by J. D. Bishop
Elijah turned back and stared at her in disbelief, stunned. “What? You've got to be kidding me. You’re not infected, and I know I’m not. Why would you stick around here?”
She crossed her arms, shaking her head. “I'm dead serious. No pun intended. We’ve got a job to do.”
“Come on, Trisha,” Elijah hissed as he came closer. For the first time she’d known him, he was showing some frustration with her, and Patricia actually found him even more handsome as his jaw clenched as he looked at her. “Think of little Natalie.”
Patricia glanced up and swallowed, knowing that she was probably condemning herself to death in staying, but it was vital that she do so. “I am thinking of her. That's why I'm staying here.”
Puzzled, Elijah said, “I don't quite follow that.”
Patricia eyed Matt, who was glaring at her in open hatred, wearily. “Someone needs to stay to make sure these guys stay put. If they go out, they could hurt every person they run into until they’re stopped. They wouldn’t want that, except for maybe Matt, who doesn’t give a fuck. I need to send out a final broadcast to let everyone know the true danger that they’re in. There’s a whole city of little Natalies out there, innocent children who maybe, by some miracle, might not have drunk tap water yet. I want to make sure they get every chance they can to be safe. Lastly, I want to wait and see if the rumors are true.”
Elijah's face turned white. He glanced over his shoulder at the sick group, who were milling around, a few of them sitting on the edges of desks, feeling lost and undirected now that their deaths were imminent. “And if they are?”
Fear shone in her eyes. “Then God help me, because I would have been taking my skepticism to my grave.”
Elijah, seeing that Patricia was devoted to her cause, tried a different tactic. “What makes you think that big Tim is going to let you do that?”
Patricia had forgotten all about her boss. He had stayed in his office through all the commotion. She looked over at his office, which was enclosed in glass. She could see him sitting at his desk but faced away from the room. All she could see of him was his arms on the armrest and his white hair sticking above the chair.
Pat motioned for Elijah to follow her. The group of infected trailed them as they slowly walked toward the boss's office. Pat knocked on the door firmly.
“Tim?” she called tentatively. There was no answer. She slowly opened the door with Elijah at her back.
“Tim?” she repeated. “We need to talk . . .”
Tim slowly got up out of his chair, the sound of leather creaking as he stood. He slowly turned around to face the group, a soft moaning sound escaping his lips.
Everyone gasped in horror.
Tim, their boss, was an animated corpse.
Chapter 9
Greg pulled up at his niece's elementary school, his hands shaking slightly as he put the car in park and shut off the engine. It must have been lunch recess for the kids or something because he could see a lot of children out playing on the playground. Greg groaned and stretched as he got out of his girlfriend’s mother's car, a red Lexus IS. He was still rather sore from the car accident, and he had to admit he was running on fumes. The Army had kept them up most of the night after he woke up with their endless questions, and he’d ‘slept’ less than two hours in the past thirty-six or so. He was hoping he could pick up little Natalie without much drama and head back home, where they could lock themselves in and he could curl up in bed with a blanket over his head.
When he reached the school's main office, the door was ajar, which he thought was odd, because it was pretty cold outside. The high school teachers constantly bitched about doors left open, griping about heating budgets and their classrooms being chilly. It was quiet when he stepped into the room, which was even weirder. Seeing no one at their desks or the counter, Jeff took a seat in one of the waiting chairs, leaning forward and propping his elbows on his knees, trying not to let his head nod.
While he waited, he pondered all of the events that took place in the last twenty-four hours. When his friends came running out of the store last night, he thought they had just done something bad for kicks and were just fucking with him. It wasn’t quite Jeff’s style, but Becky had a nasty sense of humor sometimes, and Christy was nearly as big a pothead as Wes. She’d go along with anything to get the giggles going.
He had been shocked to see the crazed man they were raving about on top of the car hood. His friends had claimed the man was dead, but Greg had not been so sure. The man certainly looked like he was on death's door, but that didn't mean he was truly dead. Greg had flip-flopped back and forth between believing his friends and believing his rational mind. On one hand, there were his friends who sounded pretty damn convinced. On the other hand . . . dead people don’t punch windshields.
He had argued in his friends’ favor to the military men because he had little to go on and because the military guys seemed to be bullies. They’d reminded Greg of his father, who constantly pushed Greg around and said he was too stupid, not good enough, and not worth the time and effort it took to pay for the food that went into Greg’s stomach. So he’d done to them what he’d done to his father—he told them they were wrong and where to fucking stick it if they didn’t like it.
It was strange how the men kept trying to get them to say that what they saw didn't happen when all they had to do was have them arrested for being drunk. That's what Greg didn't understand about the encounter. He knew they had them dead to rights with underage drinking and pot usage, but they barely mentioned either except to try and use them as a reason that Greg and his friends were wrong. Greg had been losing his temper and had been just about ready to go off on them when Tricia showed up. Thankfully, his sister had picked the right time. Otherwise, they'd probably still be there.
He wondered if Wes and Christy were okay. He planned to go back to the hospital when he met back up with Jeff and Becky to check on them. They might be druggies, especially Wes, but they were both good friends deep down. He owed them better than just leaving them in the hospital and hoping they got out okay.
Thinking of Becky, Greg sighed, shaking his head. They’d been dating for a long time, but Becky had been acting strange lately. He wondered if it had something to do with Jeff. She seemed to be paying more attention to him than before. He doubted Jeff could be doing anything with her because he was a good childhood friend. They had adopted the saying, ' bros before hos,’ and they’d lived it through and through for all of high school so far. But Jeff was also a good looking guy and could have any girl he wanted. He wasn’t quite as much a sports stud as Greg, but he had the sort of easy charm and calm demeanor that Greg knew most girls liked. They might tease that they wanted a bad boy, but deep down, they wanted a guy like Jeff who could be bad but was good at the core. Still, Greg didn't think he was the type who liked sloppy seconds.
Maybe Becky just wanted to break up. They had been going out for two years. Perhaps she was just ready to end it before they both graduated and went to college. Greg wasn’t willing to give that up so easily even if it was the case, even if he knew a lot of couples did.
He wanted to stay with Becky because she was the best girlfriend he’d ever had. She’d never teased him about being inadequate like some of his other girlfriends had. He had gotten tired of being with different girls and their not being satisfied with him. Most of them thought that because he was a handsome jock, he was automatically a beast in bed.
But then when they found out the truth, they got nasty. And the truth was . . . Greg had a slight erection problem.
He took his dad's Viagra a lot of times, and it helped, but sometimes it didn't, and he had no idea why. He was too embarrassed to tell anyone about this problem because he knew they wouldn’t understand. He was young, fit, strong, and handsome. No one could fathom someone like that being impotent at such an early age. So he’d told none of the other girls, and they’d teased him, calling him whiskey dick, or some said he had to be a closet fag
to not be able to get it up with them. The more they teased, the worse it got.
Becky was the first girl he had told. She seemed to have accepted it with open arms, though she often urged him to go see a sex therapist to get help. He always told her that he would, but he continued to put it off. Becky was probably fed up with him saying he would go and was depressed. He vowed that as soon as all of this virus nonsense was over, he would go get help, because he didn’t want to lose Becky. Her understanding of his problem had meant a lot to him.
Greg glanced up at the clock. It had been over ten minutes of sitting there with no one coming out to help him. Greg thought that maybe the secretaries and principal were out to lunch, maybe eating with the kids or something. He got up and looked around the room. Nothing was out of place. There was a door that was closed that Jeff suspected was the principal's office.
Greg knocked softly on the door. No one answered. Greg slowly opened the door, revealing the office. At first, the room appeared to be empty, but when Greg turned to walk out, he heard something. It sounded a lot like the sound of wet flesh being entered. Like the sounds when he had sex with Becky and there was a lot of lubrication, a thick schlurp that whispered through the air. It was a pretty gross sound, actually.
Thinking something sexual was going on, he began to step back out of the room, but his curiosity got the best of him when he heard no other kind of sound, and he began to creep toward the desk in the center of the room.
You perverted freak, he thought. You’re going to see some middle-aged man getting a BJ.
He was not prepared for what he saw when he peeked over the desk. A man lay sprawled out on the floor behind the desk with a woman eating between his legs. It brought a whole new meaning to the saying I'm going to have your balls for breakfast. The woman's skin was deathly white, just as the store clerk's had been. Her shirt was halfway down, exposing her perky, ivory white breasts as she ate her grizzly meal on her knees.
Greg gasped in horror and fell back in the chair in front of the desk, his butt plopping down with a loud sound like a whoopee cushion. The sound stopped as the woman stood up and looked hungrily at Greg. Her eyes were completely white. Blood and pieces of flesh dripped out of her mouth, and as he watched, a large drop drooled down her chin to land right in her cleavage, leaving a reddish-pink trail as it oozed into the tattered remains of her shirt. Greg could not believe his eyes, and a whine of terror came from his throat.
The sound seemed to unlock something in the woman, and she scrambled around the desk. With a cry that struck terror in Greg's heart, the dead woman lunged at him. Greg quickly lashed out with his foot, kicking the zombie in the stomach, his size-twelve Palladium boot catching it hard, launching it off its feet, where it crashed into the floor.
That did little to slow the thing down, however, as it recovered with inhuman speed. It jumped back up and launched itself back at Greg with frightening speed. Greg barely had enough time to do a repeat kick. The damn thing was fast. It obviously didn’t feel pain, and it wasn’t deterred at all by what should have a normal woman down crying and holding her stomach.
Greg jumped out of his seat, trying to put the chair between them as some sort of shield, but the thing was already back on him, growling and gnashing its teeth, trying desperately to bite him.
He gave it a savage punch in the side of the head, one that had ended all four of the fights Greg had had in his high school days with one shot, but it had little effect. In just kept coming, staggering slightly before turning its head back and growling ferally. Greg tried again, shoving it back against the desk with a heavy shove, trying to bring the gun out of his back pocket. But the thing was back on him before he could get it out. It was too fast and surprisingly strong. It was a struggle to keep its biting mouth at bay, even with his hand around its throat.
Grabbing the thing by the arm, he spun in a circle and slammed it to the floor in a move he remembered from sophomore PE class wrestling. Before it could recover, he dropped onto its back with his knees, and he heard something inside it crack, though obviously not the spine since its legs kept kicking. The dead woman went into a frenzy, thrashing all about and trying to get him off its back. Greg managed to pull out the gun while he had it pinned down, and he put the gun against its head. “Goodbye,” he whispered, pulling the trigger, but nothing happened, not even an empty click. “What the fuck?”
Greg looked at the gun and saw the little white line that Becky had told him meant the gun was in safe mode, and he fumbled with it slightly. He got the little button pushed and saw the red dot that meant it was ready to fire, but as he tried to get the gun back in position, the zombie gave a violent shake that made Greg lose his balance, causing him to fall against the desk and hit his head, the gun sliding from his fingers and across the floor.
Don't black out, don't black out, he told himself, fighting to stay conscious. If you black out, you’re going to end up one of those things.
The snarling, dead thing quickly crawled toward him and grabbed his leg as he rolled off the desk and was about to take a bite out of it when he launched a frantic kick at its thrashing mouth, snapping its head back as his boot heel caught it just under the nose. Its neck had to have been broken by the force he put behind that kick, but it kept coming, though its neck was hanging at an odd angle, making it hard for it to bite him.
Greg quickly scrambled for the gun, grabbing it just as the thing rose and came after him, its mouth dripping blood. He was thankful for Becky's gun handling lesson as he thumbed the hammer on the gun and pointed it at the thing's chest. And then he remembered what Jeff told him before he left the house—kill them with a shot to the head—so he lifted his sights just a fraction, pointing at the thing’s red, dripping mouth.
He fired one shot, the bullet going high and striking it just below the left eye, right in the skull. Greg hadn’t known that most rookie pistol shooters, in a panic, will jerk the trigger instead of squeezing it, making the bullet go high and to the right. He’d gotten lucky. The zombie staggered a half-step on momentum and then collapsed, spinning in a circle to the floor.
Greg sighed in relief, his chest heaving. He couldn't believe it. His friends had been telling the truth. Now he had much to apologize for, but he had a more pressing issue on his hands—his niece. The thought of Natalie being one of those things made his heart go cold.
He ran out the office and made his way to the playground, but he ran into a teacher before he could get there.
“Young man, what are you doing on the school grounds?” It was a young woman, probably in her thirties, who under most circumstances would have been pretty, Greg thought. Not today, though. She appeared to be sick, pale, and sweating profusely. She was going to turn into one of those things. Greg couldn't bring himself to kill the woman in cold blood, even though he knew she would soon be a danger to those around her, but he felt bad for her all the same. She was probably nice and loved her kids a lot.
“I'm here for my niece. Her name is Natalie Oakley. My sister wanted me to pick her up for her. There’s a virus going around and she doesn't want her exposed to it,” Greg said, trying to keep calm. He thought he was doing a pretty decent job, overall.
The woman sneezed violently, and Greg was glad. He doubted he’d done a good job of hiding the pistol that was poking him in the stomach. “There is one going around, and I seem to have contracted it. If you’re here to pick up your niece, I suggest you go to the school office and have the secretary call her name over the intercom.”
Greg didn't have time for this. He already knew what lay in the office. He’d just shot it. Instead of wasting his time arguing with the woman, he just kept running toward the school field, where he’d seen all the kids when he’d pulled up.
“Young man, you can't do that. Come back here. There is a set of rules we have to follow . . .” She tried to call weakly after him, but Greg didn’t slow down. The woman was cut off by a fit of coughing as Greg ran away.
Out on the field,
Greg was chagrined to see that nearly all the children were sick. Most of them sat in groups on the grass and at the tetherball courts on the black top. He walked up to a group of sick children, his heart breaking. They were all coughing and sneezing, too weak to play, and sat around listlessly, their eyes glazed over.
“Have any of you seen Natalie Oakley today?” he asked gently, trying with earnest effort to keep his voice from breaking. Tears stung his eyes at the sight of so many children who were soon to be dead. Innocent children who’d never done anything wrong except whatever it was to contract the sickness. They’d suffer helplessly for a while longer and then die. Then they would rise again as monsters.
“She didn't come to school today,” a small girl answered.
Greg's heart froze. If Natalie didn’t come to school today, that could only mean one thing—something had happened to Natalie and his mother.
Chapter 10
“Shoot the fucker.”
Becky stood in the doorway with two girls, who were shivering with terror, as students ran and screamed in the halls behind her. Apparently, more people had turned, and chaos was ripping through the school.
Jeff pointed the gun at Mr. Daniels's head and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. He tried again, but this time the trigger didn’t even move. “Fuck. The gun jammed,” he cried.
The zombie ran for Jeff, howling and snarling, nearly overwhelming him, biting for his neck. For the first time, Dante became un-frozen from his spot against the wall. He quickly grabbed Mr. Daniels and pulled the zombie away from Jeff, the dead man's arms flailing around madly as Dante slammed him against the wall. Next, Dante grabbed Daniels by the hair, careful to keep his gnashing teeth away, and began slamming his head against the wall repeatedly until all that was left was blood and matter.
What was left of Daniels's body dropped to the floor like a rag doll as the teen let go of the dead teacher. His face drawn, Dante eyed the corpse with satisfaction. “I always wanted to do that to that muthafucka. Always looking down on me and the way I write my fucking reports. Well, grammatically incorrect that, muthafucka.”