Preservation - 03

by Phillip Tomasso

  “And the ones that don’t die, maybe the winter will at least slow them down, make them less threatening, easier to kill?”

  “Just a thought,” she said. “Like I said, just something I was thinking.”

  # # #

  Locker room showers sprayed refreshing hot water. I was careful not to wet my new stitches. Allison helped redress the wound on my side afterward. We all looked battered and bruised. A few stitches up my side wasn’t much of anything, considering there had been car accidents and gunfights. We’d battled zombies and survived inclement weather. There was the obvious, also, crash landing a plane just yesterday.

  We even spent an hour using the football team’s washer and dryer before meeting everyone back in the cafeteria for breakfast. Powdered scrambled eggs, sausage links and buttered toast. The best part was the coffee. I enjoyed two cups, despite the still nagging urge to smoke a cigarette. At this point, I was game for lighting up anything and just smoking that.

  “Okay, Chase.” Gene stood next to his wife, arms crossed over his chest. She had hands stuffed into the pockets of her jeans. “Melissa and I, we’re with you. We’re ready to go.”

  “Me, too,” Megan said. Her face lit up with a smile. “And--I spent some time in the library last night. I found maps and compiled a list of directions and alternate directions in case we run into blocks we can’t get around.”

  She held up folded maps and a notebook with a ton of words written on it. She wore a huge smile, and I knew she’d spent the night working on directions and not sleeping. If she’d have been wearing knee-high socks, a pleated skirt, and orange turtleneck sweater, I’d have sworn she’d pass for Velma.

  Thankfully, Allison stood next to me, so I cleared my throat. I was an opening-mouth away from making myself look wishy-washy at best. “I’m not sure Mexico is the right place to go.”

  Andy sighed. I couldn’t tell if he was relieved to hear the words said, or annoyed with me. Either way, he did not make eye contact, so I had no way of better assessing his sigh.

  “Look,” I said, and yes, felt immediately defensive. Dave and Charlene even looked at me, and the confusion they must have felt was apparent on their expressions. “I am not the leader. I don’t have answers. I’ve said this from day one. I am just winging this--all of it. I’ve made so many bad choices. I go left when right is obviously the better way. I just try to pick what I think is best at the time. I’m not going to lie; at the beginning, when all of this…exploded, I didn’t really care about much else other than getting to my kids,” I said, and stopped. I missed Cash. I failed him. My little boy. I lowered my head. I felt the heat in my face. My eyes were wet. “I don’t know if Mexico is right. I just, I think it might be a mistake.”

  “So, what are you saying?” Megan said.

  “I’m saying, I’ve done little else except focus on Mexico. But Mexico might not be the answer. It was just a means to keep me centered. It provided direction. A goal.” Charlene moved closer to me, reached for my hand. She realized how difficult this was for me. I had no problem admitting when I was wrong. I struggled with admitting I didn’t know what was right, or best. I laced my fingers with hers. “Alley and I were talking. She made some points that, I just couldn’t argue against. And before any of us do anything, I think we should talk this out some more. All of us. Because right now, I’ve got to say that staying here in Pennsylvania, at this high school, at least for the winter might make the most sense. In the spring, I don’t know what will come next. I don’t. For now, I think we should talk. All of us.”

  Gene lowered his head.

  “He has a point.” Melissa tugged on her husband’s arm.

  “I want my bus.” Gene looked up, looked over at me. “We should still go get my bus. It has more weapons. More supplies.”

  I was not sure he’d heard or comprehended anything I’d just said. I was not the leader. I was not in charge. If anything, he’d been the one in charge here. Why in the hell was he telling me he wanted his bus? I was not the one to grant or deny his request to go to retrieve his bus. It wasn’t me. I wasn’t that guy.

  Allison said, “Gene, let’s make a list of all of our provisions first.”

  “It’s done,” Michelle said. “We keep it in the kitchen. It’s on a clipboard by the register. Every time we use something, we subtract it from the list.”

  “Good,” I said. “That’s excellent. Why don’t you--”

  The reserve lights mounted on the walls flickered, and then went out.

  “What just happened? What was that?” Charlene took a step back.

  “The generator,” Gene said. “It’s a quirky piece of equipment. Thing gets used like once a year. Usually when we have a bad snowstorm. I can look at it.”

  “Where is it?”

  “The generator’s in the boiler room, back of the building,” Dave said. “Saw it last night. Andy showed me around.”

  Gene nodded. “I can give you a tour of the mechanics of the place. I’ve shown Andy, who showed Dave and Megan. More people that know how this place works, the better. You never know who may need to know what, you know? Spread the knowledge.”

  I agreed. “Good call. Let’s take a look.”

  “I’d like to see it, too,” Charlene said, and kept a hand on the hilt of her long sword. She looked around, eyes taking in everything. I didn’t like it either--lights just going off.

  # # #

  Charlene and I followed a step behind as we walked from the cafeteria and through the school hallways, the whole time my mind spinning. I’d made a grandiose speech back there. In telling everyone that I was not a leader, that I was not in charge, that I was not sure if Mexico was the right place to go or not, I still had my own reservations. If Gene all of a sudden said we were going to go to Arkansas, or Megan said New Jersey -- I’d say no. I wouldn’t follow. I might not be a leader, I guess. Neither was I someone who followed. I didn’t take direction well. Maybe that made me a dick. I’m sure it did. Part of me knew I still planned to call the shots. I couldn’t change my nature. Not overnight, not even in the midst of…all of this. People were either with me, or they weren’t. It was kind of that simple. The thing was, Allison was quite possibly right. She’d made sense this morning. I wonder how long she debated telling me any of it. There it was, again. I was a dick. At least I knew it.

  “We keep the classroom doors closed, but not locked. Figure if anything gets in from one of the windows or something, we’re hopefully going to hear the glass shatter. The closed door will be a good initial line of defense. We argued about locking them all, but then figured if those things are inside the school, a classroom might be a perfect place to hide. Can lock the doors from the inside, without a key.” Gene made a motion with his hand, like he was turning a key. “And each classroom has fire windows. They swing open and are big enough to basically walk out of; ideal if getting out of the school is safer than staying inside it.”

  “You been with the school a while?” Charlene asked.

  “Seems like I’ve always been here. Graduated from here. Went to college for business. Earned a degree and everything, but seemed like schools were kicking out business students by the bucket load. Finding a job, finding a good paying job that is, was impossible. Didn’t matter I carried a solid GPA, either. Business graduates were a dime a dozen. So I came back home after a while. Moved back in with my folks, you know. That was one of the toughest things to do. After having the freedom of living on my own on campus, to go back to house rules and explaining where I’m going, who I’m going with and when I’d be home--about went insane. Within a few weeks, I knew I’d need to move out. Waited some tables at the Denny’s, grabbed up a vacant studio, and when there was a janitorial opening at the high school, so I applied. Thought it would be temporary, a good job to hold me over until I could find something more in my field.” Gene’s walking slowed. He seemed almost lost in reflection.

  “How did you and Melissa meet,” Charlene said. My kid was smart. She’d s
ensed the funk the career conversation was causing, and knew to change the subject.

  “That,” Gene pointed a finger, “that is a great story. I mean, you’ve seen her. Look at me. You’ve got to be asking yourself, how’d this Joe Schmo wind up with a babe like that?”

  We rounded a corner.

  Gene stopped. Held up a hand. “Shh. Door’s open. Shouldn’t be.”

  “Mud,” Charlene said.

  It wasn’t clearly footprints, but someone…or something, was wet and tracking mud around inside the school. “I’m guessing this wasn’t how you left the mechanical room?”

  “It was not,” Gene said. “I’m going in. You guys have my back?”

  Charlene already had her long sword drawn. I pulled mine from the scabbard. “We got you.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  1002 hours

  “Dad, I don’t like this.” Charlene held the hilt of her sword in both hands, the tip of the blade on the ground. She kept bouncing on the balls on her feet. She looked ready to swing that blade in any direction in an instant. Her eyes pivoted left and right and left.

  “We need to warn the others. If they have weapons, we’ve got to be ready to kill them,” Chase said.

  “Weapons? You don’t think it’s those things?”

  “Sneaking into the school, breaking into the mechanical room, and cutting the power from the generators?” I shook my head and almost snickered, but stopped. I thought about Charlene’s mom and the photograph, and the zombies figuring out how to climb higher on a fence, and unfasten a belt. “No, dear, I do not think it’s zombies. This is too well organized.”

  “I don’t know which is better.”

  I knew. “It’s people. Survivors. They’re not friendly, though.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “They didn’t try to make contact. They…”

  What they’d done instead was disorient and split the group. “Gene?”

  “What is it?” Charlene raised her sword.

  “Stay right here. I’m going after--”

  The lights flickered on in the hallways. Gene must have managed to restart the generators. Another flicker, two, and then they stayed on. From where we stood outside the Mechanical Room door, I could hear the motors of the generators whine as they geared up and sent out energy though the school.

  “Gene?” I pushed the door open with the sword’s blade, stood back, still cautious, still ready for anything. “Wait here, Char. Yell if you see anything.”

  There were green painted rails that followed down three cement stairs, and outlined and turned off this way and that down the small maze of different pathways. I knew nothing about machinery. There were dials, gauges, pipes. No idea. I wasn’t even sure I would recognize a generator if I saw it. I assumed it looked like one giant car battery. A positive and negative lead…

  “Gene?”

  Something grunted. Groaned. I reset my grip on the hilt of my sword. I felt my breathing go quick, shallow. “Gene?”

  “Chase?”

  I spun, bringing the blade around fast, hard.

  “Chase!”

  I stopped, lost my balance doing so, stumbled forward and into a rail. I’d come a breadth away from chunking into Gene’s ribs. “What the fuck!”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Fixing some of these wires. Trying to anyway. Going to have to get some electrical tape, do some splicing.” He held them up. “They’ve been ripped out of electrical box, and the panel’s a mess. I’m not sure I can fix it. The generators are up and running, for now anyway. Someone did this. I hate to think it’s one of our people.”

  I wasn’t about to play any finger pointing game. I knew it wasn’t any of my people. He could be suspicious all he wanted. It was his people I did not know, his people I did not yet trust. “The mud, though, that suggested someone just came in from outside. Or, from somewhere wet and muddy. We should check the nearest doors. All the doors, actually. Did you check the whole school before? I mean, like the entire school top to bottom, left to right when you locked the place down initially?”

  “I did. I do. We check everything regularly. Last night, they would have gone around checking classrooms, making sure windows were closed, locked. Doors, too. No one besides us is in here. Couldn’t be.” He bit his lower lip, pressed fists against his hips and looked around. I’d swear you could visibly see his confidence level descend.

  “Char,” I said, just before Gene and I emerged from the Mechanical Room and back into the hallway. I knew she was tense. I did not want to give her any reason to accidentally swing.

  “Everything okay in there?”

  I shook my head. “Someone messed with the wiring. Bad. We’re going to check the doors around here. See if we can figure out how someone got in.”

  “Someone got in from out there?” Char shifted weight from foot to foot. I touched her shoulder. It was meant to mentally steady her. She shrugged the hand away. She was no longer fourteen. That age was gone. A simple number that meant absolutely nothing anymore.

  “Place was locked up good,” Gene said. “Andy and your man, Dave, they would have said something this morning.”

  Of course, they would have. I was not sure why the fresh mud tracks didn’t alert Gene to the fact that whoever it was that had breached the school had just done so, or had so recently done so that they left a trail. “Let’s get back to the others.”

  “I don’t, ah, I need, I’m gonna need a weapon.” Gene must have been comfortable with his notion that no one else could be inside the school. I hadn’t even realized he’d walked the halls unarmed. I don’t know that I’d ever go anywhere, ever again, without my steel.

  I handed him a machete.

  “These lights just went off, which means the person can’t be that far.” Gene held the blade by his side. His white knuckle grip revealed the panic he felt. I heard it in the way his voice cracked when he spoke.

  There was only one set of prints that were too smeared to indicate whether they were coming or going. “We’re going to check it out, Gene. Just not yet. Not now. They either knew we’d send a few to check the mechanical room for the problem, or knew that the lights going out would cause some chaos. Either way, what they wanted was an opportunity to strike. We’ve been divided. It’s a ploy. They got us three away from the others. Let’s not get surprised, okay? Char, you stay right behind me.”

  “Got it.”

  Not sure what I heard first. Someone, somewhere, screamed. There was also a raggedy mix of gunshots that echoed down the halls, bounced off metal lockers and square-tiled walls. The high school was under attack.

  # # #

  I led as we ran from the Mechanical Room toward the cafeteria. There was no way to prepare for horror. With the screams, and guns being fired, it was bound to be a mess.

  “Whoa, wait!” I held out my arms as I skidded to a stop before rounding the last corner.

  “What?” Gene said, and panted while bent forward as if trying to catch his breath.

  Charlene answered the question. “We have no idea what’s going down. We can’t just, just -- barrel in there. Gotta take a peek, see what’s what.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Exactly.”

  At the next corner, I laid down on my belly and inched forward. Peeking around the corner, I was not sure what I expected to see. Gunmen in black ski masks holding our families hostage. I suppose that is what a part of me thought might be waiting for us.

  My imagination had failed me miserably. Kia, the woman who had comforted me yesterday while Gene stitched my side, was on her back. Someone straddled her waist. She had both hands planted on his head, forcing his mouth away from her throat.

  “Shit.” I pushed forward, legs kicked trying to get me up and propel me toward Kia.

  “Dad!”

  “It’s zombies! It’s motherfucking zombies!” I charged, sword raised. I wasn’t sure I’d make it in time. Kia bucked, thrust her hips up, and twisted. It was enough to force the
thing away from her neck. I swung my sword at its head. The force of the blow cut clean. The head rolled off the shoulders and landed with a splattering plop. Thick dark blood oozed from the corpse as Kia knocked it off of her and back-crawled away.

  I held out my hand. “Are you okay?”

  “The others are in the cafeteria!” Kia pulled herself up, looked around on the floor and found her 9 mm by the wall. The cafeteria was around the next corner. “I had them barricade the doors. I was on my way to warn all of you.”

  “How many? How many are we talking?” I led the four of us toward the next corner. The cafeteria would be roughly thirty yards from there. My sword was up, blade on my shoulder.

  “A lot, seven, eight? I don’t know. Ten?”

  The lights in the hallway flickered and went out.

  I looked back.

  “The Mechanical Room. Want me to go fix it?” Gene started to turn around.

  “No. Stay with us. We’re done splitting up. We don’t need the lights on. It’s day time.”

  “They’re doing this? Those things?” Kia said.

  I nodded. “It seems that way.”

  “That’s crazy. I mean, that’s just impossible,” she said.

  “It’s not,” Charlene said. “They’re either remembering, or they’re developing survival skills. Whales hunt in packs and communicate attack plans as skilled as generals. Saw it on Discovery, or Animal Planet.”

  “She’s right,” Gene said, as if my daughter’s comments needed confirmation. “Think I saw the same--”

  “Shh,” I said. “Listen, we need to round this corner and hit them fast. The school’s no longer secure.”

  “We need my bus,” Gene said.

  “Not now,” I said. “One thing at a time. Let’s clear the hall outside the cafeteria and then figure out where to go after that.”

  “The gym,” Gene said.

  “Not the gym,” Charlene said. “We need to get out of the school. We’re trapped in here. This building is no longer safe.”