I scanned the storefronts and realized Matt had a point. We couldn’t be sure that zombies wouldn’t be lurking in the shadows inside the buildings, and we had to find food. Otherwise, we wasted another precious day.
“We go on,” I said simply. “We don’t have a choice.” I reached into the pocket of my black jeans and pulled out a hair band. I pulled my blonde tangles into a ponytail. I didn’t want it getting in the way if we had an encounter with the undead. “Are you crazy Casey?” Jordan questioned in disbelief. “That’s too risky.”
“Look, if we go back empty-handed, we’ll run completely out of food in days,” I reasoned. “It’s best that we keep stocked up.” I regarded them thoughtfully. I could tell no one wanted to go. “Come on guys. We’ve come this far. We can pick a store, run in, and get out fast. I’ll cover us with the rifle.”
Reluctantly, Harley stepped forward. “Casey’s right. We don’t have a choice in this.” I was proud of her. Harley was beginning to take a stand, something she rarely did.
“All right,” Matt said. “I’ll do it, but we’ve got to come up with a better plan in the future.”
“I agree,” Jordan added. “I’m not interested in suicide missions.”
We walked further down the strip of light in the middle of the street, surveying the buildings as we passed. All of the storefronts showed signs of looting. Windows were shattered, and doors were smashed.
“Looks like somebody beat us to it,” Jordan quipped. He gave a derisive snort.
“Yeah,” Matt agreed. “Looks like they’ve been ransacked by survivors. Probably weeks ago.”
“Looks like everyone’s gone now though,” Harley uttered in a tone barely above a whisper. “They’re all either dead, or they’ve become zombies.”
We passed what had been a clothing store and a shoe store. I saw the outline of The Bingham Hotel a few blocks ahead, and I stopped walking. I hadn’t been prepared for it. My stomach tightened, and I felt stinging pains in my lower eyelids as they strained to push out tears that wouldn’t come.
“What is it, Casey?” Jordan asked, stepping closer to my side. “You okay?”
I couldn’t open my mouth to speak. I knew if I did, it would be an ugly cry and not the cool and collected response they needed to hear.
Jordan turned to see what I was looking at. “Oh damn,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“What is it?” Matt asked.
“That’s where her mom works,” Harley said, gesturing toward the hotel. “Worked,” she corrected herself.
“We don’t have to do this,” Jordan told me.
I jerked my chin forward in response and continued walking down the street. We finally reached a diner. The windows and doors on it were also broken and smashed, but it seemed to be the most promising place to start looking for food.
“Let’s start here,” I said. “I’ll go in first.” I gingerly stepped into the shadowed doorway. The restaurant was a long, narrow room lined with booths and a service counter on the left. The kitchen was probably behind the closed door in the back. Tables and chairs were overturned in the center aisle. Broken glass was everywhere. And of course, there were bodies. Dried blood, probably both zombie and human, stained the walls and floor.
“See anything?” Jordan asked.
I shushed him with a finger to my lips. I listened for any sound that might indicate we were not alone. When I heard nothing, I motioned for them to follow me. They moved close beside me. “We’ll have to go to the kitchen in the back,” I whispered.
We moved toward the door, a metal swinging type. I looked through the small window mounted to the metal and peered into the room beyond. It was darker inside, but I could make out a stove and a steam table. I nodded to the others and slowly opened the door.
We moved in further. Around us, work tables loaded with rotting food stood where they’d been left. Flies buzzed around, lighting on the rancid meats and other unidentifiable waste. Pots and pans were scattered across the floor, and we stepped over them carefully, trying to move as quietly as possible. What was left of a man who must have been the cook was lying on the floor, covered in blood. From what I could tell, there was nothing useful in the kitchen. Another door loomed near the back of the room beside a walk-in freezer. We made our way toward it. Like the previous door, this one had a small window, and I could see that inside it was considerably darker.
“Must be storage,” Matt whispered.
I nodded, “Let’s go in.” I carefully opened the door, my heart pounding in my chest. Inside, we stood listening. After a moment, I moved forward. I could see shelves in the dim interior. Some still held large, institutional sized cans on them, but it was impossible to tell what the labels said.
“All right,” I said. “Just fill your bags with whatever you can fit in. We’ll sort it out later.” “Looks like we hit the jackpot,” Matt whispered.
“Don’t count on it,” I warned. “Let’s hope it’s not all tomato sauce. What I wouldn’t give for a nice big can of chili.”
I was grateful that we almost filled all our bags, but they were very heavy. I bent down to zip my pack closed when I felt the skin on the back of my neck start to crawl. “Shhh,” I whispered. We all froze in the darkness. “I thought I heard something,” I breathed. We stood stone still in our places for several long moments. “Guess it was just my nerves,” I breathed.
“Yeah, well, let’s just get out of here and get back,” Jordan said.
We hoisted our bags onto our shoulders and walked lop-sided back toward the kitchen. It was difficult to manage the bulky load of cans and carry my rifle at the same time. “Jordan,” I nudged him. “Take my bag. I can’t carry it and the gun. I won’t be able to shoot if I need to.”
“Casey,” he whined, “I’ve got all I can carry. You’ll have to manage.”
“Don’t argue with me Jordan. I just need you to carry it until we get into the light.”
Suddenly the door slammed open against the wall, and a dark figure stood blocking the way out. Harley screamed. Instinctively I dropped my bag and lifted my gun to my shoulder to take aim.
“Hold it!” a male voice yelled. “Don’t shoot. I’m a human too.”
I kept my finger on the trigger, ready to squeeze. “Who are you and what are you doing here?” I asked.
“I’m Kyle Carter. I live here,” he said. “I could ask you the same thing. What are you doing in my, um--house?”
“What’s it look like, dude? We’re getting food,” Matt said.
“I’d feel a lot better if you put that gun down,” Kyle said.
“We don’t know if we can trust him,” Harley said in a small voice.
“Back into the light,” I said. “We’ll settle this outside. Just walk out, and don’t make any sudden moves, Kyle Carter.”
We inched our way back through the kitchen and into the dining area. I kept the gun on
Kyle. We made it into the shaft of sunlight that had narrowed considerably since we went inside. It took my vision a second to adjust to the light as I carefully looked Kyle up and down. He was dressed in military fatigues. I circled around him looking for signs of injury or infection. I didn’t see any blood. There were no blisters that I could see. “What are you doing here?” I asked. “You’re military. Why weren’t you evacuated?”
“Evacuated?” he laughed without humor in his voice. “Very few people were evacuated from here. When the army came through, we got orders to consider everyone infected. We were told to shoot everyone. What few the army didn’t kill, the zombies got.”
“Everyone? Even the uninfected?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice steady. Inside, I felt my chest constrict, and for a moment, I stopped breathing.
“Yes, everyone.”
Again, the peculiar pain of empty tear ducts stabbed at my eyes as I considered my mother’s odds of survival had dropped to zero. Was this why she hadn’t called or responded to my texts?
“If that’s true, then why are you still he
re, and how did you survive?” Jordan asked, his voice suspicious.
“I was in the diner when it all went down. I thought we were here on a humanitarian mission. I heard the commander on my earpiece telling us to regard all civilians as diseased and to shoot to kill. Soldiers everywhere started opening fire on the civilians. Everyone in the diner ran outside into the street, panicking. At first, I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I couldn’t just kill the people I was sworn to protect. I tried to push my way out, but I couldn’t get through the crowd, so I turned around and went to the back. That’s where I found the walk-in refrigerator.
I went inside and closed the door. I hid there until the noise stopped.”
“Dude, if that was true, you would have frozen to death,” Matt said. Jordan shook his head in agreement.
“It was cold in there for a while, but then the power went out. I’ve been bolting myself into the freezer every night since then.”
“Well, just go back to your freezer G.I. Joe and we’ll be moving on,” Jordan said, turning to leave.
“You can’t take my food,” Kyle said. “That’s all I have.”
“I think we can take it,” Matt said defensively. “We do have the gun after all.”
“Wait,” I said. “You can come with us.”
“What Casey? We don’t know this guy,” Harley said.
“We know he’s not infected,” I answered. “Besides, we need all the able-bodied help we can get. In case you haven’t noticed, we have a lot to carry.” All three of them glared at me as if I had lost my mind. I looked at Kyle, still keeping the gun aimed toward him. “Do you want to go with us? We have a safe place. There are others there.”
“What and leave all this behind?” Kyle smirked. “Guess I have nothing to lose.” Matt reluctantly handed Kyle two bulging duffel bags.
“Let’s go,” I said, looking at the sun that was now hanging low. “We don’t have much time.”
With the heavy load, we walked back toward the Carver neighborhood at a much slower pace. I felt the need to stay ahead of the group to motivate them to keep moving. Kyle walked just ahead of me, and I kept the gun ready. We could probably trust him, but I wasn’t ready just yet to let my guard down. The sky was clouding up, and it looked like it may storm. As I expected, Matt was the first to jog up to my pace to complain.
“I just don’t understand why we have to bring this guy along with us. It’s another mouth to feed,” he grumbled.
“It’s another back to share the work. It’s not that hard to understand,” I said. What I didn’t say was that Kyle was another human life, and right now any human life was valuable if we were to survive. That argument would be lost on Matt, who saw everything from the perspective of logic, math, and science. Maybe I couldn’t make a huge difference in this nightmare but giving Kyle a chance at survival was one small thing I had the power to do. He probably wouldn’t have survived much longer downtown on his own. There would be too many zombies there. And if the military ever found out that he disobeyed orders, who knew what could happen to him.
“Can’t we slow down?” Harley asked, running to catch up with me and Matt.
“No, Harley. Look at the sky. It’s getting darker,” I stopped to face her. “We don’t know exactly how dark it needs to be for the zombies come out, and I don’t want us taking chances.” Kyle turned and came back to take Harley’s bags. “I’ll carry these for a while,” he said, pulling the bags onto his shoulders. He was in good shape and seemed to have no difficulty with the extra weight. I gave Matt an ‘I told you so’ look.
We were almost through Carver when it started to rain. The sky was growing darker. A flash of lightning shot through the clouds. “Move it, guys!” I shouted as I started to jog. I could see the gate of the high school down the street ahead of us. “We’re almost there.”
Without warning a scream sliced the air. My stomach turned. It wasn’t human. “Run!” I shouted. “Drop the bags and run!”
They didn’t need telling twice. That is, except for Kyle, who ran full force, still carrying his and Harley’s bags. Another scream sounded. This time it was human. I turned to see Harley falling to the ground, a zombie right behind her. “Keep running!” I yelled to the others as I ran to help Harley to her feet.
“Run Harley!” I yelled as I pushed her forward and took aim at the zombie. Harley ran a few steps and faltered again.
“I can’t run. My ankle!” she cried. “Get inside!”
“I’m not leaving you!” I yelled. I pulled the trigger and fired, but nothing happened.
“Damn it!” I cursed.
“Casey, run!” It was Kyle. He had come back to help. He was looking around on the ground for something to use as a weapon.
“No! You run!” I yelled at him. I hated having to fight zombies. It was best to avoid it when possible. Killing the undead, I supposed, was the most unholy, stomach-turning experience you could have on this earth, but I didn’t need Kyle’s help.
The zombie barreled toward Harley, and I sped toward it. I hurled the stock of the rifle at its head. Its rotting flesh slid off its face and flew through the air, but it didn’t stop moving toward Harley. I aimed for its head again but missed, landing the butt of the gun into its back. It crumbled under the blow, and smelly black blood spewed onto my arms and chest. It finally turned toward me and swiped at me with its tattered arms. I lifted the gun above my head and brought it down hard on the zombie’s head. It fell forward onto me, knocking me to the ground. I swung wildly at it, gouging its face with the gun barrel.
“Casey no!” Harley screamed.
Suddenly, Kyle appeared over me with a large rock. He smashed it into the back of the zombie’s head, and it fell still.
I scrambled out from beneath the putrid body and pushed it off of me. It slid onto the ground with a gurgling noise. For a moment I stared at my clothes. My jeans and my top were wet with the monster’s blood.
“Casey! Are you okay?” Harley asked.
I didn’t feel any cuts. “I think I’m okay,” I said. “I’ve got to get out of these clothes.” I ripped my shirt off and threw it to the ground. Forgetting modesty altogether, I pulled my jeans off to get the infected blood off. Kyle gave me his shirt. I slipped it on, and it was long enough to cover me at least. “Thanks,” I told him.
“It was an old shirt anyway,” he said.
“Not for the shirt,” I said. “For killing the zombie. It almost had me.”
“Almost?” he asked, his face concerned. “From where I was, it looked a little more serious than that.”
“We need to go,” I said, brushing him aside. “We’ve got to help Harley.”
Kyle and I each draped one of Harley’s arms around our shoulders and lifted her up so she could stand on her good leg. We half-carried her to the gate where Matt, Jordan, and Nurse Hoffstedder waited to let us in. They pulled open the gate, and we slipped inside. Jordan locked it behind us.
“What happened?” asked Mrs. Hoffstedder as she looked us over. “Was that a zombie out there? Where are your clothes, Casey?”
“Never mind that,” I said. “We need to take care of Harley first.”
The nurse looked as if she wanted to say something but didn’t. Instead, she followed the others into the building. I was glad. I didn’t want to tell her about the blood getting all over me, or she might put me in some kind of quarantine. I looked back toward the gate and listened. I could hear the wailing beginning, and yet the sun wasn’t quite down. “Aren’t you coming in?” Kyle called from the doorway.
I walked toward him. “They’re coming out earlier tonight,” I said.
“Yes, I know,” he said.
Chapter 7
“I can’t be certain without an x-ray,” Nurse Hoffstedder said as she carefully examined Harley’s ankle. “But I think it is broken. I don’t think she’d healed completely from the sprain she had last month.” Harley rested on the table in the nurse’s makeshift office in the gym. Fortunately, the nurse usu
ally purchased supplies at the beginning of the school year to last for the duration. That translated to having almost anything she would need on hand for athletic injuries. She went to her storage room and returned with a splint and some pain meds. “You’ll need to stay off of this foot and keep the leg elevated. It really should have a cast and ice, but this is the best we can do for now.” She fitted the splint around Harley’s ankle and foot. Harley drew in a sharp breath in pain. The nurse handed her some pain tablets and a bottle of water. “Take two of these, every four hours,” she said, handing her the medicine bottle. “Get the wheelchair out of the closet, Casey. She can use that as long as she needs it to get around in the gym.”
I pulled the wheelchair out of the closet and unfolded it. Kyle and Jordan helped lift Harley off the table and placed her in the chair. The nurse extended the leg brace on the chair and lifted the injured leg into it.
By the time we wheeled Harley back to our corner of the gym, it was dark outside, and the storm had cleared. The zombies had begun their nightly ritual of banging on the gates. Although they weren’t really intelligent, they weren’t completely unaware of what was going on either. They seemed to know there were humans inside the school building, and they remembered it every night. I watched them through a window in the moonlight, clamoring over each other to get to the gate. Several of them started fighting and clawing at each other, vying to get closer. One of them was pummeling the lock on the gate with its fist from between the bars. Bits and pieces of its hand were falling off, some landing inside the gate. It freaked me out when one of them did something unexpected like that. It was as if they were learning, or maybe they were remembering information they’d learned before they turned. It was hard to tell.
Viral Series (Book 1): Viral Dawn [Extended Edition] Page 16