Dead Highways (Book 3): Discord

by Brown, Richard

  “Who did you lose?” Robinson asked.

  Paul sighed and looked off in the distance for a moment, swallowing hard. “The usual. Family. Friends. I lost my wife, Lauren. We never had any children. Lauren couldn’t. So the kids here at the school were my kids.”

  “I’m sorry,” Robinson said.

  “Yeah, but we can’t just sit around all day feeling sorry for ourselves, right? There were people who had it worse than me before the collapse, and there still are now. People like Susan. If she can still smile, then I can too. We’re still alive. We’re not sick. Most people can’t say that anymore.” He took a deep breath and turned to address Zoe and Jenson standing at his side. “Zoe…if you don’t mind escorting Naima and her father to the nurse’s office. Maybe get a wheelchair from inside. Jenson, if you could do a quick interior fence walk I’d appreciate it.”

  Jenson nodded and strolled back toward the front gate. Zoe took off inside the school, returning a minute later with a wheelchair. She accompanied Naima to the minivan and helped Aamod out of the passenger seat and into the wheelchair. Then the three of them disappeared inside the building.

  “So…” Paul said, rubbing his hands together. “I guess I should show the rest of you around, eh? In case you didn’t see the sign out front, welcome to South Bayou Middle School. Like I said earlier, I used to be the principal here so I know the place well. I had the job for going on ten years. It was a very rewarding experience.” He pointed to a darkly tinted window nearby. The gator mascot was painted in the center. “That’s my office window. Gives a nice view of the teacher parking lot as you can see. Nothing fancy.”

  “Do all these cars belong to people who live here?” Ted asked.

  “Only a few. Most belonged to city officials or their families, most of which are no longer here. I’d say over fifty percent of the people we’ve rescued didn’t have a vehicle at the time we found them or chose to leave it behind. Having a car here really isn’t all that necessary. We only have limited space as it is.”

  “How do people leave?” I asked.

  “Most don’t.”

  “They don’t, or they’re not allowed?” Bowser asked.

  “Let me explain. Everyone who is here is here because they want to be. We don’t force people to stay if they want to leave. So far only a handful of people have left, most because they wanted to go look for family out of our reach. But we can’t allow the people who choose to live here to come and go as they please because that would create a security concern. We have to manage our runs outside the gate cautiously. The reason why this place has thrived for as long as it has is because we keep a low profile. We don’t want to draw any attention. For example, this street we just came down connects to the interstate about four miles north, about a mile up from where we turned on. And as you all know, the interstate is packed with the sick. Had we turned right instead of left, we would have come upon a very different scene than this. Look around. Look how peaceful it is here. We’d like to keep it that way. So sure, there are rules. Every community has to have them. If someone needs to go somewhere for whatever reason, or they need a certain item brought back on a supply run, they can put in a special request. You’re right to be suspicious. Trust me you aren’t the first arrivals to ask these questions. But I assure you we bend over backwards to make everyone as happy as possible. I’m sure you’ll agree once you spend some time here. Why don’t y’all follow me inside and meet some of our people.”

  “What about our guns?” Ted asked.

  “I won’t ask you to give them up just yet. I only ask that you keep them safely on your backs or at your side. Now come on, I’ll give you the deluxe tour.”

  From the first step inside, I felt as though I’d walked back in time. The cool air was the first thing that hit me. It had been a while since I’d stood inside a building with electricity, and the air conditioning felt as good as I’d remembered. The sweat under my arms immediately started to melt away. The second thing I noticed upon entering was the smell. Much like libraries or hospitals, schools always had a special scent that was uniquely memorable. But unlike the dusty paper smell of books or the acrid odor of disinfectant, the school smell was much harder to diagnose. What caused the scent was unknown, probably a mixture of many things all assaulting the senses at once, and it didn’t much matter anyway. The smell instantly transported me back to the good old days five years ago when I was in high school. The days of gay slurs on my locker. The days of being picked last in gym class. The days where being popular meant everything. The days of free lunch and hall passes and drama club and reading aloud to the class. The days of homework and pep rallies and spit wads and kids asking if you had a pencil they could borrow. Standing there in the hallway thinking back, the zombie apocalypse didn’t seem so bad.

  “This is the front office,” Paul said, opening a door on the right and poking his head inside. “My office is in here, as well as the secretary and counselor offices. The nurse’s station where Zoe took your friends is at the end.”

  Paul led us down the wide corridor past dozens of rooms. The walls were painted in the school colors, white with green stripes. The classrooms were grouped by grade level. Each classroom had a square glass window on the door, with the name of the teacher listed underneath. Miss. Williams. Mrs. Holler. Mr. Woods. Many of the rooms had a large rectangular corkboard next to the door where special artwork or other projects made by the class were displayed. Groups of lockers separated each room.

  We came to an intersection and went left, passing numerous people of all ages in the hall, often glaring at us suspiciously as we walked by. We were the new kids at school—the freshman class, looking around with wide eyes trying to figure out where to go. We swung around another corner to the right.

  “These last two wings are where everyone sleeps,” Paul said.

  Robinson stopped and peered inside room number 124. “Where did you get the beds?” he asked, stepping out of the way so the rest of us could take a peek. The twin beds were set up in rows about a foot apart taking up most of the available floor space. What room was left was reserved for the chairs and desks stacked in the corner.

  “The cots were delivered by the national guard,” Paul replied. “We’ve got just enough for everyone. But as I said, we’re getting near full capacity. The beds aren’t comfortable, but they’re still better than sleeping on the floor. As you can see, this particular room is unoccupied at the moment.”

  Paul continued onward, leading us around another corner to the right, pointing out the entrance to the school library and the exit doors that led out to the auditorium. The backend corridors made the shape of a large square, with classrooms, teacher break rooms, bathrooms, and custodial rooms on the outside, and the library and cafeteria taking up the large space in the middle.

  As we moved down the last wing, the halls became more crowded with people. Adults talked quietly amongst themselves, going in and out of rooms. Kids ran by chasing each other, squealing with joy. Paul took us into the cafeteria and through the kitchen, introducing us to a few of the people tasked with getting that days lunch ready. I won’t say the food smelled good, but it was a hot meal. It couldn’t be any worse than the stuff I’d eaten when I was back in school, and I had no doubt it was better than Ted’s MRE meatloaf surprise. If I didn’t mention the steaming bowl of colorful diarrhea I left at Ted’s house the morning after the meatloaf…well, I have now. Getting all of it out was the toughest challenge I’d faced yet.

  We followed Paul to the end of the back wing and out a set of double doors that led to the recess area. The outside heat made me quickly miss being inside in the air conditioning. Off to the right side against the wall were four blue portable restrooms I couldn’t wait to go inside and smell.

  We stood for a moment on the large uncovered concrete patio, the sun beating down on our faces, and watched the kids play in the distance. Climbing the monkey bars. Swinging on the swing set. A boy and a girl were kicking a soccer ball around
. Things that had once seemed so normal now left me staring with my mouth open in shock. It was surreal, like I was watching something made up. A strange fiction. An old television show where people were happy and life was good. Nothing about it felt real, and yet if I was dreaming I didn’t want to wake up. I wanted to stay there forever and hold onto the moment for as long as possible.

  Without even realizing it, Paul had led the others toward the gymnasium standing tall and mighty to the left a short walk from the patio. I jogged to catch up but was stopped by a kid sitting with his back against the wall reading a book.

  “Hey,” the kid said, setting the open book down in his lap. “Are you new here?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “First day. My name’s Jimmy.”

  “I’m Craig. Nice to meet you.”

  Craig was around my age, young adult, skinny with spiky dark brown hair. He wore blue basketball shorts and a white faded Back to the Future T-Shirt. I liked him already.

  “What are you reading?” I asked.

  Craig glanced down at the book. “It’s called Replay. It’s about a guy who dies and ends up replaying his life over and over again.”

  “That sounds like something I wouldn’t mind doing.”

  Craig nodded. “Especially these days. I picked it up on one of my runs. There’s a library here, but it’s mostly young adult books.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  Craig briefly thought about the question, and then said, “Three weeks or so. I think I was like the thirtieth person brought in. Every day after more and more people would show up. But the last week it’s been very few.”

  “Do you like it here?”

  “I like it better than fending for myself out on the street, that’s for sure. Doesn’t mean I don’t miss the way things were before. My family and stuff.”

  “Me too.”

  “You came in with a nice group, huh?”

  “Yeah, they’re great,” I replied. “We’ve been together for a while now. Since this whole mess started.”

  “You all from around here?”

  “No, we’re actually from Florida.”

  “What are you doing way out here then?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Paul and the others leisurely walked by in front of me, done touring the gymnasium. Bowser’s slight limp kept them from walking too fast.

  “Come on, Jimmy,” Peaches said, grabbing me by the hand and pulling me back in line.

  “Maybe I’ll see you later,” I said to Craig, walking away.

  “Sure thing.”

  “You missed the helicopter,” Peaches said.

  I glanced up at the sky. “Really?”

  “No silly, it was between the auditorium and the gym. You making friends already?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Paul took us around to the other side of the building. A couple of long white water trucks were parked against the wall. Our guide reiterated that each tank could hold four thousand gallons, and that showering was done with something called a solar shower, which I thought sounded really cool and futuristic. Beyond the water trucks was a giant gray metal tank filled with thousands of gallons of diesel fuel that constantly fed into the industrial sized generator. Around another corner and we were back in the front parking lot. The cars we’d arrived in no longer sat in the bus loop.

  “That’s about it for the tour,” Paul said. “What do you think?”

  “It’s a school,” Robinson said. “But nice.”

  “Yeah, you got a good setup going here,” Ted added. “Though what’s the deal with the barbed wire on the fence. Either you had some dangerous junior high kids here, or that wasn’t there a month ago.”

  “No, it wasn’t. The emergency manager had it installed first thing, before the big trucks around back arrived. They had a strict system in place for gaining entrance and were concerned about people trying to rush the place.”

  “Worked out for the best, I guess,” Ted said.

  “Is the front gate the only way out?” Robinson asked.

  “There’s a second smaller gate in the rear of the schoolyard, but it just leads out into the woods. That gate has never been unlocked as far as I can remember. Any other questions?”

  We all looked at each other, shrugging, and then Robinson said, “I’m sure we’ll think of more before the end of the day.”

  “Take your time,” Paul said. “I’ll be happy to address any concerns or suggestions you might have. Why don’t we head back inside and check on your friends.”

  Aamod finished seeing the doctor right as we stepped into the front office. Doctor Timothy Bailey was in his mid-forties with a thick head of curly hair and thin wire-frame glasses. He was tall with long, slender arms, wearing a button up shirt and blue jeans.

  “Everything go all right?” Paul asked.

  “He’ll be fine,” Dr. Bailey replied. “Lots of bruising and small cuts. I put a few stitches in his bottom lip. His left eye is obviously very swollen. He can’t really see much out of it. But I don’t think there are any broken bones. We’ll just have to see how quickly the swelling goes down. He just needs a lot of rest. I gave him a narcotic to help with the pain.”

  “Is there somewhere he can lie down?” Naima asked.

  “Yes, of course,” Paul replied. “Zoe…go ahead and show them to room 124 on the seventh grade wing if you don’t mind. It’s empty.”

  Bowser gave Zoe the elevator eyes as she left the room with Aamod and Naima.

  “Anyone else need to be checked out?” Dr. Bailey asked.

  The two black men reluctantly raised their hands.

  After consulting with the doc, Bowser wasn’t too happy with the news. His knee was healing fine but due to him missing some vital tissue underneath the kneecap, he’d likely always have pain that would come and go. And even with some mild physical therapy, he might never walk completely normal again. As with Aamod, the doctor gave Bowser a strong pain reliever.

  Robinson’s long-term prognosis was better. Bailey said he should get back full movement in his shoulder, but in the short term would probably experience bouts of extreme discomfort. The doc was pleasantly surprised by the job Ted had done to close up the wound under the circumstances, though to reduce the risk of future problems, Robinson would need to have the wound cleaned up. Reopened. Bullet removed. Sutured closed again. Not to waste anymore time, Bailey scheduled the procedure for later that evening.

  Paul led us out of the office to a room across the hall. The armory. Weapons of all types—guns, knives, machetes, etc—sat on long folding tables and dangled from wall hooks. Boxes of ammunition were stacked underneath the tables.

  Ted examined the supply and said, “You’ve got a good collection here.”

  “Thanks,” Paul said. “I’d like everyone to eventually know how to shoot.”

  “Just in case?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Always a good idea. I used to operate an indoor gun range. I could certainly help with that.”

  “Of course.”

  Ted slipped his rifle off his back and handed it to Paul. “Here…as a sign of good faith. I think we’d all like to give this place a go.”

  “I appreciate it.” Paul took out the magazine, checked to make sure there wasn’t a live round in the chamber, and then set the rifle down on the table beside him.

  Ted handed over the pistol tucked behind his back and then the rest of us followed, parting with our gear.

  No more David Bowie knife.

  No more Mustang Sally.

  And although it hurt me inside to let them go, I prayed I’d never have to pick them up again.

  We ate lunch in the cafeteria—some kind of canned chicken with biscuits and gravy that wasn’t half bad—and spent the rest of the day relaxing, getting to know other survivors. In the afternoon, we all got the showers we had been looking forward to. It wasn’t nearly as glamorous as I thought it would be. There was no running water so the showers in the locker ro
oms didn’t work, and the solar showers Paul had mentioned were about as futuristic as an Atari 2600. It was just a five-gallon bag filled with water that heats up when left out in the sun. Connected to the bottom was a hose about a foot long with a valve that the water comes out of. Despite my initial disappointment, it felt great to be clean.

  I browsed the library for more than an hour after dinner. I wasn’t really looking for a book to read, I just wanted to be around them again. The smell reminded me of home—of my grandma.

  Just as Paul had promised, they kept Aamod in a different section of the school. He and Naima would have their own room for the time being, at least until they could see if Aamod would behave himself. They set the rest of us up on the other end, in room 156, near the doors to the playground. Seven other people were already tenants of number 156, but they didn’t seem to mind having the five of us as sleep buddies. I wondered if that would still hold true once they heard Robinson snoring. I’d have to get to sleep first and pray to not wake up during the night.

  Robinson was gone for a good three hours with Dr. Bailey. He returned to our room just before ten o’clock in the evening, his usual sling back on but with fresh bandaging wrapped underneath. Paul walked him in and then went off for the night. Peaches lay on the bed next to mine, reading an old magazine. Robinson eased down on the bed on the opposite side, looking groggy.

  “How did it go?” I whispered. The lights in the room were still on, but everyone was relaxed back, getting ready for bed.

  Robinson glared at me and sighed. “Hurt like a son of a bitch. Waiting for these pain meds to kick in.”

  “What happened?”

  “He sliced me back open, took out the bullet. He had to dig around in there a little bit to find it too. I thought I was gonna pass out. It was like being shot all over again. He gave me some local anesthetic, but I’m not sure how much it helped.” Robinson reached into his pocket and tossed something on my lap. “Here…you want it?”

  “Is that the bullet?” I picked up the small piece of twisted lead and rolled it between my thumb and index finger. It was about the size of my pinky nail. I was glad they washed the blood off it. “It’s not much, is it?”