“The team bus!” Greg exclaimed suddenly. He slapped his hands over his mouth as they all ducked back from the edge of the roof. “Sorry,” he said more quietly. Without waiting for a response, he sprinted over to the far east side of the roof and peered down. “Yes, it’s there!”
Nancy and Marshall rushed over to his side. Sure enough, there was a large school bus painted in white and navy blue, sitting in the side parking lot where a mere two zombies were shambling in circles. It had some kind of wildcat painted on the side, which looked to Nancy right then like a shining beacon of hope.
“The keys are in the gym teacher’s office,” Greg told them excitedly. “They’re always hanging on her wall by the door.”
Nancy turned to Marshall, who allowed himself a small smile and nodded. “Let’s do it.”
Greg ran for the gymnasium like his life depended on it (and it probably did), while Nancy jogged behind and Marshall slowly brought up the rear with the handgun. By the time the older man arrived Greg had already smashed the window in the gym teacher’s office and snatched the keys. They quickly retrieved the rest of their weapons from the nurse’s station and risked some time to gather whatever food they could from the cafeteria. They stuffed it all into a duffel bag that Greg had also pilfered from the gym.
They shouldn’t have wasted their time.
The sound of shattering glass echoed throughout the hallways, and the school instantly filled with dozens of groaning, undead corpses. Nancy’s heart stopped. “Run!” she cried to the men.
Unfortunately they had to pass the foyer in order to make it to the exit where the bus was parked. As they sprinted out into the line of fire, so to speak, Nancy couldn’t help pausing to stare like a deer caught in the headlights. A room full of hungry, blank eyes caught sight of them and reached out in greedy, grotesque anticipation.
Marshall snatched Nancy’s arm. “Hurry!” he screamed at her.
Hardly able to tear her eyes from the scene of blood and gore in front of her, Nancy bit the inside of her cheek and took off at a sprint. Halfway down the hall she heard a bang ring out and realized that Marshall wasn’t behind her. He’d stopped to take a few shots. His first went directly through a zombie’s forehead, but the second missed and hit its intended target in the throat. Nancy fought against survival instinct in order to run back for Marshall, grab his arm, and yank hard. “Forget it!” she screamed. “Come on!”
Greg had already made it to the exit and stopped in alarm when he realized his friends weren’t with him. He took a few feet backward, bounced on the balls of his feet, and sighed with relief when Nancy and Marshall appeared around the corner, one dragging the other. “Hurry up!” he shouted. “They’re right behind you!”
“No shit!” Nancy screamed back.
Greg threw open the door. Nancy snatched the handgun away from Marshall - who was looking too out of breath to take a steady shot - and took aim at the nearest zombie. Her shot went wide because she was moving too quickly backward as she aimed.
“Calmly,” Marshall gasped in her ear.
“Easy for you to say,” Nancy muttered. She took aim again, leaning her head so that she could get a better view through the sight, and gently squeezed the trigger. This time her shot hit home, piercing a hole in the zombie’s head just above the eye. It stood perfectly still for a moment before crumpling to the ground. “I did it!” Nancy shouted, genuinely surprised.
“Congratulations,” Greg called from where he was hanging out the door of the bus. “Now get the fuck on here!”
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Nancy said, and hauled Marshall up the stairs with a grunt. She caught the keys that Greg tossed to her and hurled herself into the driver’s seat. For a moment she had a panic attack - she’d never driven anything bigger than her old clunker - but after half a second of hesitation she grabbed the lever to swing the door closed, jammed the keys in the ignition, and turned hard. The bus’ engine groaned, then coughed. Nancy felt all the blood drain from her face.
“They’re coming,” Marshall whispered, partially to himself. Nancy stared at the rear-view mirror. Some of the zombies were even tripping over each other as they began to spew out the exit toward the bus.
She tried the ignition again. It roared for a moment, then sputtered. She felt hot tears burning at the corners of her eyes.
“Oh fuck, oh fuck,” Greg was groaning. The zombies were swarming toward them, their numbers making them appear to move faster than they had previously. Three more had appeared from the street side as well, and were actually clambering only a few feet away from the bus.
Nancy tried the ignition once more and as it whined and groaned she completely lost her cool. “Start right now you godforsaken piece of
shit!
” she shrieked, and kicked the panel above the pedals as hard as she could. The engined turned over suddenly and roared to life.
“Go!” Marshall shouted as zombie hands found the bus windows.
Praising the days that her driving instructor had insisted she learn how to drive stick, Nancy threw the bus into gear and slammed her foot down. The accelerative powers of the bus left something to be desired, but it was enough to trip up the zombies that were trying to grab onto the sides of the vehicle, and soon they were pulling out into the darkening evening, splattering anything that dared wander out in front of them.
When they were a good two miles away from the school, zombie remains painting their front bumper, Greg sighed and finally allowed himself to sit down across from Marshall. “So,” he said with a nervous half-smile. “Where to now?”
Marshall didn’t even get a chance to open his mouth to reply when the worst possible thing that could have happened to them at that moment did, indeed, happen. An explosion rocked their eardrums. Nancy felt certain that she was having a heart attack. By the time her brain managed to process that they’d blown a tire, the bus was already careening out of control toward the downtown fountain park. In a panic, Nancy tried the breaks. The remaining tires squealed in protest and the bus groaned as the rear end of it outran the front. Before they knew what was happening, the bus began to tip, and then it was rolling spectacularly, smashing a hundred-year-old stone angel clean off the fountain.
Then all was silent, except for the sound of water splashing on the the demolished outer body of the bus.
In her pain, confusion, and what may have been a concussion, Nancy only had enough time to process Marshall’s empty, frozen eyes staring at her as blood poured from the jagged piece of broken window through his throat into his open mouth. Then she passed into unconsciousness.
Chapter Seven
It was the sensation of water dripping down her face that eventually woke Nancy. The moment consciousness returned to her, so did the pain. She groaned. A hand clapped over her mouth and she heard someone hiss, “Shhh!”
She drifted in and out a few times after that. One moment she would be dreaming of rivers of blood and people jumping from the tops of buildings, and the next she’d be biting back a scream as the pain in her arm flared. She didn’t know how much time had passed when she finally drifted back to reality, but it was still raining. She looked around, confused, unsure whether she was actually awake or still dreaming. The world was moving, slowly but steadily, and a little askew. It took her a few long moments to realize that she was draped across Greg’s back. He was huffing and puffing as he carried her along, step by step. Nancy’s katana was sticking out of the duffel bag, which was hanging around his neck. The boy looked exhausted beyond words.
Nancy began to pose a question, but Greg quickly looked back at her and put a finger to his lips. Then he pointed. Nancy’s eyes followed the gesture and she had to bite her tongue to keep from crying out. There were at least a dozen zombies not a hundred yards away. They were slowly shuffling east, while Greg slowly shuffled north. It was pure luck that they weren’t looking in this direction.
Nancy wanted to scream at Greg to find somewhere to hide, quick, but after another moment she realized that was exactly what he was trying to do. The land that they were walking across was a park in front of a large six-floor hospital. Greg was moving slowly and quietly, trying his best not to attract the attention of the zombies while heading steadfastly for the building. It was amazing, Nancy thought, that he had been able to keep moving this long, and that he’d been level-headed enough to get them away from the wreck. She was sure that the bus crash must have attracted the attention of quite a few-
She thought suddenly of Marshall, and the glimpse of him that she’d caught just before passing out. She buried her face in Greg’s shoulder to keep from sobbing aloud. To force the memory of the older man’s face out of her mind, Nancy squeezed Greg’s shoulder with her good arm and motioned for him to help her down off his back. Her right arm felt like it might be broken, but she could still walk, so there was no reason for Greg to needlessly fatigue himself. For his part, the boy kept an arm around Nancy as they crept step by step toward their destination, too scared to run.
The hospital had a short stone wall around the perimeter of its land. The entrance where patients and employees alike would enter was a ten-foot gap in the wall. All that was ordinary, but what had been added to the structure was not. Ten-foot posts had been planted in the ground on the hospital side of the wall, every fifteen feet or so, and between them were strung thick rolls of chicken wire, barbed wire, and a few things Nancy didn’t recognize. The open entrance had a number of pikes sticking through it at forty-five degree angles, aimed toward the outside. Each one had something sharp - mostly steak knives - bound to the ends. Here and there on the pikes and barbed walls there were splatters of blood and entrails, but no bodies. Not only had someone turned this hospital site into a barricaded fortress, but they were taking care of any zombies that happened into their traps. She wasn’t sure why, but something about that bothered Nancy.
Still, it was a shelter, and surely someone inside could help her with her arm. As carefully and quietly as they had moved across the open, Nancy and Greg picked their way through the pikes and up to the wall of wire. The makeshift wall was at least ten feet high but it was the only way to go. Greg handed the duffel bag to Nancy and examined their options. There weren’t very many good places to place a hand without slicing it open, but he was young and fit, and soon he’d managed to haul himself up to the top of one of the poles. Now came the hard part. Greg leaned down, grasped Nancy’s good arm, and pulled. He was strong enough for his age, but he was still the smaller of the two, and Nancy couldn’t stand to move her hurt arm to help. It took a great deal of struggling, grunting, and trying not to scream from the pain, but eventually the two of them went tumbling over the opposite side of the wall. They landed with a thud; Nancy gasped in agony. They both held their breath for a few moments, and then carefully peered back though the wall. It didn’t seem that they’d attracted any attention.
Secure that they’d finally made it to safety, they sprinted for the main entrance to the hospital. Boards had been nailed horizontally across the door’s moldings, but they were able to pry two off by jamming Nancy’s katana in behind them, making a hole just big enough for them to squeeze through and shove the door open. They burst into the main foyer with twin gasps of relief.
And found no fewer than ten guns being pointed directly at their heads.
“Who are you?” a man’s voice demanded. It was a gruff, angry voice.
Nancy didn’t know which gun to look at. Her vision began to swim in front of her eyes.
“Please,” Greg begged with a note of desperation in his voice. “We’re just looking for a safe place to stay. My friend is hurt, and-”
A woman with short-cropped black hair and army boots strode forward. She looked as tough as nails and was carrying a ridiculously large hunting knife. “
How
did she get hurt?” she demanded.
Greg was taken aback, but he answered honestly, “We were in a car crash. We got out okay, but I think she might have broken her arm in the impact. She’s also lost some blood.”
As if to give purpose to his words, Nancy felt herself swooning a little.
The man who’d spoken first, a man who perpetuated every stereotype ever conceived about college football jocks, stepped up next to the army woman. He pointed his black pistol directly at Greg’s face. “Did you lead any zombies here?” he demanded furiously. “
Did you?!
”
The woman raised an eyebrow at the man, but did nothing to admonish his attitude. Instead she looked at Greg and spoke in a very stern manner. “Were you followed?” she asked.
Greg shook his head. “I swear,” he insisted. “We were very careful. And with her arm the way it is, if we’d been noticed we never would have made it over your wall. Trust me, please.”
Nancy wasn’t expecting much from these people who looked ready and willing to blow their heads off, but to her surprise another man spoke up. “They’re telling the truth,” he said. He was holding something that looked like a walkie-talkie up to his ear. “Turner’s on the roof and he says he watched the whole thing. No zombies heading in our direction.”
All eyes were on Greg and Nancy for an uncomfortably long time before the woman finally nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Bring her into the emergency room. Call the EMT.”
Nancy sighed with relief while struggling to keep her floating head on her shoulders. The loss of blood and the shock of having so many firearms pointed in her face was catching up to her.
The group disbanded, mumbling amongst themselves, all except the quarterback, who stared daggers at them as they followed the army woman toward the emergency area.
“My name is Aria,” she told them. Nancy couldn’t help but think that it was an awfully pretty name for such a mean-looking woman. “You are?” she continued.
“Greg, and this is Nancy,” the boy explained. “We’ve been traveling, hiding, but we’ve had some pretty bad luck recently.”
Aria smiled, not in a friendly way. “Well,” she said, “I hope you left the bad luck at the door because we’ve got a decent thing going here and I don’t want to see it screwed up.”
The atmosphere was tense then, until they crossed the two big swinging doors to the emergency area. Greg jumped a mile and Aria stared in confusion as the promised EMT came running toward them crying, “Nancy! It’s you!” A pair of warm arms enveloped her in an enormous bear hug before she could cry out about her arm. She felt her head swim from the fresh jolt of pain. “Oh god,” the voice exclaimed. “I’m so sorry!”
She was laying down on an examination table when her vision settled out enough for her to see who was speaking to her. She looked up into a familiar face and felt her heart skip a beat. “Ken,” she whispered through the pain. “Oh Ken, it’s you!” She reached with her good arm and he took it happily, squeezing it in welcome.
“I’m so happy to see you,” he said in a quite voice. He sounded sincere, but there was something else in the look he was giving her. “Though I do wish... Well, we’ll talk later. You rest, and I’ll fix you up, okay?”
She nodded, a little wave of happiness warming her, and as though his voice had put her under a spell, she nodded off to sleep.
When Nancy awoke she was in a pillow-filled hospital bed in a single-occupant room. Greg was sitting in an armchair that had been pulled up next to her bedside. He smiled as she yawned and inspected her arm. Ken had managed to set and cast it while she was asleep. “How long was I out?” she asked.
“About half a day,” Greg told her. He sat up straight and allowed himself a long stretch. “We gave you some drugs before we started screwing with your arm. The doc said you lost a good bit of blood, but you’ll be fine. Your arm only has a small fracture.” He sounded very relieved. Nancy wondered how bad she’d looked. She remembered feeling pretty damn awful.
“Who is he?” Greg asked suddenly.
Nancy blinked. She tried to push herself up into a sitting position with her good arm, but a wave of dizziness made her lay back down with a cringe. “Who is who?” she countered.
Greg leaned forward to play with a loose thread on the bedspread. “The doctor,” he said. “You two seemed to know each other, but I didn’t want to pry while he was busy working on you.”
“Oh, that’s Ken,” Nancy replied with a smile. “He’s this guy who came to the bar a lot. We’d hang out while I worked. He’s in emergency response. He’s a good guy.”
Greg looked up into her eyes, nodded, and then looked back down. Nancy examined his face for a long time, confused by his behavior. After a while she smiled in understanding. She worked through the pain and fatigue to reach out and place her good hand gently on Greg’s face. He looked up at the touch and Nancy could see the hurt and fear in his eyes. “It’s okay,” she assured him. “Just because I’ve found someone close to me doesn’t mean I’m going to abandon you.”
Greg turned his face away and jutted out his jaw. “That wasn’t what I was thinking at all,” he huffed.
This time Nancy forced herself to sit up, her body aching everywhere. She wrapped her good arm around Greg. He stiffened for a moment, and then relaxed. “You’re still my little brother,” she said quietly. “I’m officially adopting you.”
Greg took a long, deep breath, the kind you take when you’re trying very hard not to cry. “You can’t adopt a
brother
,” he scoffed, but quickly added, “You promise?”
Nancy squeezed tighter. “I absolutely promise.”
Greg sniffed once and put his arms around her as well. Out of the corner of his eye he caught Ken looking at them from the hallway and gave a tiny nod of approval. Ken smiled and nodded back before strolling in and coughing to announce himself. Nancy looked up and gave him a warm smile.
“How’s my patient feeling today?” he asked.
“Like hell,” Nancy admitted. “But I guess I can’t expect much after everything that happened.”
Ken rearranged her pillows so that she could sit back comfortably and handed her a bottle of juice from the small pile that had been gathered to her bedside table. “Drink this,” he insisted. “You need sugar.” Then he sat at the end of the bed and frowned. “To be honest, you’re lucky you even made it in. The...group hasn’t been particularly happy that Aria let you past the door. They wanted to chuck you back outside.”
Nancy almost choked on the gulp she’d been taking from the bottle. “You’re kidding!” she exclaimed. “They wouldn’t have actually done that, would they?”
He sighed in a way that showed the seriousness of the situation. “Some people are handling this
situation
better than others, Nancy. Aria and that pit-bull of hers, Jake, they
think
that they’re handling it well, but in reality they’re turning into something just as frightening as the ghouls outside.”
There was a disturbed look in Ken’s eyes. Nancy and Greg exchanged a look. As though he had suspected something was up himself, Greg explained, “When we arrived the first thing they did was demand how Nancy got her wound. They seemed
very
concerned about that.” Nancy nodded agreement. At the time she’d been too woozy to think much about it.
“What they really wanted to know was whether or not you’d been bitten,” Ken explained. He placed his head in his hands and tugged at his hair a little, a nervous tick that Nancy had noticed occasionally at the bar when he’d been having a particularly difficult night. “We haven’t been able to prove anything at this point, but somewhere along the line they got the idea that bitten means infected. Truthfully all we know for sure is that
dying
means infected, and it so happens that many of those who get bitten end up dying from the wounds. There have been opportunities to test the theory with some people who managed to escape with minor injuries, but...” He stopped and looked up at Nancy and Greg with sad eyes. “They’ve killed some people.
Many
people, actually...”