“Are a lot of the little kids attacked, or do they just seem to be infected?” I point at the pair.
“I think the majority of the tiny ones I’ve seen are just infected. I’m not sure how that works.” He shrugs. I’ve been seeing the same thing, and I don’t have a reason why either.
“Me too,” I agree.
Going from screen to screen, I think to myself that this is humanity now. Our violence is out for the entire world to see, but even our ability to love is visible in one undead hand curled around another.
What about our ability to innovate? How will that appear in the new species we’ve born?
“Do they sleep? Do they recover?” I ask. What I’m really thinking is do they do anything other than search for food? Will this be a desperate race to the end for survivors, or is this truly a new species?
“I haven’t seen any of them sleep yet. As to recovery, I don’t know yet.”
I realize he hasn’t been looking at the screen for a while. He drags my chair over to him by the arm and I laugh a bit, not sure what he’s doing.
He picks up my hand, running his fingers along my palm. Then before I realize what he’s doing, he leans in and kisses me.
It’s soft and gentle and not at all what I thought my first kiss might be like. He stops and pulls back, and asks quietly, “Okay?”
I nod, not really sure what to say. He kisses me again, and this time I’m prepared enough to worry about it. Am I doing this right? Is it okay? He doesn’t say anything, so I think so.
Eventually my nervousness fades, and his hands touch my face, and then we stop. I look at him, and his face is so close to mine, and his eyes are shining. I don’t want him to stop.
“You’re trembling,” he states, and I realize it’s true. I don’t know why, so I just nod. He leans in and kisses my forehead, then gives me a hug.
“Come on. Let’s get you back to bed.” He leads me back to my room.
“Did I do something wrong?” I ask quietly. He looks at me, startled, then smiles.
“No,” he says, and we kiss again. It’s nice and soft and slow, and I can’t imagine anything better.
“Now go to sleep, and tomorrow I’ll show you how to kill zombies with something other than a bat.”
Chapter 59
In the morning we’re back on the roof with Sam, setting up paper targets held in little metal boxes. I walk back a bit and he hands me something that looks a bit like my shotgun but doesn’t quite feel the same.
“What’s this?” I ask.
“It’s a BB gun.”
“I’ve been using a real gun.”
“And been missing, right?”
“Yeah, but –”
“Yeah, but I don’t want you missing and shooting your foot or me. A BB’s a lot easier to deal with than a bullet.”
“Yeah, okay.” I roll my eyes.
“Go ahead and show me how you’ve been shooting.”
I put the end of the gun against my shoulder, try to aim and then pull the trigger. There is some kick but it doesn’t exactly hurt; it’s startling more than anything. There’s a bit of noise, too.
We both walk to the target and kneel down to look at it. I pick it up and examine it, but I can’t find any sign of the BB.
“Where is it?”
“Out there somewhere.” He points off the end of the building. “You missed it completely.”
I make a face at him.
“Come on back and I’ll show you a few things.”
I walk back and act like I’m going to shoot again. Gently, he turns my waist a bit and then repositions my fingers.
“When it comes time to fire, gently squeeze the trigger. Another way to think of it is to roll the trigger back.” He stands behind me, looking over my shoulder as I fire again. We walk back to the target.
“Hey! I shot it!” I point proudly to the mark on the edge of the paper.
“Good job.” He smiles. “Now let’s try to improve that aim.”
We walk back and I shoot again. I do about the same, just in different spots, a couple of more times.
“So what do you think is throwing you off?” he asks.
Thinking about it, I raise the gun and aim. “It seems like every time I try to focus on the spot I want the gun wobbles a bit.”
“Very good. We think we hold things still, but really we don’t. We kind of shift all the time and just don’t see it. So try a very tight grip on the gun, and then before you’re about to shoot, hold your breath.”
I tighten my grip, line up my sight, and take a huge, deep breath. Then I slowly squeeze the trigger. I hurry to the target, my heart jumping from the excitement. This time, my BB hit the circle around the inner ring – much closer to the bulls-eye than ever before.
“Much better!” Sam says, and I grin.
He sets up another target, and then we both shoot for a while. By the time we finish, I’m hitting the bulls-eye every once in a while.
“Thank you, Sam! That’s much better!”
“You’re a good student.” He smiles. “Now before we go in, let’s try one more time, with a real gun, pointing at a real target.”
“Do you mean one of the zombies?”
He nods.
“Wow, okay.”
He leads me back over to the far corner with the picnic table. On the ground are more guns, and this time they look more like what I’ve seen in movies. Some of them even have scopes. Sam hands me one.
“What is this called?”
“Do you really want to know, and will you really remember it?”
I think about it and then grin. “No, not really. Kind of like with cars.”
“Uh-huh, that’s what I thought. It’s the pretty black gun, then,” he says.
“Dork.” I give him a dirty look, but he just grins.
“Look through the scope first.”
I comply, and point at the zombies. Oh, God. I can see them pretty well. I scan the crowd, flowing through the slow ones until I come to a male that’s standing still. His fingers grip the fence, and except for the big hunk of flesh hanging from his cheek he reminds me a lot of my third grade teacher. I didn’t like my third grade teacher much.
“Find one?”
“Yeah,” I tell him while trying not to move much.
“Then squeeze the trigger. The kick will be a bit more.”
I slowly squeeze and he’s right; there’s definitely more of an impact on my shoulder. “Did I get him?”
“Look through the scope.”
“I think I got him in the shoulder.” I point. Sam borrows the scope from me and follows where I’m pointing.
“Not bad. Not bad at all. I think you’re going to be good at this.”
“Thanks.” I like that look in his eyes, the one that says I did something right.
Then it hits me. There’s something missing. Some one missing.
“Hey, where’s Cassie?”
Chapter 60
I lead the way down to the main living area.
“Cassie!” I call. The family room is deserted so I keep going. I walk back to the little PSP room but it’s dark too. Sam’s a couple of feet behind me as I head to her room. The light’s still on, the twin bed’s unmade and her backpack is open and on top of her pillow.
“Well, her stuff is still here, so she hasn’t like left-left, but she’s gone,” I say.
“Anything missing?” Sam asks, standing in the doorway.
A lot of her stuff is still packed, but I can see her PSP charging on the brown chest of drawers to my left. I root around in the backpack.
“I don’t notice anything missing.” I sit back and think. Where would she have gone? I absentmindedly start playing with my necklaces and my fingers touch the USB drive.
“You said this used to be an academy, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Would they have science stuff? Like science classrooms, labs, biology labs?”
“Yeah. They actually did some research
here, too.”
“That’s it!” I grin. “She’s headed to the labs.”
“Why? What would a kid want with a lab?”
I realize this might not be something I should tell him. Weird, I let him kiss me, but I’m not sure I can trust him with the truth about Cassie’s dad. What if he gets all angry and tries to hurt her? I lean back on my hands and look up at him. Better to tell him now instead of when we’re trying to find her and he has a gun.
“Cassie’s dad developed The Shot.”
“The Shot? The one that was supposed to save everybody?”
“Yeah.” I study his face, looking for signs of anger. I don’t know him very well, but I don’t see any.
“Wow.” He sits down heavily next to me on the bed.
“Yeah. A… crowd came to the house afterwards. He had a caretaker sneak Cassie out the back while he went out front. He died saving her.”
“God, that sucks.”
“Yeah. Please be careful when talking about it with her, okay? It hit her pretty hard. I think they were really close. And don’t tell anyone else.”
“I won’t,” he says, still in thought. “So, when you say they were close, was she there when he was developing The Shot?”
“Yeah, for part of it.” I’m not sure how much to tell him, so I decide to leave most of it up to Cassie. “She thinks he was close.”
“To a cure?”
“No.” I shake my head. “First, to prevent people from catching it. Then the next step would be a cure.”
“Wouldn’t the infected just die from their wounds?”
“We don’t know. Probably. But it might help some of the kids who don’t have any wounds.”
“Good point.” He nods. “So, we should probably find her and help her out, huh?”
“Definitely.” I reply, relieved he isn’t angry about Cassie’s connection to The Shot. “I’m worried about her being out there alone. Let’s bring guns, okay?”
“Hey, look who likes having a gun now.” He smiles. “Yeah, that’s cool, but you have to go in front so you don’t shoot me accidentally.”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, okay, whatever. You just don’t want to be the first in the door.”
“Well, why should I? I’ve got a sharpshooter with me now.”
“Uh-huh,” I say. “Come on.” I grab his hand and pull him to his feet. Funny how it always takes me so long to get used to touching people, except for Sam.
He leads me to a room full of weapons, giving me a handgun to slip into the waist of my jeans and a shotgun, as well.
“Don’t shoot your foot,” he orders. I give him a dirty look and then we head out.
Chapter 61
We walk on the emptied pathways of the former academy. Everything is silent, ghostly, like at any moment a bell might ring and a bunch of students will come streaming out, chatting and laughing.
“Where do you think the lab’s at?”
Sam shrugs in response. We walk quietly for a few minutes until we reach a crossroads. We randomly pick a direction and wander up and down the paths like that for twenty minutes until we find a four-story tan brick building with a set of double doors open at the front.
“Want to try in there?” I ask and Sam nods.
Inside, it’s cool and dark with all of the doors closed and the blinds drawn. Sam digs into his pocket, pulls out a small flashlight and clicks it on.
It looks like any school, with classroom after classroom. I even peek into some of them, but Cassie isn’t there.
“Cassie?” I call out tentatively, but don’t hear anything back. About a block into the school, we hit a set of very wide, stately stairs, with a branch leading up and another leading down. Taking a wild guess, I head down the stairs, Sam at my side.
“So, who taught you to shoot?” I ask.
“My Dad, back when he cared,” Sam answers, staring straight ahead. I don’t even know what to say to that. Sorry your dad became a dick?
“What happened?”
“After he and my mom divorced, he didn’t really want a lot to do with us. Same old story.”
“New family?”
He shakes his head. “New career. Not a lot of time for us anymore.” He shrugs, like it doesn’t matter.
“My parents divorced, too. My Dad moved out to California. Divorce sucks.” It’s all I can think of to say. Sam nods.
We turn a corner, and at the end of the hall is a Jeep parked sideways against an open door. I walk closer and I can see blood on the windshield and on the side of the door.
“What the hell?” Sam asks. He vaults into the Jeep. “Keys are still in it.”
I don’t see anything in the room beyond, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of explanation as to why the vehicle is here. Was it to keep something out, or something in? If so, it wouldn’t make sense that the door’s wide open.
Why did they leave it this way? What happened?
I have the feeling that I will go through life seeing signs of others without ever finding out what happened to them.
Sam can't open the door on the other side, and we can’t jump over the thing, so we decide to crawl under it. The floor is wet, not from blood but from something else, and it does look like someone else scuttled through. I’m hoping it was Cassie; I would hate to go through this muck twice for no reason.
It’s a bit darker under the Jeep, but I can see a bit into the next room. The laminated floors look like they could be a part of a cafeteria, but that just could be my perspective.
Something grabs my foot, and I let out a short sound that isn’t quite a scream. I twist and find Sam laughing.
“You jerk!” I kick at him and he just laughs harder.
“That was a great scream,” he says.
I finish crawling out from under the Jeep and he follows.
“Yeah, and I’m sure everything in the surrounding area heard me, too.” I cross my arms and cock a hip.
“Nothing’s in here.” He shrugs.
And that’s when I hear the sound of pounding feet.
Chapter 62
“Fast ones,” I say, just as zombies pour into the room from two doors in front of us – one on the east and one on the west side.
“Run!” Sam shouts, pointing at a door north of us.
The zombies hit the middle of the room the same time as me. On my right side is a young woman in a long brown skirt and a tan top. Her throat’s ripped out, but she doesn’t seem to notice. On my left is a huge man – made of muscle instead of fat – who has hair so short I can’t tell the color. He’s wearing dirty jeans and a formerly white t-shirt, and is bitten all over, like it took a pack of zombies to take him out.
He grabs my arm so hard it yanks me fully around, his grip so strong it hurts. Brown, shining eyes burn into me and his mouth opens wide. Without really thinking about it, I raise my hand and find I’m holding a gun. The whole thing feels like a reflex, like jumping on a bike. I put it right to his open mouth and pull the trigger.
The sound seems loud in this enclosed room, and I don’t see the zombies that must be near me. I just see the light in his eyes go away and feel things splatter me.
Something else grabs my arm and I scream, whirling around with the gun in my hand. Sam’s eyes are wide but he holds up one hand.
“Come on!” he shouts, and then releases me so he can shoot the woman closing in. Together, we race to the other side and through the big open doorway.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Sam yells, as we both realize there isn’t a door to close. We run down the hallway, zombies streaming after us, Sam’s shoes squeaking on the floor. I gesture with my gun to a door at the end of the hallway. He nods.
“Go faster.”
I speed up with my last reserves as he slows down a bit. I put the gun in my other hand and yank on the doorknob, praying it isn’t locked. It turns and I run through, holding it open for Sam.
“Come on!”
He shoots one near him, kicks another, and then races past me. I
slam the door shut and throw the bolt home just as a body thuds into it.
“Good job.” Sam grins. “In normal times, never run with a gun when the safety’s off.”
I roll my eyes and try to hide the fact that my heart is trying to jump out of my chest.
“Sure.”
“Come on,” he says, and we lope off down the hallway.
“She can’t have come down here,” I tell him.
“Why not?”
I motion backwards. “Zombie hell?”
“She was probably quiet.”
“Hey, I wasn’t the one who grabbed someone’s leg.”
“No, you’re just the one who screamed.” He grins. I push him so he stumbles, and he laughs again.
“Hey, I think we’re in the right place.” I motion to the room to my right. The open door shows what looks like a chemistry lab from school – black desks, beakers and all.
We keep going and the labs start to get nicer and more sophisticated. Then I hear the soft humming of a Lady Gaga song.
“Cassie,” I call out, and run in the direction of the song.
Chapter 63
I find her in a white lab which looks similar to the one I saw in her house. There’s a long, steel table that resembles an autopsy table and near that is a narrow hospital bed with straps attached. There’s a sink about five feet behind the bed, and then a row of tables to the right.
Cassie’s back is to us and she’s rifling through a set of drawers.
“Cassie,” I say and her shoulders hunch. She stops and turns around. “What are you doing here? Why didn’t you tell me you were coming here?”
On Our Own Page 15