by Bryan Way
“What’s. Your. Point?”
“They were settling a score… and that’s what you understand… I… tried to tell myself you’ve been acting this way out of guilt… but you want revenge.”
“We’ve been over this before…”
“No. We haven’t. You’ve tried hiding it, ignoring us, yelling at us, crying, drinking, going on a rampage… and nothing makes you feel better… but you’ll keep digging … even if it means burying yourself…”
“Spare me the rhetorical nonsense…”
“…when you told me you’d trade places with Julia and your brother, I didn’t think you were rushing to join them. But I digress. I can’t change your mind, so let this suffice: you’re killing yourself. And if you died today, we’d say we saw it coming. We’d remember you as a bitter, angry, vengeful cautionary tale. I know you don’t believe in a higher power, which means the only thing left of you will be your legacy, so you’d better think real hard about it… it’s your life, Jeff…” Ally sighs.
“It’s this world. I’m just living in it.”
“It’s our world. And it’s what we make it.”
I look up to see Rich pretending to ignore us. “You got something to add?” I ask. Rich lifts his hands off the wheel in surrender, his head subtly twitching side-to-side. I can feel Ally staring at me. “Can you just… piss off?” She purses her lips like she’s going to speak, but I slam my fist into the seat back in front of me, prompting her to do my bidding. I face front as Ally shuffles toward the rear, but my attempt to ignore her is sullied when a commotion from the back draws my attention.
I rip myself out of my seat and spin toward the tail to find Ally hunched over the backboard amidst a cluster of bodies hovering over the seat backs. A cold chill shakes the rage out of me as I slowly make my way behind Ally, watching as her hands move over Alan’s motionless, blanketed body. Her left ear hovers a few millimeters above his mouth. Still kneeling, she looks hauntingly toward the back of the bus until she falls back on her butt, wiping her eyes. After a few seconds, she stretches out her arm to pull the blanket over Alan’s hair. He’s dead.
I subside into the seat across from Jack, staring at Alan’s lifeless form in disbelief. I recall his ludicrous smile when in agreement, watching him vomit from drinking too much, and his exaggerated gesticulations when voicing dissent. The time he invited me up to Penn State and let me tag along to a party despite the fact that I was grossly underage. I made out with a girl. We talked about it afterward. The idea that Alan ever moved or spoke seems as though it were a dated concept, as if my visualizations of him have joined the same part of my memory in which I store scenes from movies.
But his corpse is in front of me. Did he ever regain consciousness? Did he have a moment to regret his decision to lean out the bus window, or were his last thoughts occupied by an animalistic survival impulse that convinced him he would live if only he held on to something on his way down? Did he hear Nick shoot Heather? If we hadn’t struggled to protect him, would she still be alive? Would he? Did we kill him by moving him?
These questions, and my lack of answers, make me dizzy. I look up at Nick and he doesn’t look back; how long is he prepared to wait to put a bullet in Alan’s head? I stand and march back to the front, retaking my seat behind Rich. Fracturing Alan’s skull with a bullet and rendering his brain a puddle of useless, pulpy muscle feels oddly more permanent in his current state, and it’s too much for me to digest. At this moment, it’s almost as though he’ll simply wake up. Nothing will materially change if Nick ventilates his forehead, but it feels utterly wrong to defile the body of my dead friend. I try and fail to squelch my tears.
A murmur bubbles up from the back as we pass the toll plaza for the Northeast Extension. Mel joins me eventually, watching me breathe heavily before I return her gaze. There’s nothing to say, so thankfully she doesn’t try. I drop my head on the blanket covering the cold glass of the window, allowing the sensation to numb my thoughts as I try to remember waking up safely in bed this morning. Or any morning. Cool sheets, warmed only by my body, stacked so heavily that they’d retain heat even after I’d been out of bed for an hour.
I try to remember what it was like in the high school, but my thoughts are still infected by Ally’s notion that we will remain adrift in space until we make contact with those we left behind. At this point, it seems feasible that a UFO has landed on the front lawn. Our trip continues with Rich negotiating the same obstacles we faced on the way up, made more difficult by the fact that each has been covered with more snow. Any undead we encounter form random and light groups compared to what we saw on the trip up, so our heaviest confrontation involves Rich running down one he sees unfit to avoid.
As we pass the off ramp for Villanova, I stand and sidle up to Rich. “Turn on the radio… we’re almost in range.” He does, but we hear only static. I remain next to Rich as the Broomall exit approaches, arrives, and passes us; only one more to go until we get off the highway. Halfway to the Springfield exit, the static crackles on the radio; it sounds like a human voice is buried in the transmission, but it’s impossible to decipher. I ask Rich to boost the gain but he merely points at the device to indicate the gain is at maximum.
We continue along the highway, turning the radio’s volume to its highest setting, receiving little more than an annoying click every few seconds. The excitement mounts as Jack explains the relevance of the Springfield exit; we dump out on Route 1, merge onto 320, and as we pass Bishop Carrell High School, the clicks of the radio transform into a garbled transmission. I leap up and grab the transmitter. “This is Operation Prometheus, anyone out there, over? We’re receiving you, over?” I look out the window to see the sun descending in the sky to our left. We have about three hours of daylight remaining.
“Can’t… -ou, is… -ver?”
“This is Operation Prometheus, we’re receiving you, over!”
“…-ey? Is… at… Grey…”
“It’s Grey, Anderson, is that you, come back?!”
“Hear… this… -etting… -ed, over?!”
“Keep talking, we’re coming in range!”
A strained groan snaps in over the radio, accompanied by what might be gunshots.
“Anderson, come back? What’s going on!? Over!”
“…-ault… -ear me? We’re… all out… over?”
“Anderson, you’re starting to come through, keep transmitting… keep transmitting, over! Something’s up…”
I can’t hear the next reply as I turn back to the rest of the bus.
“Alright, everyone, listen up… there’s something going on at the school… have your weapons ready, leave everything else onboard… when we get off, you’re following my instructions, okay?”
“…-ey… they’re coming from the… do you hear me… -om the college, it’s a horde…”
I rush back to the radio.
“It’s a horde… Anderson, it’s a horde? How many, what are we looking at… how many?”
“…-oo many… -eak out the automatics when… -ear me? Ov-…”
“You’re… breaking out automatics? Jesus Christ, is it hundreds? Thousands? What are we coming in to?”
“Grey? Can you… -me? Thousands, I don’t… -ver.”
“Fail copy. Fail copy… how many? What do we do? Over?”
“When you… in, you’re gonna… ‘em away… over?”
“Alright, listen… when the bus comes up, you clear a path so we can get out. You’ve got a dozen people here to help… once we get our bearings we’ll be fine… do you hear me? Over?”
“Gotcha… bring in… and slow… you’ve… ready to move.”
“Move?! What are you talking about?!”
“There’s too many… we might have to bail on the school… I don’t know if we can hold out… what’s that… oh horse shit, Grey, I’ll get back…”
“No! Wait! Who’s injured?!”
“No one. Over and out.”
I sigh in relief a
s I jam the transmitter back on the hook, returning my attention to the rest of the bus. “Alright, pull the blankets off…” They get started, and I assist until all the windows are naked. The tranquility of the snow-covered roads, businesses, and houses betray Anderson’s notion of a horde; there’s nary a Zombie in sight.
“Okay… looks like it’s gonna get dicey… like I said before, you follow the instructions Anderson and I give, and that’ll put us in…”
“Why are we following your instructions?” Andy asks.
“…because we’re running the show…”
“And why is that?”
I take a few steps forward to address him directly.
“Because we’re in charge. Maybe Alan and Jack didn’t explain well enough: we reinforced the school, stored food and water, rationed ammo, developed a division of labor… and we had to kill a dozen people to do it. We drove halfway across the state to rescue you, and I didn’t go through any of that to stand here and mince words. Do you want to tell me how to handle a horde?”
“…no, but…”
“Good. When you think of an alternative to the plan I have yet to tell you, I’ll be interested in what you have to say. Until then: Shut. The fuck. Up.”
Andy’s silence is deafening. I look past him once I continue.
“Anderson will arm you as he sees fit, and after we’ve dealt with the problem, we enter the school and work on getting you fed, showered, and accommodated… not a moment before. Here’s the basic strategy. We form a line confronting the undead with enough space between us to allow a full range of swinging with our melee weapons… it’s called a blood circle. First, we clear a space behind us so we can back up. The arc starts small and gets bigger as we back away so they funnel in. Everyone follow so far?”
I have a few nods, and some people shake their heads. “Okay, fairly simple. Form a semi-circle of people facing the oncoming undead…” I hold up my hands, putting my thumbs together and sticking out my index fingers.
“The open part of the circle is facing them…”
“What about the people on the ends?” Lada asks.
“The undead play the average, so most of them head up the center. That’s why we back up. Since we’re in a circle, everyone can see what’s happening behind everyone else. If we get our backs against a wall, or it’s too much, the ends of the arc peel back until it becomes a straight line and we escape to the left.”
“Why the left?” Nick asks.
“Most of us are right handed, that ensures your dominant weapon hand is facing the undead. Now, don’t go through the bushes out front, there’s a pit in front of the windows. There are driveways to the rear parking lot on either side of the school, so if you have to, run over the cars into the back, but use them as a tactical advantage first. Try to clear a path in front of you, get back down, and rejoin the group. Now, there is no entrance to the school from the front…”
Rich and Ally look at me. I nod at Rich and he understands. Ally stays quiet.
“They’re too smart for that… they’d remember where we got in and follow us right up. Every door in the front is reinforced, so there is positively no way in. Clear?”
Everyone nods this time. I look out the window to see the familiar roads and houses neighboring the high school. “Alright… we’re about a minute out… take a backpack, leave everything else, and I need two people to grab the M-16s and the ammo…” I take a few hits off my inhaler, check my weapons, and reattach my katana to my belt. Though I’ve worried about various things throughout the day, the one fleeting fantasy I’ve nurtured involves a haze of relief upon seeing the school, getting cozy with a drink once inside, and a long nap to recuperate.
As Rich pulls around the corner, that fantasy dissolves: there are at least a hundred Zombies shuffling toward TMHS from the road leading to DC cubed. They stick out of the falling snow like mud-coated drunks staggering out of a bar, totally unaware of each other as they get wrapped in the bushes around the cemetery and plummet face first into mounds of frost with relentless constitution. Fortunately, they’re far enough apart that I can see a thousand feet down the road, back to the foggy mist from which they emerge.
I close my eyes, taking a moment to accept this reality. It could be worse. A walking corpse close to the bus reaches out and scrapes the raw bones of his fingers along the aluminum chassis. I open my eyes and analyze the wide-spaced throng approaching the school, seeing that their direction and inclination gives us a tactical advantage; as we are arriving from the opposite direction, the bus will draw them away, allowing Anderson a chance to recover. “Let’s go!” I shout. Rich pulls the door open and I’m the first one out, trying to ignore the lingering sting in my hip as I bound forth. The bus horn blasts out as a parade of feet hit the snow-dusted pavement. “Arc up!” I shout.
The dark cluster of bodies stands in stark contrast to the bright snow as they pirouette away from the school, giving me a moment to observe what looks like Mursak defending the gate with Anderson, who is dressed in his National Guard fatigues. I unsheathe my katana as the rest of the group fills out behind me; Mel, arguably the one most familiar with this pattern, steps up on the opposite prong on of the arc. The cold penetrates me as I battle the feeling that we might be overwhelmed. I look back at Rich. His cold blue eyes lock on mine as he issues a stirringly emotive head nod, wrenching the door shut an instant later. The bus wheels away slowly, the horn blaring once again.
“Wait…” Mel offers, pointing as the horde thins into a spike advancing toward us. The bus accelerates suddenly, taking on the undead full bore; an entire filthy cluster of ragged bodies smacks into the flattened hood without resistance. The high-pitched crackling of bones both sullies the pure white snow and sends shivers up my spine, especially when punctuated by the occasional fleshy pop of a burst skull or chest cavity. Someone behind me vomits after viewing the carnage at the same moment I notice a black truck I’ve never seen before parked in front of Helen’s house. I shift my focus to catch the spear of undead advancing between Mel and me. “Attack!” I shout.
Mel and I aim for the center of the column while the rest of our compatriots step into the middle and cut down the contingent already trapped within. With our assailants dispatched, we reform the arc and allow the apex of the advancing horde inside again. “Attack!” Mel shouts. More shouting, slicing, and pounding occurs, and in a few moments, we’ve taken down another dozen corpses. Though math was never my strong suit, I imagine another ten assaults like this will winnow the crowd to a manageable figure. We continue forward, making our way to the gate a few steps at a time while Anderson swipes away at the stragglers and Mursak prepares the remaining M-16.
“Attack!” More blows are dished out, and the field has thinned down considerably. “Shift right!” I shout. Mel and I keep ourselves evenly spaced as we sidestep toward the gate, bringing the rest of the group swinging out behind us. Mel and I take on the stragglers as they approach, and in a hundred feet, we’ve made it to Anderson. I look back to see Nancy and Andy carrying the M-16s and the ammo crate. “Nancy, Andy, peel back to the door and drop that off… Ally, Mel, Levi, Jack, take ‘em as they come.” I look out at the street as the end of the bus disappears past the bushes separating the school from the cemetery. “Grey, Jesus…” Anderson starts. He resists the half-hug I give him as he catches his breath.
“Only two M-16s comin’ back?” He asks.
“Long story…”
“Where’s the Humvee?”
“Lost it…”
“Lost it!? How!?”
“I’ll explain later…” I mumble. “What’s the sitch?”
“They’ve been comin’ in hard since noon…” He replies. “We tried pushin’ ‘em back but we needed more men…”
“Execution time?”
“Boy howdy… they know what to do?”
“Nope… let’s get you, Mel, and Mursak on detail… everyone else mops up…”
“No… we mop up. They take point. We
’re not wasting ammo.”
“Fair enough. Give ‘em the rundown.”
Anderson turns to the group as I find a departed corpse whose clothes I can use to wipe the blood and tissue off my katana.
“I’m Anderson… I’m sure Grey told you about me… we’re prepping the execution tactic. Get on the field and engage ‘em one-on-one… stay close together, and we’ll be right behind you. When it looks like you might be in trouble, don’t panic, just step back. Me, Mel, and Mursak here walk up to the nearest Z, hold an M-16 up to its forehead, fire one shot, and that’s the ballgame. Saves ammo and no misfires. When one of us needs to reload, we call for it. If one’s still twitching after a shot, you put ‘em down… bullet cracks the skull, making your job easier. Any questions?”
I notice a few smiles in the sea of nodding faces. Having checked the M-16s, Mursak hands them off as I finish cleaning my blade. I turn toward the front lawn, and though the approaching dead stick out like headstones in a snow covered cemetery, most of them are now chasing the bus. “Cakewalk.” I say as Mursak labors over to me. “You need a break?” He asks. I smile in response, looking past him to see Rob exiting through the gate, blowing my insistence that the front doors are reinforced. “No…” I mutter. “Let’s finish this.”
I pop the strap on my .45, adjust my Winchester, and advance in front of the group with my katana wielded. “I hope you know what you’re doing, dude…” Jack warbles behind me. I take the first two easily, hearing the sounds of slaughter well up behind me while I lay into a third. Two M-16s loose a single round a dozen feet back, drawing a few more Zombies from the wake of the bus. I swipe off another head and look back to see Jack staring at me in awe. He shakes his head. “You guys are effing nuts…”