by Chelsea Luna
Cage peered closer.
A hand poked out from the raised tile. “Up here, hurry!”
Cage blinked, decided he wasn’t hallucinating, and swung into action. He knocked a zombie over and sprinted to a dining room table. He dragged the cheap piece of furniture against the wall and hopped on top of its wobbly legs. The room flooded with zombies.
Cage kicked an old man wearing a hospital gown in the face.
“Give me your hand,” the male voice said. The tile was gone, exposing a perfect square of blackness in the ceiling. Two hands appeared.
Cage reached for his unknown rescuer. The stranger hauled Cage into the hole while zombies grabbed at his dangling legs. He kicked in every direction, trying to throw them off. One latched onto his leg and dragged him back down to the kitchen. Cage kicked harder, praying the zombie wouldn’t take a chunk out of his calf.
His rescuer pulled him up. Once Cage’s top half was safely inside the hole, he braced himself on the ledge. He gave the zombie holding his leg one last savage kick to the face and watched as it fell back into the mob.
Cage scrambled into the hole. It was an air vent shaft — a perfectly squared three-by-three metal tunnel that ran the length of the room and throughout the dormitory.
“Put it back,” the voice said and shoved a square tile in Cage’s face. “We need to spread out. We can’t put too much weight in one area. The airshaft can’t support us both. Come, I’ll take you to the others.”
It was too dark for Cage to see anything. “There are others?”
“Yes. Close up the hole.”
Cage placed the tile back in place, effectively sealing out all of the light. He couldn’t even see his hand in front of his face. Cage rubbed his eyes. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t hear. Rachel was gone. He fought the urge to punch the airshaft.
He was alive. That’s what mattered — alive because of the kindness of a stranger.
Cage twisted in the small space. His rescuer’s outline was barely visible. The man shifted and a bright flashlight illuminated the dark tunnel. Cage’s rescuer was a skinny middle-aged man with a white lab coat and thick Coke-bottle glasses.
“Thank you for saving me,” he said. “My name is Cage Vance.”
“You are very welcome. The name’s Edward. Dr. Edward Nessle. Follow me. Make sure you stay approximately three feet behind me and move quickly.” The man turned on his hands and knees and crawled in the opposite direction.
Cage slowed his breathing. His heartbeat pounded in his ears, almost as loud as the zombies’ rumbling. He crawled after Edward. The man moved swiftly and Cage wasn’t sure if it was from fear of the zombies or if this airshaft really wasn’t that stable. Cage didn’t want to wait around to find out, so he quickly followed the man — careful to keep the three-foot distance in between them.
Cage’s shoulders brushed the sides of the airshaft. He had to keep his head bent in order to fit, but he was thankful for the escape route. A few more seconds and he would’ve been the main course for a pack of zombies.
Edward disappeared to the left. Cage hurried after him. He followed Edward through a maze of turns, losing track of the number of rights and lefts they had made. Finally, the man stopped.
The flashlight’s yellow glow filled Edward’s sallow face. He pointed below and put a finger to his mouth. Edward unlatched a square tile and fluorescent light filled the tunnel. He swung his legs around and disappeared below.
Cage looked down. A wooden painter’s ladder was positioned beneath the hole. Edward reached the floor and waved him down. Cage lowered his foot until it touched the rung of the ladder.
It was a utility room — probably the size of an average bedroom. Tools, cleaning supplies and old towels were stacked on plastic shelves. The smell of bleach permeated the small space. A thick red door was barricaded with wood and other bits of odd junk. The zombies’ moans sounded far away.
Fluorescent panel lights lit the space, giving it a weird operating room feel. The floors were concrete with a drain in the center of the room. Edward stood protectively in front of two kids huddled together in the corner.
Cage hopped to the floor and backed away from the kids. He didn’t want to scare them. Heaven knows they’d been through enough. The girl and boy both wore the neon yellow science camp T-shirts. The girl had black hair and looked nothing like Rachel, but Cage had to ask. “Are you Morgan Cole?”
She shook her head.
“No, that’s my niece, Lacey, and that’s Finn. But I do know Morgan Cole.” Edward pinched the bridge of his nose above his glasses. “She’s from Flint, Michigan. Adams Elementary School, if I remember correctly. Test scores through the roof with a natural aptitude for science. I was one of the professors in charge of this year’s summer science camp. Are you related to Morgan?”
“No, but I’m with her sister and a few others. We came from Flint to rescue Morgan.”
Edward frowned. “I haven’t seen her since…since it happened.” He lowered his skinny frame to the ground beside Lacey. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I don’t know where Morgan is. In fact, I don’t know where anyone is anymore.”
“You’ve been hiding in here this whole time?”
The small space was stocked with food and blankets. A hand-held radio sat on an overturned milk crate. It was kind of cozy, despite the fact that it was a utility closet.
Edward nodded.
Cage pointed to the red door. “What’s out there? The hallway?”
“No, the men’s restroom. I barricaded that door, too. The, uh, those things haven’t been able to hear us through two sets of doors. Thankfully.”
“This is the perfect hiding place. You’ve done a great job of keeping these kids safe,” Cage said.
“I venture out through there.” Edward pointed up at the airshaft. “To get food from the cafeteria on the first floor and supplies throughout the dormitory. At first, there were only a handful of those things roaming around. There are hundreds of them now.”
“Zombies.”
“Pardon me?”
“Those things?” Cage said. “They are zombies.”
The girl scooted closer to the boy.
“Zombies? Huh.” Edward paled. “I have a radio, but I haven’t heard much. The battery is almost dead, so I keep it turned off to conserve energy. Do you know anything about the ongoing rescue operations? My cell phone isn’t working. There’s no reception and not just in here either. It’s like the towers around Ann Arbor are all down. I can’t get a bar for the life of me.”
Cage didn’t want to be the messenger of bad news, but they’d been holed up in the utility closet since the initial outbreak. Edward and the kids had been completely cut off from what was happening outside.
Cage exhaled. “I don’t think help is coming. At least, not in the immediate future.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think you understand how bad things are out there. It gets worse every day. We almost didn’t make it here and we were only coming from Flint.”
“You have a group?” Edward asked.
“A small one. There are six of us, including me. Three men, three women, but I don’t know where they are now,” Cage said. “When the zombies stormed the dorm, we became separated.”
“I don’t understand. Why don’t you think help is coming?” Edward scratched his head. “I mean, surely the military or the government is sending someone. That’s what we’ve been waiting for. My plan was to hold out here until the rescue team showed up. They have to come.”
The boy — Finn — made eye contact with Cage. He had light brown hair and deep green eyes. He seemed tall for twelve, but his face reminded Cage that he was just a kid. Finn didn’t look scared like Edward and Lacey. He actually looked hopeful. Cage had a feeling that all of this child’s hope rested on his shoulders.
“As soon as we rescued Morgan, my friends and I were planning to go to Ford Field in Detroit.” Cage made eye contact with Finn. “An emergency bro
adcast over the radio directed people to go there.”
“Detroit is forty-five miles away,” Edward said.
“I know, but it’s closer than Spartan Stadium in East Lansing. That’s where the other safe zone was set up.”
“Do you have a car?”
Cage grimaced. “We did, but it fell apart on the way down here. We walked the last few miles.”
“You’re going to Ford Field on foot?” Edward’s eyebrows rose above his thick glasses.
“We’ll get there somehow, but I have to find my friends first. I won’t leave this dorm without them.” Cage ran his hand over his face. He was so tired. How in the world was he going to find the others with so many walking dead roaming the hallways?
“Earlier, you said that those creatures were zombies. Are you sure?”
“Oh, I’m sure,” Cage said bitterly.
Cage squeezed his eyes shut to dispel the image of his elderly parents growling at him. Staring at him with those blue zombie eyes and dull gray skin. Cage walked over to a shelf stacked with rusty tools. He needed a new weapon. He wouldn’t go far with only the kitchen knife.
Edward lowered his voice. “The, uh, the zombies are eating people?”
“Yes.” Cage lifted a tire iron from the shelf. It felt heavy in his hands — it would be the perfect weapon. “Do you mind if I take this?”
“Sure.” Edward stood up. “What’s causing it? A virus?”
“You’re a doctor?”
“Not a medical doctor. I have a Ph.D. I teach microbiology here at the university. I was appointed to teach the children during the summer science camp.” Edward removed his glasses and cleaned the lenses on his dirty shirt. “A virus is turning people into… is causing cannibalistic tendencies?”
“I’m not sure. We saw a news broadcast at the fire station a few days ago and we read a couple of internet reports. Word is that there was a biological terrorist attack and now it’s spread throughout the country.”
“It spreads from bodily fluids…by being bitten?”
“Or scratched,” Cage said. That’s how Selena’s sister, Vivienne, had died. Zombie scratches to the torso had killed her — a little slower than by a bite, but it had killed her and turned her, nonetheless. “The last time I heard, the zombie outbreak had spread over the northern half of America. I think people were heading south because the infection hadn’t reached there yet, but that was a few days ago. It’s probably worse now.”
Edward pushed his glasses up his nose. “I should’ve known.”
“Known what?”
“Samuel was bitten, but we didn’t know what was happening.”
“Who’s Samuel?”
“Dr. Samuel Harrison. He is — was — a colleague of mine and the head of the Department of Microbiology & Immunology. He was bitten by one of those things right as the outbreak occurred. I should’ve known he was infected with something. His fever was through the roof.”
“Was he the first zombie you saw?”
Edward nodded and walked over to a shelf packed full of cleaning equipment. He retrieved a book wedged in between toilet cleaner and a pack of sponges. “Here kids, why don’t you read this? Alice in Wonderland is a classic.” Edward handed the novel to Lacey and Finn and motioned for Cage to follow him to the corner.
Lacey flipped through the novel’s pages, but Finn kept his eyes glued to them.
“It started the morning the children were to arrive for camp,” Edward whispered. “We were getting the lab ready, making the space kid-friendly, and preparing for their arrival at lunch. When I left the lab, I bumped into Dr. Harrison — Samuel — in the hallway. His hand was wrapped in a bloody towel.”
“He’d been bitten,” Cage said.
“Evidently. I asked him what happened. He said a student attacked him in the parking lot. Samuel assumed it was a robbery. Apparently, the student was high on some form of hallucinogenic drug because his behavior was extremely peculiar. The student was on the Dean’s List — not your typical hard drug user.”
Edward handed Cage a bottle of water. He opened one for himself and took a deep drink. “Anyhow, the student attacked Samuel. The fight escalated and the student bit Samuel’s hand. Samuel managed to get away and headed to the professor’s lounge to clean the wound and give himself a tetanus shot before he reported the crime to campus security. I agreed. The human mouth can contain over one thousand different types of bacteria. It’s really quite gross.”
“But it was a zombie, not a crazed student, who attacked him.”
“I didn’t know that at the time,” Edward said. “I didn’t give it much thought, because the children had arrived. I had to give an introductory speech in the lab and then a short lecture on biology, as a way of launching the camp.”
The kids were still wearing the neon camp T-shirt. Finn watched them, trying to eavesdrop on their conversation. Lacey was reading Alice in Wonderland.
“I checked in on Samuel before class. He was sprawled out on the couch in the professor’s lounge with a high fever. He was sweating profusely and his skin had turned an ugly ashen color. Some of the other professors tried to convince him to go to the hospital. It was obvious he had an infection due to the human bite, but Samuel refused to go. I had to leave for my class. That was the last time I saw him alive.”
“He died and turned?” Cage asked.
“I went to class. Morgan Cole sat at the front lab table. Pen and paper ready, hanging onto my every word. All of the students were. All of those poor children were so excited about science camp.”
Edward tensed. “I was halfway through my lecture on microbial growth when I heard shouting in the hallway. My classroom door was propped open and the voices were close by. The children were immediately frightened. Heck, even I was a little nervous. Nowadays, with all the violence on school campuses, you never know. I told the children to settle down and I was about to close the door, when Samuel stumbled into my classroom.”
Cage didn’t want to hear the rest of the story, but he knew Edward had to get it off his chest. Cage lowered his voice. “He was a zombie.”
Edward shrugged. “I don’t know what was wrong with him. Whatever it was, it wasn’t my colleague, I know that much. He was salivating at the mouth. His eyes… his eye color had changed to this light clear blue, but the sclera — that’s the white part of your eye that’s usually opaque — was entirely bloodshot. Samuel looked like an animal — a crazed animal — and that’s exactly how he behaved. Screams erupted from down the hall, but I stood frozen. Some of the children had already scrambled to the back of the room. I know Morgan was one of them. She fled from her seat the moment Samuel entered.”
“What happened?”
Moisture filled Edward’s eyes. “I stood there like an idiot. Samuel lunged at one of the children. He grabbed her and bit her in the face. It was horrible. The children screamed and I finally forced myself into action. I grabbed a chair and bashed it over Samuel’s back, knocking him to the ground. He released the child, but the girl didn’t move. I found my niece, Lacey, and instructed all of the children to get ready to run. Samuel staggered to his feet, so I hit him again on my way out and all of the children followed me out of the lab.”
Cage put his hand on Edward’s shoulder. “That’s amazing. You led all of those kids safely out of the classroom.”
Edward shook his head. “No, no, once we were in the hallway, there were others like Samuel. Infected with whatever he had. I led the children down the corridor — thirty-seven of them — because the child Samuel had attacked was dead. I wanted to get the children to the dorm until campus security could sort everything out. It was a mistake, because it was worse outside. More of those things prowled around everywhere. Most of them moved slowly, but a few of the creatures were extremely fast. I knew we were in trouble because the dorms were located on the other side of campus. It was just me and all those children.” Edward covered his face.
Cage gave him a moment.
“We ra
n toward the dorms.” Edward lowered his hands. “But our group kept getting smaller and there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t protect them all — there were too many of those things. We saw a security guard — Allan — he ran over to help us. He tried to escort us to the dorm. I saw Allan shoot one of those things eight times in the chest and it kept coming. It wouldn’t stay down.”
“You have to shoot them in the head,” Cage said quietly.
“Ah, yes, that would make sense. Damaging the cerebral cortex would inhibit the motor function, I assume, but I didn’t think of that at the time. Too much was going on.” Edward’s shoulders slumped. “We finally made it to Peabody Dorm. The thirty-seven children in my charge had turned into nineteen, including Morgan Cole. We holed up on the fifth floor for a day or so, but a chaperone had been bitten and we didn’t know that she was going to, ah — well, she turned into one of those things, too.”
“She attacked?”
“We didn’t suspect what was happening to her and all hell broke loose on the floor. Things became chaotic and we were separated from the others. I had my niece Lacey and Finn. I found this utility closet in the back of the restroom. I boarded both doors and went out occasionally for supplies. We’ve been in here since the day after the initial attack. I heard you and went into the airshaft to investigate. I thought you were part of the rescue team.”
“And Morgan?”
“I last saw her on the day we returned to the dorms. I don’t remember seeing her during the ensuing chaos.”
“I think she’s alive,” Cage said. “Before I was split from my group, her sister thought she heard Morgan cry out. But that was before the horde of zombies invaded the dorm.” Cage pointed to the radio. “Have you heard anything?”
“Not much, just the initial reports, which are all conflicting, of course. No one mentioned the word zombie.”
“The airshaft runs across the entire floor?”
Edward nodded. “Along the edges of the dorm rooms.”
Cage walked to the ladder.
“Where are you going?”