I hadn’t said it out loud, but the possibility existed that someone might leave the gate unlocked, or a door open, enabling the zombies to breach it. One thing was clear. Every time the zombies found a fresh meal at our gates, we noticed increasing numbers of them coming from further distances. That alone threatened our survival.
I didn’t understand how they continued to survive, despite the fact that very few uninfected humans appeared to be in the area. The necro-regenerative process, as Matt dubbed it, continued to happen indefinitely in the tissue samples we’d collected. None of us understood how the tissues could die and regenerate over long periods of time, even without a nutritional or oxygen source.
“Come on, Harley,” I urged, steering her by the arm toward the gymnasium’s back door. “We need to talk with the others before we go out for provisions.”
Harley abruptly stopped walking and stooped. She inspected her right boot, which didn’t need fixing. I noticed she made a quick swipe across her eyes with her cuff.
“It’s okay to cry,” I said. “You don’t have to hide it.”
She gave me a side-eye. “People think I’m weak when I cry. They respect you because you don’t.”
“They respect both of us for what we do for the group,” I corrected her. “They don’t give a shit about how we feel as long as we get the work done.”
The side-eye relaxed into a look of acknowledgment, and Harley flashed a rare smile. “Good point,” she said.
We went back inside the school building to get our group together for the daily foray. Our runs were essential to locate and bring back any useful items we might find in the surrounding neighborhood to maintain our base.
It was already almost noon, but most of the remaining forty or so adults, teens, and children were still asleep on the floor in the gymnasium. They slept in rows on the basketball courts on top of exercise mats or anything else they could find to give some small comfort on the hardwood surface. Some had cots, but they weren’t much better than the exercise pads. Both were brutal on the back but better than sleeping on the rock-like terrazzo in the hallways and classrooms. They had to sleep when they could during the day because the screaming kept us all awake at night. That’s when the zombies came out to hunt. We had managed to stay safe here, but the nightly terror of the undead ramming at the gate was unnerving.
I found Jordan and Matt sleeping in the corner and woke them. “You guys up for a supply run?” I asked.
Jordan groaned. “Man, I just got to sleep. Leave me alone.” He rolled over and pulled the theatre curtain panel he’d been using for a blanket over his face. The makeshift du-rag he’d crafted from an abandoned racerback swimsuit stuck out at the edge of the curtain, the only visible clue he was there at all.
Matt sat up and rubbed his face. “What time is it?” he asked.
“It’s almost noon,” I answered, as I pulled Jordan’s curtain off his face and gave the tail of the du-rag a playful tug. “Come on! We don’t have much time. You know we have to go downtown today, and it is a pretty far walk.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he groaned and jumped to his feet in one smooth motion and began doing some stretches. “Just give me a minute.”
He’d recovered reasonably well from the injury he received last month during the incident in the alcove. Nurse Hoffstedder had examined him and diagnosed severe sprains in both ankles and contusions in both calves from the force of the gun case hitting his legs. Several of the weapons had discharged, and the recoil slammed the trunk into both his legs, causing the injury.
Matt groped around the floor and found his glasses. He slipped them on and gazed around the room at the others. Some were still sleeping, and others were beginning to stir as the gym warmed up from the sun hitting the windows on the east side of the building.
We had been venturing out during the daylight hours to forage for food and other supplies ever since the food started running low in the cafeteria storage. As long as we made it back before sundown, we were safe. That had not been a problem when we could still ransack the houses near the school, but now that we had to move farther out to find anything, it was becoming more of a challenge. Bronson’s death heightened the danger.
“Before we go, there’s something you all need to know,” I said, attempting to keep my tone matter-of-fact and my volume low. There was no sense in alerting others until it was necessary.
Jordan stopped mid-stretch and turned to look at me, his dark eyes wary. He glanced at Harley, whose brows crinkled into a worried scowl. Instincts piqued, he moved to our sides and spoke quietly. “What’s up?”
“We had a runner last night,” I explained.
Matt hoisted himself to his feet with considerably less grace than Jordan had. “No.” He shook his head. “No, that’s not possible. The doors were all locked last night. I checked them all myself.”
“It’s true,” Harley confirmed, her voice barely audible as we all conformed into a huddle.
“Who was it?” Jordan asked, his eyes darting about the gym in search of a vacant sleep spot.
“Trey Bronson,” I answered.
Matt’s face looked blank before recognition of the name sunk in. “That guy…yeah. The one who was always in trouble.” He straightened his t-shirt and brushed his hair out of his eyes. “Wasn’t he in juvey last year?”
I nodded. “That was the rumor. I don’t know for sure, but yeah, he got in trouble some. Weed mostly.”
“So, what’s the landscape?” Jordan asked, directing the conversation back to business.
I pulled out the notepad and read my notes. “No new damage to the outer wall,” I reported. “So, that’s the good news. At some point, we have got to bolster the barricade behind the bus garage. It’s holding for now, but I’m concerned about the rust on the fence as the weather changes. By the end of October, we’re going to see more rain and possibly snow.”
“Yeah, but can we get to the runner?”
I shot Jordan a look that felt a bit annoyed on my side of it. “Fine,” I responded. “The scatter looked about sixty yards to me. There were multiple markers in several directions.”
“So, compared to last time?” Jordan pressed forward, his voice quieter.
I flipped back through the pages and found the previous plot. “The last runner’s scatter was possibly ten yards less, and there were fewer markers spread in fewer directions.” I checked both plots, tapping the markers with the tip of my pen as I mentally calculated the differences. “I’m estimating about a 5% increase in scatter and direction, so…”
“There are more zombies coming into the neighborhood from more places,” Harley spoke the words we were all thinking. “It’s getting worse.”
For a long moment, we stood in silent thought.
“Does anyone else know yet?” Matt asked.
I shook my head. “But they’ll see it. The attack happened just outside the gate.”
Jordan mouthed a silent curse word.
“What if we just stayed here for the next couple of days?” Matt offered. “We could stick around close and work to keep an eye on everyone.”
“And maybe if we stay inside the wall, and no one goes out, something else may attract the zombies away from here,” Harley added.
“Exactly,” Matt continued. “Like they would lose interest.”
“I don’t know, man,” Jordan said, his expression doubtful. “Have you looked at our food supplies? We can’t afford to let them get lower. We have to stay ahead of the weather.”
“Jordan’s right,” I insisted. “Besides, it’s getting darker earlier now, and we’re going to have less time for supply runs.”
Matt’s face looked a bit more pale than usual, but his expression was resolute. “Then it’s settled. Let’s get on it.”
While Harley, Jordan, and Matt gathered up the empty duffle bags we had scavenged from the athletic department for the foraging runs, I found the school nurse sleeping near the door in her traditional white uniform. ‘The Hoff’ as
we had begun calling her (but not to her face) was old school like that. “Mrs. Hoffstedder,” I spoke in a soft voice close to her ear and jostled her shoulder.
She awoke startled. “What’s wrong?” she gasped.
“Nothing’s wrong. We’re just going for supplies, and I need you to secure the gate behind us,” I answered.
“You almost gave me a heart attack,” she said breathlessly.
“Sorry about that. I guess we’re all on edge, aren’t we?” I helped her heave her plus-sized
frame up to a standing position as she wobbled, trying to balance herself. “Oh, my knee!” she exclaimed in a stage whisper. She sucked in air between clenched teeth, sending a sharp hiss into the silence.
“Still hurts, I see.”
“Damned zombies,” she grumbled. “I’d be going with you if it weren’t for this--. She gestured toward her swollen joint with an emphatic open hand.
I watched her strain to retrieve her shoes from a nearby chair. She sat down and struggled as she bent over and eased the shoes onto her feet. The knee was clearly still inflamed, and her pants leg looked tighter than on the other side. She had nearly broken it in a fall during her last attempt to gather supplies with us. It was at that point when we all decided it was better for her to stay inside the fence during runs. We needed her medical skills, and everyone here depended on her for treatment as much as they did us for food.
The day she fell, we had spent too much time outside the wall. That evening, the sun was sinking on the horizon when we were a few yards from the gate. One lone zombie appeared, seemingly from nowhere. We had all scrambled toward the campus, and Mrs. Hoffstedder tripped on the curb. We dragged her inside and slammed the gate on the zombie’s head as it tried to get in. Its head snapped off with a sickening crunch, and its body fell to the asphalt outside the gate, flailing wildly in the road and slinging black, slimy zombie blood everywhere. It reminded me of chickens my grandmother killed on her farm with the way it lunged around, clumsily banging into the fence and street signs. Luckily, none of us were hit by the blood spray.
Before we lost power, the authorities on the emergency broadcast system had warned that contact with the blood or saliva of infected humans. At the time, they hadn’t bothered to mention it turned people into zombies. It must have slipped their minds. They’d only called it a mutated virus. It was originally engineered by a company called BioGenetics. I couldn’t recall the scientific name for the strain. So far, no one knew how to stop it. Guess it really didn’t matter what they called it.
It was taking longer for Mrs. Hoffstedder to get her shoes on than I’d anticipated. “I could help with that,” I offered.
“No, it’s best that I do it. It’s just stiff from being stationary all night,” Mrs. Hoffstedder insisted. “I could probably go with you part of the way.”
“Um, we’ve settled that. You don’t go on food runs. Don’t worry about it,” I reassured her. “We’ll bring back enough.” Secretly, I wasn’t so sure. The truth was, it was becoming more and more difficult to carry back enough food for everyone. But most of the others were too sick, out of shape, injured, old, or young to help. With more zombies moving into the area and our daylight hours becoming shorter, the situation would soon become worse. Much worse.
“Besides,” I added, “We need you here for damage control.”
Mrs. Hoffstedder finished tying her shoes and stood up, favoring her aching joint. “What do you mean, damage control?”
“We had a runner last night.”
“Good Lord,” the nurse responded. “Who was it?”
“Bronson,” I answered.
“Stella or Trey?”
“It was Trey. He must have gone through the gate and locked it back behind him. I didn’t see anything stacked around the walls, and I don’t think he could have scaled them without a ladder or something.”
“Probably not,” Mrs. Hoffstedder said, shaking her head and gazing into nothing. “He didn’t look strong enough for that.”
“People are going to see the remains. He was killed just outside the gate a few yards away.”
The nurse gave a somber nod as she retrieved the massive brass gate key from a rack near the door. “I’ll tell everyone. We’ll sign up volunteers to counsel and watch for other runners.”
Matt, Jordan, and Haley came toward us. “C’mon Casey, get a move on,” Jordan said, tossing me an empty duffel bag.
The nurse limped after us as we left the building and made our way to the front gate, which we kept locked from the inside at all times, even when the zombies weren’t active. Gang activity had grown in some areas near the school over the last few years, so even though we thought there were no other uninfected humans in the area, we couldn’t assume anyone who might wander in would be trustworthy.
The fortress that was Carver High now served as our home. After we learned the zombies came out at night, we spent the daylight hours securing the three outer gates. One was located at the front entrance of the building, and two were situated at both ends of the parking lot behind the school. So far, it seemed to be a viable plan, and the walls hadn’t been breached. Even if the zombies broke through the gates, all of the structures’ windows had bars on them. Normally, it sucked going to school in a building reminiscent of Sing Sing. On the other hand, it was good to know the bars were there when the zombies rammed the gates at night, their blood-chilling screams echoing in the deserted streets. When I was a freshman, a school shooting in a nearby district prompted to our county to replace the exterior glass doors with solid steel ones. Now, all our entries had bullet-proof glass panels. It was enough to allow for visibility while preventing a shooter from using it to gain entry.
“Be careful out there,” Mrs. Hoffstedder said as she pulled the gate closed behind us.
I patted the butt of the rifle that rested against the back of my hip. “Got it covered,” I said, hoping to convey more assurance than I felt. The assault weapon made me feel safer, despite knowing the odds were increasingly turning in favor of the undead. Their insatiable hunger was driving them closer to us. Our ammunition was limited, and the zombie infiltration seemed endless. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if help didn’t come soon for us.
“We’ll be back in a few hours,” I told the nurse. “Be ready for us.” We began walking at a brisk pace past the rows of houses in the Carver neighborhood.
When we reached the downtown area, the streets looked like a war zone. In fact, it was in a way. The military had come through to evacuate people. Burned out and broken-down cars lined the roadways.
We had walked for almost two hours, and my feet were beginning to throb in pain. My dollar store sneakers that had zero arch support weren’t the shoes of choice for food runs, but they were all I had. It made walking through the streets and houses more dangerous. I had to watch every step. As bad as the Carver neighborhood was, it was nothing compared to what we saw before us as we reached the edge of the business district. More bodies and parts of bodies were strewn across the sidewalks and roads.
I remembered it was evening rush hour when the cloud of toxic gases carrying wafted into the city. Initially, we’d been told it was chemical weapons, but over time, it became horrifyingly clear there was much the government hadn’t told us. The deadly cloud also carried a genetically engineered virus. The incident happened so fast that anyone caught in the open air was infected, and even though I knew people were likely to have died in the streets, nothing could have prepared me for the carnage I saw before me.
It made me angry that the military hadn’t been more forthcoming with what they were working with. According to Matt, there weren’t supposed to be any biological weapons stored at that facility, but apparently, the site had been the location of a covert initiative for years.
The virus they’d genetically engineered and was designed to kill, but we believed something had gone wrong. Our experiments on flesh samples taken from Baba left no other logical explanation. The viral
strain had obviously mutated into a deadly agent that caused a horrible sickness followed by a kind of death state that lasted a period from a few hours to a few days. The virus then incubated inside the body and caused it to become, well, reanimated is the best word I can think of. It caused cells to continuously die and regenerate until the host was completely destroyed. So far, fire, acid, and dismemberment were the only strategies we’d found successful in killing an infected host.
The zombies weren’t alive in the same sense we were and didn’t fully function like a human would. They were jerky and robot-like in their movements, but they were incredibly fast and strong. They screamed and wailed as if they were in constant pain.
The virus caused a hideous outbreak of bleeding blisters. It rotted the flesh, even though the victim was reanimated. In a way, the body would decompose as it walked among the living. Matt, Jordan, Harley, and I believed this is why they were always ravenous. The necro-regenerative cycle left them with an insatiable hunger.
As we approached the main street, the sun was high in the sky, casting a well-defined ray of light down the road between the tall skyscrapers. It was something we hadn’t planned on. The doorways to all the shops down the street were in shadows. We all stopped and stared.
“What do we do now?” Harley asked, dropping her duffle bags onto the asphalt.
“We can’t go into any of the buildings,” Matt observed. “What now, boss lady?” he said sarcastically, looking in my direction. “This was all your idea.”
Possibly because I was eighteen, a year older than the others, and because I was the only one who’d actually killed zombies, I had become the de facto leader of our group over the past few weeks. It was a role I didn’t particularly like. It meant that everything that went wrong was my fault.
Viral Series (Book 1): Viral Dawn [Extended Edition] Page 15