***
They made their way back to the hallway, having found no other way out. The elevator was no longer working. The zombie arm that had gotten caught in it must have caused it to malfunction. They figured if they could take out three zombies in a classroom then they could take out four in an elevator. At least they knew how to kill them now. But that was no longer an option; which left the stairwell, the worst of all possible scenarios.
Ian called his girlfriend Ashley on his cell phone. She would be heading to class about now and
he called to tell her to stay home. She answered, happy to hear from him, and he was happy she was okay, until she said, “I think there’s someone in the house.”
Someone, or something?
He heard a sound, like something getting knocked over, and then Ashley screamed, a scream like he’d never heard before, and then the phone went dead. He tried to call back several times but the line went directly to voice mail. All his good humor was gone.
“I’m sorry,” Lupe said.
“That means it’s not just here, in the school,” Samir said, “It’s everywhere.”
“My mom, my sister!” Kamara said.
All those who had parents and loved ones in the states called them. Everyone was fine, but something was happening in the streets. News reports were telling people to lock their doors and stay inside.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Jomo said. He worried for his family. Klaus worried for his wife.
“Yes, I agree,” he said. “Is the stairwell really our only option?”
“It looks like it,” Samir said.
“I worry for everyone,” Xinga said shyly.
“Thank you,” Samir said. He knew she spoke of their families, but in a broader sense it was everyone that they had to worry about now. He mentioned to the others the strange news he’d heard coming out of India. That was when Xinga put a hand to her mouth and told Jomo and the others what she’d heard about Kenya. It was also something to do with cows.
“Oh no, this is not good,” Jomo said. “Most of my family is here now, but I still have friends and cousins there.”
“Jesus, it’s already spread beyond what they can contain,” Klaus said.
“We don’t know that yet,” Samir said.
“We don’t? Look what’s happened here, at the school, in just a matter of hours.”
“Poindexter’s got a point,” Marina said.
“Please refrain from calling me that.”
“Case in point,” she said. “Personally, I think
it’s charming, in an uptight German sense, but charming.”
“How exactly are we going to go about getting down the stairs?” Jomo asked.
“Well, I think we’re going to need weapons,” Lupe said.
“Definitely those,” Kamara agreed.
“And we’re going to have to step very carefully,” Xinga chimed in.
“Obviously,” Samir agreed, not in a demeaning way. “We’re going to have to protect our legs somehow. We know what could happen if they bite us.”
“I’m good,” Marina said, tapping on her boots. “Their chompers ain’t getting through these.”
“All right, any ideas?”
***
Going through each of the classrooms the group gathered whatever they could find to use as weapons- erasers, scissors, rulers, metal hole punchers... Ian grabbed a mop from the supply closet, taking off the mop head to use the wooden stick. They found bubble wrap and wrapped their legs from the knees down in it.
“Are we ready?” Samir asked. They nodded.
He opened the door leading to the stairwell.
Immediately groans rose in the air. The intertwining
bodies covering the stairs began to shift and writhe.
Ian was eager to start beating them. He was thinking about Ashley who might be dead at the hands of one of these things. But Samir held up his
hand. “Wait! There may be survivors.”
“Is anyone alive out there?!” Ian shouted. He got a chorus of moans as answer. “Satisfied?” And he began whacking their heads with his stick as he waded through them, the others following behind him. Stepping over the carpet of corpses, both dead and re-animated, eager arms grabbed at their legs.
Lupe felt pressure on her leg as one of them bit down. But the only thing he got was a mouthful of bubble wrap. The makeshift calf and shin guard produced a series of pops that sounded like firecrackers going off. She yelped.
Kamara took the long black metal hole puncher she had wrapped a knot around with twine, and swung it at the head of the zombie at Lupe’s leg, caving its head in with three swings.
“Are you okay?” Kamara asked.
Lupe nodded. They stomped their way past the first flight of stairs, but they had awakened other zombies further down who seemed to be rising out of a deep sleep. Marina appeared to actually enjoy herself as she crushed heads under her boot heel. Xinga and Jomo stuck together, throwing books at the zombies, and when they ran out of those chalkboard erasers. Samir grabbed a pair of scissors as one of the zombies rose up to meet him, laying its hands on his shoulders. He panicked, going in two handed with the open scissors across its nose and jabbing the points into the zombie’s eyes. They popped like two water balloons squirting blood and clear aqueou
s
fluid, and he felt sick, dropping the scissors.
Klaus had a wooden yard stick he was using to thump any zombies that came near. Arms rose like
ocean waves, emerging from beneath still bodies; a sea of zombies reaching for them. Some were already gnawing on dead flesh while others it appeared were seeking something fresher. Some of the dead, other than those who’d had their heads consumed, were waking, turning into zombies themselves.
Two more flights to go
, Guadalupe thought. Already she was feeling queasy, stepping on the backs of undulating bodies. Ian seemed to be clearing a decent path for them, knocking them back with the mop pole. And Kamara’s hole puncher flail thing was ingenious. She wished she’d thought of that. And Marina was just stomping on heads, and crouching low to jab the ones she’d missed in the temple with the letter opener she still had in one of her hands. Lupe wouldn’t be stomping on anything with her flimsy sandals wrapped in bubble wrap like a cast, because otherwise she would have left too much skin exposed. What she did have was a metal T-Square which she wielded like a two sided hammer, which of course was feeble by comparison, but if she hit their head at just the right angle...
She buried one end of the crosspiece into a zombie’s cheek; it stuck there, and it tried to shake itself loose, working its jaws as if it could gnaw through.
“Here, let me help you,” Ian said, swinging at its head with the pole as if he were knocking a ball off a golf tee. Lupe shrank back, looking away as she caught a glimpse of brain and the T-Square was suddenly pried loose and fully in her hand again.
Amazingly, they had only one flight of zombies left to wade through now. The firecracker sound of popping bubble wrap intensified as did the moans of the dead and the sounds of metal, wood, and hard leather meeting flesh. And then they were out into the first floor hallway, breathing heavily, backs to the door so none of them could get out. Surveying the corridor they saw more of them on either end, three to the right, and four to the left. After the stairwell, those were incredibly good odds. To the right was the building’s entrance, so that was the way they’d go. They made a quick kill of the three of them; Ian’s stick, Kamara’s flail, and Marina’s letter opener quickly dispatched them. Once they got outside they realized it would be a whole ’nother story.
Stepping outside was like stepping into a war zone. Directly ahead of them a car lay on its back on the front lawn, wheels still spinning. There were people running everywhere, smoke, zombies, cops firing into them (which explained why there weren’t any of them
in the school
), and people getting bitten wherever they looked. They weaved between them, finding whatever spaces they could to get through. The zombies weren’t yet aware of the newcomers on the scene, which worked to their benefit.
How on earth could things have turned this horribly wrong so quickly?
Klaus wondered. They were out of the building, but they still had to get off of school property. The campus green was swarming with activity, and their first priority was to find safer ground. They made their way into a side path between buildings where they were temporarily clear of the chaos. The white asphalt walkway was a shortcut through the grass to other buildings for people that parked in one of the side or back lots.
“What do we do now?” Jomo asked.
“Who’s parked close?” Samir said.
“I am,” Kamara pointed, “Two rows down, behind this building.”
“Good. We’ll need to get to your car.”
They could see zombies and people being chased outside either entrance.
“I think they’ve probably tried that too,” Ian said. “What’s to say the parking lot isn’t swarming with them too?”
“Won’t know until we try,” Marina countered.
They watched as an officer fell back outside the entrance, was devoured voraciously by two zombies, and then left there once they’d had their fill. The top of his head, his face, his chest, his stomach, was gone, just big gaping holes where they’d been. They stood and watched with revulsion as he was reduced to little more than ground meat, wanting to help but not wanting to reveal their position.
“I’ve got to get his gun,” Marina said, spying his sidearm, which he hadn’t had a chance to pull out, “Then we’ll stand a chance. They don’t know where to aim, but we do.”
“All right,” Samir said. “Everyone close behind Marina.” They moved in at a crouch. She reached for the gun in the holster, pulling it free. A loud groan to her left and she fired, hitting the zombie in the forehead, stopping it cold. She undid the policeman’s belt which carried spare ammunition. She was horrified both by his condition, and the fact that she was stealing from the dead. But she had no time to feel terrible about that now. They had a job to do.
“Come on!” she said, cinching the policeman’s belt over her own. The holster was attached to it, so when she wasn’t using the gun she could put it away. On the other side of the belt the officer’s billy club was a button snap away.
They ran out the alley beside her. The undead were all around them. Marina started firing away, striking everyone she targeted in the head, cleanly, efficiently. Ian came in behind her with his stick and bashed those remaining in their respective noggins. Kamara did equally well with her hole puncher flail. Samir stabbed many in the head with his scissors until they bent and became useless. Guadalupe ended up finally breaking her T-Square off in one zombie’s temple. Klaus cracked his yard stick, and began to use the splintered half to stab at them. Jomo and Xinga eventually ran out of things to throw at them. Marina handed Jomo the letter opener, and Xinga the officer’s nightstick, so they could at least have something to defend themselves with. She kept most of them at bay and from getting to close to them as they made their way through the mob. There were still living people around running amongst the zombies and she had to be careful not to shoot them as well. She spotted a group of five officers firing into a line of zombies heading toward them. Marina shouted at them, “Aim for their heads!!”
They did, and cried gleefully as the tide began to turn, but it was too late for three of them. They were overrun before they could kill enough of them. But their group had to solder on. They wouldn’t be able to stop and save people without becoming meals themselves. They had to blast and bash and stab their way through as best they could until they reached the parking lot and Kamara’s car.
Xinga was still afraid but she was also getting angry. To be new in a place so foreign and finally begin to make friends and then have it all threatened by these monsters, these freaks of nature. She didn’t have the words for it in English, but she knew this was not good, and she emphasized it with every swing of the club, and every skull she caved in, trying not to think too much about what she was actually doing, reminding herself that they were already dead.
Jomo was angry too but his fear was dissipating much more quickly. He began to think of hunting and these “zombies” as prey, animals. He was used to having much longer weapons, and not having to come in so close when he did have to hunt, but the letter opener would have to do. He aimed for the side of their head when any got close, rather than the top of their skull, which would be much harder to penetrate and to reach, and killed several this way.
The zombies were more sporadic in the parking lot, but there was no shortage of them either. Kamara spied her car. There were at least three zombies loitering near it. “Over there!” she pointed. Once those zombies were sent to their lasting deaths there was the other dilemma they hadn’t thought of. There were eight of them and only five could squeeze into her car at most.
“Women first,” Samir decided. There were four women, so one of the men had to go to. “And Jomo, since he is the youngest. The rest of us will make our way to my car.”
“That’s very big of you Samir,” Lupe said, and meant it.
“Be safe my friends.”
They nodded as Kamara drove off, leaving Samir, Klaus, and Ian to wade through the stationary cars and the lumbering zombies. With a sudden surge of energy Kamara wailed like a banshee and plowed through a row of the undead; the way they fell and the sound their heads made smacking the pavement was not unlike bowling pins being knocked over. The extra meaty thud and squish as the wheels and the full weight of the vehicle drove over them assured them they were not. At any rate she had cleared a path for them to run through in the direction of Samir’s car, parked four more rows down.
Ian hopped in the back and Klaus sat in the front with Samir.
“I need to find my girlfriend,” Ian said.
“I have to see if my wife is okay,” Klaus said.
“Yes, and I want to see my family,” Samir sympathized. “We’ll get there.” He skidded out the parking lot entrance, side swiping a group of undead. The streets were cluttered with them, but not nearly as bad as on the campus. They could easily be avoided in the vehicle. Samir asked each of them where they needed to be so he could take them. He kept silent as his family was the closest.