“Nancy!” Marshall cried out in alarm.
She had just enough time to wonder at the panic in his voice - a tone she’d yet to hear from him. Then her eyes found the road again just in time for her body to slam violently forward as a white cloud burst in her face.
Nancy was only out for a few seconds, but it was enough to disorient her. Her vision was filled with whiteness and she felt as though she was being smothered. There was a loud, ceaseless horn screeching at her from somewhere nearby.
“Nancy?” a voice called. “Nancy, are you okay?” The voice sounded panicked. Nancy wondered what had upset him so much.
“Are you okay?” This was a different voice, older, calmer, but also with a note of concern.
“I’m fine,” the younger voice insisted. “I think I bruised a few ribs flying into the back of your seat, but I’ll be okay.”
“You should wear your seat belt, you know.”
For some reason that statement made Nancy burst into giggles.
“Nancy!”
Her head finally started to clear. With some effort she lifted her arms and pushed back at the airbag. It felt like the impact had broken her nose. At this her giggles subsided. She turned to see Marshall looking back at her with a small stream of blood running down the side of his face. “What happened?” she asked.
He didn’t need to answer. She looked out the front window of her car and groaned. As they’d come up over the crest of a hill there had been two vehicles - a semi and a Mustang - that had crashed head-on in the middle of the road. The nose of her Hyundai was now about three feet shorter and fused with the passenger-side door of the Mustang.
“I don’t want to rush you guys,” Greg’s voice hissed from the backseat, “but we have a bigger problem here!”
They were coming, Nancy realized. At least two dozen that she could see, shuffling toward the car with purpose. The nearest one, a woman with the entire left side of her face and an arm missing, was only a few meters away.
“Forget the car!” Marshall commanded. He kicked open his door and the entire thing crashed to the ground. “Grab a weapon!” He pulled off two shots with his rifle - his last two shells - and snatched up a piece of broken pool cue. Greg produced the letter opener he’d taken from the bar and stabbed at the airbag still pressing against Nancy. He dropped the opener as the bag began to deflate; Nancy shouted for him to leave it as they rushed from the car.
They moved with fear and desperation. Marshall stabbed his pool cue into the nearest zombie’s head and abandoned it while calling to Nancy and Greg to follow him. The school was only just down the road. Nancy snagged her katana, jabbing and slashing at anything that seemed too close, while Greg pointed a shaking pistol in every direction but didn’t shoot once. The zombies were closing in from every direction, their moans and groans a morbid chorus. The sheer number of them made Nancy’s head swim. How could there be so many? They moved so slowly, so where were they all coming from?
“Run, dammit!” Marshall’s voice shouted, and the younger two obeyed. Nancy shrieked as she swung her sword at arm’s length while she ran. Ahead of her, Marshall jabbed the nose of his rifle into a zombie’s eye socket, ripped it back out, and kept moving. Behind her a shot rang out; she allowed herself to turn just long enough to see that Greg had shot wildly at a man in a police uniform with a giant hole through his chest. He’d almost dropped the gun in surprise of the recoil.
It seemed as though they’d had to run a marathon, but suddenly they were in front of the high school and Marshall was sprinting for the front door. Greg cried, “No! This way!” and took off instead toward the back alley. There was no time to argue with him, so Nancy and Marshall followed and saw the boy’s plan. The rear school grounds were fenced in and attached to the main office area. With significantly less care than they may have otherwise had, Nancy and Greg shoved Marshall up over the fence before scrambling up behind him. Nancy had to kick a zombie in the face to keep it biting her leg as she threw herself over the top of the fence; she felt his teeth shatter beneath her heel.
“Now, quickly!” Greg hissed. He hauled Marshall to his feet and took off running again. Before the zombies could even begin to rattle at the fence, the trio hurled themselves over a wall that separated the office area from the baseball field in back. Nancy couldn’t help but hoot aloud - the wall was one of three that housed several benches and blocked a single door from the outside - it was a smoking area. Because of their side-stepping, the zombies were out of sight when they ran up to the rear entrance of the school. Marshall smashed the lock on the heavy steel doors with the butt of his rifle, and they slipped inside. Just in case the zombies figured out how to climb the wall, Greg dragged one of the benches in with him and butted it up against the doors to keep them closed.
“Good thinking,” Nancy gasped. She gave Greg a smile and ruffled his hair, despite his weak protests.
The sound of a gun cocking ruined their small victory.
A man stood no more than ten feet away from them at the end of the hallway. He held a pistol with two hands, both of them shaking. He looked like a complete wreck; his clothes were torn and filthy, his face unshaven for several days, and his blond hair sticking out in every direction. He gave the distinct impression of a drunk who’d been removed from his vice.
“Who are you?!” he demanded with a voice like a shattered stone. He waved the shaking gun at each of them in turn. His eyes were wild.
Nancy lifted her hands very slowly. Just our luck, she couldn’t help thinking. “Please, calm down,” she pleaded. “We’re just looking for a place to hide.”
Moving equally as slow, Marshall placed his rifle down on the ground in a gesture of good faith and spread his hands wide. “Why don’t you put the gun away, son?” he requested as calmly as he could while still catching his breath.
The man’s hands were twitching like leaves in the wind, and his eyes flicked from one stranger to the next in rapid succession, but after a few moments he began to lower the gun.
“What’s your name, son?” Marshall asked. Nancy saw that he was trying to keep the man occupied with calm, normal conversation.
“William,” he answered, and one of his eyes twitched.
“Marshall. And this is Nancy and Greg.”
“My brother, Aaron, is the night janitor here,” William continued, almost as if he hadn’t heard Marshall speak. “I was nearby when all hell broke loose and thought it would be a good place to hole up-” His mouth seemed to dry up as he spoke, but Nancy could imagine what he was thinking. The poor guy was all alone. They’d been going through one hell of a time, but he’d been doing it by himself. Yeah, it was really no wonder that William looked like hell. Greg must have been imagining a similar scenario because he had begun to shudder uncontrollably.
“Do you mind if we stay here, William?” Marshall asked.
His eyes didn’t seem to focus at first, but eventually William found his way to looking back at the visitors. He shook his head in a slow, creaky motion - a creepy kind of movement - and replied, “Of course not. My home is open to all who seek asylum.”
Marshall tried to keep his face indifferent, but Nancy saw him twitch a little in reaction to the strange choice of words. After a moment of hesitation he nodded and forced a smile on his face. “Come on then, young’uns,” he said without taking his eyes off the other man. “Let’s...let’s go find something to eat.”
They headed down the hallway at a very casual pace, smiling and keeping their eyes on William. The man stared at them the entire way with a creepy, blank look in his eyes. When they finally moved around a corner where he could no longer see them, Greg let out a large breath of air that he’d been holding. “That guy is fucked,” he whispered under his breath. Nancy said nothing, but Marshall nodded just slightly.
The cafeteria had no windows and large, solid doors, so they felt relatively comfortable, although the power didn’t seem to work here so it was dark and their food options were limited. There
was a supply of fresh fruit and milk, and sandwiches that must have been made the day before the disaster began. Since the power would have been lost recently, they dove into anything that would soon go bad. The milk smelled okay for the moment, so they drank greedily, expecting that they might not see any more of it for a long time. They barely spoke while they ate, and by the time they finished they were exhausted. Greg led them off to the nurse’s station on the second floor. The beds were not particularly comfortable, but they were definitely an acceptable substitute to the floors of the bar.
Nancy couldn’t help glancing out the window. She could hear the zombies still shaking at the fence below, and a careful peek outside told her that they were getting close to having it down. There had to be a hundred of them pawing at the spot where the three of them had jumped. Nancy felt her jaw clench. She prayed that they wouldn’t bother with the walled-in smoking area, since that door was no longer terribly well-held.
“What are you doing?” Greg was asking Marshall. Nancy turned back to see that the older man had begun to push a desk in front of the door.
“I don’t know about you two,” he replied with a huff. “But I’m not particularly keen on the idea of that William fella wandering in here with his gun while we’re all fast asleep.”
He made a very good point, Nancy thought. Greg must have thought so too, because he quickly ran over to help Marshall pile a second desk on top of the first.
They slept surprisingly well for a little while - no doubt a result of pure exhaustion. Around 2 or 3 in the morning, however, Nancy found herself beginning to toss and turn. She was antsy, she realized, not to mention stressed beyond belief. There were a million thoughts rushing through her mind, but she couldn’t seem to focus on any one of them, and she felt an almost itchy desire to get up and move. Though she knew it was a little bit foolish, she quietly slid the desks away from the door just enough to slip through and began wandering the halls.
It really wasn’t that long ago since Nancy had been in high school herself. Aside from the bars on the first-floor windows it didn’t seem much different. She stopped in front of a display case full of trophies and peered inside. It was too dark to read the names and award titles, but she could get the idea. A baseball trophy here, a cheerleading award there, a plaque or two sporting pictures of valedictorians. Nancy found herself remembering back to her high school experience. She’d tried several different extracurricular activities, from band to the girls’ hockey team, but none of them had stuck. Even then she’d had no idea about what she wanted to do with herself. She’d tried her hand at everything within reach, but none of it had ever seemed right to her. She couldn’t find her purpose.
She was broken from her thoughts by the sound of a door closing and a lock turning. Too curious perhaps for her own good, she peeked one eye around the corner at the end of the hall. William was there, his gun shoved in his waistband, staring oddly at a door labeled ‘Basement’. In his hand was a set of keys, clutched tight. After a long moment, during which Nancy stubbornly held her breath, the disturbed man turned and wandered off down the adjacent hall.
Now Nancy was certain that she was being stupid, but instead of returning to the nurse’s station and reporting what she’d seen to her comrades, she crept forward and put a hand on the door as though she could see through it by touching it. She turned the knob gently and felt the resistance of the lock. Why would he lock the basement? she thought to herself. What could be down there worth hiding from us?
A hand wrapped around her mouth, another around her midsection, too sudden and swift for her to get out a scream. For a moment she thought a zombie had found its way in the school, but it was William, looking equal parts furious and miserable. He held her tight as she struggled and leaned his mouth close to her face. His breath was like rotten eggs and old brandy. When he spoke, it was a series of hisses: “Stay. Out. Of. The. Basement.”
Then as quickly as he had swooped down upon her, he let her go. She pulled away with a gasp and almost ran for it, but she couldn’t help stopping to stare at this wreck of a man who was looking back at her with haunted eyes.
“What did you do?” she found herself whispering.
The accusatory tone made William narrow his eyes. “Stay out of the basement,” he repeated, louder than before. This time he placed a hand on the gun in his waistband for emphasis.
Nancy tried to stand her ground, but in the end she was more frightened of the man than she wanted to admit, so she backed up slowly until she was around the corner out of sight and then turned and ran for it.
Marshall was awake and looking concerned when Nancy squeezed herself through the nurse’s station door. He looked ready to admonish her at first, but then he noticed the look on her face and the heaviness of her breathing. “What happened?” he demanded.
Nancy took a quick peek out the door, closed it, and slid the desks back into place before responding.
“I think we’d better keep a close eye on William.”
The next morning they couldn’t find William anywhere, which did nothing to allay Nancy’s fears of him. As a trio they searched every hall and classroom - careful to keep a safe distance from any windows - until eventually determining that the only place he could be was in the locked basement.
“What do you think he has down there?” Greg asked for the dozenth time while they picked at a modest lunch.
“I don’t know,” Nancy told him again. “But it worries me.”
Marshall chewed his sandwich slowly, swallowed. “Perhaps we should take a little more care to block our door this evening.”
They spent the remainder of the day spit-balling thoughts and ideas on a number of topics, from how long this disaster might last, to whether it was happening on other continents, to where they would go next if they ran out of supplies. Nothing particularly useful came of the conversations. They were all still too exhausted, and more than a little stressed out over William’s secret. More than once Nancy got the creeping sensation that someone was listening to them, and wondered if William wasn’t following them around the school, staying one step behind them at all times. Just in case, before they began pushing file cabinets full of students’ medical info in front of their safe-room door that night, Nancy leaned out into the hall and called, “William? If you’re there, you don’t have to keep secrets from us. We can help.”
It was about 1 am when a soft rapping came at the door. Greg woke first, half in a dream, but Marshall and Nancy soon opened their eyes as well. They all looked at each other, and then to the door. The knocking was gentle, but continuous, determined.
Eventually Marshall couldn’t stand it anymore. “Hello?” he called out.
The knocking stopped and a shaking voice called back. “Can I talk to you folks for a few minutes?”
Greg pulled a white sheet up to his mouth and shook his head. Though she’d pretty much asked for this, Nancy was quite inclined to mimic him. Marshall gave them both a look and called out again, “What d’you want to talk about?”
Silence for a few moments, and then, “My... My brother.”
Marshall relaxed just a little, sighed, and hauled himself down off his cot. Greg and Nancy watched him for a moment before eventually swinging their legs to the floor. Together they helped their older friend move the barricades from the door. In the back of her mind Nancy wondered if William even realized that they’d blocked the door specifically against him.
When they finally got the door open he was standing there, looking even more disheveled and disheartened. His pistol was tucked in his pants again, which was still too close for comfort for Nancy, but she did relax a little to see that at least he wasn’t waving it around like a lunatic.
“Would you... Would you mind coming with me for a minute?” he begged. “I want to show you something.” He looked at Nancy as he spoke.
For a few moments everyone was very quiet and still, but then Nancy nodded. Marshall and Greg traded a look and reluctantly joined along
behind as they started down the hallway.
William led them down several hallways, past classrooms, down stairs, and eventually to the basement door, which was now hanging open. He paused at the threshold for a moment before gesturing to Nancy and continuing down. Greg shivered a little at the dark, dank area, but William reached onto a shelf at the bottom of the stairs and handed each of them a flashlight. Nancy’s seemed to be dying, but she was glad for the tiny bit of light.
Down at the end of the hall, William led them to an old, unused classroom on the left. After a hard swallow, he pointed in the small glass window on the front of the door. Marshall raised an eyebrow, kept William in the corner of his eye, and pushed forward to be the first to peer into the classroom. His eyes went wide and he stumbled back several feet. “Is that-?” he croaked. William nodded.
Curious and confused, Nancy and Greg huddled close together to peer in the window. As a pair they gasped in shock and disgust.
The man in the room was clearly William’s brother. They could have been twins except for the fact that Aaron’s throat and arms were covered in blood and his lower lip had been ripped clean off. William had used gym equipment to restrain him to an old cast iron radiator on the back wall, but that didn’t keep him from trying to get at them. He was snarling, spitting blood, and pulling on his bounds so hard that Nancy thought he might rip his own arms off.
“We came to the school together. He... He wasn’t quite dead yet when we got here,” William explained in a disturbed, shaking voice. “He got swarmed, but I shot them off him and carried him down here. He told me that I had to kill him, that he didn’t want to become one of them-”
Nancy turned to look at the man, the brother who’d lived. There were tears streaming down his dirty face.
“But I couldn’t do it!” he cried. “He’s my brother, god dammit! So I tied him up...and he died cursing me for refusing to kill him. Now he’s haunting me, in the day and in my dreams...” The man certainly looked haunted. No one could deny that.
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