by Bryan Way
“They’re just gonna do what they always do…” I start. “Cut off the exits and box us in, unless we get out now.”
“Look, we know you’re trying to kill as many of those things as you can…”
“Yeah, let’s leave that shit out of it…” I snort.
“Knock it off.” Mel says, butting in. She motions to both of us. “You’re being an asshole, you’re being an asshole… we’re not gonna figure this out until you put your dicks away.”
“How ‘bout we watch the staircase…” Anderson starts. “If they come up, two of us take Karen out another way and the others create a diversion.”
“Works for me.” I reply.
“So, who’s creating the diversion?” Mel asks.
“Me and Jake’ll look for a way out. One of you watches the stairs, the other watches Karen.”
“I got the stairs…” Anderson says.
“Great, so I’m the babysitter.” Mel growls.
“Only one of us has military training.”
“Oh, I forgot you were in the army.”
“…really?”
“No, retard, you only bring it up every twenty minutes.”
Anderson looks like he wants to slug her, and though I don’t agree with her phrasing, the conclusion is erudite. I butt in before Anderson tries to retort. “We better get moving… hit the stairwell… I think I know another way out.” Anderson yanks at his weapon and slinks off down the hall as Jake and I head in the opposite direction. The breezeway seems like the way to go, but I only have vague ideas on how to proceed.
A thin strip of the floor in the breezeway is cleanly illuminated by the tungsten light cast from the side of the building, making it difficult to see where the breezeway ends and the unlit connecting hall begins. Jake and I duck and crawl to remain clear of the windows. Halfway across I peek through the glass to find that the group around the Humvee has swollen.
“You really don’t think we should call Rich?” Jake asks.
“No. He’ll just be a dick.”
“I dunno… he’s a good listener.” Jakes huffs as we near the hallway.
“Not when it comes to Karen… you think he’s better than Ally?”
“All Ally does is ask questions.”
“…wow, she totally does.” I concede.
“Rich talks to you… you know?”
“Yeah… talks down to you…”
“Nah, he just gets jealous. You can tell he wants to be the adult, y’know?”
“Maybe…”
“It’s not a bad thing…” Jake continues. “At least he’s trying.”
Jake and I stand up as we get to the connecting hall; this section of the building doesn’t have corridors lined with glass like the other, so the orange exit sign to our left explodes out of the darkness. Following this glow, we find the stairwell empty, giving us a surefire escape route to the Humvee. All we need to do is draw in the bodies near our vehicle and we should be home free.
We return to 308 to find Mel sitting outside holding her knees, her gun sticking out between her legs. “You alright?” I ask. When she turns to look at me, the barely visible light from outside reflects off of her eyes. She doesn’t need to say anything. I take off my hoodie to hand over and she accepts it without a word. I silently hope my flannel shirt will suffice against the cold as I join Anderson at the stairwell, aware that Jake and Mel are carrying out a conversation in whispers behind me.
“How’s it look?” I ask.
“Same… you?” Anderson replies.
“Looks like we can sneak out the back.”
“Good…”
For about a minute, I try to listen in to Jake and Mel’s conversation, but I can’t even make out a context. My concentration is broken when Anderson’s rifle clicks; I turn back toward the stairwell to see a body slump against the wall as a burbling mass of black blood cascades down his temple. “They’re gettin’ curious…” I glide over to an adjacent window and look down to see an unfamiliar throng of corpses pushing past the Humvee to get in, meaning most of the group I saw before has already breached the lobby. “I’m checking the breezeway…” I mutter, taking off my boots to make as little noise as possible.
I jog past Mel and Jake, sliding myself into a prone position as I crawl through the breezeway. Once I’m beyond the edge of the building that obstructs my view of the Humvee, I pop my head up and find that very little has changed. I sigh in relief the same moment I hear a door close in the adjacent building. The hair on the back of my neck stands up as tears coat my eyes. A click echoes from the hallway behind me as I crawl toward the next junction.
I stand up and slink toward the connecting hall once I’m clear of the breezeway, seeing little other than the exit sign. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, giving my eyes a moment to acclimate to the dark. I open them to find a silhouette staggering down the hall toward me; our previously arranged exit is now officially compromised. I rip my katana free and deprive him of his head, hearing nothing but the padded thud of his melon shaking the floor, followed by the body crumpling with a soft echo.
The chunky click of a crash bar on the stairwell door is followed by a woman’s body sliding through the opening. I sheathe my katana and pull out my trench knife, advancing and incapacitating her with one blow. There are two more behind her and I take care of them in similar fashion. I sheath the trench knife and listen to a few disparate gasps as more ascend the stairwell beneath me. I silently debate using my shoeless foot to drag the corpses in an effort to block the door, ultimately deciding against it.
I’m careful to avoid the skunked blood as I make my way back to the breezeway, listening to the displaced head of my previous victim taking soft bites at the air. Discarding my previous attempt at stealth, I run back through the breezeway and put my boots on before rejoining Anderson.
“They know we’re in here… the exit’s compromised.”
“How bad?” Anderson asks, loosing another suppressed shot.
“Three I saw… heard about a half-dozen more.”
“The Humvee’s all that matters… we need about a minute to get out safe.”
“Okay… okay… yeah… then let’s move…”
Anderson takes another shot, producing nothing but a trigger click. My blood runs cold; this is officially the only time I’ve seen Anderson pull a trigger not realizing that he’d run out of ammo. He silently curses, yanking himself away from the door as he begins reloading. “We might not have enough bullets.” Following what I just saw, this is the single most terrifying thing he could say.
“Check the exit again… then we move Karen.” I swallow hard as I nod, running on my toes past Mel and Jake. “What’s going on?” Mel asks quietly. I wave my arm for her to quiet down in response, stopping in the breezeway to look down at the Humvee again. When I see that the surrounding area is barren, I chuckle nervously, wandering toward the windows on the opposite side of the breezeway, something I hadn’t considered doing before.
My first impression is tied to the faded tungsten bulbs on either side of the complex, offering very little illumination of the snow-coated brick walkways. Beyond the edge of the buildings is a grassy hill leading down to a black thatch of trees I can’t see beyond, but thanks to the light, I can still detect movement; at least forty bodies are crawling up the hill in a scene that could only be approximated by a nightmare. Those approaching the top are splitting into two groups, each one drifting toward one of the two buildings connected by the breezeway. I have no idea if they’re getting in, and this is cause for concern.
I jog toward the next intersection and find two more bodies navigating the dark hallway with another joining from the doorway behind them. I pull my katana again, taking another head before I needlessly twirl it in the air, giving myself a taste of bravado. After the second decapitation, I cringe as a pistol shot echoes through the hall behind me. Game over. If there was any doubt they knew we were in here, it has just been erased.
I consider
pulling my piece as well, but I opt to sheathe the katana again in favor of the trench knife as I hear shouting in the breezeway. I brain another as the shouting continues, distracting me long enough for the next corpse to scratch its fingernails down the fabric of my flannel shirt. I give her a kick in the stomach for her troubles and fail to ascertain the number behind her as I run back for the breezeway, not seeing anyone on the other side. “ANDERSON!” I call out. He pops out from the corner at the end of the hall, heaving as blood drips off his crowbar. “Where are they?!” I bellow. “Jake’s looking for a way out, Melody’s got Karen… move, now!” I look behind me in just enough time to avoid the grasp of a fresh-looking corpse and run for Anderson.
A scream rips through the building, loud enough to interrupt my footing and send me tumbling toward Anderson’s feet. “JEFF! JEFF!” Jake calls out. Anderson grabs my collar and pulls me up as he peels off down the hall, leaving me to struggle against a field of inert, bloody corpses as two bodies stumble through the stairwell door behind us. “FUCK!” I scream, swimming to my feet and again ripping my katana free as Anderson disappears down the dark hallway. “WHAT’S HAPPENING?!” I shout after him. “COME ON!”
I turn the corner in his wake and see a crowd of Zombies. I stop and prop myself against the wall as Anderson barrels forward at an unnatural pace, bulldozing through the swarm to reveal Jake with his foot on the shoulder of a grounded corpse, struggling to free a crowbar lodged in its bleeding skull. Anderson grabs Jake and throws him past the bodies struggling to regain footing; Jake hits the floor and rolls as the crowbar pops out of his hands while Anderson pushes back a crowd I hadn’t seen before, making four impossibly fast swings and revealing that the hallway is empty beyond them. “JAKE!” I scream.
Jake scrambles to his feet and runs to me as I look around the corner we just turned, finding more gaining on us from the other side. For a moment, I consider breaking the floor-to-ceiling windows and jumping into the forest below, but I remember the nightmare of corpses scaling the hill and envision trying to escape them with broken legs. “Where’s Karen?!” I shout as Jake points off toward Anderson. Putting his arm around mine for support, I run us back down the hall as I catch sight of Anderson’s silhouette laying into pile of corpses, producing the sort of tuneless tenor wail that instantly reduces me to tears. Feeling as though my neck is wet, I look at Jake to see he’s covered with blood.
“ANDERSON!” I shout in desperation. Following Jake’s lead, I navigate past Anderson and tumble into a supply room, where we both collapse on the floor and Jake coughs as his entire body shakes, giving me the impression that some unseen wound is draining his blood. “What the…” I push him away from me as he coughs again. “Scratch… scratch… I’m scratched!” He mumbles. I push my fingers through his sopping t-shirt, lifting it to find thin streaks of red liquid up and down his entire torso. “Take it off!” I shout. He does, and before I can do anything else, Mel swoops in with an old labcoat and begins wiping off his chest.
“Where is it?” She asks. Jake shakes his head, struggling against her as his arms flail around his face. “WHERE IS IT?!” He slaps his hand against his shoulder, bringing our attention to a patch of roughed up skin. Mel rips the top off a bottle of rubbing alcohol and squeezes it, blasting a deluge of clear liquid at the wound before wiping it off with the lab coat. He’s not bleeding, and it doesn’t look like his wound broke skin.
The door explodes open to reveal Anderson soaked in blood and breathing heavily. “COME ON, MOTHERFUCKERS, IT’S TIME !” His ethereal cadence has the three of us scrambling to our feet. For some reason, I have the impression that my vision is shaking as I chase after Anderson, and the fact that I have no idea where I’m going or what I’m doing does nothing to improve this. We turn the corner that links us to the stairwell door and find a handful of rotten bodies awaiting us.
“TAKE ‘EM OUT!” Anderson screams. Blood sprays across the hall as several blunt objects strike the Zombies, and though the moans of the victims would normally terrify me, it’s happening too fast for me to process. “GET DESKS!” I’m the only person who follows Anderson’s logic, running into the nearest room and grabbing two school desks under each arm. Anderson kicks open the stairwell door and steps in, firing off three shots with his pistol before I blindly toss the desks down toward the landing where Mel shot down one of her captors less than a week ago.
Jake follows my lead, pursued by Mel as Anderson continues shouting and firing in the stairwell. By the third trip, we’ve created a tangle of metal and flesh that will make progress beyond the landing a hardship for the undead. While the rest of us retrieve more desks, Anderson disappears down the hall. Two more trips for desks confirms the hardship, as each additional body rushing up the steps knots into the sea of stainless steel, packing the polypropylene desktops tighter together. Mel throws the last batch on top as four Zombies struggle against the blockade; one of them ends up flipping over the banister, hitting each successive railing on the way down before he strikes the bottom in a mess of broken limbs.
My asthma catches up with me as I return to the hall and hit the floor desperately gasping for air. I use my inhaler again, knowing the effect will be minimal at this point. Anderson reappears carrying a beaker full of brackish liquid, tossing it toward the mess in the stairwell where it explodes in a shower of glass shards, emitting a remarkably pungent aroma that would induce my gag reflex if I weren’t able to move away.
As I crawl across the floor, I realize that this stink bomb won’t be enough to distract the undead from our location, so I scramble through my thoughts for a potential trump card. As I sit up to catch my breath, I find a fire alarm on the wall. I tear the shirt off a nearby corpse to cover my hand as I pull the lever; as expected, a burst of powder blasts out of the device as I roll out of the way and shake off the stained cloth.
The hall is blanketed with squawking klaxons and non-sequential strobes from LEDs. “YES!” Anderson shouts, shepherding us back toward the supply room in which we examined Jake. My wheezy travail ends when I lie prostrate across the floor as Anderson dismantles the alarms in the room. Once I catch my breath, I notice Karen shivering in the corner. I locate a fire blanket fixed in a metal cabinet near the door and rip it free, wrapping it around her as she partially wakes up.
“There’s a fire…” She coughs. “We should…” I quiet her back into sleep and retrieve my trench coat as Anderson turns off the lights. I dig into Karen’s survival pack; once I find a pair of earplugs, I snug them into her ears and hope they cancel the noise. I push myself off the floor to look out the windows that face the interior of the complex; from here, we can see the adjacent hallway and the bottom floor, so with the lights out and the alarm dismantled, we have a superior position from which to view the movements of the undead. After a considerable silence, Mel speaks. “How long?” Her question is followed only by the continued din of the fire klaxons. Once Anderson begins silently reloading his rifle, I do the same.
“Wait,” Anderson starts finally. “When we were at Temple… weren’t they leaving the building with the alarm? Maybe sound doesn’t do anything for them after a while.”
“But they know we’re in here…”
“…I got first watch.”
Mel puts in her earplugs, Jake falls back against the wall in frustration, and Anderson silently negotiates the doorway to enter the hall. Karen appears to be sleeping soundly in the corner, and I wonder if we run the risk of catching whatever she has just by breathing the same air. After another minute or so of silence, I try to get Mel’s attention. “Think you can sleep?” She pulls out her earplugs and turns to indicate that she didn’t understand.
“Can you sleep?”
“I dunno.” She replies.
“Remember what we said about Anderson?”
“Yeah?”
“Jake must’ve thought he was a goner…” I continue, checking to make sure he didn’t hear me. “Anderson went toe-to-toe with the horde to save him.”
“How’d he do?”
“Let’s just say he’d give Schwarzenegger a run for his money.”
“Don’t tell him, or he’s off on another ego trip.” She says.
“Let’s hope there’s a gift shop and he brings back enough balls for the rest of us.” I reply.
“For serious.”
We both snicker and fall into silence. She’s about to say something else when my cell phone vibrates. It’s Rich.
“Hello?”
“…what’s all the noise? ”
“You can hear it from the school?”
“No, on the phone.”
“…could you send someone to the roof to see if you can hear it from the high school?”
“That’s almost a mile.”
“Even so…”
“Headed up there now. You pull the alarms? ”
“Yeah… got a little dicey… it’s just to cover the noise.”
“Good one. How’s Karen? ”
“She’s okay… takin’ a nap.”
“A nap? Why aren’t you on your way out? ”
“Actually… we might have to spend the night.”
“That’s a shit idea.”
“I’ll let you know if something changes…”
“Like what?”
“I dunno… like I said, it’s dicey…”
There’s a long silence, either that or I can’t hear him over the bells.
“I can hear it from the school.”
“Great… that means they can hear us from a mile in each direction.”
“Jeff… you’ve got to get out of there now, you read me? Right now.”
“Rich, Karen isn’t in a condition to go anywhere…”
“Condition? ”
“Uh… she’s… sick.”
“Then what are you waiting for?! ”
“She’s sick, Rich… and you want me to run her out of here?”
“If you don’t get out now… Jesus, Jeff, there could be a thousand of ‘em! ”