Salvisa’s gaze drifted to Michelle’s face. Her look of hatred, the one she had started wearing in the car, had only intensified. For the first time, Salvisa blanched at her look, as it had gotten to a point that would intimidate even that crotchety old man. The fear in his face lasted only a few seconds though, before it was replaced by a new resolve.
“On second thought,” he said, smiling, “I’d just as soon not have to look over my shoulder at every opportunity, wondering when this lovely young lady is going to catch up with me and put a bullet in my back. Probably better for my life expectancy if I do just let you guys go now. No sense in prolonging the inevitable, after all.”
Salvisa stopped speaking then. Just as he straightened his arm to take his shot, the gun pointed at Michelle’s forehead, he was grabbed from behind. A legless zombie, pulling itself along by its arms, had reached Salvisa and seized the old man’s ankle, taking a bite through the man’s sock.
“Shit!” Salvisa cried out, his attention diverted. He whirled around and shot downward, ending that zombie’s dreadful existence.
In the second Salvisa was looking away, Michelle and Donnie both managed to get their own weapons back out, gaining the upper hand. It didn’t matter, though, as Salvisa dropped his gun as soon as he was sure the crawling zombie was done crawling.
“Goddamn thing didn’t die in the blast,” he said, his voice suddenly full of grief. “Just started crawling.”
Salvisa knelt down, pulling up his pant leg and pushing down his sock. Even from several feet away and in the darkness, Donnie saw the blood that was flowing from the wound and knew that their lives had been saved again, this time by one of the zombies.
The old man slowly, with his shoulders sagging, pulled the backpack back off his shoulders and let it fall to the ground. He followed it down, hitting his knees.
“I’m dead,” Salvisa said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I’m dead.”
Michelle, without waiting for Salvisa to say anything else, leveled her gun at the back of his head. “And not a moment too soon,” she said, pulling the trigger. Salvisa pitched forward, dead.
Donnie moved up and grabbed Salvisa’s discarded pack from the ground. He scanned the area to make sure there were no other partial zombies coming toward them, but it seemed clear. Instead, Donnie grabbed Michelle’s hand and turned her attention toward the trio of buildings he had seen, toward Morgan College. Behind the college, the sun was just starting to rise, and the sky was flecked with orange and yellow bits.
“He was right,” Michelle said, also noting the dawn. “Death followed the day.”
Chapter 12: Tears
Amanda’s face flashed in Andy’s head. Roger was bearing down on him, and he knew he should shoot, but Amanda’s face was burned into his mind.
Logically, this was a different situation, and Andy knew it. But the message wouldn’t get to his hand, wouldn’t get to his trigger finger. He was sure that this was no longer Roger, and he was sure he could safely eliminate this zombie without error, but he could clearly remember being certain that Amanda was a goner as well, being sure that she was just as doomed as Roger.
And so Andy stood there, a gun in one hand, liquor bottle in the other, as his former companion charged toward him, one arm reaching out, teeth gnashing, blood soaking every inch of its clothing, and watched. Try as he might, his brain couldn’t convince his arm to aim, couldn’t convince his hand to fire.
He stood there, frozen, until Roger’s body was within ten feet or so of him. The other zombies were still untangling themselves from one another, so for a brief moment, the older man was the only threat, and still Andy could do nothing to stop him.
His savior came in the form of a gunshot from a few feet to Andy’s left. The shot rang out, and the zombie that had been Roger pitched to the side as a fountain of blood gushed out from a wound on the very top of its head.
Andy snapped to attention then, the spell of the face broken by Lowensen’s saving shot. He raised his gun from its place at his side and looked back at Roger’s body. Lowensen’s shot, while well-timed and helpful, hadn’t been a kill shot, grazing the zombie’s head. Even as Andy looked, the zombie was starting to pull itself up from the floor, made more difficult by its lack of a usable right arm.
Andy, thankful for the second the zombie’s injury gave him to focus, trained his gun at Roger’s head. As it struggled to get up, its attention was still trained on Andy, and it dove for him, falling flat again, as its teeth bit at nothing. Its lunge put it only a foot from Andy’s legs. He had to act or be ready to join Roger in wherever his soul was now.
His arm finally responsive to his brain’s instructions, Andy trained his weapon on the zombie’s face, which was still facing his own. Just as it pulled itself up on its left arm for another attempt, Andy fired, hitting the zombie right between the eyes.
A hole opened up on Roger’s face, and the zombie fell again. This time, it remained motionless.
Andy continued to stare at the man’s body for a moment, before new gunshots from Lowensen’s gun again snapped him out of his daze. He whirled back and saw that the tangled zombies in the doorway had finally worked out their kinks and were entering the room en masse. The teacher had hit a couple, but they were entering faster than any one man with a handgun could fight back.
Andy knew their plan needed to get going soon. He cocked his arm and launched the bottle of bourbon at the head of the lead zombie. His aim was true, and the bottle exploded in the zombie’s face, sending glass, alcohol and blood in all directions. The zombie fell backward, colliding with a couple of its attack-mates. Andy knelt down and grabbed their last bottle from by his feet before joining Lowensen near the exit door. As he moved, he toppled what desks were still standing.
“Thanks,” he said. He owed his life to the teacher, which was jarring to admit after all the hatred he had been holding for the man for the past day. “You ready?”
Lowensen nodded, already brandishing his barbecue-style lighter in front of him. Andy pulled out his own. They flicked their still-lit cigarettes into the desk pile, then used the lighters to ignite the articles of liquor-soaked clothing and curtain nearest them. The fire started more quickly and easily than Andy could have imagined, and the room lit up.
The first few zombies were already rounding the main part of the pile and trying to push their way through the debris. Andy, now fully out of his Roger-inspired trance, fired at them, taking down three.
The two of them turned then, leaving the classroom sanctum behind for the last time, and sprinted down the hallway toward the kids and their exit.
Celia, down at the other end of the hallway, had heard the gunshots — at least eight were fired over the span of twenty seconds, and she knew that, one way or another, they would be leaving Morgan College once and for all within a matter of minutes.
While Brandon, Travis, Stacy, and Celia stood against the wall, as though they were in a police lineup, Simon stood a few feet out, his gun clenched in his hand, his head jutting out in front of him, peering through the now-open doorway, as though those extra couple inches would enable him to see and hear what was happening better.
As they waited to see who would emerge — Celia’s father and Lowensen or the zombies — Celia stepped forward too, joining Simon at his perch. She sidled up next to him and put her hand on his arm.
“It’ll be okay,” she said, hoping she sounded surer than she felt. “We’ll get out of here.”
At Celia’s first touch, Simon’s tension had relaxed a little. Celia wasn’t at all sure of what she was saying, but she thought Simon was seconds away from bursting, and wanted to do whatever she could to relax him. Her father had always told her that being too on edge was just as dangerous as being too relaxed — either one would throw you off. It was best, in a tense situation, to be yourself, as you are yourself when preparing. Always best to recreate as much of the preparation as possible, Andy had always said.
Celia pulled her hand away from Simon and th
ought she saw him tense up again almost immediately, as though her touch was the only thing that kept him calm, and so she returned her hand to his arm, holding it there this time.
The five teens stood there, waiting, wondering how long it would take the two men to reach them. The question was answered about twenty seconds later, as Andy first, then Lowensen, rounded the corner, coming into view through the “FACULTY ONLY” doorway. Lowensen had his gun in his right hand, while her father had his gun in one hand and a bottle of liquor in the other.
“Go!” Andy screamed. “Open the hatch!”
Celia turned behind them and saw that Travis was already climbing the ladder. Simon turned to help with the exit, and Celia started to join him. One last look back at the two men charging their direction revealed that, some thirty yards behind Andy and Lowensen, some zombies had made it through the flames and were charging after them.
Travis got the hatch open, and he moved aside to let Stacy exit first. Once she was out, Travis and Simon helped Brandon, with his injured ankle, climb the ladder to freedom. From her spot still in the hallway, Celia heard gunshots fire from above, presumably from Stacy’s gun as she felled whatever zombies hadn’t come charging into the school already.
Simon and Travis quickly followed Brandon outside, and Celia started to go as well. She stopped briefly to look back at her dad, who had stopped near her and was struggling to remove his button-down shirt.
“Dad?” she said. “What are you doing?”
Lowensen leapt onto the ladder as she stood there with her father. Andy put the bottle down on the ground and finished removing his shirt, then picked the bottle back up and uncapped it. “Go!” he yelled at his daughter.
Celia nodded, realizing that this was not the time to question her father. She too climbed the ladder and exited the hatchway, into the morning air.
Down below, Andy stuffed his shirt as far down into the bottle of bourbon as he could, then upended the bottle, soaking his shirt with the liquid. That done — and with the zombies gaining on him quickly — he pulled out the lighter again and lit the shirt. It went up just as quickly as the fire in the classroom had, and Andy flung the flaming bottle at the zombies, repeating his accuracy from before.
The bottle slammed into the first zombie’s face, exploding on impact and lighting the body, and its two closest followers, immediately. Andy had hit the zombie just as it passed through the doorway, meaning the three burning corpses would be at least a temporary obstacle for any behind them as they negotiated through the doorway.
With one last look at the inside of the school building, Andy at last grabbed onto the ladder and climbed out, joining his daughter and everyone else.
Outside, he saw that there were still a handful of zombies in the general area, but Simon and Stacy were busy disposing of them. Lowensen, meanwhile, was already in the parking lot, only fifteen or so feet away. Lowensen had climbed into the driver’s seat of the nearest car and started it — whether it was his car or just an abandoned one that still held its keys, Andy didn’t know. The teacher drove the car over to them, stopping it with a tire directly atop the tiny, almost invisible opening to the school they had just exited. He killed the engine and emerged from the car.
“We did it!” Celia cried out, half in shock.
“Not yet we didn’t,” Andy said grimly. “We still have to find ourselves somewhere to be. But you all did well.” He locked eyes with Lowensen and nodded, as the teacher nodded back. “Very well.”
“Come on!” Travis cried out, already running across the parking lot. “We’ve got to get out of here!”
Andy trotted after Travis, stopping to help Brandon as they moved to the cars. The area, it seemed, was clear. Off in the distance, he saw flames flowing out of the doorway to the classroom, but they seemed to be confined to that area, and no zombies were in sight. Despite his warning to Celia, it seemed she was right. They had done it.
The others started to follow Travis. Celia and Simon led the way, followed by Stacy, then Andy and Brandon, with Lowensen bringing up the rear. None of them stowed their guns away, but no one was exactly at the ready either.
Travis, moving faster than the rest of them, passed an abandoned car that wasn’t quite in its space and turned to look behind him as he walked. He kept moving forward but hollered back. “Hurry up!” he called. “Come on!”
Just as Travis turned back forward, though, he tripped over something none of the rest of them could see from their vantage point, and he fell to the ground.
Celia and Simon ran forward to see what had happened. Before they could get there, though, Travis screamed out in pain, a scream that came too late to be mere pain from the fall. And the scream continued as Celia and Simon moved forward.
They kept going, approaching a car Celia felt sure she recognized. Sure enough, when they get close enough to see next to the vehicle, she saw why Travis was screaming. The car was sitting on top of a zombie, pinning it to the ground by its lower body. It couldn’t have moved toward the school with the rest of its ilk, but it presently was having no problem at all biting down on Travis’ stomach as he lay there wailing, either too surprised or too pained to get away.
As soon as Celia saw the scene, she jumped back. Only her hand, clenched tightly in Simon’s kept her from running in the opposite direction. Simon, though, reacted more helpfully, raising his gun and quickly firing off a shot, killing the zombie where it sat.
Seconds later, the rest of their group got to where they were and saw the same thing they had seen.
Travis, still crying in pain from his spot on the ground, scrambled away from the corpse. He leaned against the car’s rear tire and sobbed into his own lap as he held his arms tight around his stomach, fighting a losing battle trying to keep his blood inside him.
After a few seconds, he looked up at the group, tears soaking his face. “Please,” he said. “Please, I feel okay. Please, please don’t shoot me. I’m okay. It’s okay. I’m not going to be infected. Please. Really, I feel okay.”
Andy felt tears in his own eyes as well. Travis, like Stacy, had been alone in all this, without any parent to help him get through. He had been in the car with Philip and Meredith when they were killed, had escaped certain death in the classroom, and had been more than helpful in getting the injured Brandon around, only to be felled by the careless decision to move too quickly around the cars. It could have been any of them, Andy knew, as they were all being too casual about this stage of their escape.
“I’m sorry,” Andy said softly, though he didn’t move toward the boy. He knew there was no hope for him, that he was going to be dead or a zombie in minutes, but he no longer had it in him to shoot down someone who was not yet a zombie, doomed or not.
Lowensen, though, stepped forward. He moved to the boy’s side and crouched down next to him. “There’s nothing left for you, son,” he said in his most fatherly voice. “Believe me, you’d rather we do it here than come back as a zombie. Wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t want to be a zombie,” Travis said. “But I really think I’m okay. I really think…” His voice cut off there as Travis doubled over in pain. He collapsed onto his side and moaned again.
Lowensen patted the boy’s hip slowly. “I wish you were,” he said. “But a bite is a bite. There’s just no coming back from it. I’m sorry,”
Travis shook his head again, but the effect of the denial was tempered by the blood coating his midsection and the moans he was emitting. Lowensen shook his head again and stood up. He looked to the rest of the group. “Step away,” he said solemnly.
Andy met his gaze and nodded. He led the others a few feet away, to a spot where they couldn’t see Travis and Lowensen. Seconds later, with no more words passing between the two, a gunshot was fired, and Travis’ moans suddenly ceased.
Where they were standing, Celia and Simon were facing the small outhouse-sized building that was the entrance to the school. Flames were licking the top of the stairs, and the walls were
on fire as well. Celia’s tears fell in earnest, as she felt her dreams being replaced only by the dream of survival and the nightmare they found themselves in.
As they stared at the building, Celia felt Simon’s hand close down even more tightly on her own. She looked at his face and saw tears streaming down his face as well, and knew that he’d had the same dream she had, and she returned the squeeze.
She turned her attention back to the school building and watched the flames eating the doorway. Suddenly, the small shack over the stairwell buckled, and it collapsed in on itself, destroyed by the fire. Still no zombies were visible, either having been destroyed by the fire or trapped somewhere in the bowels of the building between the fire at one doorway and the car parked over the other exit.
She and Simon turned back to the parking lot. Stacy, Brandon and Andy were still staring at the school, but Celia couldn’t bring herself to look at that sight any longer. Lowensen was walking back to the group, looking shaken by his experience with Travis. Off in the distance, though, just visible in the morning haze, Celia was sure she could see two figures making their way toward them.
Simon saw the same thing, and both of them raised their guns in the direction of the figures. After a second, though, Celia lowered hers, as these two were not moving like zombies. They were walking purposefully, but not sprinting, and their hands were held by their side as they walked like normal people. There was one male and one female figure. The male wore an overloaded backpack on his back, and seemed to struggle with its weight, making him look even more human.
As they drew closer, the two of them stopped, apparently noticing the flames that were still visible amid the wreckage of the doorway. From this point, Celia could see them more clearly, and was sure they were human. The woman, a blonde with shoulder-length hair, raised a hand to her mouth. The man, with slightly darker, shorter hair, seemed to notice her gesture and turned his attention to her.
Their eyes, though, gave them away as human once and for all. Though they were still some forty or fifty yards away from Celia and her group, this pair clearly had human eyes, not the whited-out orbs of the zombies that she could still see in her mind.
After Life Page 30