The Z Word (A Zombie Novel) (14 page)

Chapter Forty Four

As soon as we left the headmaster's office, Clare and myself went a different way downstairs, avoiding the classroom full of kids. Once we reached the ground floor we could see the faces of the dead peering in through the glass of the entrance doors, hanging around as if they knew there was something or someone inside that could be advantageous for them as far as a meal was concerned.

"Try to ignore them." I nodded down the long corridor where the classrooms to the right were all locked, and we strolled down the corridor, heading towards the body of the caretaker.

Behind us we could hear them slapping at the glass, excited that they could see two potential meals. I glared at the body of the caretaker, most of his head was in bloody pieces, and I crouched down to search his pockets. I pulled out a set of keys and Clare and I both gasped as we heard a creak behind us.

They were getting in! The fuckers were getting in!

"Come on." Clare grabbed my arm. "Let's go upstairs the other way." She pointed through the double doors to the next staircase. I agreed and we went through the doors, only to be greeted by the horrific sight of two of the things at the bottom.

Clare immediately assaulted my ears with a scream and pulled out her hammer, ready to strike at the two beings that had now turned around and were heading our way. I looked down the corridor at the other set of doors and could see the glass had fallen through, just like it had with the doors in the assembly hall.

A little body weight and the glass seemed to cave in, which I thought was a little dangerous for a school full of energetic kids.

Turning my attention back to the two beings, I used the flat end of my crowbar to jab at a creature that looked no older than fourteen when it was of human form, and the bar went straight through its left eye socket and out of the back of the skull. It wasn't my original intention to do this, but it proved very effective, and once I removed the bar, it fell.

The other was another male, and despite it being dressed in a school uniform, albeit a bit bloody now, Clare wasn't hesitant at all. The hammer penetrated the skull and the mess was high because of the way the hammer was splitting and smashing at the skull.

After six blows, the thing fell and hit the floor with its head smashed in and its brain exposed, damaged from the vicious hammer blows. Clare's hand and hammer were covered in splats of blood, but amazingly her clothes looked remarkably untouched.

I asked, "You okay?"

She shivered a little and I was dying to give her a hug, but refrained from doing so. She stared at the mess that we had both left and seemed surprised, as if she had just woken up from hypnosis and had found the battered bodies. "I'm good. It's nothing I'm not used to."

"And it's amazing over a couple of days what we've got used to."

Clare never responded to the sentence that came out of my mouth, and she was the first to make her way upstairs, still clutching the bloody hammer.

I looked through to the bottom of the corridor on the ground floor to see that not only had the door at the other end of the block had been somehow pulled open, but the sheer weight of the numbers of zombies from the assembly hall had almost forced the door off its hinges. It appeared that getting the keys off the caretaker had turned into a pointless exercise.

"Clare!" I called out as she was nearing the top of the stairs. "They're coming in."

I had a feeling that Clare was giving up and was thinking that maybe the situation we were in was impossible. This was confirmed when an unruffled Clare said, with little emotion in her voice, "Let them come."

Chapter Forty Five

I tried to catch up with Clare and warn her that we still needed to crawl past the locked classroom that had the kids in it. Because these things seemed to be breaking through the glass once enough force was applied, I was becoming a little paranoid that the infected kids stuck in the classroom could also escape.

I had a feeling that Clare maybe had forgot about the classroom because of all the madness that had gone on, but she hadn't. We crawled by it, then got back to our feet.

Once we had reached Ellis' office, I gave it a knock. "It's me."

The door opened and I was greeted with a frightened-looking Ellis. We got inside and took a seat. Without uttering a word, Clare walked to the door at the right side of the office, and we could hear her washing her hands and the hammer, as it occasionally clattered off the ceramic.

As soon as Clare came out of the bathroom, I announced to Ellis and Kelly that we had to leave and explained why.

I told them that while trying to retrieve the keys from the caretaker, our presence had excited the horde and they had put the glass through, while at the other end of the building where Clare and I were, we had to remove two more freaks while the horde at the other end of the building were slowly getting in. I couldn't explain where the two had come from, so I guessed that they had entered the building, somehow, by the door at the opposite end.

The news didn't go down too well.

I could see the sweat glistening on Ellis' head and his face went as pale as snow. I put my bag of food over my shoulder and Clare did the same, in preparation to go.

Ellis then banged his fist and growled, "You stupid fools. Why did you have to come here? I was doing fine before you lot turned up."

"We can discuss this later," I snapped back. "But at the moment we have a shitload of zombies trying to make their way through this building. There'll be more outside, but we can easily outrun them."

"And go where?" Ellis yelled.

"To your car."

"The gates are locked, you bloody fool." Ellis had now began to grab his arm and was bent over the table.

I responded back, "I'm sure a BMW is strong enough to get through those gates."

"Can I make a suggestion?" Kelly held up her hands. "Can we hurry the fuck up, as I don't want to be dinner for a bunch o' hungry teenagers."

Ellis then fell to the floor and Kelly yelped in surprise. I crouched down and placed my hand on Ellis' shoulder. I could see his body shaking; his breathing then stopped and then Kelly screamed, "What's happenin'?"

"He's had a heart attack." Clare said coldly, as if it was nothing.

I put my finger on Ellis' neck. There was no pulse. A minute of resuscitation failed to bring out a positive result, and I shook my head in exasperation. "Great," I snapped. "One down, three to go."

Clare then went through Ellis' pockets and pulled out the keys for his car. "Come on; the longer we stay, then more will come in."

I turned around and told Kelly to put her hand in my bag. She pulled out a hammer, and all three of us left. "Down the bottom of the corridor, through the doors at the back." I knew those things were slowly entering at the right side of the building, and was hoping that the doors on the left, where Clare and I killed the two ghouls, were still clear.

As we reached the bottom of the staircase, at the opposite side of the building where the horde were, I double-checked the doors, and found that there was no other
Z
creatures present as far as I could see out of the building.

"I think it's clear." I then looked down the corridor of the ground floor and could see many coming in from the door that had been somehow pulled open.

Despite watching Day of the Dead a few weeks ago and watching some of the zombies learning, I was still pretty sure that now, in the real world, they couldn't perform such an action. I was certain that the door had only opened due the odd one or two ghouls that had fallen through the broken window and had, from the other side, accidentally pushed the door open with their body weight.

I guessed that, from outside, the small gap in the door had sparked excitement and arms and fingers had probably filled the gap, forcing the spring-door to open wider, causing more teenage zombies to spill into the corridor of the ground floor of the Anson Block.

We went outside and, aware that there could be hundreds on the grounds outside the Anson Block and the main building, we peered round the corner of the place to see our fears had been confirmed.

I looked at the girls for a reaction.

Clare had her bag on her back, holding a hammer, and Kelly stood with a hammer also, with no bag. I was surprised to hear Kelly snap, "Fuck it. I may not be the skinniest or fittest person in the world, but I'm sure I can outrun these dick-rots."

Her comment was hardly an inspirational piece you'd find in a Shakespearian play or from a MLK speech, but it was typical Kelly Barrett, and it gave the three of us an extra adrenaline shot.

We ran as fast as we could, knowing that Ellis' car was round the front of the main building, near the gates, and we had managed to outrun the things quite easily. Their reactions were predictably slow, considering their 'food' was escaping, but as soon as we got round the corner of the main building in the staff car park, we were surprised by two 'lost' zombies. They appeared to be the ones from the assembly, as they were two teenage females, dressed in the school attire. Maybe they had primarily been chasing Janet, I thought.

Clare never hesitated; she was the quickest of the three of us to react and slammed the hammer, claw-first, into the first one's skull. The schoolchild fell and I pulled the crowbar ready to strike the last one standing, but Kelly released a cry of anger and with two hands she hit the ghoul not once, not twice, but eleven times into its cranium.

As soon as it fell, Kelly dropped the hammer onto the floor, breathlessly, and placed her hand over her mouth once she realised what she had done. "Oh my God, I'm goin' to hell." She looked at the child, its head seeping out dark blood from her damaged head.

I unlocked the BMW by pressing the key fob, and ran over to the car, with the girls following. I threw my bag in, jumped into the driver's side and saw the girls lagging.

"Let's move it, ladies."

Once they both got into the car, Clare threw her bag in the back and sat at the front, with Kelly in the back. I wasted no time in flooring the gas pedal. The car headed for the exit with the horde to the left, slowly walking towards us. I kept the foot down as the vehicle headed for the school gates.

"Are ye sure 'bout this?" Kelly screamed at me.

"Nope," was my reply.

Seconds before impact, I heard Kelly cry, "Jesus mother-fucking Christ Almighty."

"Now you're definitely going to hell," I quipped.

The car ploughed into the gate and for a moment I thought that we were screwed, but the car, although obviously damaged, kept on moving. The BMW chugged along the long country road, a little smoke coming out from the engine, and Clare asked me where we were going. I replied that I didn't know and pulled the damaged car over after a couple of minutes.

"Have a look in that glove compartment," I said to Clare.

"What for?"

"Anything that might have his address on. His house keys are with the car keys."

"Got something," she said already. She pulled out the car's instruction manual.

The book was in a leather case and Clare pulled out some letters regarding insurance. The letters had his address on in the right hand corner. I took a look at the address and asked Clare if she knew where the place was.

She nodded. "I go running past there every two days. Just go straight on, and turn left at the next junction."

I pulled the smoking car away, and once I turned left we could see a lone zombie stumbling in the road. It was in the middle of the street where there stood six large detached houses.

"It's the second one on the left," Clare announced.

"Fuck it," I muttered under my breath. "Car's fucked anyway."

I applied more pressure to the gas and hit the ghoul. It severed in half and spilt its guts, quite literally, all over the bonnet of the crumpled car. Smoke continued to billow out and I pulled it over.

Kelly moaned, "I think I've just pissed me sen," but we had no time to stand around and be worried about her waterworks.

We left the vehicle with our bags and ran towards the front door of the house, and from the outside it looked impressive.

Chapter Forty Six

We both dumped our bags on the floor and my hands went into my pocket to pull out Ellis' set of keys, but a scream from Kelly made Clare and I turn round in fright. From around a corner, from the side of the house, two of the best dressed zombies I had seen up to now, slumbered towards us. They were both wearing suits and had either used to have a good job, or they had been to court.

Kelly struck out at the first one, but the hammer came out of her hand. Clare intervened with her own weapon and struck the first suited-being in the shoulder, completely missing the intended target. The thing grabbed a hold of Clare with the other creature behind, now joining in.

Clare fell to the floor with the fiend and she released a scream. Clare was at the bottom with the ghoul on top of her and was using her forearms for protection. I told her to close her eyes before raining a blow with the crowbar at the back of its head.

The thing fell to the side and my attention was immediately attracted to the second creature who was pursuing Kelly. I could see the woman, still dressed in her blue 'Easy Tiger' T-shirt, running away from the creature and into the middle of the road. I had no idea where she was going, and I had a feeling that neither did she.

It's amazing the weird and disastrous decisions people make when fear is injected into their veins.

Kelly's attempt to run away from the creature had turned cataclysmic as more of those things appeared from the side of a house across the road. I called out to her and she turned around to see four of them just yards away. I screamed at Kelly to come back, but she had already been grabbed by one of them and a huge chunk from the side of her neck had been ripped away.

She released a loud shriek, fell to her knees, and grabbed where the wound was. She was quickly surrounded by the four and was taken down. Kelly was screaming hysterically, but both Clare and I were about twenty yards away. We knew she was finished, and Clare burst into tears as the four creatures tore the woman, who used to be one of my neighbours, to bloody pieces.

Kelly's screams had attracted more of the things. I had no idea where they had all come from, but by the time I had managed to open the front door to Ellis' house, there was at least twenty of them, and two of them had bypassed the 'feast' that was occurring in the middle of the road and were heading towards the house after Clare and I.

As soon as I shut the door behind me and locked it with the key, Clare broke down and was becoming hysterical. I tried to comfort her, but she shrugged me away. She then told me she was heading for the bathroom, wherever that was, and I initially thought that she was going there to have her cry in peace.

Realising that we had left our bags outside, I peered out of the window to see that the two followers were harmlessly wandering around the front garden, looking lost, which immediately put my mind at ease.

I began to look round Ellis' house and thought that it seemed a lot smaller than it looked on the outside, and was also relieved that some kind of alarm never went off when I entered the house. I dread to think what could've happened if that scenario ever had materialised. It would have been like ringing the dinner bell.

I choked back a few tears as reality was trying its best to slap me in the face, and I was now standing in the reception area and playing with the light switch to see if the electricity was still working. A smile emerged when it was confirmed that the power was still going strong. But for how long?

Once it was confirmed that the electrics were working, I walked into the kitchen and put the kettle on, then I bent over the sink and cried for Kelly for a few minutes.

When I finally gathered myself together, I shouted upstairs and asked Clare if she wanted a hot drink, but I received no answer from her. Shrugging this off, I put out two cups anyway and started to cry to myself again. I don't know if it was delayed shock of what was happening overall, or it was because of Kelly's death.

Clare and I had only got to know Kelly over the last few days and she seemed quite a character. Her demise seemed unjust, and what scared me the most was the way she went. Was that the fate that awaited us all? If it was, I thought. I want out, on
my
terms.

I walked around the house and checked every room apart from the bathroom that Clare was in. It was clear. I then went back down to the reception area and saw that the door looked expensive and very solid. The pane in the windows were also solid-thick and I was certain that barricading would be pointless. If those things could get through those windows or even that door, I thought, then a few extra cupboards and drawers weren't going to make a blind bit of difference.

"Kettle's on." I called up the stairs to Clare. "I think barricading will be a waste of time. We should sleep in the rooms with the doors locked. I heard the bathroom door open and Clare appeared at the top of the stairs.

"You okay?" I asked. "You look rough."

"I'm gonna lie on the bed," she said wearily.

She then walked away, and I looked at my watch. It was late afternoon, but it had been an exhausting day. I know we were in some kind of apocalyptic scenario, but we were knackered, and I wasn't very far from sleeping myself, despite witnessing a friend of ours being killed.

Once I finished my tea and double-checked the security of the house, I went upstairs and went into the bedroom opposite where Clare had gone. The bedroom I was in looked like a guest room. There was no personal touches to it. It was as basic as it got. It had a dark blue carpet, with light blue curtains that were closed. The bed was a single one, and a chest of oak drawers and a cupboard in the right corner of the room was all that was in it.

I then took a walk back downstairs and took a look out of the living room window.

The future looked grim.