Alone No More (14 page)

That afternoon was a blur. She can remember seeing the undead father return at some point and bite more people. A few of the staff rushed out to help the victim, but they got bitten or killed too. Eventually someone took him down by beating him to death for a second time. The son and the mother were still undead and dangerous though. It was a cycle that had only just begun. The evening was a matching blur as well. All she could remember to tell her parents about it later was being abandoned by the remaining school staff. Once they had left two more girl students came in to the nurse’s office. Abigail hid upstairs from them because she wasn’t sure if they were bitten or not. They came in, ransacked the nurse’s office for a few minutes, and then left in a hurry. Apparently there were some survivors left. She just didn’t want to see any more of them right now. After an hour of building up the nerve she decided to turn off all the lights and barricade the downstairs doors. 

Abby was motivated by the sound of gunshots outside. Normally she would be scared of guns, but that night it was the sound of safety. Every loud crack of gunpowder was something dangerous being shot. It was the sound of the living fighting back. She pushed every bit of furniture she could in front of the main door. A desk, a bookcase, a file cabinet, some chairs, even a potted plant or two. The back door had a kitchen table and some chairs pushed in front of it. It wasn’t Fort Knox, but Abigail worked with what she had. 

When she finally got the kitchen table and chairs propped up in front of the door she was scared out of her mind as one of her fellow students banged on the very door she was standing in front of. The door was a sturdy industrial door, but the small glass window in it seemed bare and fragile with his face on the other side of it. She screamed at him. He wasn’t alive anymore. His face had been bitten open, and lips and cheek hung off him in bloody tatters. He hit the window with slow mechanical repetition, staring at her with those lifeless white eyes. She killed the lights and ran upstairs, locking herself in an office.

There were more gunshots too. Many more before the night was out. She huddled in the office as quietly as she could all night. The students who were dead yet still moving stayed at the kitchen door downstairs all night long. She sat alone in the dark for hours that night, hiding underneath a desk. She waited for the banging on the door to stop downstairs. She expected to hear the creak of the steps as her dead classmates came up the stairs to eat her, to feast on her. But the banging never stopped. The horror never beat down the door, and she made it through the night. 

She starved for hours. Her stomach growled hours on end as she searched the room for something, anything to eat. She found nothing. The windows in the office showed her little of what was happening on the campus. All she could see was a dorm down the street, the river that circled much of the campus, and part of the school’s cafeteria. Early in the morning as the sun started to rise she saw the coach that had been bitten stagger out of the cafeteria, his grey hooded sweatshirt stained burgundy from his blood. He was dead. He was still walking.

It wasn’t long after that she started to hear music coming from outside. Something upbeat and trendy. It came from the other side of the building, but it was muffled. It wasn’t long after the music started the streams of the dead started to form. Dozens of the undead came out from their previously hidden resting spots. They all moved with stiff legs, jaws reflexively going up and down, trying to eat the sound that was drawing them in. Abigail still shudders when she thinks of their looks of blank hunger. The memories almost make her feel as cold as the late December air in her living room now. The memories made her feel cold even back then, back in the warmth of June.

Laying on her bed now in the living room, letting the warmth of her breath fill the blankets she still hated to think about the state of the world. She was angry, bitter even, but still thankful for being alive. She could thank one of the good staff at the school for that. Mr. Ring. She started to hear a lot of gunshots after the sunrise. A little while after the music started. Sharp cracks. Dozens, maybe over a hundred before it finally stopped. She didn’t know much about guns, but she knew the sound of precision. One shot, then silence for a second. A second shot, then a moment of silence. She got the predatory rhythm of his shooting down enough that she could tell when he was about to fire again. The shots were coming from close by, maybe the school building across the street, but she never found out.

After a few more gunshots in a different area, she heard the front door open downstairs. Her heart stopped cold, waiting for the undead to smash through her makeshift barrier. Instead she heard yelling. There was quite a pause while she figured out what to yell back. She never did figure anything clever out, she just started yelling; “hey, up here,” as loud as she could. She let herself out of the office and came down the stairs. She saw her debris had been moved, and she was both excited and scared to meet the person who had rescued her. When she turned the corner at the bottom of the stairs she nearly met his ammunition. Luckily he didn’t shoot her, and she didn’t die of fright, so all’s well that ends well she thought.

He gave her the most delicious energy bar she had ever eaten, and they exchanged information in a hurry right there on the steps. He was the shooter from earlier, and his plan was to secure the campus, to make it safe and call it home until whatever was happening ended. She thought it was laughable now, months after the fact that they still thought there would be an ending to this. She just needed to get home to see her parents and her brother that day.

They left the building together. Mr. Ring stopped her in the door and handed her his small rifle. This she remembers vividly. He drew a small sword he had on his belt and he walked across the small yard towards one of the undead classmates that had survived his shooting rampage earlier. The zombie was moving awkwardly towards them. She’d never seen anyone move quite like Adrian before. He approached the zombie with no fear, just deliberate violence and determination. At the last second he sidestepped it to the left, dodging its lunge, and brought the sword in low and fast, taking the kid’s right leg off at the knee. The dead student toppled forward as his foot and calf tumbled out into the road behind him.

Adrian circled him like a predator, all the time watching her reaction. It was like a lion teaching a cub. This is life now. Kill or be killed. This is the cost of survival. He brought the sword down once, sinking it the width of her hand into the head of the student. His body twitched a few times then went limp, and his eyelids closed over his pasty white corneas. She dropped Mr. Ring’s rifle and threw up while he wrenched the blade out of the kid’s head. To this day she can remember hearing his skull crack when the blade came free. It sounded like a coconut cracking, or a stalk of celery being broken. More shivers from her memories.

After he cleaned the sword off she remembers him walking straight up to his rifle and picking it up off the grass where she’d dropped it. He looked around slowly, assessing the campus around them for danger, and then he turned to her and said his final words of advice.

“Abby, if you want to leave, I won’t stop you. It’s not safe though. These things are going to be everywhere, and they’re not even the most dangerous thing you’ll find. Plenty of people are going to be panicking, doing things they normally wouldn’t.” She remembers him looking down at her torn shirt, at her exposed bra. “Things they might not do to a 17 year old girl otherwise.”

The thought of what he meant still makes her swallow some rising bile, even now months later.

“To kill them you need to destroy the brain. I don’t know why, I just know it works. Shoot them, crack their skulls, whatever. Kill the brain, kill the threat, ok?” She remembered nodding at him, wiping the puke from her lip.

“You will need fuel, food, and water. Most grocery stores are already empty, and most gas stations will be dangerous, or out of fuel already. Go straight home. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. If your parents need to, if you have to, come back here. I think I can make this place safe. Be smart. You made it through last night like a champ and you can survive if you’re smart.” He looked around again, checking for danger.

“Remember, if you have to, run. Run to a safe place and hide. Now let’s get you a car.” 

They found a small station wagon with the keys still in it fairly quickly. He shut the door for her, wished her good luck, and that was the last time she saw Adrian Ring. Underneath her blankets, still chilly from the cold air in the living room outside them, she silently wished she’d never left school that day. It was probably warmer there right now.

*****

Abby and her mother were making dinner together later that evening. The older Williams woman was wearing an expensive black wool ankle length coat in the kitchen. It was something you’d expect to see a powerful businesswoman wear to her corporate job, not something a pale and emaciated woman would wear in her kitchen. The two women silently did their chores, their breath faintly visible in the cold air. Her whole family didn’t talk much to begin with, and since they’d locked themselves into their house, they didn’t talk much at all anymore. Her mother stood over a trash bin and opened a can of green beans, draining some of the juice out. Abby noted they were the infinitely more expensive “French cut” green beans. It must be a special day she thought dryly. Abby herself was portioning out a can of peaches onto plates as her mother came over to do the same to the green beans. They arranged each plate until the portions were all roughly equal. The two women stood and looked down at the meager meal.

“Mom how much is left?” Abby asked her mother quietly. 

Her mother didn’t answer her, instead she took a deep breath and exhaled, watching the steam drift away absently. She shook her head and quickly wiped a tear away from her cheek.

“Maybe a couple more days. Four at the most.” She looked over at her young, vibrant teenage daughter and wiped another tear away. Even her daughter’s hunger couldn’t put the fire out in her eyes. 

“Randy and I can go looking for food tomorrow. Dad can stay here and protect you again, like last time.” Abby tried to reassure her mother with a smile and a gentle rub on her back.

“No honey. It’s too cold, and there are too many of those things out there again. That truck that crashed the other day on the corner brought too many of them near here.” She leaned over and lifted the black trash bag covering the window above the sink. It was dark out, and little could be seen in the pitch black outside. “Besides, we’ve checked all the houses around here and with those assholes at the high school running around town, there isn’t going to be anything left anyway.”

The two women, one young, the other older, looked at their delectable meal of cold green beans and peach slices for a minute. They shared a silent chuckle at their misfortune.

“We can always go back to ALPA. Mr. Ring had the place pretty safe Mom. I’m telling you we should do it.” Abby pleaded in a whisper. She knew her father heard her he would object strongly to any trip anywhere. In his mind the only safe place was locked in here, together.

Abigail’s mother stood contemplating the idea for a few seconds, then responded back in her own whisper, “Tomorrow. Tomorrow when we show him how much food is left, maybe he’ll decide we have to leave. Maybe I can persuade him to see the writing on the wall. It’s not safe here in town, even locked in here. There’s too many of those things, and there are far too many people who think they’re the law now.”

Abby nodded, and the two women picked up their pauper’s dinner plates. 

*****

Bringing up the idea of leaving their home did not go well the next day. After eating their little lunch meal Abby’s mom Patty brought it up. The four of them were huddled close to each other in their living room, next to the fireplace. They were finishing off the last can of peaches and a can of cold peas.

“Charles, we’re almost out of food.” Patty made eye contact with her husband, trying to show the seriousness of their situation.

“I know. Randy and I will go out looking for more food tonight, after dark. Those assholes can’t see us then and we can outrun and lose the dead people.” Abby thought he looked strange as he said it. He seemed excited about the prospect of finding more food, but he looked afraid or scared at the same time. Abby had never seen that expression before.

“Charles, there isn’t any more food out there. We’ve scoured every house in this neighborhood twice and taken everything. The people who took over at the high school have taken everything else in town. Tomorrow we start starving if we don’t go somewhere we can find food. I know it’s dangerous but-“ 

Charles cut her off. “No. Leaving is too dangerous. You’ve seen how many of those things there are just outside the house. Can you imagine what we’ll find if we drive somewhere? Where would we go anyway? Your sister’s place?” He asked in an accusatorial whisper.

“Abby and I were thinking the school. Her school,” Patty replied quietly.

“Are you two crazy?” He said almost laughing. Abby’s 12 year old brother Randy sat on his sleeping bag stiff as a board, watching the argument unfold. Normally he couldn’t be shut up to save his life and now he was paralyzed from the argument. If only one good thing came out of this discussion Abby thought, it was shutting him up for five minutes.

“That’s over an hour away. It’s over halfway through December, those roads are probably covered in foot deep snow or ice by now. We would never make it.” He stuffed his last peach slice into his mouth angrily, chewed it twice and swallowed it.

“Well, you should’ve savored that Charles. It was our last peach.” Patty gathered up the empty plates and walked out of the living room.

Charles licked his lips sorrowfully and looked over at their bleak, unlit Christmas tree.

*****

Two days later on another cold late December morning the parents found themselves all alone in the kitchen. Abby and Randy were in the darkened living room with the slowly burning fireplace. Charles was gently washing dishes with water made from melted snow as Patty dried them and put them away.