by Sam Sisavath
“How do you ever get used to something like that?”
“You don’t have a choice. Adapt or perish.”
“Maybe that’s what we have to do now. Adapt or perish.”
“We’ve adapted, Lara. That’s how we’ve survived this long.”
“We’ve survived, Will, but survival isn’t living.”
“That can change.”
He reached over and put his hand over hers. She slipped her fingers through his until they were entwined.
“That was very slick,” she smiled.
“I have my moments,” he smiled back.
*
They drove past the overgrown football field, spread out underneath the sky. The bleachers, along just one side of the field, were empty.
Dansby High School was slightly under a kilometer from the highway, though the trip along the small, bumpy road felt longer. They pulled into the parking lot. The sprawling one-story school was much bigger than he had expected. The uncut grass swayed in the breeze, but it was easy to tell that the school grounds used to be well maintained, with a series of winding concrete walkways leading from the parking lot to two front doors. The American flag was still flying when they arrived, the metal latch that held it in place banging against the steel pole, the only sound in the whole town, other than their engines.
“How many people did Davies say lived here?” Lara asked, leaning forward to take in the sight of the school.
“Apparently just three hundred or so,” Will said.
“That’s a pretty big school for 300 or so people.”
“Maybe they’re really serious about their education. Or they had more money than they knew what to do with. A lot of small towns along the state highways don’t even have land taxes. All of their money comes from speeding tickets.”
“Really?”
“There are speed traps everywhere. It’s great if you live in those towns, not so much if you’re just driving through and happen to be going five miles over the speeding limit.”
“Are we speaking from personal experience?”
“My heart says no, but my wallet says yes.”
Will climbed out, snatching the Remington 870 and M4A1 from the back. Lara followed, leaving the ham radio behind. They met Danny and Davies in front of the trucks, and looked over the neighborhood around the school. There were a dozen houses on the other side of the street.
Danny looked over at Davies. “Three hundred or so, huh? How many of those 300 or so are kids? Two hundred and ninety-nine?”
Davies shrugged. “Look, that’s just what someone told me, okay? There might be more, I don’t know. Shit.”
Danny rolled his eyes. He looked back at Will. “Okay, boys and girls, so we’re here. What’s the plan?”
“Go in, get the girl and her brother, go home,” Will said.
“Just like that, huh?”
“Just like that.”
“Uh huh.”
“What?” Davies said, seeing Danny’s doubtful expression. “Is there something going on I should worry about?”
Danny jerked a thumb at Will. “It’s just that whenever he says something is going to be a walk in the park, it usually ends up being anything but.”
“I take offense to that,” Will said.
“Shut up. You know I’m right.” Danny looked back at the school. “Okay then, might as well get this adventure over with. It’s just a walk in the park, right?”
“Absolutely,” Will said and glanced down at his watch. 9:13 a.m.
*
Dansby High School looked big on the outside, but inside it was essentially one long hallway that extended left and right, with the main entrance in the very center. The classrooms were along the hallways, lockers sprinkled between them. As soon as they stepped into the school, they were greeted by a big glass display filled with pictures of past winning sports teams, trophies, and signed sports memorabilia. A big banner on top of the trophy case declared: “Welcome to Dansby High School. Home of the Fighting Panthers” in big, bold capital letters and three different primary colors.
Everything was covered in a thin layer of dust, and there were cobwebs dangling from the ceiling and corners. But it was the tiled floor that got Will’s attention. It was well-traveled, but not by people wearing shoes.
Bare feet…
He caught Danny’s eyes and nodded at the floor. “They’ve been here. Often. Maybe they’re still here. Eyes forward and ears open. Stay frosty.”
Davies quickly slung his G36 and freed the Remington. He racked a shell into the chamber and thumbed off the safety. Lara reflexively put her palm on her holstered gun as if to make sure it was still there, and her body stiffened noticeably next to him.
“Lara, stay close and try not to get in front of me,” Will said. “Where did Elise say she was staying?”
“In the school basement.”
“Maintenance room would be my guess,” Davies said. “My friends and I used to sneak off for smokes back in the day. That’s usually where you access the basements in small schools like this.”
Will found a map of the school encased in glass on the wall nearby and scanned it. “Maintenance room’s to our right, before the gym. You’re right, basement’s in there, too. Danny, cover our six.”
“I’ll cover Lara’s, but I’d rather not do yours,” Danny said.
“Fair enough,” he said.
Lara rolled her eyes next to them.
Will led them down the hallway toward the gym. Lara followed closely behind, while Davies kept pace on his left. Danny trailed in back, watching the long hallway at the other side of the front doors. There were enough skylights along the hallway for there to be no issue with light.
Patches of sunlight and darkness were visible in the classrooms to their left, which they could see through small security windows in the doors. There was something very wrong about the sight of an empty classroom. They moved on, reaching the maintenance room a few minutes later.
Will noted the turn twenty meters farther up the hallway, and a plaque reading Auditorium, with an arrow pointing left. “Danny,” Will said.
Danny swung around until he was standing on the other side of the maintenance door. They switched on the tactical flashlights underneath their shotguns and exchanged a nod.
He looked back. “Davies and Lara, stay out here.”
They nodded.
He took hold of the doorknob and mouthed a count from three. On one, he threw open the door and stepped inside, Danny moving swiftly behind, then quickly shuffled forward until he was beside him. Will swept the left side, while Danny swept the right, the bright halo from their flashlights lighting up the darkened room, exposing two circular patches per second. Behind them, sunlight flooded in through the opened door, but there were corners where it couldn’t reach and he quickly scanned them with the flashlight.
The maintenance room was surprisingly big. Even stuffed with the janitor’s supplies, including two large trash bins, there was more than enough space for two men with long, heavy shotguns to move around freely.
Will’s flashlight ran across a door at the back, and a plaque marked Basement. He walked over to it. The door was in one piece, but showed signs of damage, and there were dark black splotches and pieces of skin, dry to the touch, clinging to the wood exterior. He tried the doorknob, but it didn’t budge.
“Good news, right?” Danny said. “Door’s still locked—that means the bad guys didn’t get in.”
Will nodded. “Good way to look at it.” He glanced back at Lara, looking at him anxiously from the opened doorway. “Lara.”
She hurried inside, passing by Danny, who went out to join Davies.
Will and Lara stood in front of the basement door, Lara looking expectantly at it, then at him. “See if you can get it open,” Will said.
She leaned toward the door, putting one hand on it for support, careful to avoid the fleshy clumps clinging to it. “Hello? Is anyone in there? Elise? Todd? This is Lara. Remem
ber, we talked on the radio yesterday? If you can hear me, we’re here to rescue you, like I promised. But first I need you to open the door.”
She waited for a response.
Will tuned out the rest of the room. He listened intently, trying to pick up any sound coming from the other side of the door.
Nothing.
Lara continued, a little louder now: “Elise? Are you in there? We’re here to help, sweetheart. It’s Lara. Please open the door. I can’t help you if you don’t open the door.”
They waited again, but still no response.
“She said the basement?” Will asked.
Lara nodded. “Yes. I made sure of it. I asked her at least three times last night.”
“And she said she never left?”
“No. Todd wouldn’t let her leave. He’s seems to be very protective.”
“He must have gotten hurt during one of his supply runs.”
“That’s my guess. Or maybe he’s sick and couldn’t find the right medicine. They’ve been down there for a really long time, in an enclosed space…”
He nodded. “Okay, we’re going to have to do this the hard way, then.”
Will put a hand on her shoulder and led her back. She moved reluctantly as he squared up against the door. It was solid wood, but not metal clad. That wasn’t too bad. He would have preferred one of those cheap, hollow-core doors, but this was the next best thing.
He stood with his legs slightly unbalanced, took a breath, then delivered a swift, quick kick at the door just underneath the doorknob, almost as if he were falling into the brown slab of wood. He heard the loud, satisfying crack! as the wood gave way and broke around the knob, and the door swung inward, revealing pitch blackness on the other side.
Will instantly snapped backwards a full foot and lifted the shotgun, the flashlight underneath the barrel razing the darkness in a wide sweep.
There was a concrete floor below metal stairs, and what looked like more janitorial supplies in the back of the room. There was a dumpster on one side, next to a pile of boxes. Sleeping beds, clothes, candy wrappers, books, and empty soda cans covered the floor.
Just like every teenager’s bedroom.
There wasn’t any space to really hide, but he illuminated the area underneath the staircase anyway to be sure, then along the dumpster area.
“Can you see her?” Lara asked behind him.
“No.”
Will took a step back, lowered the shotgun, and produced a handful of glow sticks from a pouch. He cracked them, then tossed them into the basement, spreading them in all four directions. Slowly, the darkness gave way to a sea of green.
“I need to go down first, Lara.”
“Okay.”
He tested the first step to make sure it was solid, then scrambled down to the basement floor a second later, sweeping the back of the room with the shotgun. He made a beeline for the dumpster, looking around it, then pried open the lid with the barrel and quickly shot a look inside.
Garbage. Smelly garbage.
But no kids.
He lowered his shotgun. “Lara.”
She came down the steps and looked around. There were two sleeping bags near the back, used wrappers, scattered clothes, empty soda cans and water bottles. “What’s that smell?”
“Confined living,” he said.
He crouched next to one of the bedrolls. His flashlight picked out some used bandages, and there were blood splatters on the bedroll and the immediate floor around it.
“Blood?” she asked, looking over his shoulder.
“Dry blood. From a few days ago would be my guess.”
“She said her brother was hurt. I didn’t want to push her on it, but it must have been pretty bad if he couldn’t even talk to me on the radio. I got the feeling he was unconscious, but she probably thought he was just sleeping.”
She walked across the room and crouched next to something in the darkness. When she stood back up, she was holding an old, portable ham radio. Compared to the one Harold Campbell staffed the facility with, this one looked ancient and bulky.
His radio squawked with Danny’s voice: “What’s the word?”
“They were here recently,” Will said, “but it looks like they’re gone now.”
“How? The door was locked from the inside.”
“That’s a good question.”
He surveyed the room again, then moved closer to the walls, shining the flashlight along the cracks that he could see with the naked eye.
Lara came over. “You think there’s another way out of here?”
“Must be, right? How else would they have gotten out?”
She took out her flashlight and looked at the walls closely, searching the other side of the room to cover more ground.
There was a stack of boxes next to the dumpster. He grabbed one, finding rolls of toilet paper still in their packaging inside. A second box contained paper napkins and plastic utensils, and the third was stuffed with paper plates still in bags.
Something else caught his eye—a thin sliver along the wall, between the boxes and the dumpster, which wasn’t as flat against the wall as he had originally thought. There was a tiny crevice.
Just big enough for an eight-year-old girl to slide through.
Leaning forward and using the flashlight, he discovered a small opening in the wall behind the dumpster.
Bingo.
He grabbed the dumpster and pushed. It moved grudgingly, making a loud, squealing noise in protest, but eventually slid away to reveal the hole in the wall. He illuminated the opening, and rats scrambled out of the way on the other end. The passageway was narrow, only two-by-two feet, and went in a straight line for about thirty meters, before ending in a wall on the other end. Sunlight shone through metal grates at the top of where the passageway ended.
“Lara,” he called.
He stepped aside to let her see. “Where does it go?” she asked.
“That’s about thirty meters, which would put it somewhere underneath the auditorium next door.”
“They must have known this was here all along.”
“It was probably their backup plan. In case the ghouls made it through the door. They must have attacked, and the kids panicked and took the exit.” Her expression turned anxious, and he put a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll find them.”
She nodded.
He clicked his radio. “Danny, we think they went into the auditorium next door through an underground passageway.”
“We’ll scout ahead,” Danny said through the radio.
“Roger that. We’ll be right behind you.”
He and Lara hurried out, back into the hallway.
As they turned toward the auditorium, their radios squawked and they heard Danny’s voice: “Hey, we only brought two trucks, right?”
“Yeah, why?” he asked.
“We might need more trucks, because I think I just found every citizen of Dansby, Texas. All ‘300 or so’ of them.”
Will reflexively checked his watch: 9:42 a.m.
CHAPTER 34
LARA
THE HUMAN BODY produces two million new red cells every second. When the body senses that it has lost too many red cells, it creates new ones by secreting a hormone called erythropoietin, which in turn is used by the bone marrow to produce stem cells, the building blocks of red and white cells. In this way, the body replenishes blood on an almost instantaneous basis, constantly restoring the red cells lost during heavy bleeding. In a matter of days, the human body can restore all that it’s lost, essentially supplying a constant stream of never-ending blood. That is, as long as the human body continues to function and remain alive.
Lara was thinking about all those first-year medical school facts as she looked into the Dansby High School auditorium. The spacious, warehouse-like room was lit up by daylight flooding in from windows high along the walls.
Danny was wrong—there weren’t “300 or so” people in the auditorium. There were at least 500, but
it was hard to judge because they all looked so alike in their current state.
They lay beside each other on the hardwood floor, leaving very little space between them. Not that the people themselves needed space, because they weren’t moving. At all. From the looks of them, they hadn’t moved for a while now.
Days. Weeks. Maybe even months.
They lay on the floor with their shirtsleeves and pant legs rolled up to expose knees and shoulders. Their necks were similarly exposed, collars pulled aside and buttons undone. They looked, for all intents and purposes, like unconscious vessels.
She crouched next to the closest person—a woman whose age was hard to tell. She was pale and her skin was wrinkled, yet she didn’t look old. Her bones were visible underneath skin that covered her like ill-fitting clothes. She looked malnourished but was somehow still alive. Barely. Her eyes were closed and her lips were pale and cracked, and there were thin layers of mucus around her eyes, nostrils, and at the corners of her mouth.
Lara felt for the woman’s pulse and found it moving lazily underneath shriveled skin. It was weak, but constant. It reminded her of coma patients—alive, but not really.
“Are they dead?” Danny asked.
“They look asleep,” Lara said.
“Like some kind of coma?” Will said.
“Maybe. Some kind of induced coma? I’ve never seen anything like it. They could have been here for a while.”
“How are they still alive? Don’t coma patients need to be intravenously fed?”
“Yes,” Lara said. She didn’t understand it either.
She saw them. Teeth marks along the woman’s arms.
She leaned forward to get a closer look. There were more teeth marks along the woman’s calves, all the way up to her knees. They weren’t from the same set of teeth. One had a chipped molar. More bites along the woman’s neck. It wasn’t just one set of teeth that had bit into her, it was many.
Dozens.
Will said, “What is this place?”
“It’s a farm,” she said, standing up. “They’re farming these people for blood, Will. It doesn’t matter how many times you take blood from the human body, it will always replenish the lost supply. As long as we’re alive, we’re making new blood every day.” She looked around her, the very idea of what she was saying, staggering even to her. “These people are still alive, Will. I don’t know how, but they’re still alive, and they’re producing blood that’s being taken from them on a daily basis.”