Rise (19 page)

We turned back south again hoping to reach the road we had come in on and get out of town that way, but the way was again blocked. This time it was cars. The street was blocked by wrecked cars, and the only way through was the schoolyard. Sanji drove the rig up over the curb and through the chain link fence surrounding the school. Uncut grass was flattened under his wheels, and he aimed for what I took to be a staff parking lot, blissfully empty of undead or cars. We followed. Two vans and a truck with a horse trailer. The others led, and Jess and I (with Michael and Megan in back) were bringing up the rear. As I looked around I could see zombies coming into view all around us. Where were they hiding? They were now appearing in groups of three or four or seven or more, and closing on us from all sides. They had trouble with the fence, of course, but there were gaps they’d find eventually. I saw Sanji drive the rig onto the parking lot and off he went, onto the road we’d come in on, going the other way. He crushed another two walking dead that got in his path. Then the Caravan and F350 were bouncing up onto the pavement, gunning for the road, and it was our turn. Jess turned the wheel to follow, and we slid. The grass was just slick enough from the rain and flat from the vehicles ahead of us that we got no traction. The Odyssey slid straight into a concrete filled steel pillar at about 25 kph, and the airbags were suddenly in our faces.

Within a few seconds we were pushing deflating airbags away, and Jess tried to start the van again. It started, but there was a god-awful squealing noise coming from the engine. She threw it into drive and we lurched forwards again, around the pillar. The wheels wouldn’t turn back without some major effort, and I knew right then that we’d have to abandon the vehicle or we’d die inside it within a few minutes. The van made incredible grinding noises, and I shouted over them for Jess to drive right up beside the windows we could see on the side of the school. She tried her best, but the van was so slow and the steering so poor that we missed the first two windows, and had to stop at the third one along. She turned off the engine as I was climbing out of the passenger seat and into the back where the kids were. I unbuckled Michael and spoke to Megan, telling her to unbuckle herself and follow me with her bug-out bag. I grabbed Jess’ bag and tossed it to her, and then mine. Michael doesn’t have one; he’s too small to really carry one easily. I made sure I had the Glock in its holster, and pulled the door nearest the window open. Megan started to scream, and I turned to see a zombie, once a teenage boy, looming at her window. He was not able to get in, but he was really gruesome. I reached over and grabbed her, and the boy’s eyes followed me with excited interest. I made sure she had her bag, and that Michael was with Jess, and then I turned back to the window of the school. One firm kick with my boot and it shattered. I had lots of leverage.

The building had looked intact and secure from every angle I had seen it from, so I was betting that it was zombie-free for the time being. I moved aside and Jess climbed in first. I handed through her rifle, Michael, and her bug-out bag, in that order. Then it was Megan and her bag, then my bag, then me. The whole thing took about forty seconds, in which time we went from one desperate undead to seven of them pounding on the side, rear, and front of the van. The side we had parked closest to the window was nearly flush, but enough of those things could push it over if they tried hard enough, and I could see more on the way. I dove into the window, leaving food, water, extra ammo, sleeping gear and all kinds of goodies behind. Jess helped me down off the desk I found myself on, and I immediately helped her grab a large table and push it up against the window. We had nothing to secure it with. Shit. The door had a lock though. We went for the door, leading the kids. I drew the Glock and told Megan to stay at my shoulder. She looked terrified, the poor girl, but did what I told her. Michael was crying, but not too badly. He had hold of his mom and wasn’t letting go, but she needed both hands for her rifle. The hallway was empty, and over the noise of the walking corpses outside I couldn’t hear anything. I locked the office door and pulled it shut. That diminished the noise some, but we could still hear them. We moved on, heading down the hall towards darker regions, and we both pulled flashlights, shining them into every corner.

We found a door out of the offices, leading to the hallways of the school itself. To the right was a main door, to the left a gymnasium or machine shop. Lockers lined the hall, some open and some not. The main door to the left was thick with the undead, but the doors were solid and the zombies appeared to have no idea how to get through them other than pounding of fists. They’d break them down eventually, I had no doubt, but we could reinforce with furniture or plywood or even metal from the machine shop. First things first though. Fortunately for us the schools of this era are more like prisons. Few ways in, few ways out, and many smaller windows. We headed for the stairwell, and as we were climbing we heard a sound above us. Immediately I was aiming up the stairs, and Jess pressed the children to the wall and got in front of them. No zombie appeared, so I climbed up to the landing and looked up. The door at the top of the stairs was closing slowly and I wondered if there was a zombie up there, or if it was a survivor. I whispered to Jess that I was going to check it out, and I stepped quietly up the stairs. At the top I glanced through the glass, and I thought I saw a light in a room down the hall. Leading with the Glock I opened the door, pulling it with my broken wrist. That stung a little, but it wasn’t too bad. I pulled the door open and entered the upper hall, quietly walking down the hall towards where I had seen the light, or thought I had. It was a classroom, and there was a pile of stuff in there on the floor. I saw motion in one corner, and trained the gun there. I was pretty sure it was a survivor at this point, but I wasn’t ready to rule anything out. I called out for whoever it was to come out. The person was behind a set of metal file boxes. I stepped into the room, and from my left I felt something cold press against my temple and I heard a female voice say “I’m armed.”

“So am I,” I said right back.

The voice was shaking, and she told me to drop the gun. I could tell she was nervous, but I think I was on a level of nervousness previously unattained on earth.

I told her there was not a chance that I would drop the gun, and that there were about fifty undead just outside at the moment, trying to get in. I also assured her that I was not there to hurt her.

We stood there a while…neither of us moving, and I thought I saw a girl, maybe 16, peek out from behind the boxes. My attention wasn’t on her though, right at that second. And then Jess, bless her, called to me from down the corridor. The mystery woman asked me who that was.

I told her that it was my girlfriend, and that we also had her son and another eight year old girl with us. I lowered the Glock, careful to do it slowly. I tried to plead with her and again assured her that we were definitely
not
there to hurt her. And I asked her to aim the gun somewhere else. She lowered it, and I let go of a bunch of tension I hadn’t even been aware of. I turned, careful to keep the Glock pointed at the floor, and saw a woman in filthy clothes, maybe thirty or so, with reddish hair and a haunted look in her eyes. She had a revolver, and her hands were shaking as she lowered it. She still looked like she expected me to try to kill her, but when Jess walked in to the room she started crying. She started apologizing and sobbing, saying she thought I was one of the gang of bikers who’d come through a few weeks ago. Jess and I calmed her down, and I went over to the girl hiding in the corner. She was still crouching behind the boxes, and I was careful to put the Glock away before I went over. She cowered, and her eyes looked even more haunted than the other woman’s were. She actually flinched from me when I asked her name. I backed off, thinking she’d been through some trauma.

We learned that the woman was named Phillipa, and had been a teacher here, before. The girl was one of her students, Janice. They’d been here hiding for weeks. Phillipa had been living inside the town when the dead walked, and had helped in the defence of the town and the building of the barricades. She’d been given the gun by someone, and had fled here when a gang of raiders had arrived and breached the barricade. They’d ignored the school, but had killed a lot of people in town and then left when the undead had breached the defences too. Seeing the undead around town, she’d stayed here on the second floor. She’d seen Janice running through the field outside later that evening, and had called her and let her in. The walking corpses had gradually wandered off after that. Jess asked what was wrong with Janice, and Phillipa told her that the girl had been assaulted by several of the raiders.

Supplies included what food they had recovered from the cafeteria, which wasn’t much, and about fifty large water jugs, the kind for water coolers. They had some basic first aid supplies, a few blankets, and whatever they could steal out of lockers. I figured with us there, we had enough food for a week. If we could get to the Odyssey we could stretch that to three or four weeks easily. She also had a gun, a .38 revolver, with about a dozen bullets. That and a few fire axes were the only weapons they had.

We’ve been here two days, and haven’t seen a sign of Sarah, Darren, or any of the others. Good. I hope they got away clean, and get to Cold Lake. I hope I get there soon too, and I hope they are smart about how they do things.

The undead outside show no sign of losing interest. They stopped trying to push over the Odyssey sometime during the first night, and are content now to lurk outside and hope for a free meal. We spy on them through the 2nd floor windows, carefully using mirrors.

Jess managed to get Janice to talk to her after a day, and confirmed the worst suspicions we had. The poor girl was gang-raped by several of the raiders before she managed to escape, and wandered through the town until she was spotted by some undead. She was rescued by her teacher, and had spent the last few weeks here with her. When I barged in she was afraid that she was going to be attacked again. She’s coming out of it slowly, but still won’t talk to me. I’m not taking it personally.

Jess and I talked to Phillipa about escaping. We all know the school is a deathtrap, either by starvation or the undead getting inside. So we are trying to put together a plan to get out. We’re working on the details.

Still here. The school is secure, though the undead are still hanging around. Our plans have evolved, and we have a course of action in mind. There’s a Jeep Cherokee that belonged to some townsperson in the school auto shop. It needs some basic work done, and Jess and I are tackling it. Once it’s done we’ll get going, hopefully distracting the zombies with some noisy thing while we sneak out and away. I hope we can get to the Odyssey and grab the supplies we left there. Some food and ammo would be wonderful, as well as some of the other things. Painkillers. My wrist aches. And some extra clothing, since the weather is definitely cooler these last few days.

Phillipa is getting herself together now that we have a plan. She hadn’t heard about the military in Cold Lake, but wants to come with us. Janice needs medical care and some counseling, and they’ll be able to help her there, I hope. She’s withdrawn, but she talked to me for the first time yesterday. She just said thanks for the food I handed her, but I think that’s progress.

Bed time now. It’s late and the light from the laptop monitor is keeping Jess awake. I need to conserve battery power anyway, so I may not update until we get out of here.

The Cherokee is ready. It needed an oil change, new filters, new brake pads, and some tweaking here and there, but we got it done as quietly as we could. All six of us would wait together in the auto shop while Jess and I worked. The only time we’d separate was when somebody needed to go to the bathroom, and even then we went in threes. That bears mentioning. The facilities no longer have water, so they don’t work. What Phillipa figured was that waste would have to be deposited someplace to keep the smell down. She found a big oil receptacle in the auto shop, and had been slowly filling that up. When we arrived, she showed us the tank, and I noticed it was on wheels. We hauled it down the corridor to the far end of the hall, into a music room. There were screens there so we set up some privacy areas. The top of the tank is sealable with a large cap, so the only time we have to smell it is when we remove the cap to dump waste in. The oil inside helps make it not be
quite
so foul smelling. We put a large sign on it saying “Human Waste! Careful!” so it can be disposed of properly when someone finally gets around to cleaning up this mess.

We are going to distract the undead outside with a stereo and some rap music we found in a locker. That done, we’ll get what we can out of the Odyssey, and load it into the Jeep. Then tomorrow morning we’ll get out of here. We might even catch up to the others, if they kept to the route we planned.

An aircraft went over. Not a big jet like last time, this one was a small passenger plane, a Cessna of some kind, I think. We heard it flying low, and rushed to the windows. It went over heading west, and then turned south and circled. It was flying at about 500 feet. Phillipa said she knew how to get to the roof, so we ran up there as fast as we could. I ended up carrying Michael, since it was easier than waiting for his little legs to carry him up.