“You’re doing it!”
The full crown cleared the opening. But then Cathy grew confused as she did not see any facial features, but only a fold of skin.
Then she realized that what she had seen was not the crown of the baby’s head, but its bottom. The baby was breech.
“I can’t…” Sara panted. As soon as she had breathed the words, another contraction struck.
The baby’s buttocks emerged, along with the crease of skin where the legs joined and folded up. In desperation, Cathy grabbed hold with her fingers in the creases and pulled gently. The pulling seemed to help urge the baby forward, so she continued to pull, and said, “Push! I’ve got it!”
Sara yelled and arched back as the baby slid gradually out. The feet finally emerged and fell free, and Cathy saw that it was a boy. With another contraction, the remainder of the body emerged, and the baby lay out in the open up to its neck. Its head was still inside. The body was purple-blue and motionless.
Sara collapsed again in rest and lay back, eyes closed.
All the while, the pounding had only grown louder. The blood had pooled on the poster where Cathy knelt, and her knees and legs were soaked in it.
Sara strained with another contraction. This one seemed weaker than before, and Cathy assisted again by pulling on the baby’s body. The neck emerged, along with the deep purple umbilical cord, which was wrapped around the baby’s neck.
Sara heaved and vomited. The contraction subsided, but the baby’s head had cleared enough for Cathy to pull it free. The head dropped lightly onto the blood-covered poster paper. Cathy fell back and let go of the legs, and the baby lay motionless.
Sara had collapsed back onto the floor, the side of her face glistening with vomit. There was no motion.
“Sara,” called Cathy.
Sara did not stir. Cathy looked for evidence of her breathing but saw none. She reached up and felt her pulse with her blood-covered fingers—there was none. She withdrew her hand and sat back and looked at the baby. It was still purple-blue, motionless, the cord wrapped tightly around its neck. It too was dead.
For a moment, Cathy stared blankly at the two bodies. Then she shivered and convulsed and she screamed in horror and flung herself down on the floor.
“God, why did you pull on it? Why did you have to pull it?” Cathy screamed. “Oh, God, God!”
She held up her hands—her ugly, bony hands—and they were covered with blood.
Suddenly, the metal cabinet slid off of the edge of the table and fell to the floor with a loud crash. The venetian blinds tore from the window frames.
Cathy screamed, jumped up, and bolted for the book closet. She threw open the door, leapt inside just as she could feel cold fingers at her back, her hair, her neck—and slammed the door shut behind her.
#
She awoke with a start. All was quiet, and all was dark. She became aware of her body first. She was aware of a layer of sweat, of stink. As she began to move, her muscles resisted, exhausted from some strain. The sleep had been good. For a moment, she closed her eyes in the darkness and let the feeling of fatigue cascade over her like waves of lukewarm water. Her head throbbed gently.
Then everything came back to her in a sudden wave: Sara, the birth, the baby, death, death, everything death, and the hideous creatures climbing in through the windows.
Her heart quickened in fear at the fresh memories and her eyes bolted open, although the only thing that greeted them was the darkness.
Then, at last, she remembered where she was. She was in the book closet, a small carpeted space, walls lined with books that absorbed and deadened sound and muted the scuffling she made as she scrambled up to her knees. It was like a tomb.
She felt along the walls and found the one with the door, and she felt the bare wall next to it, reaching up for the light switch. She turned on the light. The light was intense and blinding for a moment, but her eyes soon adjusted.
She put her ear to the door and listened closely for a moment. She could not distinguish any noise coming from outside the door. She could not be certain—the movement of pressing her ear against the door and the thudding of her own heart and the static of her own ears in the silence of the room seemed like a cacophony, and within it, she thought she heard all sorts of monstrous scufflings and growlings from without.
She sat back for a while in the blaring, terrifying silence. She knew that sooner or later she would have to open the door. Would it make a difference how long she waited? If they were waiting for her outside the door, they would wait as long as she could, for all she knew. If they weren’t waiting, then she was wasting time.
She reached up to the handle. She lost her balance momentarily and she swung her hand down to maintain balance, unintentionally hitting the door handle. The impact made a loud bang which, in the room full of books, died out as though it had never happened.
She waited a moment, her ear close to the door. As before, she could discern no sound.
She sat back. She waited.
Then she wiped her hands on her pants and reached up again at the handle, this time very carefully. She put her hand to it and turned it gently, making no noise. She turned it until it stopped, and then she pushed it outward just as slowly. A sliver of light from the classroom appeared. She looked up and down it, seeing nothing. She pushed the door a little more, silently. When nothing happened, she swung it gently open all the way, revealing the entire classroom to her view.
The blinds had been torn completely from the windows. All of the glass had been broken in, so the row of windows opened to the air outside. The smell was of fresh spring in late afternoon. Pure sunlight fell through and lit on the metal cabinet, the overturned desks, and the old carpet.
Slowly, Cathy stood and entered the room. She had only taken one step when she stopped again—on the floor lay the strangled baby, dry, blue, and lifeless, its eyes closed. It was stone dead. The skin was dry now, but still blue in color. The cord was still around its neck, and nearby, attached to the other end of the cord, was the uterus. Sara was nowhere to be seen.
Strange, thought Cathy.
Something compelled her to draw closer to the baby. She looked long and hard at its shriveled, naked, grotesque body. She felt that she should weep but she could not. Although she had not wept at all, she felt empty, as though she had been weeping for hours. All she could do was look at it for a long time, as though the length of her looking would compensate for her lack of tears. Then she looked out the empty windows, through the sunlight, into the air that was more silent than she could remember.
She walked away from the dead infant, going between the rows of undisturbed desks toward the door and windows, through the maze of overturned desks and spilled books, and over Sara’s table, which lay on its side again.
She had neither seen nor heard anything out of the ordinary, so she was less cautious now. She opened the door to the classroom gently and stepped out into the warm open air. The trees rustled slightly in the wind, and birds sang. There was no other sound or motion, as though the school was abandoned—or still in session. Now that she was out of the room and no longer looking at the direct evidence of the carnage, she half expected to find that she had imagined it all and that the students and teachers were all still inside the building, going about their business as usual. But there was always some bustle or other outside when school was in session—a student being dropped off or picked up, a teacher in their planning period moving from building to building, or students running errands. The quiet was uncanny.
She walked out onto the landing and down the steps, to the asphalt below. Her footsteps sounded lightly on the ground. She looked up at the construction site that stood boldly and nakedly in the sun. Beyond the building, she could see all of the cars parked in their spaces, like inert, bejeweled insects glistening in the sun.
She walked into the shade cast by the main building and stepped up to the door. Once at the door, she listened, but as before, she heard no
thing. She grabbed the handle and pulled the heavy door open.
Inside, the hallway was dark, silent, and empty. The lights had either been turned off or gone out; the only light came from the skylight far above, partially shaded by trees that moved gently in the wind.
After a moment, she stepped forward. Her foot plopped into something slippery and wet, and she almost lost her balance. She braced herself against the doorframe. Once she had regained her balance, she looked down.
Her shoe had landed in blood at least an inch deep. She looked ahead. The thick blood covered the tile floor evenly down the entire hallway, deep red and glistening like a dark, glossy polish, shadows passing unevenly down the surface as the wind played at the trees outside. Black lumps of debris lay scattered down the hallway, half-submerged.
The feeling of dread returned to her. She brought her other foot down into the liquid and let the door close behind her. She walked forward, cautious not to lose her balance, or to make much noise, or to disturb the blood so greatly that it would splash. As she walked down the hallway, she inspected the pieces of debris: books, pieces of food, articles of clothing—and body parts, some recognizable as fingers, hands, pieces of arms, legs, others organs or flesh-covered remains mangled beyond recognition. Her throat caught. She had become conscious of the smell of it, the metallic smell of blood, and the stench of decay as of old, warm meat. Blood coated the bottom of the lockers and had splattered up to the tops, in some cases reaching the bare walls and the molding above them.
She noticed features of the hallway that she hadn’t before. She noticed the height of the ceiling, almost church-like. She noticed the painted murals, how lifeless their cartoonish designs were, and how even more garish they were now in the dark and spattered with blood. It was as though she were really seeing the halls for the first time.
As she walked down the hall, she peered into the windows of the adjoining classrooms. Many of the windows were smeared with blood. The classrooms into which she could look were dark—no lights, empty.
There were no remains in the classrooms that she could see, save for the odd piece of debris, as were scattered throughout the hall. It was not nearly enough to account for all of the students. Where had everyone gone?
She continued down the hall, stepping delicately through the blood. At the throat of the hallway was a junction to the library on the left, the main office just beyond, the other classrooms and the gymnasium ahead, and the main entrance on the right. She lingered to look in at the library. It too was unlit. She could make out larger, darker forms that appeared to be intact bodies—although the scarcity of light made them seem twisted, or heaped in odd positions that barely resembled human forms.
Curious about these, she walked closer and put her face up to the window. Looking in, she could not make out anything more clearly than she already had. It was all still very dark and obscure.
She tried the handle; the door was unlocked. She pulled at the door. It was sticky with blood and she had to pull hard to release it from the jamb.
The library carpet was soaked in blood. It squished under her feet as she walked in. The door thudded behind her.
She looked down at the nearest form.
It was a human body. The legs ended in darkness, bent out of view or torn off or destroyed. One arm was twisted behind at an unnatural angle, as though it had been pulled out of its socket, and the other presumably lay under the body. The back of the head was gone from just above the neck, the skull hollowed out, only some indeterminate mass and liquid pooled behind where the face was or used to be.
Cathy was about to cry out, when she looked up and saw a form at some distance from her, standing at the other end of the rows of bookshelves. It was a person, but in the darkness, she couldn’t make out who it was.
She moved toward the person. After her motion seemed to generate no response, she presumed the person was facing away from her, toward the wall or the ground.
“Hello?” she called out.
The figure turned abruptly, revealing a face that seemed itself to emerge out of darkness from the bottom, save for eyes that glared out from underneath a drawn brow with a glimmer as though they were lit from within. They had a hollow stare, akin to what Cathy had glimpsed between the blinds and through the window of her own classroom not long ago, although seeing it for the second time seemed to terrify her more—its repetition was the confirmation of its existence.
The eyes leapt out of the darkness at her with the rest of the shadowy form, and at the next moment, it was upon her, its fingers around her throat and its teeth flashing out of a black, decaying face. Then she became aware that there were two of them—she was not sure where the other had come from, or that it hadn’t been two all along.
Three of them pulled at her clothes, her wrists, her hair, her neck, until four of them had managed to pin her to the floor. She kicked wildly, throwing one of them back against a bookshelf. Just as another lunged for her, its mouth opening wide as though it wanted to swallow her entire face, another body thrust itself against her face, knocking her out of the way. She kicked at it and it rolled into the others, knocking them down.
The figure stood. It had a gun in its hand. It took aim quickly and fired three shots in succession. The first two struck two of the creatures, one in the shoulder, sending it recoiling backwards, and the second in the face of the second, tossing its head back and sending up a spray of black liquid. The third appeared to be a miss, for the third creature continued its advance and leapt at the figure. There was a brief tussle on the floor, and then two shots in rapid succession, and a warm spray, and the smell of gunpowder.
Then there was a firm hand on her arm, pulling her away. More of the creatures leapt out of the darkness of the library. She pushed at the slick, soggy carpet with her shoe and scrambled out of the library, her arm still being pulled by the stranger.
The library door slammed shut behind them. The stranger, whom she could now see more clearly in the light of the hallway, was a tall, broad man wearing dark clothing. The man slid a tire iron between the handles to the library just as one of the creatures hurled itself against it. The doors burst out from the frame, but were held together by the iron. The man turned towards her, and she saw that it was Dr. Stuart Miller, the guest speaker from the Sheriff’s Department. She pushed away from the library doors but fell on her knees again in the blood on the hallway floor. Then she scrambled up to her feet and bolted for the main entrance. He followed, not far behind her. They heard the tire iron clatter to the floor as they escaped into the open air, the main doors closing behind them.
They were in front of the building in the open sunlight. To their right, the paved walkway sloped downward and wound around the parking lot. Beyond the path was a small, sloping field of mown grass that ended at a line of trees not far away. They bolted down the walkway, across the field, and into the line of dense trees.
They ran through the brush and between the trees for a long time, far out of sight of the school building, until they came to something of a clearing. There they stopped. Dr. Miller fell to his knees, gasping for breath.
Cathy stopped in the middle of the clearing. She bent down with her hands on her knees and breathed in the clean air. Then she straightened and stood upright, and tipped her head back, throwing her face into the sun. After the cold and bloody hall, the sun seemed so bright and warm that it was as though she had never truly known it. She wanted to run upwards to the sun, to embrace it, to kiss its warmth forever.
“We can’t stay here for too long,” panted Dr. Miller. “We’ll have to keep moving soon. Just—I need to catch my breath.”
He fell back against a tree trunk and tipped his head back, his eyes closed, and his face twisted in a grimace from exertion.
“Who are they?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” he panted.
“Can I stay with you?”
He wiped the sweat off of his brow with his sleeve. He opened one eye, squinting at th
e sun. “Sure,” he said. “I don’t know how much good I’ll be to ya.”
“I’ll be safer with you than I will be on my own.”
He looked at her from his squinting eye, nodded slightly, and then closed his eye again.
“Your chances for survival go up from zero percent to one percent.” He panted heavily and licked his lips.
Cathy looked around the forest. They seemed to be safe.
“What do they want?” she said. “Why are they—attacking like that?”
He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, deliberately. Then he said, “Lady, I know as much as you do.” He was breathing a little easier now. “They seem to be going after brains. They eat the brains. They eat the skin too, the flesh—but it seems like the brain is mostly what they’re after.”
“But why?”
“Goddamn it, I don’t know,” he said abruptly. “I’m just telling you what I’ve seen. Yeah, I’ll tell you what I’ve seen, so maybe you’ll have a better chance at defending yourself.” He opened the eye again and squinted at her. “They attack together, but not really in a pack, like, it’s not organized. They go after the brain. I saw someone escape an attack, but they had been bitten. The bite was infected or something, and it all happened really fast, but before long, he had just turned into one of them.”
He grimaced, gritting his teeth and closing his eyes.
“I was in the office,” he said. “We could see the construction workers coming toward us. The secretary, she got up and went out to see what was going on—it looked like they wanted something. Then they attacked her, and they broke the windows to the school. I was still confused, but the principal got on the intercom… thank God he was able to think faster than I was. Obviously, it did some good. You got out of it.”
“It wasn’t really because of the announcement…”
“We got out through the fire escape in the back. The principal, he’s all right, he got in his car and went to town.” Dr. Miller pulled out his cellphone from a holster on his hip, opposite the one for his gun. “Hmm, no signal. That’s weird. I guess we’re out of range down here. Well, I was expecting a call from him—I guess that explains why I haven’t gotten it yet.” He put his cellphone back. “I went back in to see if anyone else had made it. Really, I was mostly looking for my daughter, Brooke. I don’t know if you know her.”
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