And now I was the guest of honor.
On the stairs, a stinking husk sighed as it drew close and reached for my arm. I felt its fingers touch my wrist. It was like a reverse horror show. I remembered Halloweens past where I had been blindfolded and meant to dip my hand into a bowl of intestines. They were warm and slimy, and I was on the verge of peeing my pants until the blindfold came off and revealed overcooked spaghetti. But now the pasta was grabbing me. I scrambled away from the zombie’s fingers and flew back into the depths of the dorm.
I tried one door after another. All were locked. I suddenly thought that there might be humans like me, hidden and waiting for salvation. At this point I was hardly that. But I was another man to aid their cause. They’d likely be slow to trust me. There wasn’t the history I had with Tom or the… whatever it was I had with Lana. But the simple fact that my skin was not gray and sagging, the reality that I could still speak would show those that I imagined that I could be trusted. And that I needed sanctuary.
I banged against each and every door and screamed at the top of my lungs. The zombies already knew that I was here. So what else could go wrong?
“Let me in! Somebody! I’m not with them. Let me in! Please !!!”
No one was hearing me. No one was coming. I looked over my shoulder and saw the zombies on my level. I knew they could run if they wanted to. But what was the point? They had me cornered. They were going to take their time.
I reached the end of the hallway and pounded on the last door. The draft from a window hit my back. I should bust it open. I should just drop to the earth and try to run. Or I could just wait for it. Maybe Lana and Tom had already seen the dorm engulfed in dead, moving flesh. Neither of them would want to admit that I was a lost cause. But there was Gabby and the others to think about. The needs of the many… wow. Star Trek really did apply to any situation. I felt zombie breath coming over me like road kill, and I bit my lip. They were getting closer. When they could smell my sweat, their faces calmed. They were like stoners at a diner who finally received their plates of onion rings. I resigned myself to the end and prepared to feel their teeth in my skin.
I barely felt the last door open and someone pull me in to one of the rooms. I fell against a bed of dirty laundry and peeked past a pile of skinny jeans and too many tank tops to see a tiny redhead push every piece of furniture that wasn’t bolted to the floor back against the door. The zombies thrashed and groaned from the other side. The girl turned to me. The jeans that she wore were soaked. I wasn’t the least bit disgusted as I climbed off of what had to be her bed and tried to take her hand.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
I held my hands horizontal to my head.
“Easy, easy! I’m… I’m just like you. I’m… here to help.”
She let out a slow breath and focused all of her gaze on my eyes.
“You told a different story out there. Seems like you needed rescuing.”
She was so right! I just couldn’t believe the luck of finding her in a sea of zombies.
“I… yeah. I… thanks.”
The zombies were still in the hallway. I imagined the ones who had made their way from the roof descending to join their brethren at the promise of warm flesh. The girl took my hand. Definitely not the sensation of spaghetti. She was alive, and I was grateful for that.
“What’s going on out there?” she asked.
Where to start? The redhead had probably been holed up here since the beginning. She had to know that things were bad. But I could tell her stories what would set her fiery locks on edge.
“It’s… it’s bad. They just keep coming. We’re… we were trying to get off campus and get help.”
The redhead licked her lips, and her blue eyes glistened in the pale light.
“We’re ? There’s more of you?”
I got the urgency of her question. She had probably wondered if she would ever see another living soul. And here I was! And I was promising reinforcements. If we could just make it back to the house…
“Well?” the redhead demanded as she gripped my hand tighter. I didn’t mind. I could feel her pulse, and I was already planning to bring her into the fold.
“Look,” I started as I returned her touch. “Do you know a way out of here?”
She flashed a white smile and nodded towards her window. The glass was still intact. Already I was feeling surer of an escape.
“They … they never tried it,” she said. “I… I should have just jumped. And ran. I know. But I’m… I’m scared.”
She fell into my arms, and instinct kicked in. I held her close and whispered assurances into her ear.
“It… it’ll be okay. Look. If we can just get back, there’s even more of me. Of us. We… we can keep you safe. And you … you can help us.”
The redhead lifted her watering eyes to mine and nodded as she pulled away and lifted the glass from the windowsill. I felt smacked in the face by a spray of night. The sounds of the zombies remained behind the door and on the roof. The redhead’s promise of escape was too tempting to pass up. I took her hand again and saw a bit of bare grass. We could fall without too much damage. Or we could trail down to the earth. The latter was preferable to me, and I started down the side of the dorm. The old bricks skinned my knees though my jeans, but my flesh did not tear as I neared and finally hit the ground. When I was back on terra firma, I beckoned for the redhead to follow. She didn’t need a second request, and she slid down the building until she was in my arms again. We savored the ground under out feet and our breath mingling in the night. That was when most of the zombies caught our scent and pursued. It was a different batch from the bunch on the stairs. These zombies had tried the roof and were outraged that we had even found a point of escape. So they leapt to the ground after us. At the head of pack was a sexless figure that clawed the air and nearly ripped my head from my throat with the force of a single nail. The redhead intervened and spared me from the slashing. She found a bit of bark torn from a tree and drove the zombie back. For reasons I did not understand, it fell back, and the redhead had my hand again.
We raced back to the house. The pace would have been quicker if my bad leg hadn’t held us up.
“Come on!” she screamed. “Let’s get some help !”
I fell to the porch as she desperately tried the door. If Tom and Lana were still above ground, her pounding would do nothing to gain us entrance. I found my way to my feet and tried the knob. I could hear something going on inside. There was no shattered glass under my feet. Had the zombies also acquired the ability to slip through walls?
“Lana! Tom! It’s me !!! What’s going on in---?”
In an instant, the door opened, and Tom pulled me and the redhead back into the house. He quickly started to board up the door again.
When Lana saw me, she let out a squeal of delight and threw her arms around my neck. I could feel the shotgun draped over her arm.
“Sam! Are you okay?”
I was too out of breath to answer with words, so I just nodded against her shoulder as I felt her grateful hands on my back.
I could hear Tom driving nails back into the door. What I couldn’t hear was zombie grunts and nails on the other side. That surprised me. I slipped away from Lana and peered through a slit in one of the boards. There was the front yard and the night. Both looked empty. Where had they gone ? They had been right behind us. Not that I was complaining, but why would they pass up two midnight snacks with the promise of more ?
Tom slapped me on the back.
“Guess you didn’t get too far, Dude?”
Obviously.
“How bad is it out there?” he asked.
Even though I’d only made it as far as what was practically the house next store, I’d seen enough to know that things were getting worse. We could just bolt or try to come up with a better plan to make our way back to the med wing. But would we even find that the way that we had left it? The possibility seemed slimmer and slimmer by the sec
ond. We were running out of options.
“Hey. Who are you ?”
I turned to see Lana standing over the redhead. She was huddled in the far corner of the room. She held her trembling arms around her damp jeans. When she didn’t speak, Lana looked to me for an answer.
“Oh. She’s…”
I realized that I didn’t know her name or really anything about her save for the fact that she had red hair, a lot of jeans, and that she was scared. So we had one thing in common.
“I… I found her in one of the dorms. I think… I’m pretty sure she’s been like trapped since the beginning.”
The redhead nodded and let out a horrible screech.
“Yes !!! It was awful ! I couldn’t get away. I’ve just been praying ---”
She couldn’t get another word out and started crying like crazy. I tried to hold her again, but she batted me off. Her arms were flailing wildly as she banged her head against the wall again and again and again. The sound of her slamming drew Neal and Morgan from the basement. Morgan started towards the girl and sneered at me.
“Why are you just standing there?” Morgan asked. “She needs help.”
Once again Morgan rose to the occasion in a moment of crisis. I’d read somewhere that damaged goods were good at that. The redhead flinched when Morgan tried to touch her, but Morgan simply gave it another go. She managed to grab the girl’s face.
“Shhh. It’s going to be alright. You’re safe with us.”
That much was true. We had no food and a dying girl in the basement. But we wouldn’t cause her any harm. We would get her cleaned up and ask her if she’d seen anything that might push us towards Plan B.
The redhead started to still under Morgan’s touch and she wiped her runny nose with the back of her hand. Morgan smiled and took her hand.
“What’s your name?” Morgan asked.
“I’m… Tammy.”
Good. Now we had a name to work with.
“Tammy,” Morgan said. “I’m Morgan. I’m going to help you up now. Okay?”
Tammy nodded as Morgan eased her to her feet. Everyone else took note of her wet jeans. Tammy hung her head in embarrassment, but Morgan wrapped her arm around Tammy’s shoulders.
“I… there’s a bathroom downstairs. I’ll take you there now. Okay?”
Tammy went limp and fell against Morgan. She guided our new friend past Neal, and they disappeared from our view. I fell into an armchair and held my face in my hands.
“At least you rescued her,” Neal said sadly. He was lamenting my failure to do anything else and…
Wait.
They hadn’t run like we planned.
Why ?
“You guys,” I started, “you didn’t make a break for it. What happened?”
Lana sighed and lowered the gun to the ground.
“We… we couldn’t leave Gabby.”
Oh no.
It must have been too long between the moment I chopped off her hand and Lana crafted the bomb. At least she wasn’t a zombie. If that had happened, we wouldn’t just be sitting here like we were waiting for a pizza delivery. And there was no way that Neal would have let Morgan go back to the basement without him.
“She’s… is she…?”
Lana sank to my side and took my hands.
“I’m sorry, Sam.”
I was listening through a haze as Lana described the moments just after my futile escape. She and Tom had returned to the basement to find Gabby’s breathing suddenly accelerated as Neal tried to hold her convulsing body on the bed. Lana had pushed him aside and tried to see what was obstructing her breathing. She was gagging on her own tongue. With no time and no way to glove, Lana had reached her hand down Gabby’s throat and tried to pry her tongue forth.
“She… I knew there was a chance she would bite me. But I didn’t …”
Lana didn’t care. Her patient was all that mattered. If she survived this, she’d be an amazing doctor.
I blinked back tears and silently pleaded for her to continue
“She… she just gave out. We… waited. Gabby… Gabby didn’t change, Sam. At least you gave her that.”
I saw Neal nod as he smoothed his hands down his face. Gabby never became one of them.
But she was still gone.
“We… we realized we had to leave her,” Neal said.
“No. No that was your idea.”
I turned my head to see Tom shaking his fist in Neal’s direction. Tom? Seriously ? Out of all of them, had he been the one to suggest some kind of proper burial for the poor dead girl?
Neal charged forward and grabbed Tom by his collar.
“You wanted to use her… her flesh as a distraction! Throw her to the vultures.”
“I was just ---”
“You saw nothing wrong with them picking her bones clean so we could escape.”
That was more like Tom.
He pressed Neal into the corner that Tammy had abandoned.
“She is dead. And we’re not. It would’ve worked if you’d just---”
Neal formed a fist and hit Tom square in the jaw. Tom doubled back and fell at my feet. Lana shifted to my side and held my shoulders.
“If I had just what ?” Neal asked. “Been like you ? In case you’ve forgotten , we’re still human.”
“Not for long,” Tom spat back. “Thanks to you. And your girlfriend.”
Neal looked as if he would bring his heel down on Tom’s chest when Tom sat up on his elbows and glared.
“What do you---?”
“Admit it! It was a good … a great idea! But she was all it’s not right, it’s evil, and you lapped it up like a dog.”
Now he kicked him. Tom winced but didn’t let it stop his tirade.
“And some of us have people out there who really know us.”
I knew his mind was drifting back to Leslie. Some of this was just run of the mill jerk Tom. But another part was Tom scared out of his mind for where she was and what had happened or what might happen to her.
Tom smirked.
“And that whacked out little number down there ? She wouldn’t give you a first glance if they weren’t at the front door.”
Tom kind of had a point.
Neal had enough of a monster in him to fall against Tom and start hitting him. I was out of my seat and trying to pull them apart. Lana followed my lead and dropped the gun as she dragged Tom away from Neal’s attack. I got the professor to his feet and held him against the fireplace.
“Prof!”
“You slimy piece of---”
“Hey! Hold up! We’re on the same side. Remember that . We can’t afford to like fight each other.”
Neal’s pounding chest slowed as I kept him from charging towards Tom again. Lana had Tom on the bottom most step of the staircase, and she was checking his face for injuries. He shook her off and pounded his fist against a wall. He did it three more times then started to cry. I felt Neal relax to the point where I knew I could trust him on his own, and I went to Tom and touched his back. I remembered him returning to our dorm after 2am on the night, or I guess the morning, that he first met her.
“This girl, Dude. This girl is everything.”
When I met Leslie, I had to agree. Smart. Sweet. Hot. She even knew how to deep fry a Mounds bar and let it melt in her mouth without so much as a blink. If she’d been anyone’s girl but Tom’s I’d have attempted a robbery. Not like I would’ve stood a chance. I never did.
And none of that mattered now.
“Tom? Come on, man. We’ll still find her. Everything’s going to be---”
I stopped as a scream came from the basement. Neal needed only a second to recognize the voice.
“Morgan!”
He was off with Lana at his heels. Tom was not moving, and I knew I had to leave him to see what was happening. I was moving down the stairs and stopped when I heard Lana gasp. Gabby. Had to be. She had turned. So I’d gotten everything wrong, and I had to try to clean up the mess, and…
<
br /> Gabby was still on the bed lifeless. My eyes shifted to the other side of the room.
Tammy was out of her jeans. I saw that her legs were not soaked in pee. They were a collection of bite marks and torn skin that was oozing something green.
She… she wasn’t. How could she… how could she talk if she was one of them ? Why had she felt alive when I touched her? What…
Tammy had found a razor in the bathroom and she held it to Morgan’s throat.
“So you’re all here,” Tammy hissed as she looked us over. “Except… where’s the other boy ?”
I sent my thoughts to Tom. Run, man. Find Leslie. Run now!
“Hey!”
Tammy’s voice captured all of my attention.
“Your friend, jerk. Where’d he go?”
I couldn’t speak. Tammy nicked Morgan’s cheek with the razor, and she let out a light cry. Neal tried to move closer, but Lana held him back.
“Neal, don’t!” Lana cried out. I saw her reach over her arm for where the shotgun had been. But she’d left it upstairs. With Tom.
Get the gun, guy. Help!
Tammy smirked as Morgan hung her head and cried. Tammy lifted her face back to the light and roughly held her chin. It was everything that Morgan’s tender caress when she thought Tammy was normal wasn’t. Morgan gritted her teeth and looked into Neal’s eyes.
Tammy pressed her lips to Morgan’s ear.
“So which one first ? You were nice to me.”
She licked Morgan’s neck, and I saw her shudder.
“Him, too.”
Tammy winked in my direction. I wished that I had left her to fend for herself. But she wasn’t… she didn’t look like a zombie? So was she just crazy ?
Zombie University (The Complete Series): How I Survived the Zombie Apocalypse Page 7