The Last Days of Salton Academy

by Jennifer Brozek

  How could he have known? Why didn’t they try to go out a window? It had been so obvious to him. Why didn’t they just do the obvious thing? Why didn’t anyone ever do the obvious thing? When he saw the number of shambling forms through the second floor windows he couldn’t get an accurate count. The closest he had gotten was ‘more than seven,’ which was more than half the number of people he knew still lived when he sent dinner over. When he locked the zombies in it hadn’t occurred to him that anyone had survived.

  But they had, and he’d, killed them.

  How had everything gone so wrong so quickly?

  #

  “Please, please don’t make me do this.” Tears flowed down Maya’s face. “Don’t make me kill you. You’re the only thing I love in this world.”

  “If you don’t I’m going to kill you when I change.” Pria looked down at her hand and took the bloody towel from it. Blood barely dribbled from the gaping wound. “And I’m going to change soon.”

  Maya started sobbing in great body-shuddering cries. She hunkered down, wrapping her arms around her knees. “I can’t kill you. I don’t want to live without you. What am I going to do?”

  “Get up. Get up.” Pria begged as she moved to stand over her sister, not daring to touch her. “Please, Maya. We have to do something.” She looked around the hallway until she found what she was looking for. “The root cellar. It has a lock.”

  Maya looked up at her sister through wet lashes, still crying. She didn’t say anything.

  “We can lock me up. Put me in there. And figure out what you’re going to do next.” Pria reached out a hand, then stopped and pulled back into herself. “You’ve got to live. I promised Father. Let me keep my promise.”

  This soft plea made Maya nod, stand, and follow Pria to the root cellar. She still carried the two sandwiches. She paused at the door. “Will you eat dinner with me?”

  Pria’s eyes brightened with tears again as she nodded. “Of course. Once I’m settled.” She looked around the dark room, found the little camping lamp Rose used, and flicked it on. “There’s the lock they used to keep on the door when it stored more than veggies.” Pria pointed at the large rusty lock on the table. “You close and lock the door. I’ll bolt it from the inside, too.”

  Maya put the sandwiches in her coat pocket before she moved to close the door. She looked Pria full in the face. “Your cheek is clean.” She stepped forward and planted a soft, trembling kiss on her sister’s unmarred skin. “Thank you for being you.” Maya stepped back as Pria touched the kiss on her cheek. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.” Pria nodded for Maya to close the door.

  The sobs came again as Maya heard the bolt slide home. She closed the rusted lock with a loud click. “Oh God, Pria…”

  “Sit by the door. We’ll have dinner.” Pria’s voice was muffled but audible.

  Maya obeyed, pulling the now squished tortilla sandwiches from her pocket. She opened one. “What’s the white stuff?”

  “I don’t know but it’s sweet. Let’s take a bite at the same time. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “One…two…three.”

  Maya took a bite of the sandwich as Pria spoke the word three. It was so sweet and sticky that it was a shock. She didn’t know if she should love it or hate it. She chewed slowly, savoring the tastes of the peanut butter and marshmallow cream. “It’s…amazing.” Energy flooded back into her with the first swallow. She took another, larger bite.

  “I know. I know.” Pria leaned her head back against the wooden door. “It’s like the best parts of a candy bar.” She wasn’t eating her leftover sandwiches. Just the thought of food made her want to throw up. But she still had the memory of that first sandwich.

  The two of them talked while Maya ate both of her sandwiches, making plots and plans on how Maya was going to get out of the basement and to survive with almost everyone dead. Someone was alive. They had to be. Someone chained the doors to Bonny Hall closed.

  Fifteen

  Heather leaned against Joe as the four of them sat around the bunker’s table. After exhausting the trap of its ammunition they found the bunker door unlocked. They thought the basement might be a bunker. The prepper’s dream they walked down into showed them just how wrong they were. There was an entire one level house down here with everything anyone could want to survive the end of the world.

  This included box upon box of emergency food, another pump to the well, an amazing array of drugs, including Percocet. It was what was keeping Heather up at the moment. As well as clothing, books, recharging stations. This prepper wanted to ride out the end of the world in style.

  Joe had found books on how to maintain the solar power system installed on the roof of the house. Nicholas found enough beds to house eight people comfortably. Rachel looked through the kitchen and bathroom. Heather found a room painted to look like the outside, complete with park benches, a grill, and a fake sun.

  “We need to stay here for the winter. There’s no way we can make it back while it’s snowing.” Joe pet Heather’s arm. “And Heather isn’t in any shape to move.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me.” Rachel sipped the first cold soda she’d had in months and let out a burp with a grin.

  Nicholas gazed at his clasped hands. “What about our friends back at the Salton Academy? What do we owe them? I mean, there’s enough staples here to get Jeff what he demanded twenty times over. Do we owe it to them to go back with this food?”

  Joe was quiet. “I think, if Lee were here, a couple of us might chance it, leaving the rest of you behind.”

  “No.” Heather’s voice, though muzzy with drugs, was implacable. “Lee isn’t here. You aren’t leaving me.”

  “Vote on it,” Rachel said. “All in favor of staying here for at least the winter, say aye.”

  “Aye.” Joe nodded to Rachel.

  “Aye,” Heather repeated.

  “Aye.” Rachel looked at Nicholas.

  He nodded. “Aye.” He raised a hand “But in the spring Joe and I need to take some food back and give our friends the option of coming here. We can take four more people comfortably. Agreed?”

  Joe glanced at the boxes. “Agreed. I just wish we could’ve gotten that medicine for Evan.”

  “Yeah.” Nicholas sighed. It was one of the first things they had looked for when the medical supply was found.

  #

  Dear Jeff,

  I don’t know if you’ll get this letter. I hope you do. I wanted you to know that I waited as long as I could. It’s been six weeks now. I haven’t eaten anything for three weeks. Just drunk water. Mom’s downstairs. I’m too weak to fight her to get to the food. I should’ve fought her when I still had food and was strong. I was afraid and the thought of killing Mom… I couldn’t do it.

  I waited for you as long as I could. I’m so hungry and so scared. I waited for you. I did. I tried. I’m so sorry that I’m not strong enough to wait any longer.

  I love you, Jeff. You’re the best big brother a girl could’ve ever had. I just wish I could’ve seen you one last time before the end. Pray for me.

  Love,

  Kristi

  Jeff smoothed the letter of it crinkles as best he could. He missed his little sister so much. He didn’t get there in time and it was his fault…all his damn planning. If he’d only gone two days sooner his sister would’ve been alive. “If wishes were fishes the poor would eat,” he murmured.

  He hadn’t protected his sister…or Julie…or anyone else on campus. The only people who might still be alive were Shin and Professor Leeds. Shin was a good man. Leeds, not so much. But both deserved to live. Jeff just wasn’t sure he wanted to live with them. Eventually he would confess his sins and they would kill him themselves.

  Or the those returning from the supply run would.

  Jeff grimaced, remembering his last conversation with Lee. He shook his head. He was guilty. As guilty as Ron was of k
illing Julie and Steve. Jeff bowed his head and stared at the letter from his sister. How fitting. He would execute himself for his crimes and join his sister in whatever hell await those who committed suicide.

  #

  “Pria?” Maya waited for some sign that Pria was still awake. “Pria?” Nothing. The tears came again. When Pria woke next, she wouldn’t be Maya’s sister anymore. Maya got up and moved away from the root cellar door. She didn’t want to hear Pria’s waking moans as a zombie.

  Instead she walked over to the closed elevator doors. When the school had been a functioning school and the world was still alive the elevator had only been for faculty and for students with disabilities. All of the girls used it from time to time to get their laundry to the basement. Of course, when you got caught, it was extra chores for you.

  The elevator hadn’t worked since the power went out. Now it might be her only saving grace. In the power outage the elevator had automatically moved to the basement floor. Pria’s idea was for the Maya to somehow pry open the doors and climb the interior ladder to the fourth floor and get to their prepared shelter. It was as good of a plan as any. If she could get the elevator doors open.

  A tapping sound caught her attention. It was soft and rhythmic. She listened. She followed it to another pair of double doors, white knuckling her hockey stick the whole time. It was the first part of ”Shave and a Haircut.” Her heart leapt. The loading bay doors. She listened for the tapping again. When it came, she answered with the required two taps for two bits.

  Maya trembled at the next sound: the heavy click of the doors being unlocked.

  The moment Shin came into view Maya threw herself into his arms, burying her face in his shoulder. He made soothing noises, holding her. “Zombies?” He whispered the question in her ear as he looked around for danger.

  She nodded. “Locked upstairs…and one in the root cellar.”

  He pushed her away from him just enough to look at her face. “Pria?” Her fresh tears were answer enough. “Is it safe here?”

  “For now. Yes.”

  Shin moved her back into the basement hallway and closed the door behind him. “Did you put the chains on the doors?”

  “No. No. They kept Pria from escaping.”

  At the soft sound of their voices something moved within the root cellar, pushing against the wooden door with a moan.

  “We can’t stay here.” Maya pointed at the closed elevator doors. “Pria thought I should try to get to the fourth floor through the elevator shaft.”

  “Why the fourth floor?”

  “We have an emergency room there. To shelter in place.” Maya turned away, keeping her eyes on the floor. “It’s got food and water and stuff.” She paused. “And my pictures.”

  Shin realized that Maya and Pria were the ones who had been taking the food from the pantry. In truth he couldn’t fault them. He had his own ration of MREs in his suite back in Hadfield Hall. “Here’s the choice for tonight. We leave here and go to Hadfield in the dark. Or we try to get up to the fourth floor to spend the night.”

  “Are there zombies outside?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t move around in the dark.”

  Shin nodded. “That’s what I was thinking. I can go outside to the escape ladder and climb to the top of the building, let myself in, secure the fourth floor, then come get you.”

  Maya shook her head. “Please, please don’t leave me alone. Please Shin.”

  He considered her, seeing her panicked eyes and frantic need. “All right. But you do what I say.”

  “I will. I swear!”

  “That means I’m going to need to leave you on the roof while I secure the fourth floor.”

  Maya nodded. “Okay.”

  Shin listened to the sound of Pria slapping her hands against the wood and understood Maya’s want to leave this place. “Let’s go.”

  The next fifteen minutes were tense ones but, ultimately, safe ones. They both made it to the top of the building where Shin left Maya. He let himself in through the roof access and directly into the fourth floor. A quick search told him the zombies hadn’t made it this far and he locked the doors at either end before he retrieved his ward.

  When he saw the emergency shelter Maya and Pria had put together he understood why Maya chose to stay here for the night. The two of them would be safe, fed, and comfortable until he figured out what to do next.

  #

  To whom it may concern,

  Please consider these to be my last words. Take it as confession or suicide letter. At this point it no longer matters. I am my own judge, jury, and executioner. Sentence to be carried out immediately.

  I have done so many bad things in the name of protecting the Salton Academy and its surviving denizens. I was afraid. In the end I couldn’t protect the campus or its students from anything or anyone, including myself. My sins are too numerous to mention.

  I want those on the supply run to know I’m sorry for what I said. They know what I did. It is their choice to reveal it or not. But, I am truly, honestly, sorry.

  In this envelope are keys to the Commons and to the pantry in the kitchen. The pantry is locked. My last act is to make certain the remaining food is safe for whomever is left alive. There are about three months of food left for fifteen people or less. I left the rustic cookbook I’ve been using in the pantry as well. It shows how to make all sorts of food from the staples that are there.

  I hope whoever finds this can use what is there.

  Sincerely,

  Jeff Meadows

  Shin pocketed the keys then folded the letter and considered it before adding it to the pocket with the keys. Following a hunch, he left the Commons and traced the single track of steps that lead from the front of the Commons to the back of it. There he found a ladder on the ground next to one of the large closed trash bins.

  He eyed steps to the trash bin, then righted the ladder and climbed until he could lift the lid and look inside. In the kindness of the early morning light Jeff could have been sleeping. He was half-bundled up in a sleeping bag in one corner of the trash bin. Only the exposed arm with the needle sticking out of it told Shin what had happened.

  After Jeff had written the letter he had killed himself with a drug overdose. But, ever the neat boy, the youngest Eagle Scout in the tri-cities area, Jeff had decided to dispose of his body at the same time. Shin didn’t bother to get close enough to see what the drug was. What mattered was that Jeff was dead. One more student Shin had failed to protect.

  Shin bowed his head and murmured a prayer for Jeff’s soul before he closed the trash bin and decided what to tell Maya of the boy who had locked her in with a building full of zombies.

  In the meantime, the Commons would become their new home. It had food, the water pump, and the wood stove. It was what they needed. At least for now.”

  Sixteen

  Three months later…

  Joe and Nicholas approached the side door in the stone wall of the Salton Academy with excitement and trepidation. They saw a clear plastic bag attached to the door. There was a white envelope in it. As Joe pulled it from the door, the door swung in, admitting them. The teens gave each other a worried glance.

  “We should read this now,” Joe said as they stepped through the wall and onto Salton Academy property.

  “Yeah.” Nicholas closed the door behind him, keeping a watch out for the worse.

  Joe scanned the letter. “Oh boy. Listen to this: “Dear Lee, Melissa, Joe, and Nicolas. The academy was overrun with zombies. The why and how of it can be explained when we meet. Bonny Hall and the gymnasium are filled with zombies and are locked up. Do not go near either building. The only survivors are myself, Shin Yoshida, and Maya Chand. We are currently living in the Commons. If we are not there we will be in Hadfield Hall. Come to the Commons and wait for us, please. We have much to talk about. I know this is a poor greeting but welcome home. Sincerely,
Shin.”

  “I know what we’re doing.” Nicholas looked toward the Commons.

  “Inviting them to come home with us. There’s room and…God. Poor Maya and Shin.”

  Joe and Nicholas walked toward the Commons. The walk became a run as Maya and Shin came out to meet them.

  About the Author

  Jennifer Brozek is a Hugo Award-nominated editor and an award-winning author. Winner of the Australian Shadows Award for best edited publication, Jennifer has edited fifteen anthologies with more on the way, including the acclaimed Chicks Dig Gaming and Shattered Shields anthologies. Author of Apocalypse Girl Dreaming, Industry Talk, the Karen Wilson Chronicles, and the Melissa Allen series, she has more than sixty-five published short stories, and is the Creative Director of Apocalypse Ink Productions.

  Jennifer is a freelance author for numerous RPG companies. Winner of the Scribe, Origins, and ENnie awards, her contributions to RPG sourcebooks include Dragonlance, Colonial Gothic, Shadowrun, Serenity, Savage Worlds, and White Wolf SAS. Jennifer is the author of the award winning YA Battletech novel, The Nellus Academy Incident, and Shadowrun novella, Doc Wagon 19. She has also written for the AAA MMO Aion and the award winning videogame, Shadowrun Returns.

  When she is not writing her heart out, she is gallivanting around the Pacific Northwest in its wonderfully mercurial weather. Jennifer is a Director-at-Large of SFWA, and an active member of HWA and IAMTW. Read more about her at www.jenniferbrozek.com or follow her on Twitter at @JenniferBrozek.