The Human Spring

by Hollingsworth, David

  “Shit,” Sarah muttered.

  “How about the other one?” Cecilia asked. Ehsan couldn’t believe her continued journalist-like calm in the wake of everything Josue had said.

  “It didn’t say anything, but it was like the one who spoke. It avoided unnecessary risks and blocked when I hit it. It even tried to grab my crowbar.”

  “So, our enemy is capable of making zombies who possess the instinct for self-preservation,” Cecilia concluded. “And the ability to speak.”

  Josue perked up at Cecilia’s words. “Yes. God damn it, yes, you’re right. Whoever’s out there did this!”

  “That’s not what she-” Sarah began, but Josue got up and ran outside before she could finish speaking.

  Josue stopped about five feet past the front gate and turned around. “I’m finding this motherfucker. You guys can help or get the hell outta my way.”

  Cecilia stepped forward. “Do not do it, Josue.”

  “The hell I won’t!” he replied, scanning the area in front of the school.

  “Josue,” Cecilia said with all the strength in her diaphragm. He turned around. “I understand how you feel. However, if they planned this, then they have either left or set up a trap. We cannot afford to lose anyone else after already losing Ryan.”

  “Fuck that!” Josue walked toward the street. “I’m not going through this again without some fucking justice.” Ehsan wondered what Josue meant until he saw his back tattoo once more. Mateo and Deon ran over to restrain him while he cupped his hands around his mouth and started to yell “WHOEVER’S OUT THERE, WATCH YOUR-”

  Josue froze and clutched the left side of his chest. He toppled over. Everyone else watched, confused, except for Mateo, who kept running toward him.

  “Holy shit,” Ehsan said. “Is he having a heart attack?”

  “Cardiac arrest!” Mateo corrected as he slid onto the ground next to Josue and put his hands on the middle of Josue’s lower chest. He started to push with a surprising amount of force, using his whole body weight with each pump.

  Cecilia turned to Sarah. “Sarah, go get the defibrillator! It should still have some charge.”

  “Where is it?”

  “The auditorium, by the janitor’s closet.”

  Sarah nodded and sprinted toward the gym. Ehsan clutched his head in despair. He couldn’t handle the idea of losing both marines in one night. He turned to Fatima, who had both hands covering her mouth in horror. A few feet away, Marcus watched with no trace of his usual forced aloofness.

  “What can we do?” Deon asked Cecilia desperately.

  “Wait. Right now Mateo is giving CPR. When Sarah gets back, they will use the defibrillator.”

  A loud pop came from what sounded like Josue’s lungs. Ehsan saw that it had no effect on how hard Mateo pushed. Ehsan hunched over, on the verge of throwing up.

  “Seems like Mateo is going too hard,” Fatima commented nervously.

  Cecilia shook her head. “Better to go hard and bruise a lung than push too softly and let the heart die.”

  Everyone watched in a silence so tense that Ehsan found it hard to breath. He had to go to the trenches they’d dug earlier that day to throw up. He walked over and looked down, feeling both nauseous and light-headed. He vomited. After everything came out he felt slightly better, though still woozy.

  When he looked back up, he saw a zombie sprinting toward him from up the street.

  “G-guys…” Ehsan stammered, realizing he hadn’t brought his weapon with him. His legs went numb. He looked in horror as the zombie came closer, its arms writhing in that same despicable, unnatural way the previous sprinter’s arms had.

  “Shit!” Ehsan heard Deon exclaim behind him.

  “Ehsan, come back here,” Cecilia commanded calmly. Ehsan forced himself to his feet and staggered backward, still staring in horror at the sprinter, as Cecilia walked right behind the trenches with a knife in her hand. Deon walked up next to her, but she put her hand out in front of him. “I appreciate it, Deon, but your weapon is still inside. I shall handle this one.”

  Deon nodded and backed up while Mateo continued to perform CPR. Mateo glanced at the zombie briefly and grimaced, but returned to giving CPR. Fatima walked over to pull Ehsan closer to the gate. Cecilia remained behind the trenches with the quiet, immovable discipline of a mountain. The zombie crossed the street in front of the school. Ehsan looked at the trenches again. Three rows in front of the school, each two feet deep and two feet across. The zombie got onto the lawn. Once it got within two yards of Cecilia it tripped on the first trench and fell violently to the ground. Before it could get up Cecilia moved over quickly but calmly, pinning it down with her right knee as she drove her knife into the back of its head.

  “It seems the trenches work,” she stated matter-of-factly. Everyone except for Mateo breathed a collective sigh of relief.

  “Miss Torres…” Ehsan began. “That was incredible.”

  “For real though,” Deon agreed, grinning from ear to ear.

  “Thank you Ehsan, thank you Deon,” Cecilia replied with a small, flickering smile that quickly disappeared. She looked further down the street. “It appears we have a few more headed our way, though none are sprinting. I shall keep an eye on them.”

  Just then, Sarah came sprinting back with a black and yellow electric box with rounded edges that looked like it belonged in a low budget sci-fi movie. She rushed over to Mateo, who looked to be getting tired from CPR. She turned on the machine, which surprisingly had enough battery power to boot up, and presented it to Mateo.

  “Please place adhesive electric pads on patient’s chest,” the machine instructed. Mateo stopped pumping and did what it told him to. He placed one pad on Josue’s upper right chest and another on his left rib. The machine beeped after Mateo finished putting on the pads. “Analyzing heart rhythm. Please do not touch patient.”

  “Thanks for getting that, Sarah,” Mateo told Sarah with a weak smile.

  “No problem,” she replied, putting her hand on his back. “So what happens now?”

  “It’s gonna see if he needs a shock.”

  Knowing that Mateo had Josue under control and Cecilia had her eye on the seemingly normal zombies up street, Ehsan fell to the ground. He took in a deep breath and sighed. He looked over to Fatima, who watched Josue intently.

  “Analysis complete. Shock advised. Press ‘start’ to initiate.” Mateo pressed the button and the machine went into effect.

  “What’re Josue’s chances?” Ehsan asked feebly.

  “Better than if he didn’t have CPR or a defibrillator,” Mateo answered without answering.

  “Shock treatment complete. Analyzing.” Everyone held their breath. All Ehsan could hear was the small group of zombies, now across the street. “Analysis complete. Patient heart rate back to normal.”

  “Yes,” Mateo muttered under his breath. Ehsan’s eyes started to well up with relief.

  “Good thing we got a firefighter here,” Deon said with a grin and pat on Mateo’s back. He looked in the direction of the zombies. “Anywho, let’s handle these motherfuckers before they get any closer.”

  Ehsan, newly energized by Josue’s health, looked to the approaching zombies. Cecilia, Mateo, and Deon went to take care of them, Cecilia the only one with a weapon. Mateo and Cecilia each took one out while Deon distracted the remaining two. Cecilia grabbed the arm of her opponent and put her foot on the inside of its opposite ankle. In one swift motion she pulled the arm while sweeping the foot, causing the zombie to topple down with minimal effort on her part. Meanwhile, Mateo side-kicked his zombie with such force it flew backwards. They finished each of theirs off, then went to take out the remaining two Deon ran circles around. Ehsan noticed Mateo use much lower risk moves than he’d used before his bite.

  “So what should we do now?” Sarah asked as everyone regrouped. Mateo, Deon, and Cecilia looked exhausted, no doubt having already been tired before the encounter.

  “We get Josue inside a
nd put him on bed rest,” Cecilia answered. “We must also prepare.”

  “Prepare for what?” Mateo asked.

  “War.” Her eyes shone with a resolve brighter than the moon that glistened overhead. She looked over to the sprinter she had taken out. “We can win, but we must be ready, starting with guard duty. One person awake at all times from now on.” She put her hand on her chin as she pondered further action. “Additionally, no more leaving the front gate unlocked. We must also have people patrol the classrooms at night as well, preferably in twos, who will also periodically check out the kindergarten area. This school has been fortified to keep out mindless herds, not people and intelligent zombies. We must consider the possibility that they may sneak in through some way other than the front.”

  Everyone nodded, though Fatima still looked worried. “Do you honestly think we can win against someone who can do this?” She motioned to the three corpses of the talking zombies and glanced at the sprinter Cecilia had dispatched.

  “Yes.” She took a step toward Fatima and everyone else. “Yes, I truly do. Whoever is out there has yet to make any significant move. My theory is that they are still developing more modified zombies right now. Otherwise, they would have no reason to avoid a full-scale assault. Why remain hidden if they already had the ability to defeat us? All they succeeded in doing tonight was to put us on alert.”

  “Speaking of tonight, what do we do now?” Sarah asked. “Who’s on look duty?”

  “I propose Mateo and Sarah go on lookout duty tonight. Manuel and I will guard the classrooms.” She looked to Deon and Marcus. “Would it be okay if you two switched off with us after a few hours?”

  “Yeah. Though what about the clinic and fishermen? We gotta warn ‘em.”

  Cecilia looked back at the zombies. “It would be too great a risk to do that tonight. We shall tell them in the morning.”

  “What if whoever attacked us tonight got something planned for them?” Deon motioned with his hand in the direction of the clinic. “They’re in serious danger right now.”

  “I apologize, Deon, but we need everyone here.”

  “What if we went quick? We can get a small group and handle it. Mateo?”

  Mateo rubbed the back of his head. “I would’ve done it a few days ago, but after getting bit, and losing Ryan… I dunno, I think we gotta focus on the school right now. At least till morning.”

  Deon looked at the floor. “Fine. I ain’t happy about it, though.”

  “I know how you feel Deon,” Mateo said. “Don’t worry, we’ll do it first thing in the morning.”

  Deon nodded and didn’t say anything else. The group paused to process everything that’d just happened. Mateo went to check on Josue. Ehsan, starting to recover from the emotional roller coaster he’d just dismounted, looked to the bodies on the ground around them. “I hate to bring this up, but what about, well… cleanup?”

  “We bury them now,” Cecilia answered. “We have a funeral for Ryan in the morning.”

  With everyone outside, burying Ryan went quickly. Mateo, Ehsan, Deon, and Cecilia dug the graves. A carefully dug one for Ryan, hastily dug ones for the zombies. Mateo volunteered to be the one to put Ryan in the ground. His eyes began to well up as he looked at his corpse. Fortunately, because the zombies had attacked Ryan’s neck, he wouldn’t transform. No one had to hack away at it with their weapon, the normal protocol for people killed by zombies.

  “I really thought the last time we buried someone was gonna be the last time,” Mateo commented with a shake of his head, referring to a time before Ehsan and Fatima had joined. He wiped his eye with the back of his left hand, the only part of either of his hands still mostly clean. “Guess not.”

  “We owe it to Ryan to make this the last time,” Cecilia replied.

  With the job done, everyone started to walk inside. Mateo and Cecilia carried Josue to his room. Cecilia asked Deon to go on lookout with Sarah while Mateo returned Josue to his room. As Deon and Sarah walked to the front, Ehsan saw him whisper something to her. They had what looked like a debate, which ended quickly and seemingly in Deon’s favor. He walked up to Ehsan and Fatima next.

  “We’re gonna warn the clinic and the fisherman. Y’all in?”

  Ehsan froze. He wanted more than anything to go to his room, rest, and prepare for the next day’s plan. His legs felt heavy and the rest of his body had no fuel left. He thought of Ryan’s body, motionless, lying on the concrete next to those monsters that had ripped apart his throat.

  “Yeah, let’s do it.” His answer surprised even himself.

  Ehsan and Fatima went to their room. Deon had told them to wait a few minutes then go into the common room that connected the classrooms, wait for him, and together exit through one of the classrooms in the row of classes behind them to go out unseen. Ehsan felt a deep anxiety as they stepped into their room. His palms sweated so severely that they became pruned.

  “I still cannot believe you said yes,” Fatima whispered.

  “I know. If you wanna stay, I get it.” Ehsan’s throat felt tight from dread as he grabbed Dragon Hair. He wanted Fatima to beg him to stay so that he’d have an excuse not to go.

  “If you go, I go too.” She grinned sourly as she slung her weapon over shoulder. “If I’m not around, who will stop you from doing something stupid?”

  Ehsan smiled with no enthusiasm. “Thanks, Sis.”

  The two of them went to the common area to find Deon already there, his machete slung across his back. They crept to one of the classrooms in the row behind them and exited carefully. They walked toward the back of the school to avoid detection from Cecilia or Manuel. When they got to the field they went to the very end, along the fence. They walked toward the other side of the school, near the garden, and finally made their way toward the front. The whole time Ehsan’s legs ached from the physical and emotional toll the day had taken on his body.

  “We gotta keep this a secret from Cecilia, but we got no choice but to tell Mateo,” Deon said as they approached the front. “Probably better, anyways.”

  “Why?” Sarah asked.

  “In case those motherfuckers out there get us.”

  They heard mumbling inside the front room as they approached. When they got within a few feet of the door, however, the mumbling stopped. They heard the sound of Mateo’s fire axe scrapping across the ground for a split second, presumably being picked up. Ehsan whispered “it’s us” through the door.

  “What’s going on?” Mateo asked as he opened the door, his Nimbus at the ready.

  “We’re gonna warn the clinic and fisherman,” Deon said.

  “You really should wait until morning,” Mateo protested with a concerned look on his face.

  “I’m from the hood, I know what it’s like to not be a priority. I ain’t gonna do that to our other people.”

  Mateo blinked in surprise, then pursed his lips. “I understand.”

  “I’m going with them, too,” Sarah informed him.

  Mateo’s jaw dropped. “No way. It’s way too dangerous.”

  Sarah smiled and shook her head. “I appreciate it, Mateo, but my mind is made up. But first…” She grabbed the collar of Mateo’s shirt and pulled him toward her. She kissed him passionately. Mateo looked surprised for only a split second before reciprocating. Deon rolled his eyes, but with a small grin on his face. Ehsan looked over to Fatima, whose face became gravel. Sarah finished kissing Mateo and gently nudged him away. “Just in case I don’t come back.”

  “Sarah…” Mateo began.

  “I said just in case. I don’t plan on dying,” she told him with a smile. She turned to Deon. “So, what’s the plan?”

  “We got two options,” Deon explained. “We either go to one place together or split up. I don’t normally like splitting up ‘cause it’s some white people horror movie nonsense, but the clinic and pier are in opposite directions. What d’ya think, Fatima?”

  Fatima’s face returned to normal as she looked to Deon. “I thin
k we should all go together. Yes, it will be a much greater distance, but we have seen firsthand the threat in front of us. Better safe than sorry.”

  “Cool. We can go to the clinic first, since the route there is protected,” Sarah decided. “Then we’ll go over to the pier from there.”

  “I should go with you,” Mateo offered.

  Fatima shook her head. “We need you here to keep the school safe, Mateo. Besides, you still need to recover. Even fighting the few you did earlier was probably a bad idea.”

  Mateo sighed and nodded. “Okay. But promise me you’ll all come back if you encounter any serious trouble out there. You won’t be of use to anyone dead.”

  “You have my word,” Fatima promised. She smiled sourly. “Honestly, I only agreed to come to look out for Ehsan anyway.”

  Mateo chuckled. Sarah walked up to kiss him once more before the group left the school.

  The group made it to the first house and knocked on the walls. Nothing inside. They crept upstairs and cautiously crossed the walkway. Ehsan’s instincts screamed for him to turn back. Cecilia’s effortless dispatch of the sprinter a little while earlier had made him feel better, but he still abhorred the idea of running into any more sprinters, and even moreso any intelligent zombies. The scene of Ryan lying motionless on the ground wouldn’t leave Ehsan’s mind. Each time they had to cross the street Deon went first, followed by Fatima, then Ehsan, and finally Sarah. Ehsan was on the verge of a panic attack. He had no idea what he’d do if any more abnormal zombies attacked.

  Fortunately, he didn’t have to find out. The walk to the clinic occurred without incident. They only encountered two small groups of zombies, one during the second crossing and one during the third. Using a more cautious version of the bottle method Josue had used before, Ehsan discovered none of them had any special capabilities. During each encounter they decided to have both Deon and Sarah distract the zombies to make sure neither were alone in case anything happened.

  By the time they got to the clinic Ehsan’s nerves had subsided slightly. Not by much, but enough to allow him to think without fear of a panic attack. As they finally reached the front of the clinic Ehsan saw Hector and Ken, the professional fighter he had met earlier that day, standing guard. Both had on their gauntlets.