Ophelia

by Briana Rain

  He saw them coming and tightened the grip on his shovel, and took a step back, wincing at the movement. Now we were the same distance from the door and we're both fair game.

  Thanks a lot, bud.

  I don't know how he did it, but he leveled the shovel so that it was parallel to the floor and sliced both of their heads in one swing. Now, it wasn't a clean cut all the way through, but it was enough. Off the record, it was also kind of cool.

  I looked up and there was one right in front of me, not two yards away. I hadn’t even see it come in, and I only looked away for two seconds.

  I guess that's all it took.

  I swung, and I swung hard, but I wasn't quick enough. She— it— came at me and knocked me on the ground with as much skill as a linebacker. It was on top of me, fingers clawing at the air, drooling on my flannel. My favorite flannel.

  My only flannel, actually.

  I once again held up my bat against a Crazy, desperately trying to extend the inevitable visit from Death. It clawed at me and my arms, but couldn't get a hold because of my constant squirming and movement. It didn't have the brains to hold me down to stop that, I guessed. I didn't care, just as long as I stayed alive.

  Its drool was everywhere and was getting dangerously close to splashing onto my face, and I almost puked right then and there. It kept screaming and screaming and screaming at me, that demonic sound that couldn't possibly come from a human. If it weren't for the drooling, I would've joined it and screamed my lungs out, too.

  There were white tuffs of hair peeking out from under her— it’s— nun headpiece thing. I had to get the upper hand, and get it quickly, so I wildly flung my hand around its arm and grabbed at it.

  “Oh my god!” I screamed, shoving those three words together to make one as the hair and most of her scalp fell apart in my fingers and the feared jelly stuff started to ooze out.

  I screamed, the oozing substance igniting more fear in me then drool ever will.

  “Ophelia!”

  I heard Clyde, but he sounded farther away than I remembered. Like, all the way on the other side of the classroom far. Too far away to help me.

  I couldn't hold the Crazy up with one arm, and my locked elbow crumbled. As it came down, I kicked and pushed at whatever I could touch, trying to put distance between me and it.

  It was flung to the side by yours truly as I kicked and rolled about a foot in the other direction. It was on its hands and knees in an instant, while I was still on my back, scrambling to put distance between us. It opened its mouth impossibly wide, like a snake unhinging its jaw, and roared at me, spit flying off of its teeth. Then it moved its hand, and began to crawl towards me, when a bullet suddenly passed through the top of its skull and ended it.

  I looked up to see my mom, who, by the way, is the best mom ever, pointing that same 9mm handgun that we talked about so long ago on that trip to the drug store at the spot where the undead nun once was. Now it was a dead nun. A double dead nun.

  I should have probably thanked her, but at that moment, I just so happened to look at Clyde, who was backed into a corner, with a Crazy snapping at him just like mine was moments ago. Only, this one was once a child. A little girl with two blonde braids, who was probably in the beginning of middle school when this all happened. Clyde snapped out of it, and kicked her— it— square in the chest and raised his shovel. He hesitated, probably because of the age and the lack of rot. It still looked like a human. The hesitation gave the Crazy just enough time to launch at Clyde with a high-pitched shriek.

  But it never made it to him. A bullet through the head stopped it just like it had done to my nun. Thanks, Mom.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw another one race towards me. One that was even smaller than the one that had just attacked Clyde. But, this time, I was ready.

  Don't hesitate.

  I whipped around and swung, hitting the little Crazy in the side of the head. The kid went down hard, like a sack of potatoes.

  “I think that's the last of them.” Clyde unstuck his shovel from a Crazy, his voice quiet.

  A string of, well, goop came from the head, and stuck to the shovel's blade. He took a page out of the Ophelia's Guide to the Apocalypse and grabbed the nearest paper, which happened to be a Phonics book, and wiped the metal clean. Or, should I say, cleaner. Because nothing’s really clean during the Apocalypse, right?

  “Sounds like it.”

  My voice was much more quiet than his. A whisper. We both watched the door for a moment, straining our ears, making sure that nothing else was coming. That we were okay-ish. At least for now.

  He looked at me, his overgrown hair, mixed with sweat and rain and mud and blood, covering his eyes. He ran his fingers through it and pushed the strands to the side on his forehead. I suddenly became hyper-aware of my hair, my braid that was one big clump. I also became aware of my flannel covered in drool, and my burning ankle, though I didn't risk a look down to check either of them.

  I did the same thing to clean my bat, and then looked up at Mom and the twins in the ceiling.

  They were preparing to jump down and join us. Clyde was there in an instant once he realized that, which was about two seconds before I did.

  I wanted to help them, I really did, but something told me not to take my eyes off the door. And by something, I mean every single cell in my body. It was like that feeling that you forgot something, but didn't know what it was. Well, I could feel that something was coming, but I didn't know what it was. It was just… Something.

  “Just jump, you big baby.” Viola taunted Puck.

  “Don't call me a baby, wimp.” Puck retorted, intelligently.

  “How am I a wimp?” She challenged her older brother, who was only older by a few minutes, but that never stopped him from using the “I’m the oldest” card.

  “You're a wimp because I'm jumping first and you're not.” I'm guessing that that card was pulled out just a minute ago, when deciding who would go first.

  “Oh yeah?” Vi sounded irritated and fed up with her older brother, which wasn't a new thing. Luck did pick on her a lot, back before all of this started.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well watch this then, you big baby.”

  There was some shuffling, and then a light thud. Vi had jumped and Clyde had caught her.

  Way to go, Vi.

  “You alright there, little Miss?” Clyde asked.

  I heard him put her down but I didn't look.

  I stepped toward the doorway, careful not to fall over the bodies or slip in the puddles of goop, and land flat on my tailbone. If we were in a movie theater and I was on screen, everyone would be yelling at me to stop and don't open the door. Except, this was real life, and there was no one to tell me to turn around and go back. And, in this case, there wasn't even a door to open, as it was blasted to smithereens by the pure force of brainless bags of flesh searching for their next meal and nothing else.

  And because that door was open, it was then possible for an old, balding Crazy to come wandering in, nose up in the air, sniffing his next meal out. It was a fresh one, with only one visible spot of rotting, even if that spot took up the entire left cheek and was down to the bone. If he’d opened his mouth, I bet I could’ve seen right through it and out into the hallway.

  I reacted before I reacted, if that made any sense. Before I could process the grossness and the danger and the fear, I clobbered the thing. Right on the top of its head. Before either of us could scream.

  I hit it again and again, just to make sure. Its skull was thicker, and harder to get through, confirming the man's newness to being a zombie. I stopped when its brains were showing.

  “O?”

  I didn't realize I was breathing so fast and that my grip was so tight until a hand was on mine. I looked up, then down. Lucky.

  I looked around and they were all down from the ceiling, looking at me. I felt weird.

  “We should… we should get to the roof.” It was Clyde that came to my re
scue.

  Thank God.

  He stepped carefully around me and the new pile of flesh I’d added to the masses, into the doorway, prepared to lead the way, but he stopped and ripped something off of the wall.

  A map of the school and all of its emergency exits. He scanned it briefly before moving forward. I followed, Mom and the twins behind me.

  Eyes forward. Be alert. Weapon ready.

  The five of us stepped out into the hallway which couldn't be described as empty. Sure, there wasn't a living thing in sight except for us, but it was the opposite of empty.

  Bodies. Bodies of nuns and children and teachers and parents. There were too many of them. Too many of them for a place like this. What the hell had happened here?

  But it wasn't the death itself that was disturbing. It was what’d happened afterwards. The blood. The pools were shiny with only half of the hallways emergency lights working and glowing dimly above us. Most of the bodies looked torn to shreds by who knows what. Crazies. Bugs. Animals. The once eggshell white walls were splattered, like a special effects guy was given an unlimited amount of fake blood and told to go nuts. Except this wasn't fake and the bodies weren't actors laying on the ground. It was real. Too real.

  I heard one of the twins start sniffling behind me, and the other one tried to comfort them by shushing. Mom puked. Even Clyde stumbled for a second at the sight.

  I read this book once where this guy was at war, and to get through all the bad stuff that was happening, he pretended he wasn't there. He pretended he was just playing a part in a film. At the time, I thought that it was really stupid, until this moment. All I wanted in this moment was to not be here and to not be me. I didn't want to go into the scary hallway and wander around the scary building just waiting for the next thing to pop out at me. I didn't want to do this. I wanted to go home. Even if I had to finish my Calculus, home sounded really good.

  Clyde recovered, and led us forward, moving his feet in a really strange way, but at the same time making no noise. Not even a squeak from the wet tile and his slicked soles. Not slicked with water, by the way.

  I peeked into the first room we passed. The door was smashed open, just like the classroom we were just in. The room was once identical, except now this one had been absolutely destroyed, furniture and paper everywhere.

  My shoe squeaked on the once-white tile. Clyde stopped. I stopped. We all stopped and held our breaths. Another ten years were shaved off of my life in that moment.

  Thunder clapped. The rain stormed on. The hoard of Crazies raged outside. In hindsight, a small squeak was probably nothing.

  Great, I probably just jinxed myself. Why not, because everything else seemed to go wrong.

  We continued walking down the hallway, passing the bodies. Dozens of them. This was a long hallway.

  But I didn't look at them, or at least, I tried not to. I looked at Clyde. I stared at the back of his head, his hair, and his pack. He had a lot of zippers. A lot of pockets. I wondered what was in them. I saw the outline of a plastic water bottle in one. The top of a plastic Ziplock sticking out of a space that was not fully zipped up. A—

  We arrived at the end of the hallway and found the stairs.

  “What the heck?” Clyde sounded outraged, and I was too. He looked at his map, rotated it, flipped it over to the blank side, then flipped it over again.

  The stairs only went down.

  Okay, who does that? Who. Does. That. Stairs go up, and then they go down. If you're in the middle floor of a building, you should have stairs going both ways but nooooooooo. There’re only these stupid stairs going down. Who. Does. That.

  I inhaled, and exhaled. Clyde did the same. I'm guessing that he more or less had the same train of thought that I did.

  “Let me see the map.”

  I thought that maybe I could read the map better with my flashlight than he could in the dying emergency lights. Maybe he got something wrong. I reached around him and took it as he just stood there, shaking his head. He did not want to venture deeper into the school and find out what else it held.

  “It’s set up like a... triangle? Look.”

  The slightly crumpled piece of paper did kinda look like a triangle. But only kinda. It was like the children were all put in charge of the building’s architecture and the construction crew took all their ideas into consideration. In other words, it was a big, stupid mess.

  The others crowded around me, everyone keeping a third eye out for Crazies.

  “It looks like we go down, across, up, up, then up here, to the roof?” I traced my finger along the printed hallways and stairs, to our destination— the roof.

  At least, that's what I thought I was doing. I hoped I was reading it right. I hoped and hoped and hoped.

  I looked around, and no one told me otherwise. No questions, comments, or concerns. I didn't like that they were just going to follow me on this one. I would've felt better if someone had pointed out something I had wrong. I would've felt more secure, that things weren't going to go majorly, completely, totally, and fatally wrong.

  Clyde led us down each dark step. All twenty-four of them (and yes, I did count them), and into the basement. Or was it the first floor? This building was weird, because it was a little bit of both.

  The deeper we ventured into the building, the less light we had. Most of the emergency lights were out, and the little bit of light from the moon was long gone. There was probably a moon, somewhere, but not here. The storm, which went from a raging force to a steady rain, blocked it out. The lightning was less frequent. I kept my flashlight out, and when we ran out of emergency lights, I debated for a moment whether or not to click it on, and compromised by covering most of the light with my hand, and clicked it on.

  I immediately regretted this decision.

  It was just... So gross. So so so gross.

  In the bright, concentrated rays of light that I let slip through my fingers, I saw them. There were bugs. Tons of them everywhere, but especially swarming around where lone body parts laid, abandoned. I knew, reasonably, that there was probably an open or smashed window that was down here somewhere, but I almost lost what little I had in my stomach when I saw those creepy crawlies.

  Speaking of my stomach, when was the last time I ate?

  Clyde stopped suddenly when the thin ray of light illuminated his path. He, either dramatically or carefully, I couldn't quite tell which, stepped around something right in front of him. I did the same.

  It was a head.

  The head of a child. Or, at least, it once was. I tried not to look. That way I wouldn't have the details seared into my mind. I couldn't handle any more details and horrific images. I needed some time, like, an hour. Yeah, an hour will do. A break would be nice. Like clocking out of work for lunch.

  But I still caught a glimpse of it, and a glimpse was all it took.

  There was a light ahead. Light that didn't come from me. A faint one, which is why it wasn't seen before. We came around a slight curve which brought us to some double doors with light. Actual, artificial light. The kind that humans use.

  I tapped Clyde on the shoulder. For a split second, I was going to whisper his name, but for many reasons, I decided against it. He turned around just as thunder clapped and lightning struck and gave me the “what” look. You know it. The one where you raise your eyebrows, shake your head slightly to the side, and bring your shoulders back just a bit. It dripped with annoyance. Kind of like when a toddler tugs too hard on your hand when you'd been having a stressful day and announces that they have to pee. That level of annoyance.

  I held out my turtle flashlight to him, nodding at the doors. He looked back at the doors, then at me, then took the flashlight. Because there was no way that I was going first on this one. It was too scary. Too intense.

  My anxiety was off the charts as he continued, alone, forward to investigate. The rest of us crowded together to the side. Someone's teeth were chattering, and I wanted to tell them to stop, but it was radio
silence and I would not be the one to break it.

  Please don't lose my flashlight Clyde. It's my favorite. Also my only one.

  I think Mom might’ve had an extra one somewhere in her pack… but how in the world would that compare to one that has freaking turtles all over it? It wouldn’t.

  He approached the doors, doing that weird walk that made zero noise and avoided all of the obstacles in his path.

  There was a movement from behind the doors. Something darted past the small panes of glass embedded in the metal. Or windows.

  Turn back!!!! Clyde don't do it! Don't go in the room!!!

  He clicked the light off. I felt like I was watching a movie and there was nothing I could do to change the outcome of what was happening. The unavoidably bad outcome.

  At a yard away, he crouched and proceeded even more slowly than he already was. I felt physical pain at his speed. But he did eventually arrive at the doors, and crouched under the windows. He closed his eyes, mouthed something, then jumped up, clicked on the light and peered into the window.

  No sooner that he did that, a face appeared in the very same window.

  Clyde yelled, swore, and jumped back as other members of our group screamed.

  I will not disclose who. (One was me)

  I couldn't tell if the face had been there and the flashlight just illuminated it, or if it came was attracted to the window by the light, but it was there. One eye was red and the other was blue. Her hair was falling out, but she looked really old, so it could’ve been because of that. Hopefully it was just that.

  The light was still aimed at the face as she started to wheeze. Her whole body shook, her shoulders jerking in a painful manner and she hacked up something. Probably blood.

  Breaking news: it was blood.

  She held it in her hand and looked at Clyde. I mean, really stared him down. The kind of eye contact that people tended to avoid.

  Then she moved. She brought her hand up to the window. It was the hand that still held the blood that she hadn't bothered to wipe away. Clyde let more light through his hands to see what she was writing.