“Sam? Okay, Dude?”
I weakly nodded as he helped me to my feet. I looked around for the others.
Morgan had fallen against the steps. She was coming to. As I moved to help her, I saw Neal, unconscious, at the foot of the stairs. I rushed to him and started to shake his shoulders.
“Prof! You okay?”
I could feel him breathing, but he showed no signs of waking up. Morgan recovered to the point where she could see him, and she crawled down the steps to his side.
“No. No he’s not… he’s not… oh no !”
I took a page from Neal’s former playbook and slapped her face. Morgan was stunned into silence.
“He’s just knocked out.” Morgan blinked at me and lightly touched Neal’s face. When he stirred slightly, she calmed down a bit.
Tom was already leaping over all of us on his way up the steps.
“Tom?”
“We gotta go, Dude.”
“We have to help him,” I ordered Tom.
I saw him hesitate.
“Tom!”
He started back down the steps and lifted Neal up with Morgan’s help. Then he looked back at me.
“Sam?”
I tuned him out and searched for Lana. I only saw the gun and slowly picked it up. Why wasn’t she in a crumpled heap with the rest of us? Maybe she hadn’t gotten out. Was she still in there, burnt or burning to a crisp? No. No I couldn’t have failed her.
“Lana!”
I started back into the room when another explosion rang out. The force of it sent me falling into Tom’s shoulder. He started tugging at my collar with his free hand.
“What are you doing? I have to find her.”
“It’s no good, Sam. She didn’t make it.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Sam! Come on!”
I gripped the gun with one hand and held my bat under my other arm.
“Lana!”
The only sound was the fading of the explosion as we made our way into the light.
Tom started to bolt the door. I grabbed his arm before he had the key in the lock.
“No! She’s still down there. She’ll be trapped.”
“Sam---”
“We can’t leave her---”
“Sam! She’s gone. Okay. I’m… I’m sorry.”
I knew that he had to be right, and I wished I had never taken her out of the med wing in the first place. If she had stayed behind, she’d be with Josh and the others. I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but it probably wasn’t death.
This was.
I fell to the ground and wanted to cry. But I was too tired and too hungry and too sad to do anything but grind my fingers into the soil.
Neal gasped and choked. I turned to see Morgan help him sit up. She smoothed her hands across his back as he continued to cough and blink at everything around him.
“What… happened?”
Clay had gone psycho. Lana was gone. Beyond that, I didn’t have any other answers. I started to my feet. Tom tried to help me and I pushed him away, taking the keys and stuffing them into my pocket. All I could think was that Lana’s body deserved a chance to be found. Then again, was I just dooming her to the fate that Tom had proposed for Gabby? I didn’t like the thought of her bones picked clean, her flesh fueling more and more zombies.
But I just couldn’t lock the door.
We helped Neal to his feet and left the campus. Our one time home looked more abandoned than ever, and we turned the corner to the main strip of town. Everything was still. Quiet. Too still and quiet. I expected another rush of zombies at any second. But it didn’t really matter to me. Killing Gabby was one thing. This was much worse.
“Look!”
For a second I hoped for a revived Lana. But it was a car among many. The difference was that the windows weren’t smashed, and the thing looked drivable.
“I’ll hotwire it,” Tom said. “Come on!”
I helped Morgan settle Neal in the backseat. He was still dazed, but showing signs of true life. Morgan scooted into the seat beside him and wrapped her arm around his shoulders. His head fell to her shoulder. I placed the gun and the bat at their feet and shut them in.
At least someone should have a happy ending.
I watched Tom at work under the hood and took a few steps away. Lana should still be here. The fact that she wasn’t was just wrong. It wasn’t like we had been anything but crisis buddies, but it could have been so much more if I had just saved her. Had she felt her death? Did she blame me for it? And why had Clay pushed the plunger in the first place?
What was going on?
“Got it!”
Tom sounded overjoyed as he slipped into the driver’s seat. He started pulling the car towards me as another sound grabbed my attention. I looked to see the source.
A stray zombie was nearing me at a seemingly impossible speed.
I didn’t move.
Take me. Eat me! There’s no beating you. I’d rather go now than watch my friends die one by one by---
“Move, Dude!”
Tom swerved away from me and ground the zombie into the asphalt. When he cleared the creature and brought the car to a halt, I saw zombie guts, all green and wet, baking in the wake of the car and the rays of the sun. Maybe I should just fall into it and lap it all up. I was already a killer. So why not take it to the next level?
“Sam? No way.”
Morgan was leaning out of the back window. She held the gun awkwardly. I wanted her to pull the trigger. What was my life even worth at this point?
“Do it, Morgan. Shoot.”
I could see that she was trembling, but somehow she kept the gun steady.
“Sam---”
“Just do it !
I don’t know if she didn’t hear me or just flinched or whatever. But the gun went off. I couldn’t believe that she had actually fired. I think it was that fact that sent me back three steps until I slipped in the zombie guts and fell flat on my butt. For a second I thought she had hit me, and I pressed my hand to my chest. I lifted my fingers up. In place of my red blood was just creamy green slime. I flung it away and looked up as Morgan stepped out of the car. When she dropped the gun, it went off again. Morgan screamed as the bullet struck a tire in one of the other useless cars. It started to hiss and deflate. There was no saving that car now.
“What’s wrong with you?” I yelled as I struggled to my feet.
Morgan was blinking fast, and her lip was quivering. I got to her and roughly grabbed her shoulders.
“You really are crazy!”
“No. No I’m not. I---”
“You trying to kill someone?” I asked.
She shook her head as she tried to speak. If she was, it was on my orders. So why was I suddenly so mad at her? Morgan was just doing as she was told, as I had told.
I wasn’t really ready to die. Guess I wasn’t as brave as I thought.
Morgan was slipping away from me to the pavement. Here came the waterworks again. I couldn’t stop a sigh as I sank beside her and rubbed her back.
“Hey. It’s okay, Morgan. Really.”
Tom charged towards us. He looked like he would kill.
“What’s your deal?”
I thought it was meant for me, but before I could get the apology out, he wrestled Morgan from my grip and spun her towards a maple tree with red and yellow leaves peeking over the curb. Tom pressed her against the trunk. Morgan got so scared that she stopped crying.
“You want to draw them all out of wherever they’re hiding?”
“No, I---”
“I have to find Leslie. You’re not screwing this up. Understand?”
Morgan stayed silent, and Tom started to shake her.
“Answer me!”
I got back on my feet and tried to peel him off of her.
“Hey! Let her go, man. It wasn’t her fault. I made her do it.”
“Right. Let’s just ditch her and the old man right here.”
&nb
sp; Morgan found her voice.
“Please. Please don’t do that.”
“Excess baggage. We should have just left that at the med wing.”
I kept trying to get him away from her. There had been too many close calls to count. With each second that drifted by, Leslie’s fate had to be eating away at him like a zombie on a warm limb. Excess baggage? Sure. But if that was any of us, it was me. Maybe I didn’t want to die, but if Tom hadn’t snapped, I would have run in the other direction. It’d be safer for all of them if I was gone.
Now I had to say to keep our numbers from dwindling even further.
I released my hold on Tom and picked up the gun. My hands weren’t shaking as I pressed the end into Tom’s back. He tensed and relaxed his hold on Morgan. But he didn’t turn around.
“Sam?”
I caught Morgan’s eye.
“Go check on the Prof.”
She stayed frozen where she stood.
“Now.”
Morgan wiggled away from Tom and raced back to the car. I used the gun to turn Tom’s face to mine. He slowly raised his hands beside his glaring eyes.
“Sam? What do you think you’re doing?”
There was no time to answer his question.
“Now you get back behind the wheel.”
“Sam---”
“Let’s just get out of here. Leslie’s waiting. Right?”
He nodded slowly, and I followed him back to the car. Tom got it going, and I climbed into the passenger’s seat. I wasn’t pointing the gun at anyone anymore, but when I looked in the rearview mirror, I saw Morgan gripping my bat. Neal was coming around more and more, and he looked like he would knock my head into Tom’s if either one of us did something else stupid.
We drove off. The silence was brutal.
We reached the house that Leslie shared with her cousin. It was two stories with a rolling hill for a backyard. As Tom pulled up the driveway, I remembered simpler times when we’d made it a kind of weekend base of operations. It’d start with pizza and beer, graduate to weed, and I’d spend the rest of the night playing XBox in the den while Tom and Leslie disappeared into her bedroom. Her cousin, Ally, worked weekends at IHOP, so I had the place to myself. Save for Ally’s old Labrador, Roscoe. When the old guy had to be put down, I was left with his abandoned crate for company. But I never really felt lonely. Tom was there. He was otherwise engaged, but it had kind of a family feel.
I tried to remind myself of that as he parked the car and started up the steps. He left the door open.
It would be okay. He’d find Leslie huddled in a closet or something and get back as close to normal as we could get. The alternative was too much to think about. He’d lose it if Leslie was already gone.
I got out of the car. Morgan was already helping Neal make a similar move. I picked up the gun and the bat. My momentary death wish aside, they seemed safer in my hands. Neal still coughed, and I patted his back.
“Hanging in there, Prof?”
Neal nodded and swayed. Morgan and I steadied him where he stood, and he looked up at the house.
“So this is the girlfriend’s place?” he asked in between hacks.
“Here we are.”
“Do you think---?”
Before he could finish his question, a tremendous scream reached us through the open door. We looked at each other in total shock.
So we were too late for Leslie, and---
“Tom!”
I charged up the steps and entered the house. It reeked of spoiled food and stale smoke. It wasn’t all that different from how I remembered it.
But Leslie sure was.
She was perched on the couch like the angriest gargoyle. Her hair was still red and rosy, and her cheeks weren’t the shade of gray that was becoming all too familiar. But she growled and flashed her nails when she saw us enter. Tom was on the floor. My first thought was that she had taken a bite out of him, but there were no visible signs of an injury.
“Tom!”
When he didn’t answer right away, I aimed the gun at Leslie. Tom saw what I was doing, and he waved me off with a frantic hand.
“Don’t do it, Dude! She didn’t get me. I… I just got scared. I fell.”
Even if that was true, Leslie had to go. Killing female co-eds was almost a routine thing now. This kill would sting more than the others. Leslie was… Leslie had been my friend, too.
But we couldn’t take a chance.
I was about to fire when Tom was on his feet. He took the bat from me and held it like he was about to bash my skull in. He should save the home run for Leslie’s head.
“Tom?”
“It’s okay. She’s okay. See?”
I gave Leslie a closer look. For a split second I thought I saw her recognize me. Her eyes were almost black. Maybe that was on account of no sleep? Was she aping the zombies in an attempt to survive? Had she just snapped, and was this ordinary insanity? Or was she the next phase of zombie life? Like Lana had said, the rule book was gone.
Leslie opened her mouth.
Brown teeth. She started to rush me. I pointed the gun again, but Tom drove her back with the bat. Leslie lost her footing and went crashing through the glass coffee table littered with containers of rotten Chinese food and magazines that no one had any interest in reading.
“No! Please,” Tom begged.
Leslie crawled through bits of broken glass. I pushed Tom out of her path.
She was headed for the others.
Morgan pulled Neal out of Leslie’s line of fire. Half of Leslie was on the porch. I thought of kicking the rest of her out of the house and bolting the door behind her. If we couldn’t get away from her, then we’d get her away from us.
Tom seemed to beat me to the punch, but instead of sending her on her way, he used the bat to drive her deeper inside.
“Tom! No!”
He either didn’t or couldn’t hear me. He just kept swinging the bat. Leslie was swatting and foaming at the mouth. Every time she almost got her claws into his legs, he just swung again. Leslie, or whatever she now was, knew enough to duck and weave. I felt Morgan’s hand on my shoulder.
“Sam! Do something!”
For like the thousandth time since this had started, I pointed the gun. Tom was brave enough or stupid enough to risk a bite, and he pounded his foot into Leslie’s face. She recoiled and covered her eyes with her hands. Her body slid into Roscoe’s empty crate. Before she could lower her hands, Tom latched the thing shut and took a step back. He was panting hard as Leslie understood her new surroundings. She thrashed about behind the bars. Her shaking sent pictures flying off the walls along with a small round mirror.
More broken glass. More years of bad luck on the horizon.
I slowly approached Tom and stared down at his captive girlfriend.
“Tom? What do you think you’re doing?”
He kept his eyes on Leslie as he spoke.
“Maybe… maybe there’s a way to reverse it. To… you know… like cure her.”
“What would even make you think that that’s possible?”
Neal had completely recovered from the med wing blast. He grabbed Tom by his collar. Leslie let out a high-pitched squeal and struggled so much that the crate flipped over with her in it. I was afraid that she might get the thing open, and I raised the gun again. The latch held, and Leslie stayed upside down. She banged her head against the roof of the crate, which was now the floor of the room, which was the worst place that she could be.
“I wasn’t talking to you!” Tom screamed.
I was totally prepared for him and Neal to go at it again. Neal turned Tom’s face to his and lowered his voice.
“Tom? Come on, Tom. She’s… she’s not who she was. I’m sorry but---”
Tom twisted away from him.
“But nothing. We… okay. So maybe we can’t cure her. But we can… you know… you know like watch her and see what happens.”
In spite of the awful hissing sound that Leslie was no
w making, maybe Tom wasn’t so crazy. It was kill or be killed when it came to Gabby and Tammy. But we had Leslie confined. Did she deserve a chance? Did Tom?
Neal reached for Tom again. He shrugged off the Professor’s touch.
“Tom, I’m sorry. We’re too late. It’s not… it’s not safe to keep her going. It’s not fair either.”
Point Neal. Growling in a crate like a dog was no kind of life.
Tom slowly turned his head. He looked past Neal and stared at Morgan.
“What if it was her ?” he asked.
I watched Neal look at Morgan. He didn’t answer. Tom had him. He’d lock her in a cage if he even thought there was a chance of getting her back to normal. She’d probably do the same for him.
I knew I would’ve done the same for Lana, and I really wished that she was still here.
I lowered the gun and fell to the couch. Leslie had grown quieter, but she still rocked the crate back and forth.
“So I guess we’re waiting this out, right?”
No one argued with me.
The morning became the afternoon, and soon it started to get dark. Leslie kept twisting and snarling from the crate. A few times she pounded her head against the door again and again. Tom drove her back deeper in to the box with swings of the bat. Each time he did, she seemed to get angrier. And Tom was getting more and more upset. I finally asked Morgan to take him into the kitchen to see if there was anything to eat.
“I’m not hungry, Dude!”
Neither was I, but I wanted him out of earshot so I could talk with the Professor.
“Then just give the place a once over,” I said. “See if… see if there’s anything that might help her.”
There wouldn’t be anything. I was sure of it. Tom bought the lie though, and I saw Morgan shift into mothering mode as she led him out of the room.
Multiple personalities much, Morgan?
I pulled Neal far enough away from the crate so that we could keep an eye on Leslie. But I wanted to be sure that if she could comprehend even a fraction of what we were saying, she wouldn’t catch a word of it.
“Prof?”
“We have to do something, Kid. We can’t… we can’t just stay here with her. We’re sitting ducks.”
“I know. But Tom---”
Zombie University (The Complete Series): How I Survived the Zombie Apocalypse Page 9