Another Zombie Apocalypse Tale: Part 21

Day One of the Apocalypses

Ava and I ran toward the school. There had to be someone who could help us. Someone calling the police, the military, whoever, to come and stop the mob. The West Middleton High School building was squat and long with dark windows. I’d never been inside, never had the need. They had a separate gym and locker room beside the track and field. Being unfamiliar with the place, finding an open door took us a while. 

Our footsteps echoed in the dark, empty place. Our shouts for help carried down the halls, unheard. 

“What kind of school locks all the classroom doors?” Ava protested, frustration overtaking the fear in her tone. 

“A bullshit one,” I said, trying the knob of a door labeled Music. It didn’t budge. I growled and kicked it. Shock shot up my leg, but the door remained locked shut.

“What’s going on?” Ava gripped her head and braced herself against the wall, keeping herself upright. Her breathing was rapid and shallow. 

Glancing around to make sure that bloody woman didn’t follow us, I helped my sister sit on the floor, head between her knees, and I rubbed her back until she calmed.

“I don’t know.” I kept rubbing circles between her shoulder blades. “Someone’s had to have called for help already.”

She sniffed and sat up, patting her pockets. “I lost my phone. Dad was holding onto yours.” Her chin quivered, and I wrapped my arm around her shoulders. 

A sharp ache wallowed a hole in my chest, and I wanted to ask if she was sure he was dead. I couldn’t imagine a world without our dad, he was always there: dancing in the kitchen with Mom while he made dinner, shaking his head when Ava and I picked horror movies over historical fiction, and making sure I made it to practice on Saturdays. 

He was always there, like the sun, moon, and stars. It couldn’t be possible for him to not be around anymore.

“Did you hear that?” She shifted under my arm, peering down the hall. Light from tinted windows high up on the wall shone across the floor, but didn’t provide enough illumination to reveal the dark corners at the end of the hall.

“Bad sound or good sound?” I whispered. My pulse beat like a drum in my ears. I don’t know how she heard anything. 

She shook her head, and we both got to our feet. She cast me a wary glance, and we tiptoed down the hall, opposite the direction she’d heard the sound. 

A muted and hurried voice carried over to us, and we stopped. Ava looked at me with wide eyes, petrified, and I squeezed her hand as we listened. They were too far away to make out the words, but they sounded frantic, panicked. As they should be, but it made me hesitate to find them, ask if they’d been able to call for help. 

Hysteria, I realized within a quick moment, was a dangerous thing. People didn’t see with their eyes; they saw with their fear. What if we approached this person and they attacked us? Thinking we were part of the mob?

“Cami, what do we do?” Ava’s voice quivered. I’d never heard her so scared. Even after the most unsettling horror movies and she asked to sleep in my room with me.

I squeezed her hand again. “Let’s find the principal’s office. Their office might be locked, but the secretary’s desk should have a phone.”

“What if they don’t have—”

A scream cut her off. We took off running. Quiet was no longer an option as fight or flight kicked in. Her pulse drummed against my hand; she was holding so tight.

“No! No, please!” The begging, shrill cry sent us running. A thump echoed down the hall, cutting the pleas short. 

Another thump followed, resounding over the pounding of our footsteps. Then another thump. I could picture what those thumps meant in my head. Clear as day. One of the mob people grabbed their victim’s head and smashed it into the ground, again, and again, and again, until the skull cracked open, exposing the pink of the brain.

I fell to my knees. I’m sure there was pain, but I threw up—lumps of oatmeal, browned bacon, yellow bile, and milky fluids splattered around my hands. Ava was crying, trying to coax me to my feet, but I heaved again, and again, until stings of bile and saliva hung from my lips. The scent stung my eyes and nose, almost making me dry heave another time. 

“Please, Cam. Stand up.” Ava grabbed my arm and tried pulling me, her voice panicked and whiny. She stopped with a gasp, but I still couldn’t move. I stared at a piece of bacon, then at a piece of sticky drool stretching to the floor. 

“Stand up!” Her voice pitched up with urgency. “We gotta go. Gotta go now!”

A moan came from behind me, hungry and deep. The sound crawled across my skin, and Ava dragged me to my feet and away from the vomit. I glanced back as we rounded a corner. A single, crazed man lurched after us, hands and face bloodied. I pressed a hand to my mouth as my body tried to conjure up the reason he was bloody. He was too close for me to lose my shit again, and Ava wasn’t strong enough to carry me or fight him off. 

I had to pull it together. I was the older sister, goddammit!

Matching Ava’s pace so she was no longer pulling me, I scanned the path ahead, looking for a sign that would lead us to the principal’s office or administration. Anywhere that would have phones and would be unlocked. With all the classrooms locked, why would they have those areas unlocked? We needed to try, though. The dead were already inside and we needed to try. 

“Left left left,” I panted, pivoting to pull her along with me. A sign up above had the symbol of an open book, guy/girl symbols used for bathrooms, and the word ADMIN. 

We ran past double doors marked study hall, past the boy’s bathroom, and then the girl’s bathroom. At the end of the hall, ADMINISTRAION was in bold letters above a panel of windows, and to the side of those windows was a door.

Ava slowed.

I didn’t.

I charged toward the door, aiming with the weak side. The side that opened and not the side with the hinges. I slammed against it, and it didn’t budge. Shock shot through my body, protesting the blunt force trauma. 

“Camille,” Ava protested. “You could have tried the handle first.”

I tried to handle, giving her a pointed look. My shoulder and neck ached from ramming into the door. “If all the classrooms are locked, I figured admin would be, too.”

“Fair point.” She looked down the empty hall, but the moans of the crazed man followed us. “Bathrooms,” she suggested. “They shouldn’t lock those, right?”

I shrugged, and we hurried back the way we came. The crazed man rounded the corner, arms outstretching at the sight of us. Ava squealed. Panic trapped my screech in my throat. We shoved our way into the girl’s bathroom and held our backs against the door to keep it shut. Our shoes scuffed against the ground until we pressed hard enough to make them grip. 

“These people are clearly out of their minds,” Ava whispered, wide eyes staring across the bathroom illuminated by a window near the ceiling. The tiles were clean, save for a few scuff marks and a wad of paper towel under the sinks. “Can we hope that he’s too far gone to realize we’re in here?”

“We can, but let’s be realistic.” I kept my feet planted and listened with my ear pressed to the door. His moans echoed down the hall, longing and hungry. A clacking sound followed, and as it got closer, I realized he was snapping his teeth together. Revulsion swept over me and I had to fight to keep my gorge down. 

Ava’s chin quivered. She mouthed, “He’s right outside.”

I lifted a finger to my lips, and she nodded, clenching her eyes shut.

Hands thumped against the door and we screamed, tensing, and pressed harder back against the door. The moans intensified and fingernails scratched against the vanished wood. 

My foot slipped, and the door budged. Panic buzzed across my skin and I scrambled back in place, but the man’s bloodied hand reached through, getting stuck between the door and the frame. He didn’t care that we were crushing his bones. His blood-stained fingers searched for us.

“Ava. Ava, listen.” I looked up at the window. She could reach it if she climbed up the stall wall. It would be a bit of a test of strength, but it was an escape. “Get out that window. Go!”

“But what about you?” 

We both squealed as the door opened a smidge more. I dug my heels in until my quads and calves ached. 

“Go out the window. I’m going to let him in—”

“What?” she shrieked. 

“—then I’m going to go out behind him.” 

She started shaking her head, protesting. 

“Once you’re out, go find help. I’ll find you, okay?” It wasn’t the best idea, but it would get her out of here. We shouldn’t have come into the school. But where should we have gone? Outside was chaos. We didn’t have access to a car. Someone had to have called the police by now and there’d be someone outside for Ava to go to. 

Ava nodded grimly, then steeled herself. “You got it?”

“I got it.” My leg muscles burned and my shoulder ached, but I would hold the door until she got out. 

“I’m going in one, two, three.” She pushed off the door and raced to the stall closet to the window. The crazed man’s hand seemed to lack complete motor function, not just because of the doorframe squishing it. I kept my heels down, watching Ava climb. She wasn’t slow, but it felt agonizing. 

The crazed man moaned, teeth clacking, and pushed against the door. I gritted my teeth to keep from yelping and distracting Ava. She unlocked the window and pushed it open, grabbed the edge and pulled herself up to her stomach. She swung a leg over and rotated around. 

“You better not get eaten,” she said. Tear streamed down her cheeks.

“Just go.” My chin trembled, and my legs shook. 

She dropped, disappearing from sight. 

The crazed man search with his hand, fingernails clawing into the door, pressing so hard his index finger snapped. The pain didn’t faze him. He pushed harder against the door. I closed my eyes, psyching myself up. Then I stepped away from the door, pivoting to grab the door’s handle to keep it from slamming into me and to put it between me and the crazed man. 

He stumbled in, tripping over his feet, falling against the countertop. Lurching around to face me, his head drooped and his mouth opened. Gore stretched in strings between his teeth and he lifted his arms. 

I skirted around the door and raced down the hall, searching for an exit. With luck, he wouldn’t be able to open the door. 

Where did we come in from? I didn’t want to go out the way we’d come in. That’d put me in the middle of the—

I rounded a corner and skidded to a halt. The mob shuffled into the building through the double doors. They raised their heads, mouths opened with hungry groans, and reached bloody hands out to me. One had a handful of gore clenched in its fists. It plopped to the floor, forgotten, as a fresh meal had arrived.

Me.