Class of 2013 - 22

Chapter Twenty Two

The scene that James and I came upon when we returned to the school was that of an empty group of structures. The classrooms were devoid of life, as was the office, and we couldn’t seem to find anyone around the forward portion of the campus. It wasn’t until we reached the rear half of the campus that we heard sounds of life… and living death. We froze, and then looked at one another as we listened to where the noises were coming from. The report of a rifle gave us our destination – the soccer field. Sprinting, James reached the concrete bleachers before I did and stopped; his gaze sweeping across the soccer field to the gate on the far side. A moment later, when I reached his position, I saw why he had stopped. Just inside the partially open gate was a semi truck; Chien and Lea’s team had obviously been successful.

In addition to the truck itself was the trailer that it was pulling – a refrigeration unit – and the rear doors were opened. Around the truck was a small horde of zombies in close quarters with most of the other survivors. A simple matter of deduction told me that the numbers of the horde had probably been in the refrigeration unit. How had they gotten in there? There was no way to know for sure, but it could easily be assumed that they had been human when they were in there originally. If that was the case, then it meant that they might have been illegal immigrants – a common tactic for smuggling people and weapons across borders was to put them in the back of an unassuming semi truck.

I was guessing that they had found this one on the southbound side of the freeway, and that probably indicated that they had crossed over the border on exactly the wrong day. How they had all become zombies I’m unsure of, but it would have been easy for an injured person to get picked up at some point and stuck in the back. Perhaps the person had even paid the driver for a ride south. Who knows? In the end, about fifty people had been packed into the back of that rig, and one by one they had been turned into mindless creatures without any hope of escape. Whatever it was that had really happened didn’t matter so much anymore. What mattered now was the fact that there were zombies in the school again, and this time we couldn’t just climb on the roofs and gun them down from safety.

Another eruption of gunfire brought us back to our senses, and James rushed ahead of me toward the soccer field. Taking a route through a shut – though lockless – personnel gate, he ran toward Lea, Johnny, and Christine as I trailed behind him and shut the gate that he had gone through. Getting the shotgun that Christine had, he charged into the fray as I moved over to the group gathered behind Lea’s GTO, in front of the rig, and got Johnny’s Ruger. Despite the conflict and having to pay attention to my own targets, there was no ignoring the skill with which James moved through the horde. Most people would think that hand to hand techniques wouldn’t be useful against zombies – and would even be dangerous. For the most part, they would be right…

…But James was the exception to that rule.

The first couple clusters of zombies that he came up against were blown away by the shotgun, which eliminated five from the start, and a third shell was used to eliminate a sixth that was closing in on one of the jocks that was already dealing with a zombie on top of him. Having used all three shells that had still been in the shotgun, he grabbed it by the stock and used the heavy barrel as a club the kill the zombie attacking the jock; dropping the empty shotgun in the process. That one dealt with, he sprinted toward the closest zombie to him along the side of the semi’s trailer and then tucked and rolled at the last minute, barreling into the zombie’s legs and sending it to the ground. Using the momentum from the roll, he sprang to his feet and moved toward its upper body, jumping up and landing with both feet slamming down on its cranium – a sickening crack and a spurt of blood from the mashed skull accompanying the action.

His next targets were a couple of zombies that were next to one another, and he went right up the middle. The one on his left was given a right, and the one on his right got his left; both were dazed from the blows. Knowing that his right was more powerful than his left, and instinctively acting on the fact that the zombie on his right would thereby be dazed for less time, he grabbed that zombie by the shirt and spun it around – giving it a rabbit punch with his right. The zombie on his left got a kick to the chest and was hurled back a couple of feet – its head slamming into the metal of the trailer. Moving past them he could hear more distinctly the gunfire coming from the back of the trailer; notably a couple of Rugers, probably those being used by the gate guards, and accompanying them were two blasts from what sounded like a shotgun.

Despite the instruction that was given to the P.M.A. students, the Rugers were being fired rapidly, which meant that the guards were starting to forget their fundamentals at the close range – and that meant that they were probably missing as much or more than they were hitting. He had no idea about the shotgun he was hearing. Two blasts and a period of silence usually meant a double barrel, but as far as he knew none of the guards were using one. All these things flew through his mind in a matter of a moment or so. In combat, it seemed as though your mind worked faster and the world around you slowed down – and this phenomenon was exactly what the Core Four’s hand to hand expert was experiencing. Now he just hoped none of those stray bullets winged him or worse as he moved through this horde.

Regardless of the danger, he moved forward, juking through the horde and getting in advantageous positions to strike, or even grabbing one just to bash another’s head with it. One strike was even comprised of sweeping a zombie’s feet and driving his knee into the side of its head. By the time he reached the rear of the trailer and stopped – moving off to the side of the horde for a better look at those in the rear – he had killed a grand total of fifteen ghouls with nothing but his hand to hand combat skills – plus the six he’d shot at the start, and the one that he’d clubbed. He’d taken out a total of twenty-two zombies, while the rest of us were aiming in on targets.

As James had moved forward and cleared out along driver’s side of the rig, Lea, Christine, and Johnny had moved down the other side to clear it. I had stayed on the driver’s side to cover James if he needed it, and once he reached the back and stepped off to the side, I moved forward to join him. Looking across I could see Lea’s group on the opposite side and backed up, while peering through the fence I could see the rest of the survivors outside the gate – waiting as the zombies filtered through. It seemed as though the gate guards had been shutting the gate when the rear of the trailer had been opened. Considering the fact that the survivors were outside the gate, I assumed they had all been gathered near the rear of the trailer, waiting to see what was inside as it was opened. Surely they hadn’t expected this.

Glancing forward to make sure no zombies were headed our way, I soon found my attention grabbed by two shotgun blasts. Looking over, I saw Chien with a sawed off double barrel and a pouch of shells hanging off his shoulder – I knew we hadn’t had one before, so my best guess was that it had come from inside the semi’s cab. Considering that we were safe for the moment, I turned my attention from the slowly dwindling horde of zombies to the survivors, and began to count. When I had finished, I found myself coming up short at twenty-two. I did a quick recount as I spotted someone off to the side on their knees that I hadn’t noticed before, and came up with twenty-three – and assumed twenty seven since the scavenging team had gone back out after James and I left. Squinting a bit, I tried to make out who it was and what they were doing. After a moment, I realized that it was Molly… and that she was leaning over someone else that was in the grass.

Briefly I held a flicker of hope for another to add to the count… but that hope was dashed as Molly screamed and leaned backward, falling on her back and scooting back as quickly as she could. Raising the Ruger I tried to line up a shot through the chain link, but Molly was in the way – between me and whoever it was that was turning. As she moved backward and the zombie moved to get up, I realized who it was: the same boy that Molly has been found with; the one that had used a skateboard to take on zombies. He clutched the skateboard at his side even now, between his reanimated fingers – his other hand forward toward the girl who had minutes earlier been his friend. Getting up just enough, he fell forward on top of her, clawing at her and snapping his jaws. She screamed again, and this time the attention of others near the gate was grabbed, but the ones that noticed were also the ones that were unarmed.

However, the human instinct to survive can be an incredibly powerful thing, and Molly’s kicked in. Using her knees to prop up her recently reanimated friend, she twisted her face away from his clawing hands and grabbed the skateboard that had come loose from his grip. Hitting him in the side of the head dazed him, and she shoved him off before proceeding to continue beating him with the skateboard.

Finally a powerful hit cracked the skateboard, but she continued hitting the now inanimate corpse until the trucks of the board struck a final, powerful, blow – and the skateboard broke completely in half. Seeing that her attacker was incapable of doing so anymore, she tossed the half of the board that she still held down atop him… and then let out another scream. This time, it was not a scream of panic, but one of mental and emotional anguish. Then came the tears.

Looking over the survivors, I tried to figure out who all we had lost. Skateboard kid was one, but who else? I thought hard, but found myself not really coming up with any specific faces – much less any names. Molly was really the only person I had learned the name of, outside of the members of the Core Four, Sweet, and Christine. I didn’t know anybody else. Before now, had everything gone on as normal, this never would have mattered to me. I would have graduated and probably never have seen any of the lower grade students ever again. But after everything that had happened, not knowing their names felt like some sort of crime. I didn’t even know why that was. It just… was.

As the horde dwindled to the last dregs of the living dead and was quickly cut down by a couple final shotgun blasts, we finally got a clear picture of the defense that had been mounted… and the first three casualties that had been suffered. Sweet and Chien stood in the center of the defense, with the gate guards flanking them. From the looks of things, Sweet had been with Chien to guard him while he reloaded each time, and the gate guards had… well, basically just been there to lay down as much fire as possible, considering how many shots they fired compared to how many zombies there had actually been. If I were to guess, they’d probably killed ten between the two of them, and had probably fired an entire magazine’s worth of ammunition for each one of them. One hundred rounds, in total.

Novik, for his limited part, had kept the rest away from the forward battle line.

The three corpses that had never reanimated consisted of two of our people, and one of the jocks. Those three added to Skateboard Kid totaled four. With the number of zombies that had been sprung on everyone, that wasn’t a horrible amount of casualties. However, compared to our total, it took us down a decent amount: from thirty-one to twenty-seven. Silence dominated the area for a few moments after the last zombie fell, though Molly’s now-quiet sobbing continued on to spite our muteness. There was nothing that could be said or done to comfort the girl, and we all knew it. No matter how much we wished we could say ‘it’ll be alright’ and somehow make things better, we knew that it would just be a meaningless equivocation. Eventually, we all began filtering back inside, and I got to see Chien up close.

Now, Chien was one of the toughest people that I knew – in the mental and emotional sense anyway. Physically, he was more imposing than James because he was about my height, but was also a proper weight. However, James could take him in a fight… because James knew how to fight. This was the physical though. Mentally, Chien was build like the Tower of London. Nothing got in or out unless he gave it permission. Yet, as he walked past me and James, having handed the sawed off and ammo pouch to Sweet, I could see tears forming in his eyes, and I knew just exactly what was going on in his head. He was blaming himself, and nothing I could say would help him.

I would still try and talk to him later, but I couldn’t exactly tell him that he hadn’t driven a semi truck full of zombies into the school. The glaring reality was that had done it. He just hadn’t known that’s what he was doing at the time – nor could he have known of the grievous error that he was perpetrating without opening the trailer before returning. Even then, had he done so, that would have been a death sentence for him, and perhaps for the entire team. We probably wouldn’t have even known what happened or where they were until we sent scouts out to find them, and by then it would have been far too late to do anything. Either way, we would have lost four people, and while it was a horrible thing to think, perhaps this was good for us – better this happen sooner than later.

At least this would give us a chance to tighten our security, and make sure that this sort of thing didn’t happen to us again. Sweet would take care of that though, so for now… well, everyone was pretty much left to shake off their frazzled nerves and go on with their lives. Once most of the group had made their way back into the interior of the school, I nudged James and we headed to talk to Sweet. We still had our captive to handle, and no idea how long they would be knocked out for – assuming that they hadn’t already recovered. Also, considering the recent events, it wasn’t going to be an easy thing to break to people. How could we tell anyone that we were willingly bringing one of the infected onto the base after all this? Simply put, per Sweet’s orders, we weren’t telling a soul.

Of course, he also told us to wait until nightfall to move our captive into the makeshift laboratory, as Alice still had to set the place up to her liking. That meant waiting around for a few hours, but that didn’t really bother us all that much. It gave us some time to relax and think about how stealthily we might be able to do this. Or… how stealthily we hoped we could do this. If word got out that we had one of those things inside the base, there would be a shit-storm the likes of which hadn’t been seen since Alaric walked the streets of Rome. An hour or so passed before there were any further interruptions, but more bad news came with the return of the scavenging team. We’d lost another. Apparently a crawler had been under the SUV they were using and had bitten one of them as they stood next to it, loading supplies inside.

Five. Five in one day, and all due to a lack of security measures. Worse, it wasn’t like any of those couldn’t have been the members of the Core Four and Sweet. It was just luck (and maybe the useful addition of a bit of paranoia) that we had avoided the fate of those five. Worse, four of those five were from P.M.A.’s original band of survivors. Only one was from Perris High, and while it shouldn’t have made any difference where they were from… something about most of the Perris High students was… wrong. Christine was fine, and that wasn’t just a personal biased – she’d proven herself. Johnny seemed alright, aside from his… addiction. William seemed to be okay, and so did one of the other cheerleaders, but the rest, Novik included? Something about them had me on guard.

I tried to push the thoughts of possible foul scenarios from my mind, but sitting in my room in the office with little more to do than think meant my mind kept going back to it. Christine, Johnny, William, and… Amelia, that was the other cheerleader’s name. The four of them were in a gray area. If something went wrong between the groups, it was hard to say which side they would support. On our side we’d lost four of our originals, and were down to nine, but held the advantage in that we had Sophie, and her and Sweet’s daughters, which bumped us to twelve. Alice and Timothy were good kids, and Alice was smart, but combat wise they couldn’t do that much. On the other side, without Christine, Johnny, William, and Amelia assured to join him, Novik had just himself and seven followers.

But… if a scav’ team was out… and the Core Four were on a mission… our assured numbers dropped from twelve to four – five if you wanted to count Alice and Timothy together as one. Sweet was a badass, we all knew that, and Sophie had shown us in the past that she could fight too – of all things, she knew Krav Maga. No idea what or if their daughters knew anything, but basic self defense was a decent guess. Even then though… if one of the jocks got their hands on a pump action shotgun and decided to not bother fighting them? It would be over, just like that. The flick of an eye and it would be over. After that they could just wait in ambush for the rest of us to get back, and we’d be finished.

Rubbing my temples and sitting up straight on the cot I had, I tried once more to ignore the thoughts of possible betrayal. Wasn’t it a silly thing to be worried about? We were living the real life version of the zombie apocalypse. There was strength in numbers and joint forces, that was common sense and anyone could see it. Did we really need to worry about people we had saved trying to stab us in the back? Were we… was I… really that paranoid over this? Were it just the original group I wouldn’t have worried about it. Why was I so worried about it happening now? Was it just me not knowing them?

I wished I knew.

I really, truly, wished I knew.