Whimper (13 page)

“You could use the maintenance tunnels,” Zack suggested from behind us, causing us both to jump. “Hey, my cell phone isn’t working. Do you have a signal?” He waved his phone in the air, flashing the screen at us.

“Maintenance tunnels?” Zoe repeated, staring at her brother rather than his phone. “Explain, please.”

“Phone?” Zack asked again, waggling the device in her face.

“No one has a signal. The internet is down too. They’ve taken down the networks to control information. You might as well turn it off for a while and save your battery,” I interrupted before Zoe beat her twin to death with his own cell phone. She was looking a bit homicidal.

“What? Who can do that?” Zack wailed.

“The government, apparently,” Zoe answered dryly. “So, tell us about these tunnels.”

Zack went on to explain that most of the buildings on campus were connected by underground hallways that were used by maintenance and custodial staff to haul equipment and generally avoid the crowds of students during the day. Some of the buildings had access from their basement and some from an exterior door. Apparently one of Zack’s fraternity brothers had worked on the maintenance crew for his work study and made an illegal copy of the master key. Juvenile hijinks ensued.

“So then they had a hell of a time chasing all the squirrels out of the locker room once the vodka wore off. Man, you have not lived until you’ve seen a drunk squirrel chasing freshman girls!” Zack guffawed, slapping his leg. I’d tuned out for most of the story, plotting my assault on the mobile lab instead. Zoe rolled her eyes at him. I think she may have heard the squirrel story before.

“Where and how can we get into the tunnel system? Is there somewhere close by?” she asked impatiently.

“It’d be easier if we had Keith’s key, but there’s an entrance in Butler Hall. I’ve got a buddy who lives in Butler, but I can’t exactly shoot him a text, can I?” Zack shrugged, spinning his useless cell phone on the tabletop.

We sat for the next hour, making decisions on when to leave and how we could get from Point A to Point B without being caught by the patrols. After a while, we were only repeating the same problems over and over. “We aren’t going to solve anything sitting here. We’re at the point where we need to see what happens and deal with it when it does happen. Let’s get some food and rest and then the two of us will leave once it’s fully dark.”

“Whoa. You think I’m going to let my sister go off into the dark with you when there are zombies and soldiers roaming around?” Zack protested.

“You aren’t “letting” me do anything, Zack. You’re staying here with Brianna because one of us has to. She doesn’t know where everything is or how to operate it and before you suggest it, there isn’t a chance in hell I’m staying here with her,” Zoe announced firmly, staring both of us down. The thought had crossed my mind. It would be easier for me if Zack came and the girls stayed here safely locked behind metal bars. Easier, but the look on Zoe’s face assured me it wasn’t going to happen.

Zack picked up the duffle bag he’d evidently dropped on the floor when he first came into the room. With a sigh he dumped it onto the couch between us. “Here. If I’m not going with you, you might as well use some of my gear.”

Zoe unzipped the bag, looked inside and grinned. “This could be fun after all!”

“You know I’d still be careful if Zack was the one coming with me. He and I could go and then I wouldn’t be distracted by worrying about you,” Elliott reasoned. He’d been trying to talk me out of coming with him by degrees since we started planning. I ignored his last ditch guilt trip and instead bent to make sure the laces on my black running shoes were securely tightened.

“You ready?” I asked cheerfully, checking that everything I needed was in place.

“Yes,” he replied grimly. “And no. Let’s go before I change my mind.”

We unlocked the side door and pulled up the security grate by hand, trying to make as little noise as possible, and slipped out into the night. Behind us, Zack re-secured the door, a worried expression on his face. The steps made too much noise being lowered, so we had the rope ladder I’d used back when I used to sneak out of the house in high school. Zack would be watching for us to return and lower the steps when we needed to get back in.

Quietly, we slipped over the porch railing and across the side yard. Both of us wore dark clothing, but not all black. We didn’t want to look too suspicious if we did encounter someone so the cat burglar look was out. I guided Elliott through the neighborhood, moving from one patch of darkness to the next. The quiet was oppressive. On a normal night this neighborhood vibrated with life. You could hear music drifting from the bars and sorority houses, snippets of conversations as people strolled by, and the hiss and hum of passing cars. Tonight not even the crickets chirped. Nothing moved. It was downright spooky.

“Do you think there are any, um, infected people running around?” I whispered to Elliott, my hand swiping at the long gone blood splatter on my neck. Running into a screaming, tearing monster was far more terrifying than the CDC patrols with their guns.

“Well, it’s early yet for the ones who might have been exposed during inoculations to be experiencing rage symptoms. There’s still a chance that someone might have been exposed earlier or might have an accelerated reaction…”

“So basically, yes, there’s a good chance there are homicidal maniacs running loose in the dark. Great,” I summarized, cutting off his long winded attempt to rationalize me into a false sense of security.

“Yup,” he responded mildly. “Basically.”

Well, super. We reached the edge of campus without speaking another word, my ears straining to hear any little noise that might indicate we were being followed. The metallic whining of an approaching engine caught our attention before we stepped out of the bushes. We ducked down closer to the ground, hoping the foliage hid us as the headlights of a white van swept over our hiding place. I held my breath, waiting for the van to slam on its brakes and soldiers to pour out. It drove by slowly, the passenger window lowering as the vehicle closed in on us. I braced myself for shots or worse, and nearly gave us away when a glowing light launched out of the window and bounced off the toe of my sneaker. The van pulled away, leaving me staring at the still smoking cigarette butt in front of me.

“Smokers think the world is their ashtray,” Elliott bitched, shaking his head. He pulled me to my feet and stomped out the offending ash. “You okay?”

I nodded and started across the street towards the brightly lit building we needed to sneak into in order to enter the tunnels. We didn’t have a student ID that would scan us into the building, and since all the buildings were on lockdown I couldn’t just go to the front desk and bullshit my way past the RA. We’d planned to pick a lock, but I wasn’t too sure I could do that before we were spotted, even with Zack’s lock picks. I really didn’t want to know why he owned lock picks in the first place.

“Let me try one thing first. It probably won’t work, but what’s the harm?” Elliott asked, speaking more to himself than to me. Walking up to the intercom box, he punched buttons to the rhythm of “Shave and a Haircut” and then stepped away, waving at the bubble camera over the door as he did so.

“Seriously?” I asked. I was opening my mouth to crack a Roger Rabbit joke when the door buzzed, allowing Elliott to yank it open. We both stumbled through, amazed at our own dumb luck.

“It’s what we did when we were locked out of our dorm and one of the desk attendants would buzz us through.” Elliott laughed. “I can’t believe it actually worked!”

We made a mad dash for the basement before anyone could come investigate. The tunnels weren’t anywhere near as sinister as I’d imagined. Instead of damp catacombs, they were actually long concrete block hallways with crappy fluorescent lighting. I’d been convinced that we would end up wandering aimlessly in a dark maze, but every intersection was neatly marked with the names of each building it accessed and helpful directional arrows. It was almost disappointing. I certainly felt a lot less bad ass about the whole adventure.

“This has been a whole lot easier than I expected so far,” I commented to Elliott as we strolled down another boring hallway with our backpacks of equipment and samples.

“Shhh. Don’t say things like that. You’ll jinx it!” Elliott warned.

“You’re superstitious?” I asked incredulously.

“I don’t like to tempt fate much anymore. I’m kind of a living worst case scenario already,” he said and shrugged.

I could see that. I couldn’t accept it, but I could understand where he was coming from. “Let’s keep moving.” I suggested, nodding towards the door that would lead us up out of the tunnels. “We’re close to the next stage of the plan.”
The most dangerous part
, I thought. Some things don’t need to be said.

We emerged on the other side of campus, between two buildings. We still had an open grassy area to cross before we’d reach the maintenance garage’s fence and storage lot. Elliott was afraid that if the mobile lab was stashed there then we’d face a lot of security presence. There was really only one way to find out for sure. Slowly, we cracked open the door, placed tape over the locking mechanism, and slipped out into the shadows. We knelt down in the landscaping, hoping the clumps of decorative grass would give us some cover, and listened. In the distance, we could hear a commotion of some kind. Yelling. A lot of yelling actually.

“What is that building over there?” Elliott whispered, pointing past me towards one of the old dorms.

“That’s one of the freshman dorms. Is that where the noise is coming from?” A siren wailed from behind the dorms, then another. The yelling we were hearing was only getting louder, more panicked. With so many voices, I couldn’t make out any words, but the message was simple: Fear.

“We need to move before any vehicles start coming through here,” Elliott ordered, pulling me to my feet. We raced across the open yard where students normally sunbathed and played aggressive games of Frisbee. I kept tripping and stumbling over clumps of grass or the occasional pine cone. Panic was making me clumsy. “Breathe!” Elliott said, puffing on one of his inhalers. The pressure couldn’t be good for him.

“I am breathing,” I puffed as we reached the fence line. “Just keep moving.” We made it to a shrubby area as two campus police cars and an ambulance roared past. We froze, their headlights flashing our silhouettes against the painted wood fence pickets.

“Shit!” we both gasped, ducking. “Do you think they saw us?”

“Let’s not wait around to find out. We need to get in there. Around or over?” Elliott asked, eyeing the height of the fence. It had to be eight foot tall. I had pretty strong arms from hefting kegs and such around all day, but I doubted it’d be enough for me to be able haul myself over and I didn’t want Elliott to have to help me. He was exerting himself too much already. I ran my hand down the side of his face, surreptitiously checking his temperature as I planted a soft kiss on his lips.

“They aren’t turning around yet, so we go for the gate. We may need to conserve our energy,” I suggested. From the screaming in the distance, they had bigger concerns than two shadows by the garage where the lawn mowers are stored. We turned the corner of the fence, headed towards the main gate when loud pops echoed off the walls of the brick buildings. “Gunshots?” I wondered aloud, even though I knew they were.

“Keep running,” Elliott wheezed, sounding winded. We reached the gate, but as expected it was shut for the night. Unlike the fence, the gate was metal grating. It was really only meant to keep vehicles out. If I turned to the side I could squeeze between the gap, although my boobs and butt were going to really get squashed. I didn’t think Elliott stood a chance of getting through though, and we were totally out in the open here. It was all dark inside the yard, so rather than risk underestimating the size of my ass and getting stuck in the gate, we started climbing together. As we reached the top railing, my foot slipped and I dangled for a moment, my legs pedaling to find the metal bar. Elliott dropped over the side, grasping my waist from the front. “Gotcha,” he said with a grin, helping me find my footing so I could pull myself back over the top.

We landed with a crunch in the gravel, glancing around for any obvious cameras or security. I didn’t see anything, but it was dark enough that who knows if I would. All the bay and service doors to the garage were shut, but dim light filtered out of the few windows. The light was distorted by the old, wavy glass, but we could make out the shapes of several vehicles, including one that looked like a huge, boring RV.

“It’s here! You were right!” Elliott whispered excitedly.

“Great. We need to find a way inside before those squad cars come back to investigate,” I reminded him. Goosebumps covered my arms and I kept twitching at every rustle or pop I heard around us. Bad things lurked in the shadows tonight and I really wanted to be inside, even if it was inside a big garage. I swore I heard erratic footsteps somewhere beyond the fence.