Generation Dead - 07 (25 page)

“That would have been
embarrassing,
” 
he
said.

“Especially since you’d have to come back
alone,
” I
said.

“What’d you find?” Jake asked, pointing to the rolls on my shoulder. 

“Maps, including county
maps,
”  I
said with a smile.

“Nice.”

Julia had already tucked her books away, not giving Jake the pleasure of teasing her.

“Ready to go?”
I asked.

“Right behind
you,
” Jake
said.  He would have to be in back, since his hands were occupied with the collection.  He couldn’t just drop the thing and fight.  That would defeat the purpose of this trip.  We had a computer at home that we used from time to time, but this thing was something different.  I found myself wondering what they were going to do with it, but it wasn’t my worry.

We started down the stairs and immediately knew something was wrong.  There was a lot of noise a couple of flights down and some banging, as if something was running into the walls.  Julia shone her light down the stairwell and lit up about a dozen zombies.  They must have been on levels we passed, and got into the stairs to chase after us.

“Back!
 
Into the library!”
Julia called out, causing a series of groans that echoed up and down the stairwell. 

We dodged back into the library and closed the doors.  I secured the handles with a big zip tie and hoped it would hold long enough to find another way down.

“Search the two sides, there has to be another way out of
here,
” Jake said, heading off into the stacks.  Julia and I split up, and I went over to the magazine section by the opposite walls.

About a minute
later,
there came a pounding on the door and a surging that stretched the zip tie.  The zombies were groaning something fierce, and I could have sworn I heard answering groans, although it could have been an echo.

I found nothing, and
I
was running into Jake back at the center when Julia called out.

“Over here!”

We followed the sound of her voice and found her along the back wall next to a fire door.  She was smiling
as if
she just got away with something, although neither Jake nor I felt like smiling back.

The door was tucked away behind a couple rows of books, and next to a small study booth.  It would have taken us an hour
to find this door and she walk
s right up to it.  I had to ask.

“How did you find this door so fast?”

Julia didn’t answer, she just pointed at the ceiling.  Above us were exit signs that conveniently marked the way. 
Cute.

We stepped through the door just as we could hear the other door breaking open.  The groans and moans got suddenly louder as the zombies, desperate for prey, began hunting through the aisles of books and materials.  Just as the door was
closing,
I heard a sound that chilled m
e to the bone.  It was the high-
pitched wheezing of a child zombie.

Nothing wa
s
more dangerous than a little kid zombie.  For whatever reason, t
hey were fast, vicious, and
smarter than your average
zombie was
.  If you had one stalking you, you needed to find some open space really fast, and hope it wasn’t right on your ass.  No one knew why they were so different, but it didn’t matter.  They were and we had to be ready for them.

Chapter 39

We moved down the fire escape
as
quickly and as quietly as possible.  If we were lucky, the little bastards wouldn’t find the fire escape until it was too late.  If we were
very
lucky, we would be out of here in a few minutes.

At the bottom of the stairs on the first floor, Julia halted by the door and looked out the little window.  She shook her head, indicating she didn’t see any zombies.  Jake was sweating his ass
off;
apparently,
the server was heavier than he had anticipated.  I didn’t offer to take it from him, and I knew he would be too proud to ask.  It was amusing to see him make himself suffer like this.

Julia opened the door and I
followed behind
, with Jake bringing up the rear.  We were at the end of a long balcony, with several small offices positioned on our right.  On our left was open space, and the light coming in from the huge windows showed us an enormous hall, with dozens of large tables scattered about.  I guessed that this was where the students to the college got something to eat when the mood hit them.

It was also the place where about fifty zombies were hanging out, and they groaned loudly as they made their way under the balcony to reach up in frustration at us. 
A
large stairwell that I could see that went under the balcony on the other side and came out in the middle of the hallway in front of us.  Several zombies were making their way to the stairs, and we didn’t have much time.

“Let’s go, let’s go!” Julia urged Jake and
me
, although we had no plans for sticking around.

We ran across the balcony, and
we
were turning the corner to head out the front when Julia stopped dead.  I ran into her trying to stop, and Jake ran into me.  A corner of the server jabbed me in the back to add injury to insult.

I didn’t ask why Julia had stopped.  A big horde of zombies had come out of the dark and had been looking for us to return when we came at them from behind.  Had we come down the stairs we had gone up, we would have walked right into the middle of them before we knew they were there. 

“Follow me!” I said, turning around and running for the surprisingly
well-lit
bridge that linked this building with another across a small valley.  We ran past the cafeteria stairwell that was becoming crowded with ghouls, and onto the bridge.  The first section wasn’t very bright, but that was because it looked to be a sitting room where students could watch the television that was mounted on the wall.

The next room was a big lounge area, with lots of small chairs and desks for work.  The windows on this section of the bridge were clear, and it was as bright as day in that area.  The next section had two little pits that went into the floor about five
feet
and more chairs and cushions
were
scattered about.  There was also a large party of zombies headed our way from the other side.

“Watch yourself!” I yelled as I jumped into the pit, running across and leaping up the other side.  I was hoping the other side of the bridge was unoccupied and I breathed an internal sigh of relief when I saw that it was.

I looked back to make sure Julia and Jake made it across, and Julia leapt up with a great deal of grace.  Jake was doing well, but on his jump up, his foot caught the edge of the step and he went down.  The server flew from his hands, past my startled head, and through the window.  The glass seemed to fall for a long time as I
watched the server drift away into space before landing at the bottom of the valley.  Imagine my surprise when the valley floor splashed up as the server disappeared beneath the surface of the water down there.

I didn’t say
anything,
I just looked through the big hole in disbelief.  Jake got up and joined me at the hole.

“
Where did
it go?  Can we go get it?” he asked.

“
No,
” I said, ignoring the wave of zombies headed our way.

“Guys?”
Julia asked.

“Why not?
  It’s not that far. It probably landed on something soft.” Jake argued.

“Guys?”
Julia asked again.

“Soft like the pond it fell in?”  I asked, pointing to the edge of the water that could be seen further out from the bridge.

Jake visibly deflated. “Well,
dang
.”

“
Guys
!”
  Julia yelled.

“What? Oh.”  We finally paid attention and realized the zombies were closing in behind, the side, and in front.

I whipped up my rifle and fired once, sending a hot round through the brain of a zombie, tumbling her to the floor.  “I got the back,
Jake,
you take the front,
and Julia,
the side’s yours.  First one
clear,
we go that way.”

We fired carefully, and some of our targets required more than one round, but we had enough ammo for a decent fight, as long as we took our time and made the shots count.  .22s worked well on zombies, but you had to hit them straight it.  Any angle made it risky to need a second shot, and if they were close enough, it was going to be tough.

After I had dropped fifteen zombies, I paused to reload.  I had created enough of a barrier that the zombies were delayed tripping over their fallen comrades.  I had a tubular magazine, so it wasn’t as quick as using a semi-auto’s magazine, but I could reload faster than they could reload their
mags
, so it evened out.

Suddenly,
Julia shouted. “Clear!”  We wasted no time in bolting across the lounge space one more time and heading right, moving towards the second building again.  Behind
us,
dozens of zombies were in pursuit, and I stopped to shoot two of the others to try and trip up the rest to buy us some time.

Julia fired twice, killing a couple of ghouls that stumbled out of the doorway to the main area, and then we were clear.

“This way!”
Jake said, running down a huge corridor.  On the left were floor to ceiling windows, and this allowed us to see very well as we moved past tables, chairs, and a mess of used supplies.  Apparently, someone in the past has used this place as a safe zone against zombies.  With dozens of doors and huge windows, that was probably a mistake.

On our right
were
two floors of classrooms and several alcoves of lecture halls and experiment rooms.  As we ran past room after room, I was struck with the size of the damn place.  You could effectively house a big community here and have room for everyone.  That is, if
you
could keep the zombies from smashing your windows in.

“Come on!” Jake was running towards the far end of the hall, where a set of doors looked like they would lead us to the outside.  We didn’t need motivation, as
zombies poured from the doorway to the bridge into the main hall.  If there was one there was a hundred, and they all moved in groaning desperation for flesh.

I looked back and saw what I feared most.  Several little zombies were outrunning their peers and were moving up on us fast.  I stopped suddenly, firing once, and managed to put one of them down.

Jake looked back to see what I was doing and cursed.  “Damn.  Just keep
on
running Aaron, we’ll get them outside!” 

I spun around and caught up to Jake and Julia, and we put on an additional burst of speed to get away from the little ones.  At the doors, we nearly broke them in an attempt to get through, and I tied the interior doors with a zip tie.  The exterior doors got the same treatment, and we moved away from the building and into the parking lot.

Chapter 40

Rather
, what was left of
it.
  Nature had been staking claims on this propert
y for years, and in recent times
had made pretty good progress.  But there were wide spaces and little cover, so it would be a good place to make a stand. 

Behind us, the glass on the door shattered, and four little zombies shoved their way through the broken shards, slicing themselves silly on the glass.  They were going to look worse than they already did, if that was possible.

Jake led us south through the parking lot and towards the small valley that was home to the big pond that swallowed our server.  He went right up to the edge,
and then
turned around.  Julia and I turned as well, but Jake shook his head.

“Nope.
  You two get down on the hill, further south and stay out of sight.  We need an adv
antage here and with four to three
odds, one of us will get killed if we stand
together,” he
said.

“What are you going to do?”  I asked, pulling out my sword.  “You can’t face them alone.”

“You’ll s
ee.  Just be ready to
get up here in a
hurry,
” Jake said.

I shook my
head,
but
I
did as he wanted.  Julia and I moved about fifteen feet away and then hunkered down just over the edge of the ditch.  It was a steep ditch, so it wasn’t easy to stay in place, let alone get out in a hurry, but we’d have it to do.