Class of 2013 - 2

Chapter Two

We reached the door and Sweet paused. The grip on his sabre tightened, and he let out a breath slowly. He knew that none of us were really ready for this, despite the fact that we’d always kind of hoped for this sort of apocalyptic scenario to be the one that we would face. Better than a nuclear holocaust or a Chinese invasion! Of course, we weren’t really soldiers. We’d been taught basic self defense, though James was the best at hand to hand – then again, he should be; he was the only one of our group that actually practiced hand to hand outside of school.

While James was our hand to hand guy, I was our sword master – or the closest thing to it that we had. Chien was best with knives, though he was basically a brawler; jack of all trades really since he also was a damn good shooter. He was a faster shot than Lea was, actually. Give them both Remington 700’s and he’d knock out shots every three seconds – that was effectively five shots and a reload in twenty seconds. With that he could get headshots. This would make one think at first glance that he was a better shooter. How many others could get headshots every three seconds?

However, this was also dependent upon range. Out to a hundred yards, and with a good scope, he could keep this up. Past that his speed started to slow if he wanted that same accuracy. Two hundred yards and he was equal with her – five shots and a reload every twenty five seconds. Three hundred yards and he began to get slower; five and a reload every thirty seconds. Four hundred and he did it forty-five seconds. Five hundred and it would take him a full minute. Lea? She was consistent.

From fifty yards out to five hundred yards it never took her longer than twenty-five seconds to get five headshots and a reload. Better, she was also a trick-shooter. She knew angles by heart and could see how to ricochet bullets and how to hit multiple targets with a single shot. However, while this meant that she was the best shot in the group, it also meant that she didn’t know any other means of combat. She was also best with rifles. Put anything without a scope, or at least a long barrel, in her hand and she tended only to be good when she was close to the target. She did have one other particular talent, and it was mostly thanks to her father’s influence. Explosives. Don’t ask how we all learned that. Simply put, she was good at making things go boom.

Then there was Sweet himself. Let’s not forget the dear Colonel. He knew hand to hand, knives, medieval combat styles (longsword as well as archery!), all sorts of guns – hell; he was the only person we knew that had ever out-shot Lea! Granted, Marines were expected to shoot out to a thousand… so that should have been a give. In fact, that was how he beat her.

A year before all this they’d had a competition, just the two of them, and they were neck and neck out to about seven hundred fifty yards; Lea, however, was having to use all the skills she had to do that past five hundred. At eight hundred she started to falter. At nine hundred her grouping began to spread. By the time they hit a thousand yards her shot group had fallen apart and she was starting to barely hit the target. When it was all over she was beaten, and while she was trying to hold it back, we could all see the tears forming in her eyes. It was the thing she’d been most proud of, and she’d been beaten.

However, Sweet managed to make her smile. He revealed to her the fact that she had shot better than he ever could have at the age of seventeen. Better, she hadn’t really missed a single shot, not even out to a thousand yards. Every shot had been on target, even if it hadn’t been where she wanted them to land. A grin had come to her face then, and she’d challenged him to a rematch. That rematch would have taken place the day after graduation. All of us had talked about it a couple times in the last week – and Chien and I were truly curious to see if she could best the group’s ‘old man’. Lord help us if he’d ever heard us call him that.

As we stood at the door and waited, James was standing beside Sweet with the slicer in hand, and Lea stood on the opposite side with the air rifle at the ready. Chien and I were both looking at her and thinking about the last rifle competition. It had been nationals for the United States Cadet Corps. She’d pulled five shots at eight hundred yards and got a bull’s-eye with each shot. Her shot group had been less than two inches across at that. With her on our team, we’d wiped the floor with the competition.

The air rifle was nowhere near as powerful as a Remington 700, but she also wouldn’t have to be shooting as far, and she had three more shots with each reload. We knew what she’d be aiming for too – eyes or nose; most likely the former as the nose still had cartilage to get through and the eyes were basically a straight shot into the brain. We knew she could do it too, which ordinarily would have been kind of a scary thought. Now? We were incredibly happy for it. Having James would help too, since he could take care of anything that was too close.

Then the moment came and Sweet opened the door. The screams got louder as the door opened, and it was as if we were stepping into another world. We filed out and just kind of stared for a moment as we looked around at the dead that were around. They shambled and hobbled, but we innately knew that while a single zombie, or even two or three weren’t much of a problem, a horde could be absolutely catastrophic. The cafeteria door shut suddenly with a bang, and every zombie in the area suddenly turned their heads toward us. We were all frozen in shock until the order came.

“Everyone! Now! GO!” Sweet shouted, and immediately we broke into our groups as he grabbed the keys off Mr. Malone’s corpse and shoved them into his pocket. Then he charged ahead through the small horde that began to form, the sabre flashing in the daylight as it was swung and slashed through the heads of the living dead. Chien and I went to the left and James and Lea went right. We did as Sweet had said; we all kept moving. We headed toward the source of the screams, and only killed those creatures that were in our direct path. Any others were dodged or smacked just good enough to keep them out of our way.

The first group that Chien and I came upon were a couple of kids from the rifle team who had climbed up into a tree. They were just out of the reach of about five zombies, but we made short work of those flesh eaters and helped them down. The four of us together then snapped a couple branches off the tree for the two of them to use – not great, but better than nothing at all.

The four of us continued on to another area, knocking our way through zombies. Thankfully the school wasn’t setup like most would think of a high school. Instead of being inside a building, each classroom was in its own building, or coupled with one or two others. Every room was accessible from the open-air courtyard, which made it easier to get around the school; so much easier than dealing with hallways and stairs.

Meanwhile, James and Lea had come upon their first group; three cadets – all from middle school. They recognized them, too. They usually sat at the tables with us and talked. They were the ‘next generation’ of our group, so to speak. Two girls and a boy. The boy had armed himself with his skateboard, and the girls had armed themselves with a dirt-bike helmet and… a megaphone, respectively. That had put James and Lea at pause for a second, until they saw the system that the three were using. Every time a group of more than two zombies got close, the megaphone would be given a loud blast with its siren feature, and the zombies would be stunned long enough for the other two to handle.

Who would have thought they’d have a weakness to loud noises at point blank range? Neither James or Lea had time to analyze why at the time. Later though it would be figured out that the functional sensory portions of their nervous systems were probably more sensitive to certain things than ours. In the moment, however, they just knew that it worked, and they took advantage as they helped finish off the zombies close to the small group. Once linked up, they all rushed off to the next closest source of screams and shouts.

As fate would have it, the source for both groups was coming from the flagpole near the parade deck, and as both groups converged, they saw the scene and paused for a moment – or most of us did. The horde there was large, and had five other cadets surrounded; a combination of middle school, junior high, and high school students. Three of them were entirely unarmed, and were being defended by the other two.

The two defenders were a high school girl, and a middle school boy. The girl was unarmed, but she must have been at least close to six feet tall; on closer inspection, someone noted that she was one of the cheer team members. Despite not having a weapon, the brunette bombshell was taking out zombies left and right whenever they got close – kicks right to the head. Nobody knew the boy, but he’d armed himself with a shovel that was probably left out earlier in the day.

We were all stunned at the sight before us, and none of us moved. None of us… save for Lea, anyway. She hopped on top of a concrete bench and zeroed in on the zombies nearest the group, beginning to fire. Most of us watched as the zombies close to the group were taken down by the two defenders and the sniper fire from Lea. Of course, only one of us looked away from the scene, and that was Chien, who blinked as he watched Lea actually rapid fire with the weapon. He’d never seen her do it before, but he shrugged it off. The air rifle was no Remington 700, and wasn’t beating the hell out of her shoulder with every round she put down range.

However, after eight shots, she looked at the eight of us and snapped. “Well? What are you waiting for?! Go help them!” She said as she reloaded, then pointed at the two that held the broken branches. “You two stay with me. The rest of you, go!”

The order snapped us out of our stunned moment, and we all quickly entered the fray, save for the two that she’d ordered to stay behind. Megaphone-girl stunned zombies for us, and with them stunned the work was that much quicker, but the closer that we got to the group of five, the denser the horde became. Lea for her part was keeping up a pretty good firing rate. Another eight shots were fired, and then a couple seconds passed, and seven more before there was a scream – an obviously feminine scream, and from where I was, I could see what had happened.

It was the cheerleader; she’d kicked a zombie like she’d been doing, but this one was taller than most of the others, and she’d missed the ‘sweet spot’ she’d been kicking the others in. Instead, she’d kicked the bottom jaw in; broken it too. The problem was that it had grabbed her leg, and when she couldn’t get away from it, a couple more grabbed her, and then a few more after that, and began biting along her leg and arms. The six of us in the horde started fighting harder, trying to get to her, but… we all knew what being bitten meant. One way or another she was going to be dead.

The screaming stopped though, and at first I thought she’d finally succumbed to her wounds, but… no… she looked almost serene. She looked accepting, even… and I could see her mouth moving. She was looking at someone… mouthing words. Then I realized what the words were, and what direction she was looking in. The words were simple: ‘Kill me…’ The direction was easy to figure out too, and my head abruptly turned to see Lea suddenly lower her rifle, as if she’d been struck, but a second later it was back up and I looked to the cheerleader, just in time to see the word ‘…Please…’ form on her lips. There was a small smile on her lips and her eyes shut – right before the crack of the air rifle, and her body going limp.

Lea’s rifle fell silent after that, and stayed that way for the rest of the fight to the remaining members of the group. The firing only resumed once we started on our way back, and she was picking off the ones that got too close to us. Unfortunately, we’d been too late to get to the boy with the shovel. He got bit before we got there, and elected to stay and fight to provide at least a slight distraction. It worked too. Our rescue team made it back with three of the five evacuees in tow. Only eight more shots had rung out from the air rifle during our flight, and soon enough we were all headed for Mr. Malone’s room at top speed.

As soon as Sweet saw us getting close, he opened the door for us and then slammed it shut, locking it once we were all inside. With a sigh, he ran a hand through his hair and went to Mr. Malone’s desk and chair. The rest of us either leaned on the wall or took a seat on the floor. We all needed a rest, and we took the opportunity. About an hour went by before the silence was truly broken.

“So this is everyone, then?” Sweet asked as he looked over our group of refugees, meager as it was. Including himself, our tally came to thirteen. Thirteen! Great number, right?

“Everyone we were able to rescue, at least.” Chien’s words brought that fresh memory back to all the cadets present. We’d failed. At the very least we had failed two of our fellow cadets. Hell, we had failed two fellow human beings. They were dead because of our inaction.

Okay, that was actually incorrect. They were dead thanks to the inaction of everyone but Lea. She’d done just what she should have. She’d dialed in her scope and started getting kills while the rest of us just stood there. We hadn’t moved until she actually gave us the order. Hell, she managed to get eight kills before any of us moved! Yet still, looking at her now, there was something about her that had changed from earlier. Before she’d had disbelief, and then a calm, calculating look. She was our sniper. Killing zombies was no problem for her. They weren’t people anymore. Hell, it wasn’t hard for any of us. We’d all seen enough zombie movies to know that once someone was bit, there was no coming back from it.

However… Lea was the only one of us that had actually killed a person, and to see her now, you’d think something near and dear to her had just been taken. Hell, she kind of looked like a little kid whose favorite pet had just died. She was trying to hide it though, and while it worked for just about everyone else, it didn’t work on me. I was her cousin. I was almost as good as her brother, considering she’d lived with me for so long. She was tearing herself apart on the inside, but there was nothing anyone else could do. We couldn’t just make it alright. This was going to be hard for her, and despite how much I would have liked to tell her everything was going to be okay, I knew that was a lie. She’d killed someone, even though they were basically dead already, and she was going to have to come to terms with it on her own.

“Thirteen out of six-hundred forty-three cadets and fifty-seven staff members.” In other words, thirteen out of seven hundred – or roughly one-point-eight percent of the people that were at the school had survived. It was possible that others had, maybe they somehow got out, but the only confirmed survivors were in this very room. While Sweet hadn’t said it that way, I’m pretty sure that Chien, Lea, and I did that math in our heads pretty quick. James probably thought about doing it, and then abruptly decided the numbers didn’t really matter much.

“So, back to the question of how we get outta here…” I said, and Sweet looked at me for a moment. His gaze seemed… distant, I suppose you could say. His arms half rested and half hung from the arms of the chair that he sat in; his legs propped up on the desk he sat behind – the one that less than two hours ago had been Mr. Malone’s. When he finally spoke, he sounded drained.

“…I don’t know…”

Those words hung in the air for a moment, and we all tried to grasp what that meant for us. I managed to grasp it pretty quickly: it meant that one of the few legal adults that had survived this whole ordeal thus far didn’t have a plan. Of course, what could we do? We didn’t have any way to unlock the gates. Christ, the armory with all the rifles and ammunition for both the rifle team and drill team was the room right next to this one – and we couldn’t even get inside!

“I have an idea…” The voice belonged to Molly – the girl that had the megaphone.

“We’re all ears, dear…” Lea said softly as she turned her attention to the girl. Despite having the loudest ‘weapon’, we all knew Molly was a soft spoken girl.

“Well… over the weekend they started working on the roof of this building, didn’t they?” I know both this room and the armory leaked pretty badly over the winter…”

Oh, that was putting it mildly, to say the very least. Half the tiles in the ceiling had been like leaky faucets. It was the kind of funny thing about southern California; in the mountains we got snow – everywhere else it was sheets of rain all winter long.

Molly was correct though – they had begun working on the roof over the weekend. They’d stopped about half way through and decided to finish next weekend; guess they weren’t going to be finishing now, huh? The teachers hadn’t wanted all the racket and the extra worry of watching everyone to make sure they didn’t wander in the construction area.

“…So couldn’t we just go through the roof into the armory? I don’t have anything past that, but we could at least get the guns and ammunition.”

There was silence for a moment after Molly had spoken, and while everyone else seemed to dismiss the idea at first, as we didn’t have a ladder, Chien and I looked at one another and then toward the pile of desks. Quick as a flash we sprinted toward them and grabbed a couple, starting to stack them at the front of the classroom. Why the front? Because on the other side of that wall was the armory, and the plywood that was covering the hole in the roof spanned across the divide. Desk after desk was stacked, and then Chien handed me his baseball bat as he scrambled up and began pushing the flimsy ceiling tiles out of the way. Once through those, he reached down and I handed him the bat so he could pound away at the plywood.

When I glanced around at everyone else, they were staring at us, and I wasn’t quite sure what to say to them. Really, what was there to say? The only close friend I’d had longer than Chien was Lea. I’d known her since we were little. I’d known Chien since fifth grade. We’d met James in eighth grade, when we transferred over from the private school we used to go to. Needless to say, Chien and I worked well as a team; better than Lea and I did even – because while I had known Lea longer, she and I didn’t tend to do a lot of stuff together until we came here. That meant Chien had three years of teamwork practice over her.

Thinking of her, I looked toward where I knew she’d left the air rifle resting against the wall, only to find her nowhere near it. She was a few feet away, sitting on the floor and leaned against the wall. She looked like she was just curling in on herself. I caught her glancing at the rifle once, and then she rested her forehead on her knees. She wanted to be away from it. For a moment I stood, thinking about what I should do. However, as I soon heard the plywood giving way and the nails holding it coming loose, I walked over to the air rifle and picked it up; then walked back to the pile of desks as the plywood came loose from one corner. A shove, and the other nails came undone as well. One last push, and the plywood came off entirely, sliding off the roof and to the pavement below.

I could see the grin on Chien’s face as he climbed up a bit to look over and into the armory, though it fell once he saw what was there…