Nancy turned to glance at Terri-Lynn, curled up with her face to the wall, and sighed. She didn’t bother asking if the woman was going to come or stay.
“Are you two ready? Alert?” Marshall asked.
Nancy and Greg took deep breaths and nodded in unison. Together they pushed the freezer back to its original position, listened for a few moments, and then stood at the guard while Marshall slowly slid the door open.
It was just before twilight outside. A tiny bit of light from the setting sun was coming through the windows at the front of the bar’s main area, casting unnerving shadows across the walls. The building was silent.
“Stay away from windows, and avoid making any noise,” Marshall whispered.
“We should head for the office first,” Nancy suggested. “There might be something there in case of emergencies.”
They walked very close together, like sheep scared to leave the safety of the herd, and moved slowly to avoid making much noise. If they were to attract the attention of any zombies wandering around on the other side of those large windows out front they would find themselves in hot water quite quickly. It was painstaking, and nerve-wracking, but eventually the three made their way to the corner of the main area, down the short hall, around a pile of overstock boxes, and to the office door.
It was locked.
“Dammit,” Nancy hissed. She glared through the frosted window, but couldn’t make out the inside of the office. “We can’t break in without making a ton of noise.”
“It’s okay,” Marshall assured her. He laid his rifle carefully on the floor. “I can pick it. I just need some kind of wire or something similarly rigid.”
Nancy didn’t ask where Marshall had learned to pick locks. Greg pulled something from under his shirt and around his neck and offered a necklace made of a thin, stiff metal. Marshall thanked him and immediately set to work, snapping the necklace in half and straightening it into two lengths. “This may take a little while,” he grunted.
Nancy and Greg shared a look. Nancy jerked her head down the hall, and though Greg’s face was white, he nodded. As slowly as before, the two made their way back to the main room to see if they could find anything else helpful. It was quite dark now, so they went step by step around tables, mindful of the chairs, and avoided a few of the pool tables that had the balls still sitting loose on top. Nancy was just about to lean over the bar to have a look when something hit her hard and the wind went out of her lungs. It took a few moments of gasping to get some air back in her chest for her to realize that Greg had tackled her to the floor and was clutching a hand over her mouth. “Wuh th’ fu-?” she mumbled through his palm.
“Shhh!” Greg hissed, a finger to his lips. With wide eyes, he gestured toward the nearest window, where a large shadow was slowly shuffling by. Nancy bit her lip. Together she and Greg watched with bated breath from the floor until the being had moved past the window and out of sight.
“Maybe we should crawl from now on,” Nancy whispered.
Greg nodded enthusiastically.
Crawling, while perhaps the best course of action under the circumstances, was infinitely more painstaking and time-consuming than walking. Now that they were certain there were zombies outside the building, any tiny noise that they made - the
tink
of Nancy’s sword hitting the floor, the squeak of a floorboard - made them cringe and hold their breath as they stared, expectantly, out the window. By the time they were able to acquire a measly haul of two pool cues and make their way back to the office door, their hearts had just about given up on them and Marshall was impatiently wondering where they’d gotten off to.
The door was open, and with a great sigh of relief the three entered the room, closed the door, and reveled in being able to turn on the light in the windowless office. The first thing Nancy did was run to the phone and plug in ‘911’. She let the phone ring for almost two full minutes before accepting that no one was going to answer. She didn’t bother trying any other numbers. “Okay,” she sighed, keeping her voice low just in case. “Let’s see what the boss has laying around.”
At first they found nothing of import - piles of records, bills, liquor licenses, and so on. Greg found a shiny silver letter opener and stuck it in his belt. Soon after that, however, Nancy hit pay dirt in the bottom of the boss’s desk. “Yes,” she whispered in triumph. She held up the beautiful black handgun and two large boxes of ammunition for the men to see.
Marshall walked over and examined the gun. “Do you know how to use it?” he asked.
Nancy was hit with a wave of doubt. This was the sort of thing she’d been praying for them to find, but she hadn’t contemplated the idea that she might have to be the one to use it. She shook her head and frowned.
While Greg walked over to watch, Marshall carefully showed Nancy how to load a clip into the gun, let off the safety, and cock the hammer. He put it in her hand, placed her fingers into the proper positions, and brought her arms up so she could see how to aim. “Keep both eyes open,” he told her. “Squeeze the trigger, don’t pull.” He gently pushed her hand down so that she lowered the gun, and then looked her dead in the eye. “Don’t panic, and don’t waste ammo. They’re frightening and numerous, but they’re slow enough that you can take a second to breath, aim, and shoot without missing. If you don’t think that you have that second, don’t worry about shooting. Just run.”
Nancy nodded, but she felt wretched. She had a sickening premonition deep in her stomach that told her Marshall was giving her this lesson because he thought he might not be around to help her later. She wanted to hug him, to tell him that they were all in this together, but somehow she couldn’t bring the words forward. Something about the way he was speaking to her was very final; like he knew he wasn’t getting out of this situation alive.
“You get that too, son?” he asked Greg.
The teenager looked up - he’d been staring at the gun - and nodded. “Yessir.”
“Good boy.”
One last sweep through the office revealed nothing else useful. Nancy filled a laptop bag with the ammo and the gun (Marshall had to remind her to make sure the safety was on), and swung it over her shoulder. The men grabbed a pool cue each in their free hands and the group set out once again, slow and careful, back to their safe room. But when Marshall leaned against the door, it refused to open.
“What the hell?” Nancy asked when a second push yielded no movement. She leaned against it as well, turning the knob back and forth, but it was completely unwilling to budge.
“She didn’t,” Greg squeaked in alarm. “She wouldn’t! She couldn’t!”
She had. A wave of pain, rage, and panic came over Nancy as she realized that Terri-Lynn had used her time alone to slide the freezer back in place over the door, keeping herself in and the rest of them out.
“Terri!” Nancy hissed as loudly as she dared. “Terri, what are you doing?! Let us in!”
After a long minute a timid voice drifted back. “I’m sorry Nancy... But, you’re all putting me in danger by making your ridiculous plans and compromising this room. I might survive if I stay here alone and wait for help...”
Rage overtook every other emotion. “You horrid, ungrateful little bitch!” Nancy squealed and beat on the door with both fists. “You’d leave us out here after we saved your goddamn life?!”
The sound of crying from the other side of the door did nothing to lighten the blow of betrayal. “I’m sorry, Nancy,” came the pitiful voice. “I’m sorry...”
Nancy wanted to scream, wanted to ring the other woman’s neck. She hauled back, intent to punch the door as hard as she could, but Marshall and Greg grabbed her and held her back. “No, sweetie,” Marshall cooed. “It’s no good. We can’t get in, and in her state I don’t think we’re going to convince her to change her mind. Causing a fuss will only make noise and attract trouble.”
Nancy took a few dozen deep breaths, not a single one of them making her feel any better. She found that she was almost hyperventilating, and she was visibly vibrating with anger. All she wanted to do was punch and scream and curse. Then a pair of warm, shaking arms wrapped around her. Greg leaned his head between her shoulder blades. From the nature of his breathing and the dampness she felt against her back, she thought he must have been crying. “It’s okay, big sis,” he whispered. “It’s okay.”
She calmed. Her shoulders drooped. She found herself wondering if Greg had had a
real
big sister - before all this had happened - and her rage melted into sorrow.
Marshall was resigned. “We’ll stay in the office for tonight,” he told them. “Try and get some sleep, consider moving on in the morning if we can’t change her mind. We’ll have to find a place with food, better defenses, maybe.”
Nancy nodded. She placed her hands over Greg’s and they morosely made their way back to the office.
Any semblance of teenage cockiness or hidden embarrassment was set aside that night. Greg curled up with his head against Nancy’s stomach and sniffled himself to sleep. Nancy lay there for several hours, stroking his hair, and eventually drifted off to the low, quiet sounds of Marshall cleaning his gun.
Chapter Five
The following morning, hungry and having barely slept, the trio of Nancy, Greg, and Marshall had to decide what to do with themselves. Loathe though they were to leave the relative safety of the bar, Nancy could not convince Terri-Lynn to allow them back in the kitchen, and the office gave neither sustenance nor the feeling of safety that the kitchen had. They talked it over for a long while, with tears glistening at the corners of Greg’s eyes, and eventually decided that they had no choice but to move on.
“Before we hop in the car and start wasting gas, we should decide where we’re going to go,” Marshall suggested. “Somewhere we might be able to stay longer. Somewhere that would have food, and preferably somewhere that’s moderately safe.”
“A police station?” Greg suggested. “Or a hospital?”
Marshall was already shaking his head. “Good thinking in most emergencies,” he explained, “but for a situation as insane and possibly lengthly as this? Police stations wouldn’t have food supplies for more than a couple of days because no one is kept there long enough for it to be necessary. Hospitals, well... People die in hospitals.”
Nancy shuddered just imagining it; the hospitals would probably have been the first places to be overtaken by zombies.
“And while we’re thinking rationally,” Marshall continued, “we should consider somewhere that might be more easily defendable, somewhere that doesn’t have too many exits and entrances, but that has an escape route or two if that becomes necessary.” His face was a little sad. “It would be nice to find somewhere where not too many other people will have gathered as well, since too many panicked people create discord and noise.”
Nancy considered this for a moment. The creatures clearly reacted to the presence of live humans; their purpose, seemingly, was only to kill. Therefore, reasonably, they would be drawn toward the large groups that too easily made themselves known.
And
, she added to herself, thinking of her traitorous neighbor,
more people equals more opinions, more fear, and more disagreements that may not end well...
It felt strange to be thinking so negatively, but Nancy found herself thinking of the other possible survivors as the customers she’d served at the bar on late nights; that is, if trouble broke out, the more people involved meant the worse it turned out for everyone.
“So,” she mused aloud, “we want somewhere fairly safe, that would have food, but is also somewhere where the dead wouldn’t have sprung up naturally, and where not too many people would gather. What fits that description?”
“My high school isn’t far from here,” Greg offered. “Since it’s the weekend there wouldn’t have been anyone there when all this began, and I doubt too many people would immediately think of it as a safe-house. It has a huge cafeteria and a nurse’s station with about half a dozen sick beds, so we could even get a half-comfortable sleep. And since there’s been a lot of pranks and vandalism in the past, it has chain locks on the main doors and bars on the lower windows.” He smiled ironically. “I always said it was like a prison.”
Marshall’s eyes lit up and he pointed at Greg. “Bingo,” he said.
Suddenly confident, they all nodded their agreement.
“Terri,” Nancy tried at the kitchen door one more time before they set out. “This is your last chance, Terri. We’re leaving. You can either let us in so we can all stay here together a while longer, or you can stay here alone.”
A long couple of minutes went by with no answer, so with a pitiful look from Marshall and a quiet nod from Greg, Nancy sighed and walked away, leaving her neighbor behind.
Marshall opened the back door very slowly and peeked out through the gap. Nancy peered around him and saw nothing. If the zombies had followed their arrival two mornings ago, they must have been distracted by something else and wandered off. The car was still where they’d left it. Nancy was confident that there was at least half a tank of gas left in it. They could go a decent distance if they had to. Marshall quietly closed the door again and looked back. “Are we ready?” he asked.
Nancy and Greg quickly did inventory of their gear. They’d broken the pool cues into four jagged pieces and piled them in the bag with the handgun. Marshall still had his rifle, and Nancy still had her sword, and Greg was carrying the rest, along with his butcher knife. They had everything they’d been able to find. They nodded to Marshall that they were all set, and after nodding back he whipped open the door.
The dash to their vehicle, the starting of the engine, and the drive around the corner of the building went so smoothly that the group actually took a moment to look at each other and smile. Then their bubble was spectacularly burst when Nancy rounded out onto the street.
They were
everywhere
. In the less than two days that they’d been in their hideaway, an exponential number of people must have been killed and turned because the city was now absolutely swarming with them. Dozens of dead-eyed, rotting faces turned as the car approached. Hundreds of hands reached toward the vehicle with emotionless longing. Multitudes of gaping, bleeding mouths moaned and cried and gurgled. Nancy had to swallow the horror that rose in her throat. Greg pulled his legs up to his chest from the backseat, and Marshall tightened his grip on the rifle.
Nancy hit the gas and drove as fast as she dared, swerving out of the way of the large groups that might be able to stay the forward motion of the car. Though she tried not to look, she still caught glimpses of things that unnerved her even more than she already was. Here and there were zombies writhing in the streets with destroyed bodies, only their heads still functioning properly. Littered about the streets were remnants of battles: weapons that hadn’t helped their owners to survive, and destroyed cars left behind by drivers who’d been too panicked to steer properly. Nancy tightened her grip on the steering wheel when she saw these. “Greg,” she said after a few minutes. “Close your eyes if you want.”
She didn’t turn to see if he had complied. Instead she pushed down even harder on the gas pedal and began mowing zombies down. She hit everything she could without being overly reckless. As the bodies splattered and bounced off the front of her car, Marshall stuck the nose of his rifle out the window and fired a few times into the crowd. He soon receded with a huff and a sigh; Nancy understood his desire to kill as many of the retched creatures as possible, but even with his excellent aim he couldn’t get a head shot from the moving vehicle.
The most infested areas seemed to be the ones near the larger apartment buildings, strip malls, and the one hospital they drove past. Nancy found herself thinking about what they’d discussed earlier and wondered if there were any live people hiding in those buildings, staring out into the streets in terror. She pushed away the idea. Her responsibility right now was to get Marshall, Greg, and herself somewhere where they could breathe a little easier.
“The school is coming up at the end of this street,” Greg rasped from the backseat.
He sounded so miserable that Nancy couldn’t help glancing back at him. Those two seconds during which her eyes were off the road almost doomed them.
“Nancy!” Marshall cried out in alarm.
She had just enough time to wonder at the panic in his voice - a tone she’d yet to hear from him. Then her eyes found the road again just in time for her body to slam violently forward as a white cloud burst in her face.
Nancy was only out for a few seconds, but it was enough to disorient her. Her vision was filled with whiteness and she felt as though she was being smothered. There was a loud, ceaseless horn screeching at her from somewhere nearby.
“Nancy?” a voice called. “Nancy, are you okay?” The voice sounded panicked. Nancy wondered what had upset him so much.
“Are
you
okay?” This was a different voice, older, calmer, but also with a note of concern.
“I’m fine,” the younger voice insisted. “I think I bruised a few ribs flying into the back of your seat, but I’ll be okay.”
“You should wear your seat belt, you know.”
For some reason that statement made Nancy burst into giggles.
“Nancy!”
Her head finally started to clear. With some effort she lifted her arms and pushed back at the airbag. It felt like the impact had broken her nose. At this her giggles subsided. She turned to see Marshall looking back at her with a small stream of blood running down the side of his face. “What happened?” she asked.
He didn’t need to answer. She looked out the front window of her car and groaned. As they’d come up over the crest of a hill there had been two vehicles - a semi and a Mustang - that had crashed head-on in the middle of the road. The nose of her Hyundai was now about three feet shorter and fused with the passenger-side door of the Mustang.
“I don’t want to rush you guys,” Greg’s voice hissed from the backseat, “but we have a bigger problem here!”
They were coming, Nancy realized. At least two dozen that she could see, shuffling toward the car with purpose. The nearest one, a woman with the entire left side of her face and an arm missing, was only a few meters away.
“Forget the car!” Marshall commanded. He kicked open his door and the entire thing crashed to the ground. “Grab a weapon!” He pulled off two shots with his rifle - his last two shells - and snatched up a piece of broken pool cue. Greg produced the letter opener he’d taken from the bar and stabbed at the airbag still pressing against Nancy. He dropped the opener as the bag began to deflate; Nancy shouted for him to leave it as they rushed from the car.
They moved with fear and desperation. Marshall stabbed his pool cue into the nearest zombie’s head and abandoned it while calling to Nancy and Greg to follow him. The school was only just down the road. Nancy snagged her katana, jabbing and slashing at anything that seemed too close, while Greg pointed a shaking pistol in every direction but didn’t shoot once. The zombies were closing in from every direction, their moans and groans a morbid chorus. The sheer number of them made Nancy’s head swim. How could there be so many? They moved so slowly, so where were they all coming from?
“
Run, dammit!
” Marshall’s voice shouted, and the younger two obeyed. Nancy shrieked as she swung her sword at arm’s length while she ran. Ahead of her, Marshall jabbed the nose of his rifle into a zombie’s eye socket, ripped it back out, and kept moving. Behind her a shot rang out; she allowed herself to turn just long enough to see that Greg had shot wildly at a man in a police uniform with a giant hole through his chest. He’d almost dropped the gun in surprise of the recoil.
It seemed as though they’d had to run a marathon, but suddenly they were in front of the high school and Marshall was sprinting for the front door. Greg cried, “No! This way!” and took off instead toward the back alley. There was no time to argue with him, so Nancy and Marshall followed and saw the boy’s plan. The rear school grounds were fenced in and attached to the main office area. With significantly less care than they may have otherwise had, Nancy and Greg shoved Marshall up over the fence before scrambling up behind him. Nancy had to kick a zombie in the face to keep it biting her leg as she threw herself over the top of the fence; she felt his teeth shatter beneath her heel.
“Now, quickly!” Greg hissed. He hauled Marshall to his feet and took off running again. Before the zombies could even begin to rattle at the fence, the trio hurled themselves over a wall that separated the office area from the baseball field in back. Nancy couldn’t help but hoot aloud - the wall was one of three that housed several benches and blocked a single door from the outside - it was a smoking area. Because of their side-stepping, the zombies were out of sight when they ran up to the rear entrance of the school. Marshall smashed the lock on the heavy steel doors with the butt of his rifle, and they slipped inside. Just in case the zombies figured out how to climb the wall, Greg dragged one of the benches in with him and butted it up against the doors to keep them closed.
“Good thinking,” Nancy gasped. She gave Greg a smile and ruffled his hair, despite his weak protests.
The sound of a gun cocking ruined their small victory.
A man stood no more than ten feet away from them at the end of the hallway. He held a pistol with two hands, both of them shaking. He looked like a complete wreck; his clothes were torn and filthy, his face unshaven for several days, and his blond hair sticking out in every direction. He gave the distinct impression of a drunk who’d been removed from his vice.
“Who are you?!” he demanded with a voice like a shattered stone. He waved the shaking gun at each of them in turn. His eyes were wild.
Nancy lifted her hands very slowly.
Just our luck
, she couldn’t help thinking. “Please, calm down,” she pleaded. “We’re just looking for a place to hide.”
Moving equally as slow, Marshall placed his rifle down on the ground in a gesture of good faith and spread his hands wide. “Why don’t you put the gun away, son?” he requested as calmly as he could while still catching his breath.
The man’s hands were twitching like leaves in the wind, and his eyes flicked from one stranger to the next in rapid succession, but after a few moments he began to lower the gun.