by Oliver, Nick
I just smirked, “Road? We don’t need a road.” I turned the wheel sharp and hopped the curb, driving half on the sidewalk, half on the grass, completely avoiding the cars.
She just shook her head, trying in vain to hold back the laughter. "I don't think that's the quote you were looking for."
"Eh," I shrugged with a smirk, "close enough."
There was quite a large gap between the gymnasium and the main building, so my truck fit through it no problem. Once I drove through the gap I was in the center courtyard. I tried my best to avoid them, but bodies were everywhere, and the truck bounced as if they were speed bumps.
I didn’t waste any time once we reached the center of the courtyard. I shut off the ignition and Sarah and I both got out of the truck. Nick and Roxie pulled up right behind us.
Roxie shut her four-wheeler off, but Nick kept his running. “Come on, we’ll ride this to the buses, we can get this done faster.”
“Good idea,” I nodded. That would save us some time for sure, I hopped on and he sped off so fast I damn near fell off.
We stopped in the middle of the bus loop. There was enough space between two of the buses for me to turn one and drive it out. I was mentally crossing my fingers that the keys were still in it. I hopped off the four-wheeler and pushed the door open on the bus. Nick stayed where he was, keeping an eye out for any wandering zombies.
The driver, or what was left of him, was still in the driver’s seat. Most of his limbs were gone, just bone with bits of meat and tattered clothing hanging off. It turned its head and started snapping its jaws at me, but there wasn’t enough muscle left to move his body toward me, other than to snap at the air.
I aimed at its head and fired. The rest of the bus was clear. There was blood all over the floor, but no more bodies. The driver’s body didn’t weigh much anymore. I tossed it into the aisle between the seats. The keys were still half hanging out of the ignition.
I turned the key and heard the low rumble of the engine firing up. I looked over at Nick and gave him the thumbs up, “Follow me! I’m gonna block the way we drove in so none of the ones in the parking lot follow us in.”
He nodded in agreement and backed up so I had room to get out. I turned the wheel as hard as I could, but still scraped the bus in front of me.
Some of the zombies in the neighborhood across the street from the school were already stumbling toward where we drove in. I ignored them. Once we blocked off all the gaps between buildings they wouldn’t be able to get in.
I could hear gunshots from inside the school, which meant they either followed us from the parking lot, or were coming out of the school.
I hopped the same curb to get around the cars in the parking lot just like I did with my truck. The bus was awkward to handle, but I was getting the hang of it. The space between the buildings was smaller then the length of the bus so I pulled up against the side of the main building, so close that I could hear the metal side scraping the brick building.
Nick gave me the thumbs up that the space between the buildings was blocked, so I shut down the bus and got up. The side door was now blocked by the wall of the gymnasium, so I went out the back emergency exit, which I made sure to shut after I hoped out.
There were at least twenty zombies coming after us, but now that this area was blocked I didn’t need to waste ammo trying to take them down, so I sprinted to Nick’s four-wheeler and hopped on. “Go!” I yelled as he accelerated. We were going so fast I had to put a hand on my hat so it didn’t fly off.
Rather then try to dodge the zombies that had followed us in he drove around the school in the opposite direction, through the grass behind the school. We only had to block four more spaces between the various buildings, though we would need at least two buses to block off the area between the lunch room and the main building.
The second bus was empty, but like the last one there was blood all over the place. The key was lying on the floor next to the seat.
“Nick, let’s fill up these hallways in a clockwise motion,” I yelled to him as I fired up the second bus, “So the zombies don’t follow us in any large numbers.”
He gave me thumbs up. “Better hurry then, that big group by the parking lot was on a mission.”
I shut the door and drove the bus around the bus loop on the sidewalk. Going around this time I noticed even more zombies following the way we had just drove around the school. It didn’t take me but a second to decide to just run them over. Each bump was more satisfying then the last one.
The rear or east side of the school was relatively devoid of even corpses on the ground, but we needed to cover all our bases. I parked the second bus same as the first, only this time blocking the walkway between the gymnasium and the library, then got on the four-wheeler to get the next bus.
The next bus didn’t have any keys in it so I hopped back out to get in the next one. The rest of the buses were empty, just the dried pools of blood, maybe a bone or two. I drove them to the other walkways that needed blocking, between the library and the auto garage and wood shop, and blocked them.
The last walkway was the one between the cafeteria and the main building. We’d already driven one bus up against the cafeteria but needed this one to close the rest of the walkway and outside eating area so that it was entirely blocked off. This time I was backing up to the spot rather then driving forward into it so that the door led inside rather than out, otherwise I would be stuck outside. Nick was already inside the courtyard guiding me in.
I felt the bus jolt as I hit the one behind me. I shut off the ignition just in time to hear more gunshots coming from the courtyard. I didn’t bother getting on the four-wheeler. We weren’t but fifty yards from Sarah and Roxie. Nick shut down his four-wheeler and did the same.
There were at least a dozen new bodies around the courtyard. Roxie was aiming my .22 rifle at one of them on the second floor. She missed with the first shot, and then dropped it with a second.
“Nice shootin’, Tex!” Nick hollered in a crappy Texan accent.
Roxie shot him a look, “I’d like to see you hit one from that far in one shot.”
“Alright kids, lets get working on clearing these classrooms and making sure any doors leading outside are locked.” I started refilling my clip after taking care of the zombies in the buses. “It looks like all the bottom floor shutters are down. I made sure to look at all of them while we were parking the buses. The master keys should be somewhere in the main office. From here on out we all stay together until we’ve cleared the entire grounds.”
I was expecting one of them to make a joke, or salute or something, but I could tell by their faces they knew how serious this was. We weren’t playing a video game, this was really life or death.
The front office was completely dark inside. We brought flashlights just in case this would be the case, especially with all the window storm shutters down. I’d been to this school plenty of times while substitute teaching, so I knew where the keys were kept. I grabbed four copies, one for each of us. Roxie found a campus map to help us cross off the rooms as we cleared them.
I let Sarah use my pistol. I decided that using my baseball bat would help us to save what little ammo we had left.
The main office, guidance office, and attendance office were clear. There were a few bodies on the ground, but they either had bullet wounds in their heads, or didn’t have heads.
After we made sure the attendance office was clear we set the map down on one of the tables. “Okay, so we all know the school is broken up into these buildings, the main horseshoe shaped building. The offices and the history department are the west side, where we are now. The science and art classrooms are on the north side. The Math and English classrooms are on the south side. And then we have the library, cafeteria, gym, and other separate buildings on the East side” I looked back up at everyone else. “Where do we start?”
“The army set up a triage center in the Health and Science classrooms here,” she pointed at
the map. “If anything, that’s where they will be the most congested. They sent anyone who was bitten there.”
“Well that’s as good a place as any to start,” I looked at the map again. “All the classrooms on the outside edge of the school connect to the ones on the inside through the Teacher Planning rooms, so we won’t have to go outside again.”
We left the office and went into the first classroom on the north side. It was just as dark as the offices. I went in first. Nick was right behind me, and then Roxie behind him. Sarah stayed at the doorway to cover our rear so we wouldn’t be surrounded.
There were medical supplies galore, on shelves and on the floor. The army sure left a lot of stuff when they left, just like Nick said. There were five zombies walking around. I expected there to be more, and from the looks of it there was. Blood was everywhere, on the floor, the walls, even the turned over cots.
I hit the closest one hard with a swing to the left side of its head. It fell to the floor but still tried to get back up. Nick and Roxie stepped in front of me and took care of the rest as I swung the bat down on the first one’s head again.
The rest of the classrooms followed a similar pattern. We went in, took care of any zombies, and then locked the doors behind us.
It felt like one of those movies with army guys entering a room, and methodically taking out the targets inside. Maybe watching those movies and playing those video games is what kept us alive this long.
We were almost out of ammo after clearing the first floor of the north side, there had to have been at least forty of them in the various classrooms. After clearing the last room, we went back to the truck to refill our weapons, drink some water, and just clear our heads for a few minutes.
The heat was brutal. I’d worked outside in the summer before sure, but this was something else. There was nowhere to hide from it. I thought about firing up my truck just for the air conditioning inside, but we couldn’t waste the gas.
I was sitting on the tailgate of my truck, wiping the blood and brain matter off my bat when Nick stood up, “If we’re going to do this let’s get it done, we still have a lot of rooms to clear.”
He was right, “Okay, lets get to it, we have the south side, and then we can get working on the second floor of the main building.”
The south side had fewer zombies in it than the north. There were probably two dozen, maybe a few more then that. I was getting tired of counting them. We reloaded at the truck again, took another five minute breather, and then headed upstairs. There were a lot of bodies upstairs, but most of them were already taken care of.
Every room had at least one corpse on the floor, with multiple blood stains. Even after we cleared this place, it was going to take a hell of a long time just to clean it all up to be livable. It was all worth it though, the walls were cinderblock, with steel doors built to withstand hurricane force winds. If we were going to be safe anywhere, this was it.
We finished clearing the second floor of the south side and took a breather. We brought up the bag of ammo and some water with us this time. The last thing we needed was for one of us to pass out from dehydration.
“There were a lot more on just this side then the bottom floor,” I observed. “There had to be almost fifty of those things on this side.”
“We were downstairs, it was hard enough to get out from there,” Nick leaned over the hand rails and looked over the side. “People probably got trapped up here.” He gestured toward the ground, “Looks like some people tried to get down another way.”
I leaned over and saw a few bodies with legs bent in awkward directions, “Ouch.” I gulped, “Not exactly the way I want to go out.”
The rest of the second floor was just as congested. We took our time, kept our distance, and placed our shots carefully.
One classroom stood out, I pushed the door open and glanced inside. There weren’t any bodies on the ground or walking around. Everyone followed me in and noticed the same thing.
“There aren’t even any blood stains on the carpet,” Sarah noticed, shining her flashlight around the floor of the room.
“We’ll stay here tonight, once we’ve cleared the rest of the school.” I checked the door to the planning room between this classroom and the one facing the courtyard. “At this rate we should be able to clear the rest of the school before nightfall. Then we can bring up some blankets and anything else we need.”
With the main horseshoe building cleared of zombies, we went back downstairs to clear out the other buildings. Even though I was wearing gloves my hands were killing me, I must have broken at least a hundred of their skulls with my bat.
We stopped at my truck to reload again and get ready for the final push. I leaned my bat against the truck and grabbed my shotgun. I had about three dozen shells tucked into a bandolier, which I threw over my shoulder.
“Which building do we clear next?” Roxie asked, unfolding the map and setting it on the hood of my truck. “The library and cafeteria are the biggest, the auto garage and wood shop are smaller and off to the south here.”
Nick looked at it for a second then pointed to the gymnasium, “We start here and head south, first the gym, then the library, then the wood shop and Auto garage, and then we end with the cafeteria.”
“Sounds fine to me,” I looked up at the sky. “We still have a few hours of sunlight left,” I pulled back the pump on my shotgun to check that a shell was loaded, saw there was and slid it back shut again. “Let’s clear it out.”
The gym was all locked up. When we opened the doors it was practically spotless inside, which was odd, but it was one less area to clean up.
The library was oddly just as locked up as the gym. I looked over at Nick, “Were there not people in the other buildings?
“I honestly didn’t notice,” Nick shrugged. “They put us in the main building, maybe because it was all connected.”
The auto garage and wood shop were empty, but not locked. The auto garage’s bay doors were open. There was some blood in the auto garage, and a few bodies with screwdrivers stabbed into the heads. “It looks like somebody made a decent enough stand here.” I kicked over one of the corpses, it had a caved in skull the shape of the head of a sledge hammer.
“It looks like it was a last stand.” Roxie pointed at a body curled up in the corner, there was a small revolver lying next to him.
I picked it up and saw all the rounds were spent. “He saved the last round for himself.”
I stood back up and tucked the now empty gun in my pocket, no sense in letting it go to waste. “Let’s get moving, no sense in wasting time.”
We walked outside on the way to the cafeteria. Some zombies had already started gathering at one of the buses we parked to block them out. I could see their feet, and hear their hands banging on the side of the bus.
“What are we going to do with the bodies?” Sarah asked me.
“Burn them.” I remembered the large piles I saw outside Orlando, “The ones upstairs we’ll throw outside the school, and the ones downstairs we pile up and burn.”
“I meant of the people.” She walked in front of me and stopped, “Like that guy back there.”
I took a deep breath, “What about him?”
“Shouldn’t he get a better burial then a pile of rotting corpses?” she was staring at me with painful eyes. That guy reminded her of her dad.
“The ones that weren’t infected we can make a separate pile for.” I knew it wasn’t the answer she wanted.
She shook her head, “He deserves more then that, he probably has family out there.”
“And they were probably the ones trying to eat him!” I snapped, this wasn’t the way things were supposed to go. I wanted to be with her, and then the world went to shit. I waited too long, and now she wasn’t the person she used to be. She barely smiled anymore, and when she did it was fake.
She slapped me across the face so hard my hat turned to the side. I turned my head back just in time to see the tears rollin
g down her cheeks as she turned around and started walking toward the cafeteria. “Let’s just clear the damned cafeteria and library and get this over with.”
She stopped outside the cafeteria door and waited. She avoided eye contact with me as I adjusted my hat then opened the door. Nick and Roxie were notably silent, not wanting to get in the middle of it. The main eating area was empty, at least of anything walking around.
There were plenty of bodies, most of them picked clean of anything but blood and clothes. Sarah and Roxie covered their mouths with their hands, more out of shock then anything. These bodies were truly mutilated.
I took the lead. I could hear something coming from the kitchen area in the back. It sounded like a deep wind, like a window was open. As we got closer we realized it wasn’t the wind. There had to be at least a hundred of them all trying to get to the big walk in freezers. The doors were shut, but had big blood stained dents all over them.
“You don’t think?” Roxie asked, she didn’t say it loud, but for that matter she didn’t whisper either. All of the sudden their moaning got louder and they all turned around to face us.
“Oh fuck me,” Nick blurted out, his face was full of fear.
My heart was racing sure, but my head was clear, I wasn’t thinking about flight, I was thinking about fight, “Take them down!”
I aimed my shotgun at the closest one and fired. The slug went through the first zombie’s head and then through the one behind him. Before I pulled the pump back to load another shell Nick, Roxie, and even Sarah all fired into the crowd.
We started walking backward, firing, reloading, firing, and reloading. My ears were ringing from how loud it was, gunshots echoing in the cafeteria. It felt like we were in there for hours, but it couldn’t have been more then a few minutes.