Something seemed to click with all three of them, transforming them from victims to advocates based on their expressions.
“I want to come with you,” the young man said. “I’ll help if I can.”
Both of the women seemed to object momentarily, but quickly realized their limited options weren’t good in any sense, and protection from an armed group might not be a bad thing.
“We’ll stick with you,” the older woman said, indicating Metzger personally.
He realized he had missed some of the instructions being provided by Molly, but he didn’t exactly plan on leading the charge with three unarmed people in his care. Trying to take in the setting, he noticed a few access doors along this particular side of the school and fewer windows than the other sides of the building. He hoped no one had seen them enter with a group, because murdering a sentry wasn’t going to bode well if one of the schoolyard Wardens witnessed it.
“Do we have keys?” he heard one of the group members ask Molly after she finished going over a very brief plan of action.
She jingled them for everyone to see. Metzger figured she lifted them from the bound man in the back of the truck, and when he took a look inside he found the man still bound, lying with his face atop the rubber mat. Blood oozed from somewhere along his upper body, pooling atop the mat, and his eyes remained wide open as though he never saw his death coming.
“Shit,” Metzger muttered, thinking he was only here for three people he barely knew because they saved his life.
Pressing forward, he glanced inside the truck’s cab, finding the driver slumped over the wheel, killed under similar circumstances. Blood still dripped from his skull, which remained pressed against the top of the wheel beside both of his hands. Metzger couldn’t help but think keeping one of them alive as a tour guide of sorts certainly might have helped his group’s cause. Growing angrier by the second, he wondered if Molly kept him behind and saddled him with the three kidnap victims to keep him from objecting to their senseless brutality. The group had plenty of time to subdue the three men at gunpoint without putting bullets in their heads.
He understood that perhaps the rest of the group saw unthinkable things during their surveillance that he hadn’t, but they had yet to justify murder to him.
“Don’t look,” he said to his three wards as they passed the truck behind him.
He wasn’t sure three murders would faze them much considering two of the three deceased men had just abducted them from their normal lives. A normal life wasn’t anything like before, but people still deserved the right to freedom, and not being scooped up by tyrants.
Possessing only a shotgun and his .357, Metzger wasn’t as well-armed as the others in the group ahead of him. Some of them sported automatic weapons and combat shotguns that held more shells and fired without being pumped each time. He harbored concerns about all of them entering the same exact door and becoming targets for anyone inside.
Molly already seemed extremely agitated with him, so Metzger said nothing, but let everyone else in the group enter the building, hesitating momentarily before he followed. When he stepped through the door he found both directions open with his group heading to the right side. Although not completely dark, the hallway in either direction appeared dim due to the lack of windows. No overhead lights were turned on, assuming the school even had any electricity or generators to power lights and appliances.
Without saying a word to his three wards, Metzger pointed to the left, and they silently followed him down the hallway as the others went right. Although he worked as a teacher, Metzger never considered himself much of a natural leader, yet here he was leading three strangers away from the jaws of certain death.
He hoped.
From what he actually did hear of Molly’s plan, the group was going to get inside and split up, taking different hallways to conduct some reconnaissance of the school’s layout. From there they wanted to draw up a more thorough plan, deciding exactly where they wanted to attack, and how.
Metzger found it difficult to believe that in a month’s time a large number of people jumped on board with the concept of imprisoning fellow human beings like slaves. He didn’t expect the number of Wardens to be especially high, and if more than a dozen roamed the grounds he felt the chances of success for his group weren’t very high. Of course three members of the enemy force lie dead at the gate, reducing the number of potential lethal encounters, but he could not condone murder. In this world where the living were by far the minority, he considered people the world’s greatest resource. Not food, not supplies, and certainly not luxury items people once took for granted.
Taking the lead, Metzger came to the first corner, which only went to the right because the left and ahead were both exterior walls. Where they entered appeared to be an area where the gymnasium and locker rooms were located nearby, but after a short walk he entered an area filled with classrooms and possible danger.
None of the classrooms had lights on, and blinds or blankets covered all of the windows. Ahead, Metzger saw wooden barricades blocking the hallway like those used by police along roads to limit traffic access. Painted white with orange striping, they blocked an intersection that turned back to the right or went directly ahead. The hallway directly ahead was the blocked portion, so Metzger approached cautiously, looking to the right and finding only more classrooms. Ahead, the hallway grew darker, and after about fifty feet became pitch black. He wondered if the area was cut off to prisoners, the Wardens, or everyone in general.
Without lighting or some kind of night vision he wouldn’t be able to get far, but he decided to head that way anyway. He patted down his pockets and belt for the stubby flashlight he carried, but couldn’t locate it within the darkness. Ensured his three charges followed, he quietly walked down the hallway, looking for a light switch or some means to illuminate the hallway beyond the darkness. About halfway down he detected an odor that immediately alerted him to death, whether it came in the form of the undead or recently deceased people lying nearby. The undead didn’t usually stink too badly unless they were in herds because their flesh decayed at a far reduced rate due to the reanimation.
“Something’s wrong,” Metzger whispered to the three people with him. “Smell that?”
All three nodded affirmatively, which he saw only because their silhouettes were backlit by the minimal light behind them.
He thumbed for them to head back toward the intersection but all three stopped short when the noise of footsteps reached their ears. At first, Metzger believed it might be Molly and the others circling around the hallways, finally reaching this area, but he doubted they could cover that much ground so quickly. He motioned for his three companions to take a few steps back, into the darkness, before shoving his hand downward repeatedly. Following his command, they all hunkered to the floor, surrounded by darkness, watching as three unfamiliar men rounded the corner, running in the direction of the door where Metzger and the others entered.
All three were dressed in dark clothes that appeared tactical in nature, and each carried some sort of firearm. Metzger’s heart sunk because he needed to carry out the last act he wanted to, and he needed to do it alone.
“Stay here,” he whispered to the three people with him. “I’ll be back.”
“Are you sure?” the young man asked with questioning eyes, barely visible in the darkness.
“No.”
Metzger didn’t waste time with another word, dashing in the direction of the three men, hoping to intercept them before they found Molly and the others. He didn’t know if they discovered the bodies outside, had some form of security system within the school, or spotted some of the group members within the hallways. And though he knew his steel-toed boots made an awful sound clopping against the ground with each step, the three men made at least as much noise during their militaristic sprints.
Fighting to catch up to them, Metzger wasn’t accustomed to sprinting for very long distances, despite having to escape
the undead on a few occasions. Of course they shambled at a snail’s pace compared to normal people.
Reacting a little too quickly from a tactical perspective, Metzger barely realized he possessed a shotgun and his faithful six-shooter against potentially militaristic weaponry. Not until he reached the blind corner did he begin to slow down and think, barely coming to a complete stop before he dropped to one knee for a glance around the corner. A shotgun shell splintered the wall just above his head immediately, leaving him thankful he didn’t provide them with a full target. He ducked back, feeling his face, having noticed only one of the three men stayed behind to fire at him from the brief glance.
His other two buddies had run ahead, but hopefully the gunfire alerted Molly and the others to their presence. Despite placing himself in grave danger, Metzger felt he had done his allies a service by alerting them the best way possible, given the circumstances.
“Why don’t you come around that corner and play, boy?” the man who shot at him asked as though he were a character from Deliverance with a Louisiana accent that sounded exaggerated and fake.
Knowing his options were limited, Metzger could retreat and put his three wards in danger, advance and likely get himself killed, or figure out a different approach before more Wardens came down the hallway behind him. He wondered why only three men were sent, unless they didn’t know the number of people intruding in their sanctuary, or they didn’t have many people in their camp. Wishing he possessed a grenade, Metzger scooted away from the corner, looking to the ceiling, and then the classroom across the hall from him.
Too high to reach, the ceiling offered no sneaky way to hide or ambush anyone, and unless the classroom was unlocked, he’d make too much noise trying to enter it and give away his position. The door to one classroom across the hallway made him an easy target, but the one almost diagonally behind him presented an opportunity so he scrambled across the tile floor to try the door.
Finding it locked, he darted across the hallway to the lit, open corridor where the three men had emerged. He immediately found some rooms accessed by solid doors, with no windows, indicating they might be janitorial closets or the mechanical room where heating and cooling components were stored. The first was unlocked, revealing a utility closet with nothing immediately useful when Metzger opened the door and flipped the light switch, illuminating the small room to his surprise. He started to pull the door closed when he spied something useful on the wall in the form of an extension cord. Grimacing, he wondered if he had enough time to manufacture what he considered an ideal weapon from the bright orange cord.
A few minutes later he heard the man coming around the corner, being a complete jackass by continuing to call out. For some reason he seemed to think Metzger was cowering in terror, intimidated by a single gunman. In truth, as Metzger crouched within the closet, looking to the extension cord, now plugged in just above him, he worried more for the three people he left in the darkness with a foul odor surrounding them.
Metzger opted to leave the light on because he didn’t believe it was visible beneath the door. Even if someone saw it, the idea was to attract the lone gunman his way. Somewhat cramped within the small room, Metzger felt the metal shelving against his back that held a number of cleaners, spare mop heads, and a few small tools. To his front was a small washbasin on the ground for filling mop buckets and dumping the dirty water, and across from that was another storage shelf with lightbulbs, instruction manuals, and a few old computers.
As quietly as possible he dumped a chemical agent from a spray bottle into the washbasin and used one of the rubber hose lines to fill the bottle with water. He didn’t bother to cap it as he heard the man draw closer, still speaking taunting lines. Metzger wondered why the other two hadn’t come back with this particular man, deciding they probably didn’t care much whether he lived or died based on his demeanor. He debated whether or not to make a sound when he heard footsteps draw closer to lure the man to the door, but he decided that might be too obvious and give away his plan.
With the electrical cord stripped at one end thanks to his pocket knife, and the exposed wiring wrapped around the doorknob, Metzger held the bottle of water in one hand, fully prepared to electrocute the man and end this ordeal quickly when the footsteps stopped. Complete silence overtook the hallways momentarily, and he could hear only the sound of inhalation through his nose as he waited a few seconds, and then a few more. He felt certain the man was on the other side of the door, debating whether to play it safe and study the door or recklessly turn the knob and yank it open. Their stalemate soon became a moot point when the sound of a sneeze, brief and completely unintended, echoed throughout the hallway.
Hearing the footsteps begin to walk away from the room in the direction of his three charges, Metzger reached up slowly to unplug the extension cord from the wall with a gentle tug, his eyes never moving from the door. Quietly collecting the shotgun beside him, he slowly stood, set the water bottle in the basin, and placed his hand on the doorknob.
He decided he wanted maximum effectiveness from the shotgun, so he opted not to wait until the gunman reached the darkness and three helpless victims before taking action. Even though it left him completely exposed because the door swung the opposite way from the man’s location, Metzger threw the door open, racked the shotgun for effect, and cupped the weapon along his right side. He watched the man whirl around in complete surprise upon hearing the rack slide back and forth. Perhaps he thought one of his allies had caught up to him, or realized too late he wasn’t following the sound of an armed man sneezing, but his jaw had just begun to drop when Metzger pulled the trigger, unleashing dozens of pellets into his torso.
Unlike the movies, the man didn’t go flying back into a wall some unrealistic distance away, or even leave his feet. In the middle of trying to raise his own weapon, he accidentally blocked some of the buckshot with his arms. Even so, enough caught his chest from Metzger’s vantage point that blood immediately spurted outward and he stumbled backwards, landing hard on his back after a few steps.
Metzger possessed a variety of shells for the shotgun, which held five at a time. The 12 Gauge used a variety of shells from the BB type, to birdshot, to buckshot that included single to triple-aught. With plenty of each type in reserve, he left the birdshot and BB shot shells in storage, knowing he wasn’t going to be hunting when he stepped outside. In this case the double-aught shells appeared to have done their job, so he picked up the shell discarded from the gun when he pumped it and slid it down his right pants pocket. The man continued to groan and gasp as Metzger approached him, no longer the arrogant ass who thought he had easy prey cornered when he separated from his two buddies.
Immediately questioning how the man was even breathing after taking fire from close to twenty yards, Metzger began to contemplate why the men all wore tactical clothing.
“Body armor,” he muttered to himself as the man sat up like some kind of killer robot from a movie and grasped for his shotgun.
His face and arms both drizzled blood, and fortunately for Metzger the man’s arms weren’t functioning correctly because he failed to grasp his rifle and hold onto it. Already halfway closer than the distance he shot from, Metzger moved swiftly after the man dropped the rifle the first time. Caught in the open, he had little choice but to move toward the man, readying the shotgun with pump action before aiming it closer to the man’s head this time. Considering the man appeared dazed, entering a state of shock perhaps, Metzger didn’t shout any commands, but simply stepped closer until he was able to kick the automatic weapon away from the man’s side.
Drawing the man’s friends to their location wasn’t a good idea, so he didn’t want additional gunfire echoing through the halls.
Looking up, Metzger noticed his three wards peering around the corner with concerned expressions. Once they saw he had the situation under control they cautiously stepped closer as Metzger debated what to do with the subdued man who lacked sufficient use of both ar
ms but wore some kind of body armor that protected his torso from receiving major damage. Body armor stopped any kind of shotgun blast, even from close range, except for a slug. The man’s face received only a few punctures from the buckshot, and Metzger couldn’t determine the extent of his injuries. At the moment he needed to get the man out of sight, regardless of whether he chose to end his life or somehow subdue him.
Kneeling down, he removed the semi-automatic sidearm from a holster along the man’s side as the former assailant continued to sputter and spit, as though his brain had somehow been scrambled. Metzger quickly patted the rest of the man’s body down with one hand, keeping hold of the shotgun, and finding a rather large knife along the man’s belt. Knowing time wasn’t on his side regarding the other two armed men, and who knew how many others, he tossed the young man the sidearm.
“Get him out of sight and subdue him,” Metzger said, looking between the young man and the two women. “If you even think he’s going to make a move, shoot him. And keep yourselves out of sight. There are several rooms down this hall where you can hide.”
“And what about you?” the older woman asked with concern.
“The other two will get the jump on my group if they haven’t already.”
He scooped up the automatic rifle, grinning a bit as he looked at it.
“I’m going to see if I can even the odds.”
Eight
Back to square one, Metzger rounded two corners just to get back to where he last got stonewalled. This time no one waited to ambush him around the left turn, but he slowed his pace and made certain to walk quietly. Having heard nothing, especially any gunfire, he wondered where the two men had gotten to. They seemed to have an idea someone was trespassing within their school when they ran purposefully that way. Either they were tracking Molly and the others, or they had stepped outside to examine how trespassers entered their domain so easily.
Part of him wished he’d stuck with the main group, but now he suspected their presence was detected and he might be the only one from his group who knew that fact. Soon he reached the area where his group originally entered, peering outside of the door to see if both armed men were outside. Considering the door was already open, resting against the frame with a thin strip of daylight coming through the opening, Metzger figured they at least opened it for a look.
The Undead Chronicles_Book 1_Home and Back Again Page 10