“How did you know to do that?” I asked.
“When you spend as much time in this gym as I do, you know the place inside and out.”
“G-good th-thing t-t-too,” Matt managed to say.
“Glad you’re back with us, buddy,” Jordan said.
By the time we’d showered and made it back upstairs, dawn was breaking, and a dim light filtered through the windows. People were huddled around in groups. Some were talking amongst themselves, and others sat in stunned silence. I saw Trey sitting on the bleachers beside the homeless man. He looked zoned out, and the man beside him was talking to someone else who wasn’t there. Mr. Woods met us as we walked entered and began asking questions.
Mrs. Hoffstedder tried to fend him off. “We need to let them calm down. They’ve had a serious shock of some kind,” she said. She handed me a cup with two capsules in it. “Take these,” she instructed and handed me a bottle of water.
I swallowed the pills and chased them down with the lukewarm water.
“You can have another dose in 4-6 hours,” the nurse advised me. She turned to Mr. Woods. “Did you see what happened in the hallway?” she asked him.
“I didn’t see everything, but I can tell you what went on near the end of the incident,” he responded. His eyes were intense and wide. “Verna,” he said to the nurse, “we’re in a serious situation here, and shock or no, we don’t have time to wait. I saw those—those—attackers out there. Something is very wrong, and we need details from these kids to piece this thing together.”
Verna looked around with a doubtful expression on her face. She tilted her head toward the open gym. “Do they need to know too, or is this a private conversation?”
Woods looked as if he was considering what to do. “Let’s go to the coaches’ office.”
We crowded into the tiny work area located just inside the athletic supply room that served as an office for the coaches. Woods closed the door behind us. He stood with his back against it as Matt, Jordan, and I sat on a nearby bench. Mrs. Hoffstedder took a seat in the swivel chair beside the desk Coach Jensen shared with the other four head coaches.
“First off,” Mr. Woods continued, “I want to know what happened out there before we decide what, if anything, to tell everyone else. What happened after you left with Corporal Greer to go to the science lab?”
“Why did they go to the science lab in the first place?” the nurse asked, turning to look at Woods.
“Verna, the power was off, and Corporal Greer’s radio was dead. Since there isn’t any backup power for the ESIP system, he wanted to go outside to get another radio from the truck outside so he could call for help. He seemed to think it was urgent to establish communications as quickly as possible,” Woods explained. He grasped his chin and paused as if focusing on the details in his memory. “I had this feeling there was something Greer wasn’t telling me. It didn’t make any sense to me why he wanted to risk going outside and being exposed to the chemicals, but he was calling the shots. I figured he knew what he was doing. They took Casey and Matt with them. I don’t know what happened after they left the gym.”
Matt was still visibly shaken from what we’d just witnessed, but he managed to explain Greer’s plan to construct an airlock to keep any toxins out of the building while allowing him and the others to go to the vehicle to get the radio and other supplies. “They told us to stay inside and keep the doors closed. When they came back to where we could see them, they just…” Matt’s voice trailed off, and he stared into nothingness as his jaw went slack.
“It’s okay, Matt,” I reassured him as I put my arm around his shoulders. “You’re safe now.” It didn’t appear that he was going to be able to explain further, so I picked up where he stopped. “It was so dark we couldn’t see much. The soldiers were coming back to the building, and they were attacked.” A hard, painful rock was forming in my throat making it difficult to continue without crying out.
“Did you see who it was?” Mrs. Hoffstedder asked. She leaned forward, her light blonde brows furrowed with concern.
“Those things,” Jordan interjected, “were not human. I don’t know what they were, but they looked like…like corpses. Zombies.”
“Jordan,” Hoffstedder interrupted him. “I know you’ve all been through a traumatic experience, and at times like this, it’s normal for things to seem worse than they actually were. I don’t know who you saw, but I can assure you they could not have been anything other than humans. Perhaps they were disfigured from chemical burns.”
“I’m tellin’ you they weren’t natural!” Jordan insisted, his voice rising with urgency.
“Jordan, be calm, and keep your voice down,” Woods warned. “We can’t start a panic.”
“But Jordan is right,” I declared. “I don’t know what those things were, but they were not normal people, at least not anymore.”
“You don’t have to convince me they weren’t normal. I saw them,” Woods said. “I don’t believe in anything like zombies, but there was definitely something wrong with those people.”
“There were maybe ten or more. I couldn’t tell for sure. They tore into the soldiers’ bodies and killed them all in front of us. When they heard the everyone inside banging on the doors, they started coming toward us and trying to get in. Matt and I were trying to hold the door that wouldn’t latch. That’s when my shoulder snapped, and I could barely hold on. If Jordan hadn’t come when he did, we would be dead.”
Mrs. Hoffstedder looked doubtful as the full implications of what we were saying sunk in. “What are we doing to do about this, Phillip?” she said, looking at Mr. Woods. “What are we going to tell those people out there?”
“We don’t have a choice,” he answered. “We have to tell them the truth.”
Chapter 5
When we opened the door to the coaches’ office, many of the adults in the group were standing just beyond it waiting for us. I imagined they wanted an explanation of what was going on, but more than that, they wanted something we couldn’t give them, and that was a plan. Where would we go from here?
Mr. Woods approached them. “Everyone, I know you’re all wanting an explanation about what transpired last night. I think it would be in the best interest of the children in the room for some of the adults to take them across the courts and occupy them. The news I have to share is not appropriate for them.” He paused for a long moment, and no one moved away at first. Gradually, some of the adults took the younger children by the hand and led them away from us.
“Last night, we experienced a power failure in the building, and as a result, the ESIP system stopped working,” Mr. Woods explained. Some of the people in the crowd gasped. “We believe we are safe at this time, so there is no airborne threat in the building.”
“How can you be sure about that?” a man asked.
“Because we’re all standing here,” Mr. Woods answered. “Unfortunately, Corporal Greer and the other soldiers who were with us attempted to reach their transport vehicle last night in an attempt to retrieve batteries to establish communication with their commanders to request help.”
“What do you mean by, unfortunately?” a woman in the back called out. “Where are they? Have they left us here?”
“The soldiers,” Mr. Woods began and then paused. I could see his throat flex as he swallowed hard, and a furrow creased his brow. “The soldiers were attacked by some unknown assailants outside the building, and they are dead.”
The crowd erupted in a cacophony of shrieks, gasps, and sobs. The initial expressions of shock melded into angry and confused voices all talking at once.
“Everyone, please,” Mr. Woods continued. “We must remain calm because we have a lot to do to ensure everyone is safe.”
“You ‘gotta be joking,” a man said. “We ain’t safe here! Ain’t nobody in control here. That’s obvious.”
Angry voices rumbled through the group. Some seemed to agree with him.
“Let’s allow the man to finis
h, okay?” Mrs. Hoffstedder said, her voice raised to a higher level than her typical calm and measured tone. “We do not have time to interrupt, argue or blame. We need to focus on the task at hand.”
Mr. Woods held up his hands as if directing a chorus to end their performance, and surprisingly, the crowd quieted down in response. “We don’t know what the security situation is outside this building, or elsewhere in the city, so our only option right now is to secure this building, starting with this wing. We’re fortunate that all of the windows on the building are fortified by iron bars so we can make those a lower priority. Exterior doors are the most important at this time. We will start with those in the gymnasium itself. Once that is finished, we will extend our work to the connecting hallways in a systematic manner until all are secured. This will improve overall building security,” Mr. Woods explained.
“You said that the soldiers were killed by unknown assailants,” a woman said.
“Yes, that’s right. We know the attack occurred outside the building, and we do not know the identity of the killers at this time,” Woods affirmed.
“But I heard the attackers were not normal people,” she continued. “I heard they were like zombies. That’s what one of the teenagers said.”
Rapid questions flew about the crowd. The homeless man wandered through the group, alternately muttering toward the floor and then to the ceiling. “Hell is full,” he pronounced, “the dead will walk the earth.”
Mr. Woods tried to calm everyone down once more. “Listen, please. We have no evidence of anything like that. Furthermore, that’s just…just impossible,” he reasoned. He tapped his hand to his forehead in emphasis as he continued. “You must understand that the students witnessed a traumatic incident, and it is a natural response for them to overreact. We have no evidence this was anything other than a violent group of people roaming the streets. It could have been a local gang or perhaps random looters. We just don’t know.”
Matt’s expression turned to a scowl of concern, and Jordan looked ticked off. I couldn’t believe how the adults were discounting everything we’d told them.
Mr. Woods walked back and forth in front of the group and seemed to try to make eye contact with everyone. “The only thing we can do at this point is to secure the school to ensure everyone here remains safe.”
“Once we’ve accomplished that,” Mrs. Hoffstedder interrupted, “we can move forward with finding a way to communicate with authorities and getting the assistance we need.”
“Exactly,” Mr. Woods agreed. “But for now, I’ll need volunteers to help with securing the building and to organize meals and ensure everyone’s needs are met. Anyone willing to assist with this, please see me and the nurse. The rest of you must remain in the gymnasium. That is all I have for now, but I will update you as we know more.”
Mr. Woods took most of the volunteers aside and began discussing strategies for barricading all the exterior doors and covering windows to prevent anyone outside from seeing into the building. They moved toward the exterior doors near the ticket booth on the other side of the facility. Mrs. Hoffstedder took the remaining volunteers to her workstation to plan how to proceed with meals and other necessities.
Jordan, Matt, and I wandered back toward our mats near the far corner of the gym, and the homeless man trailed behind us. He stopped several feet away and began counting objects he seemed to see floating in midair.
Harley sat cross-legged on the floor, clutching the black Stetson close to her chest. She looked so frail and vulnerable. It saddened me to see her like this. I climbed onto the exercise pad beside her and tucked my jacket around her shoulders. Matt and Jordan sat down beside us.
“I thought you all were going to die out there,” Harley whispered. “I didn’t know what to do. Why did you leave me like that?” her voice broke with emotion.
I draped my arm across her back and pulled her close. “I’m sorry you were left here alone,” Harley. I explained what happened as best I could. “Matt and I had no clue what they were getting us into.”
“Trust me. If I had any idea what was going to happen, I would not have agreed to help them,” Matt insisted. “If I hadn’t helped them find the things they wanted to make that airlock, maybe they wouldn’t have gone outside. They’d still be alive.”
“You can’t think like that, Matt,” I said. “They told us what to do, and we did it. It’s nobody’s fault what happened. I mean who could have known they would be eaten by zombies?”
“Right,” Jordan agreed. “That was some crazy shiz you only supposed to see in movies.”
“What are we going to do?” I asked. “They don’t believe us.”
“No, they don’t,” Jordan agreed, “but I know what I saw.”
“Maybe we don’t have to do anything. We could just stay in here, and when we’re rescued, the military or police or someone can deal with it. If we all just stay in here, we’ll be safe,” Harley offered.
Jordan looked at Harley, and his head gave a slight bob of acknowledgment. “That would be the better plan, but people got to know what we’re dealing with. They got to know what to expect.”
I considered what my friends were saying. They all had good points, but there was a problem. “Seriously though, we don’t really know what we’re dealing with. Maybe we need to just get as much information as we can about this situation and then let them know. Then they might believe us that whatever these things are, they’re not human.”
“Okay, so how we going to get information?” Jordan asked. “We got no phone. No internet.”
“We have a hand,” I countered.
“And we have a science lab,” Matt added. “We just need to slip away without anyone noticing.”
“How are we going to get past everyone? They’ll see us.”
“We’ll take the tunnel in the mechanical room,” Jordan explained. “We just need to get down there on the sly. One at a time.”
We made our way down to the locker room, and Jordan and Matt showed us the way to the mechanical room where the ESIP system was located. It was down a short tunnel past the locker rooms. Surprisingly, the door was secured only by a sign warning of high voltage and informing us that authorized personnel only may enter. I hadn’t really thought about what the chemical filtration system might look like. If I had, I would have imagined something higher tech. The unit resembled furnace connected to a series of barrels and PVC pipes that were built into steel racks and stacked from floor to ceiling in rows. We walked through to the other end of the room and exited through another door leading to a tunnel similar to the one leading to the locker rooms. We emerged at a staircase that took us to a door in the back of the main office on the first floor. Matt started rummaging around the office.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“We’re going to need something to put the hand in. A plastic bag or something similar would work,” he answered.
We fanned out around the office and rummaged through cabinets and drawers. “I got a dollar store bag,” Harley called out. She held up a bag that appeared to contain someone’s lunch. She dumped the contents into a nearby trashcan. Moving fast, we ran to the hallway just outside the athletic facility where last night’s carnage occurred. The floor was strewn with vomit, tarps, and plastic.
“You may not want to look outside,” I told Harley. “You can wait here if you want.”
Harley shook her head in agreement. She handed me the bag and then hung back away from the windows and door. Matt, Jordan, and I pushed the plastic around in search of the severed hand.
“Got it here,” Matt said, looking at the floor.
The hand, well, the piece of it, was partially smashed against the floor. The imprint of someone’s shoe was visible across the palm. Using the bag over my own hand and forearm like a barbeque glove, I reached down and grabbed it. I had to work my fingertips under it to peel it from the floor. Pulled the edges down over the severed extremity, I avoided touching its rancid flesh.
As we turned to leave, I felt my head turning, almost involuntarily, toward the window. I didn’t want to know what was out there. Not really. At the same time, I couldn’t stand not knowing. I looked out onto the grass, now bathed in the morning sun. The monsters were gone, but they left something disturbing in their wake. “Guys? What the hell?”
Matt and Jordan turned in the direction of the window. “Aww, man. That’s some strangeness right there.”
“I don’t believe it,” Matt mouthed, seemingly unable to voice his words.
There, in the yard where the soldiers were murdered last night, was nothing. No bodies. No clothes. Not even a pile of bones. A few shreds of blood-spattered Tyvek, the three trunks the soldiers had been carrying, and four lifeless flashlights were strewn in the grass.
“What happened to the bodies?” Matt finally managed to speak.
“Maybe they were eaten,” I posed, feeling my stomach lurch.
“Bones and all?” Jordan asked in a rhetorical tone. “Who or what could have done this?”
The implications were grim no matter what. “If humans did this,” I began, but couldn’t finish the sentence. We exchanged dark, knowing glances.
“Wild dogs might be wandering the streets,” Jordan suggested. His expression said he really didn’t believe that.
“It’s only been a couple of days since the chemicals were released, so I think it’s something else. It seems too soon for feral dogs or coyotes to have moved into the territory,” Matt speculated.
Harley took a few tentative steps toward us and peered out the window. “Do you think they’re still alive?”
I shook my head. “No, that’s impossible.” Jordan and Matt agreed.
“Then they couldn’t have just got up and walked away,” Harley reasoned.
“Come on,” Matt said. “We’ve got work to do.”
We climbed the stairs to the science hallway and went to the biological sciences rooms. Matt took the bagged hand from me and placed it on a nearby table with a microscope on it. “You should wash up, Casey,” he cautioned. “I know you didn’t actually touch it, but since we don’t know what we’re dealing with yet…just do it.”
Viral Series (Book 1): Viral Dawn [Extended Edition] Page 11