by Sam Sisavath
“That right?” Davies asked, looking over at Will.
“He’s exaggerating,” Will said. “He wishes we had goat milk.”
“In my mind, it will always be goat milk,” Danny said.
“Who are these guys?” Lara asked. “What do they want?”
“Besides the desire to keep us from driving away from here?” Danny said.
“Besides that, yeah.”
“Those are hazmat suits,” Will said. “Level B designs, from the looks of them. Protection against hazardous materials and chemicals.”
“What, you going to throw acid on them?” Danny grinned.
“I’m just saying, they’re no good against lead.”
Will stepped out in front of the window, raised the M4A1, and fired a single shot that shattered the school window and hit one of the men in hazmat suits, leaning out from behind the Tacoma, in the face. The gas mask lens shattered and the figure went down in a pile, his rifle clattering away harmlessly.
The remaining nine men immediately fired back.
She dropped to the floor and slid against the wall as glass shards rained down all around her. Bullets peppered the wall across from her, destroying the bulletin board and the map of the school, while more cascading glass covered the floor like rain.
She glanced up the hallway toward the auditorium and saw Elise and Megan holding onto each other against the relentless, earsplitting sound of gunfire. Thankfully, they were too far away to be hurt by falling glass.
Will was sitting behind the wall, between what was left of the window and the opened front doors, casually tapping his hand against the floor next to him. Danny sat nearby, equally calm, while Davies hugged the floor on his stomach as bullets zipped inside, piercing the doors that were now swinging wildly back and forth. The volley of gunfire had obliterated every inch of the trophy case that greeted visitors upon entering the school, and hard-earned trophies and pictures and even souvenir baseball bats had been shredded into tiny fragments under the torrid assault of lead.
Finally, mercifully, the shooting stopped.
Will slid back up along the wall, then poked his head out the window for a split second, scanned the parking lot, and quickly pulled his head back.
“Nice,” Danny said. “You couldn’t have given us a heads up there, chief?”
“Element of surprise,” Will said.
“Element of almost got my ass shot off.”
“What the hell?” Davies said, fuming.
Will shrugged back at him. “They destroyed our vehicles. That means they don’t want us leaving this place. They already made it clear they’re not friendlies.”
“Still, man, a little warning next time?” Danny said.
“Yeah, yeah.”
“By the way,” Danny said, “I think they’re trying to outflank us. I saw one—possibly two—moving toward the back of the school.”
“You’re full of good news today, aren’t you?”
Danny grinned. “I aims to please. Just ask Carly.”
CHAPTER 35
WILL
Danny’s goat milk story reminded him of those two weeks in Afghanistan—not three, as Danny claimed. They were well into their second redeployment by then, and a mission to check if expelled Taliban forces had returned to a village in the Kunar Province went bad almost the second they climbed onboard the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. The reliable bird, first introduced in the ′70s and in service ever since, had trouble lifting off and came within a foot of shearing the roof off one of the base’s watchtowers.
He remembered exchanging a look with Danny. They were seated at the edge of the bird, strapped in by harnesses, and saw the whites of the tower guard’s eyes as the UH-60 came up on him and swooped away at the very last second.
So when the Black Hawk crashed into the side of a mountain more than sixteen kilometers short of their assigned landing zone, neither he nor Danny was surprised. They managed to survive with only minor bruises, as did the rest of the unit. Unfortunately, they lost both pilots, the cockpit having taken the brunt of the impact against the rocky terrain.
That was when they saw the goats standing nearby, watching them as they climbed out of the helicopter wreckage. The unit spent two weeks in the mountains, waiting for rescue that was delayed by an intense and prolonged sand storm, with nothing to eat but goat.
As he leaned back against the wall between what was left of the window over his right shoulder and the shattered twin front doors of the school to his left, he remembered the taste of goat and how much it sucked.
Somehow, some way, the two front doors were still hanging from their hinges, just barely, with maybe a hundred or so holes between the two of them. Whoever had hung those doors should be proud. They did their jobs, and then some.
Danny was crouched across from him, eyeing the long hallway to their left through the red dot sight of his M4A1. Will had sent Davies back to the auditorium doors to cover their backside with his G36.
He checked his watch: 10:16 a.m.
“What’s the plan?” Danny asked.
“We can’t retreat back into the auditorium. That’ll just get those people in there killed if there’s any kind of fight, which there will be.”
“Back to the ol’ maintenance room, then?”
“There’s no way out of there once we’re inside. Unless you feel like crawling through that passageway to the boys’ locker room. See Reason Number One for why that’s a no-go.”
“Kinda running out of options then, Kemosabe.”
Will glanced back at Lara. She sat next to Elise and Megan down the hallway, looking down at her Glock. She looked up and caught his eyes. They exchanged a tight smile.
He turned back to the doors. He didn’t have to poke his head out—there was probably a sniper out there waiting to take it off—to know the men in hazmat suits weren’t advancing yet, though the sound of a breaking window from the other side of the school indicated they weren’t going to stand still forever.
He was pretty sure they weren’t soldiers or even ex-law enforcement. He could tell by the way that they unloaded on the doors and window. They shot without purpose, firing back because he killed one of them. And they kept on firing their entire magazine, stopping only when empty. He caught sight of a couple of AR-15s, three AK-47s, and a few others he couldn’t quite make out from the distance, though he was sure one had a pump-action shotgun with a pistol grip.
“There’s Waldo,” Danny said calmly next to him.
Will looked up the hallway at a dark shape peering around the corner. Danny fired a single shot and the shape fell to the floor, where it lay and didn’t move.
He pulled out his binoculars and peered down the other end of the school. The figure, wearing a gas mask, was slumped on the smooth tiles, a neat little hole in the mask’s right lens. A small patch of blood pooled underneath the hazmat suit. Dark red.
“Dead or undead?” Danny asked.
“Dead. Right through the eye.”
“Which side?”
“Right.”
“I was aiming for the left one.”
“Maybe next time.”
Feet shuffled behind him, but he didn’t have to look back to know it was Lara. Davies had heavier footsteps. And besides, he could already smell her, and she smelled nice.
“Is he dead?” Her voice was almost a whisper.
“Yes,” Will said.
“Was it one of them?”
“He’s one of us. Dead, not undead. Re-dead. Whatever.”
“I don’t understand why they’re doing this, then?”
“Collaborators,” Danny said.
“What I figured,” Will nodded.
“Collaborators?” Lara said.
“It happens in every single war that’s ever been fought throughout human history,” Danny said. His eyes never left the long hallway in front of him. “There will always be people looking out for Number One, who think they’re on the losing side, so they go all-in with the invade
rs.”
“Danny, are you telling me you’ve actually read a book or two?” Will grinned.
“Mom forced me to, and I still hate her for it.”
Lara wasn’t convinced. “Maybe this is a big misunderstanding.”
Danny chuckled. “They probably meant to just shoot out our truck windows because they heard the key to a long life is lots of air. Yeah, that’s the ticket.”
Lara sighed. “I just don’t understand why they’re attacking us. Are they protecting the auditorium for the ghouls?”
“Maybe that is what they’re doing,” Will said. “Makes sense, if you think about it. The ghouls can’t protect places like this in the day, so they need humans to do it for them.”
Lara was quiet for a moment. He could practically hear her analytical mind turning the new information over. “Then that changes everything, doesn’t it?”
“I think things have been changing for a while now. We just didn’t realize it because we’ve been living underground for months, cut off from what’s happening up here. Meanwhile, the ghouls have been adjusting, progressing.”
“Adapt or perish,” she smiled.
“Adapt or perish,” he smiled back.
She looked up at what was left of the window. “Why aren’t they attacking?”
“Maybe they don’t need to. If their job is to protect the auditorium, then that means they have time on their side.” He glanced down at his watch. “Nine hours until sunset. Then it’ll be us against them and more ghouls than we can handle, judging by all the people in the auditorium behind us.”
“Good news, though,” Danny said, “there’s only eight of them left.”
“Captain Optimism,” Will smirked.
Danny chuckled.
“Why the hazmat suits?” Lara said. “If they’re human, why do they need those?”
Will shrugged. “We’ll ask them when this is all over. Which means trying to take one of them alive.”
“No promises,” Danny said.
“Shoot for the leg.”
“I’ll shoot for the balls. You can survive with just one ball, right?”
“Last time I heard.”
“Awesome. It’s been a while since I’ve been ball shooting.”
Will looked back at Lara. “You should go stay with the kids in case they start freaking out.”
Lara looked reluctant, but she nodded and got up anyway. Keeping low, she crossed the window without exposing her head, then stood up straighter and jogged back to where Elise and Megan sat, anxiously watching her come back over.
“Look at this,” Danny said.
Will looked up the other side of the hallway. The body in the hazmat suit was gone. “Where did Waldo go?”
“Someone pulled him back around the corner by the legs a few seconds ago.”
“Hunh.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s your inventory?”
“Four long magazines, two silvered up. Two for the Glock. Twenty shells. And of course, cross-slash-knife. You?”
“About the same. Davies too, I think.”
“And there’re eight of them and probably an unlimited amount of ammo stashed around the town. And of course, darkness is not our friend. It just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it?” He grunted. “Carly was right, I should have stayed in bed this morning.”
“What happened to Captain Optimism?”
“He’s in the john right now. Try back in a few.”
Their radios squawked and Davies’s voice, panicked, came through: “Guys, I think I heard something from inside the auditorium.”
“What did you hear?” Will asked.
“I don’t know. A sound. Like a clanging sound. I don’t know.”
Will exchanged a brief look with Danny, who rolled his eyes and said, “Go. Try to keep him from shooting himself. Or you. Or me. But mostly me.”
“I’ll do my best.”
He got up and jogged back toward the auditorium. He passed Lara, Elise, and Megan. “We’re good,” he said to Lara.
She nodded back.
He reached the end of the hallway, turned left, and saw Davies near the opened auditorium doors. He put a hand on the man’s shoulder and Davies almost jumped out of his boots.
“Relax,” Will said. “Go up front and back up Danny. If you hear them coming toward the doors, open fire.”
Davies nodded and got up and ran off, moving faster than Will had ever seen the big man move. He didn’t even know Davies could move that fast.
Will looked into the auditorium to get a sense of space and distance. He tuned out the bodies on the floor, an easy enough trick since they didn’t move at all and were very low to the floor. He adjusted his eyes to ignore everything thirty centimeters from the floor and searched out the doors and hallways.
He already knew where the boys’ and girls’ locker rooms were—immediately to his right, upon entering the auditorium. There were two windows in the boys’ locker room, and both were too small and high up to allow a grown man to climb through, much less one wearing a hazmat suit. He assumed the girls’ locker room had a similar design.
That left an office, farther up the auditorium and three doors at the very end—twin doors in the middle, and two smaller, single doors at each end. All three probably opened up into the track and football field nearby. There were no other entrances or exits, so that made things easier. The office could be a problem. He had only glanced into it during his walk through the auditorium and hadn’t looked long enough to see any windows, though he guessed there had to be some. Most offices had windows, didn’t they? Not that he knew. He’d never had an office job in his life.
He jogged back up the hallway and turned right. Lara looked up at the sound of his approach. He hurried over and crouched next to her. “Keep an eye on this for me, okay?” He unslung the Remington 870 and laid it down on the floor next to her. “I’ll be right back.”
“Be careful,” she said and reached forward and put her hand over his and squeezed.
“When we get back…”
“Yes,” she said and smiled.
He smiled back, then got up and darted back around the corner and back to the auditorium doors.
He paused for a moment, took a breath, then darted inside.
Will moved at a steady pace along the row of bodies, his eyes shifting between the three doors in front of him and the office just a few meters away from the locker rooms to his right. Without the seven pounds of the Remington tapping against his back, he felt lighter and quicker on his feet.
He came up quickly to the office, moving closer to the wall, almost hugging it. The office had a door and an interior glass window that as he passed, he snapped a look into the office. There was a second set of sliding glass windows in the back, looking out into the parking lot.
Alarms rang in his head at the sight of the parking lot and, as if on cue, a gas-masked head appeared behind the glass. The man inside the hazmat suit saw Will a split second after Will spotted him.
Will spun to his left, his forward momentum carrying him across the window, the M4A1 rising to his shoulder. The man’s eyes went wide inside the gas mask just a heartbeat before Will fired a burst. His bullets shattered the window in front of him, continued on, shattered the second window, and finally caught the man in the head. The man snapped back and fell, vanishing from the window frame.
A second man scrambled out from behind the window, and as he ran away, threw back his right hand and the AK-47 in it and squeezed off a blind volley through what was left of the glass. Will was already lunging to the floor, and he scooted underneath the inner windows as the man’s bullets pelted the brick wall outside and strafed the interior of the office walls. Window frames broke, wood splintered, and bullets screamed as they whipped over his head, traveled through the length of the auditorium, and smacked against the wall on the other side. A white mist filled the office, floating out through the destroyed window above his head.
And the man k
ept blindly firing until he had wasted his entire magazine.
Amateurs.
Will snapped up to his feet the second the man stopped shooting and saw the figure fleeing across the parking lot. Twenty meters. Maybe twenty-five. Getting farther and farther way. Not far enough, though.
He fired a shot. The man seemed to stumble, as if he had tripped over something, fell, and lay still.
Will sat back down underneath the window when his radio squawked and he heard Danny’s voice: “You still alive back there?”
“Two down, six to go,” he said.
“And here I thought we were in trouble.”
“Perish the thought.”
Lara’s voice cut in, and he could tell she was more than slightly annoyed: “Would you please stop with the manly bullshit and concentrate on trying not to get killed, please.”
Danny laughed. “I think she likes you.”
“Shut up, Danny,” Lara said. Then, in a softer voice, “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Danny said. “You were talking to me, right?”
“I’m fine,” Will said. “Everyone stay where you are.”
“Are you sure?” Danny said. “I was about to head over there. After all, I don’t want Lara to lose her new boyfriend so soon.”
“Danny, shut up,” Lara snapped.
“Keep an eye on the hallway,” Will said. “I’ll call if I need any help.”
He scooted closer toward the office door and had reached for the doorknob when he heard gunfire from the parking lot.
That was followed by additional gunfire, this time coming from the school hallway outside the auditorium.
An AK-47, answered by an M4A1.
Then moments later, the unmistakable sound of a G36 firing on full-auto.
Will started to get up, to retreat back to the hallway, when a bullet smashed through the door in front of him and zipped past his head by half an inch, so close that he thought he could smell pieces of hair burning. His.
Will lunged back to the floor as more bullets punched through the door, splintered cheap wood raining down on him. He heard the familiar scream of an AK-74, the more modern version of the Russian AK-47, clattering from the other side of the door, outside the window.