoed continued to reverberate against the tinny lockers lining the hallway until they ended abruptly in a wet, tearing cough. Then there was nothing; nothing but the sound of our running and the shuffling pursuit.
Chapter 12
We raced up the stairs, taking them two or three at a time. Fred followed Kate as I, by necessity as well as choice, played rearguard, still woozy from Earl’s blow. Barely pausing to snack on Earl, the horde had followed us down the hall and to the stairs, haltingly jerking their collective legs over each step, slowly but consistently giving pursuit. Shoes and boots and bare feet and sandals, all shuffling and squeaking on the slick commercial grade tile that an industrious janitor had recently polished to a mirror-like sheen.
Reaching the second floor, I scanned the hallway, gaze flickering past rows of lockers, abstinence posters and a faded banner advertising a long-past dance. To our right was a set of restrooms, to the left a doorway to a janitor’s closet. We moved down the hall, searching for access to the roof. From below, the moaning and shambling corpses followed us up the stairs.
This school had not been spared the violence that had marred the rest of the town; bloody smears and indiscernible patterns of brown fluid covered the wall to my left, seeming to converge on a dark spot further up the hallway. A water fountain covered inexplicably in blood and gore stood out from the wall and a forgotten backpack lay torn open below, books scattered in the red mixture of fluid and solid that spread out from the scene of the mutilation.
I began to get concerned as the first zombie, a teenage boy with a large, gaping red socket where his left eye should be, reached the top of the stairs. He tripped forward as the rush of bodies from behind forced his feet out from under him on the smooth floor. His single eye never stopped watching me as he was trampled slowly from behind until his face was pushed from view.
These things are certainly determined, I’d give them that.
Not that they know that they’re determined, or intended to be, but you gotta give ‘em props for following that instinct.
“Uh, I’m starting to feel a little like that last lobster in the lobster tank,” said Kate, looking over her shoulder at the creatures shuffled forward along the hall, mutilated extremities leaving more blood and refuse streaked along the whitewashed cinder blocks as they moved toward us.
“What, appreciated?” I joked half-heartedly, even as I spotted the last door in the hall adjacent to another restroom a doorway marked “No Student Access” with a picture of a stick figure man scaling stairs to an open doorway.
“More like I’m sitting in a glass cage with my claws rubber-banded shut waiting to have my ass plucked out by the next middle aged balding guy with expandable pants and 19.99 in his pocket,” she said dryly, moving past me into the stairwell. Fred passed me next, eyes busy searching the hall behind us. In his flickering look as he moved by, I thought I caught a hint of concern.
Jesus, we must really be in deep shit if Mr. Nonplussed is showing anxiety.
We reached the roof, sprinting out as Kate shut the door and peered through the chicken wire and glass window in the steel frame.
“They’re following us in,” she said, face glued to the glass.
I looked around, searching for something to reinforce the door, remembering the ax handle downstairs and the barricade at Target. It’s amazing what a group of hungry, determined, flesh-eating zombies can do to a barricade these days.
“Is there a lock on the handle?” I asked, looking frantically on either side of the stairwell housing.
“Yeah, but it’s a deadbolt and it’s on the other side,” Kate responded. “They’re at the last landing and they’re gonna be up here soon. If you’ve got a way to keep them inside, now’s the time…”
“I left my duct tape and baling wire at home, cut me some slack,” I said, searching wildly for something to bar the entrance.
“They’re here!” she screamed, and turned around, backing against the door and bracing herself for their onslaught. Fred joined her, lending his slight frame to the temporary wall, legs clearly straining as the first hit slammed the door into their backs, a crack of space appearing behind them.
“Hurry up!” she screamed, composure lost, eyes wild, as Fred whimpered, door bulging against their backs.
There! Not perfect, but better than the alternative.
“Let it go and run toward me! Behind the stairs!”
They jumped away from the doorway as it flew open behind them, the darkened stairwell yawning into the bright light of day and virtually vomiting the creatures onto the roof, even as Kate and Fred sprinted to me. I pointed to a ladder attached to the side of the building that led to the cupola overlooking the front lawn. It was the highest point on the school, and only accessible by ladder. It also lacked another escape route.
In other words, once we were up there, we had nowhere else to go.
“This is it?” Kate yelled unbelieving, looking over her shoulder in anxiety as they appeared from behind the stairwell.
“This is your solution? How the fuck are we getting down from there?” Her face was flushed as she pointed to the white dome, her eyes blazing. Her hair, tied behind her head in a simple ponytail, shook behind her rapidly moving head as she looked first to me, then to them, and back to the ladder.
“We figure that out upstairs,” I said, looking over my shoulder at the approaching creatures.
Cursing, she grabbed the ladder and lifted herself up. Fred, looking behind me, moved almost surreptitiously toward the approaching crowd as I managed to grab his shirt as he did so, pulling him back.
“Uh-uh. Not this time, Rambo,” I directed him as I pushed him toward the ladder, hand on his shirt until he was on the rungs, climbing up. I followed quickly, getting most of my body up just as the first creature reached the foot of the ladder.
A hand grasped the leg of my pants, pulling my foot toward its mouth. It was a teenage girl this time, wearing the boisterous uniform of a school cheerleader, bloody legs appearing from underneath her skirt, scratches adorning a pretty face marred only by her vacuous, hungry stare. Her eyes greedily tracked my foot in her hand as I struggled against her unnaturally strong grip.
I kicked out clumsily and violently, my heel connecting with her jaw and forcing her head back. Grasping the ladder firmly with both hands, I brought my other foot down hard on her forehead while her head rocked backward, forcing her spine to bend further in a direction it was unable to accommodate. I could hear the neck snap; my foot flew free and the grip released as I jumped up the next two rungs, narrowly avoiding the remaining creatures, which now crowded below the last rung.
Reaching the cupola, I turned and looked behind me, seeing the roof awash in milling, gray, shambling bodies, shuffling persistently toward the ladder, moans a constant refrain as a chorus of the undead serenaded us in our ivory tower.
I sat down hard on the edge and caught my breath. Kate and Fred were breathing hard, Kate leaning against the railing, chest heaving, while Fred had plopped unceremoniously in the middle of the enclosure, legs crossed and panting like an exhausted dog.