Class of 2013 - 3

Chapter Three

“Damn it.”

The words came from my Vietnamese friend without a bit of bidding from anyone in the room, and I was sure most would be curious what it was that caused him to curse. We’d just accomplished the first step to actually making our way out of this place, so what was it that he could be frustrated by? Considering everything that was going on… my assumption wasn’t much of a leap to make.

“Dead man walking?” I asked, looking up at Chien.

“Yup.” He replied, though didn’t look back at me. He was glaring down into the room.

“Master Sergeant Macready?” I continued my line of question.

“You got it.” Chien sighed, and then looked about the room again. “Good news is that I can see where the keys are. Looks like he got bit and came back here to get weapons and ammunition. Must’ve succumbed to the infection not long after he got back. Gun-safe is open, but his key is still in the ammo locker.”

It was then that there was a throaty, raspy sort of call that rose up from the other side of the wall, and Chien’s face scrunched up in a look of disgust.

“Hey Roy, get me the air rifle, will ya? I’m gonna…” Of course, when he looked down next to him, I was already holding the air rifle up to him. “Thanks.” He said after a moment’s pause, and then snatched the rifle up and took aim. “Hey, dead-head!” A couple seconds later the rifle cracked, and there was a kind of squishy-sounding thump on the other side.

“Any others?” I asked, and Chien just shook his head as he scanned the room. After a moment he lowered the rifle, and then scowled as he looked down over the wall. “What’s the matter?”

“He moved his desk.” Chien bit off, “Sabotaging son of a…”

“The man just died today, you know.” Sweet spoke up as he looked at Chien. “I know you two had your differences on things, but really? Are you honestly going to curse the man for moving a desk?”

“…Did I just shoot his reanimated corpse?” Chien looked toward Sweet, and the Colonel hung his head and sighed. There were certain things that you could do, and certain things you couldn’t do, and Sweet knew that he couldn’t get Chien to feel sorry for the old Range Master. Of course, there were reasons for that. One of which was the fact that the man had to butt himself into things and mess them up when the Rifle Team was actually doing rather well. Truth told, we’d all been glad he was sick when we went to Nationals. He always tried to make everything so serious for us, and we all did a great deal better when we were relaxed.

“There any way to get down aside from dropping?” I asked of Chien, trying to get us to focus on the matter at hand once more.

“No, not really, but I can deal with the dropping. I’ll just have to lower myself over the wall as much as I can first, and then drop.” I nodded as Chien handed the air rifle back to me. Leaning it on the wall, I heard him begin to speak again and looked up. “Once I’m on the other side I’ll move his desk back over, but I’ll still need a chair or something to boost myself up a little more to get back over.” I gave a nod, and climbed up on the stack of desks as Chien climbed over.

“James!” I gave a whistle. “Gimme a chair, will ya?” I motioned somewhat lazily toward the stacks of chairs, and climbed atop the stack of desks carefully as Chien dropped. About the same time that he was pushing the desk over to the side, James was handing me the chair. It was all very fluid, really. Up and over the chair went, Chien set it in place, and then he went over to the gun safe and opened it, grabbing our rifles. The Hammerli air rifles were first, and were handed to me and then down to James to lean against the wall with the one that Lea had been using up till now.

Six of the air rifles were handed over, and as each one was passed from one to the next, I was thinking. Standing up where I could see all the weapons, knowing that we had thousands and thousands of rounds of ammunition for theses guns, I was beginning to wonder why exactly it was that we were trying to leave this place. It was making less and less sense to me the more that I thought about it. I knew it was our fight or flight instincts telling us to get away from danger, and part of me wanted to leave too – why wouldn’t I? This place was a grade-A horror show. But then again, it might also be the safest place that we had. The gates had all been shut after everything started. That meant that the only zombies we’d have to deal with here were the ones locked inside with us. Finally, I decided to speak up.

“I don’t think we should leave.” I said as I handed the first of the last three AirMagnums to James, and looked to Sweet. “At least not as a group.”

“And why’s that, Lieutenant?” Sweet asked as he looked up at me and leaned back in the chair he sat in. There was a little twinkle in his eye though as he looked at me, as if I had just keyed in on something that he’d already been thinking about. I seemed to have a knack for doing that, or something.

“Because we could clear the school out and it would be as good as a fortress. We have food, water, electricity, weapons and ammunition; not to mention a parking lot full of vehicles, and the bus barn for the school district is here.” As I spoke, I saw Chien starting to slow in his movements, and think about the things I was saying.

“Water and electricity will go out eventually, though.” Sweet said, though I could see that it was less an argument against the idea, and more him wanting me to think through the entire list of things that could happen if we stayed. He was testing my knowledge to see if I was actually capable of planning this properly. This challenge was accepted quickly as I handed the next rifle down to James.

“We can also find water all over the place. Perris is a city. Even if you shut off the water in a house, there’s always at least some in the pipes that will flow out until the pipes lose pressure. Besides that, we can turn on all the different faucets here and collect water until then. We can save it in all kinds of things – from plastic bags, to water and soda bottles, to buckets and jugs. Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club have tons of pallets of water bottles, so do gas stations and other stores. The same goes for soda machines anymore. Most of them seem to have one or more buttons for water on them. Water is easy to get.”

The last air rifle was handed down and I continued.

“As far as electricity goes, even once it goes down, the school has backup batteries that are charged by solar panels. Those batteries last at least for eight hours, and I would guess can last as long as sixteen if the power in the cafeteria is all that’s on – that way the refrigerators and such can stay on. The solar panels take over in the event of a blackout, and the batteries kick in as soon as the solar panels no longer provide enough energy. Automatic system. I remember from last year when we had that blackout. I also remember talking to some of the people in the cafeteria, and they mentioned a backup generator that would kick on if the batteries died, and then turn off as soon as the solar panels started collecting energy again. Said it has enough fuel for sixteen hours; diesel, too. That means that fuel will be easy to come by if the solar panels and batteries fail to be enough.”

Sweet nodded approvingly, and as he did, Chien hopped up on top of the desk and chair on his side of the wall, looking over onto our side. “So that means we’re gonna clear out the school then?”

Sweet looked around the room, then to us. “I would say so, yes.” He tilted his head a bit and looked at me directly. “What did you mean when you said that you didn’t think we should leave as a group? You obviously think it’s a good idea to clear the school out to use as a fort, so… what ever are you thinking of?”

“I think Chien and I should go to our respective houses and collect the supplies that are there. Food, water, weapons, and ammunition. Medical supplies as well. I know we have some here at the school, but the more the better.” I could feel Chien looking at me like I had just dragged him into something, and as a matter of fact I knew that I had, but I paid it no mind for the moment. Instead, I looked to him and spoke. “Aren’t you gonna get the other rifles too? And the ammunition?” He glared at me, but still got down and grabbed a couple of the Rugers from the gun safe to hand to me.

“You think you two should go out there just to grab those things from your houses?” This time it wasn’t Sweet that spoke, but James. Thus, I looked to him, as I had the feeling that the question was a general curiosity that he had simply been the first one to voice.

“Of course. Chien and I both have rifles and shotguns at our houses. On top of that, Chien has a crossbow and my dad has pistols. We both have plenty of ammunition scattered about too, and my dad has ammo reloading equipment. Plus we have a bunch of canned food and bottled water that can make up rations and such. We’ll need all of that.”

It was then that James said something that both surprised me, and made me feel as if I should have expected it. “And you’re gonna leave me here while you guys go off and have an adventure?!” I hung my head and resisted the urge to smack him with the rifles that Chien had just handed me. I really should have seen that coming. He could do things without us, but heaven forbid we ever did anything without inviting him along. There were reasons why I had asked Chien the question of ‘can we keep him?’ when we first transferred here.

“No… actually… I need you to do something.” I grinned a bit as I handed the rifles down to him, and grabbed the next two from Chien.

“…I recognize that look – and whatever it is that you have in your head, I’m telling you here and now that the answer is no.”

“Alright, fine. I won’t tell you what it was then. We’ll get someone else to do it.”

For the next minute or so we worked in relative silence as the rifles were handed off two at a time, until all of the Rugers had been moved into the room that we were in. It was then that James cracked.

“Okay, fine, tell me what it is!” He snapped as he looked up at me, and I took the two Remington 700’s from Chien. Handing them down to James, I just smirked at him.

“I will once we’ve got some ammo in here.” Glancing over the wall I saw Chien just start shaking his head, and heard James practically growling. Walking over to the ammo locker, Chien turned the key and popped it open; the doors sliding to the sides. The first things he grabbed were two, five-hundred round ammo cans for the Remingtons. He handed them up to me, and I down to James, and then grabbed a roughly shoebox sized box of ammunition for the air rifles. He stacked that on top of a wooden crate that held twenty, one hundred round, plastic boxes of .22 long rifle ammo. Grabbing the rope straps that were in place of handles, he lifted the bundle up to me and then climbed up to the chair as I handed it all down to James. Chien wanted to see this. He didn’t know what I was gonna say, but he wanted to see James react to it.

“Okay, we have ammo, so out with it!” James glared up at me.

“Alright, alright, cool your jets.” I said with a grin. “We need you to be our distraction. The zombies can be killed from atop the roofs with the rifles, but to get out of here any time soon we’re going to need a distraction. Someone to draw the zombies away from this end of the school. That’s where you come in since you’re the fastest.”

“And the loudest, by far.” Chien grinned as he chipped in. James was about to protest, but Chien cut him off. “You’re about to prove it.” That stopped him, and he shut his mouth, deciding to glare at us instead.

Of course, we may have been poking fun at him, but the fact was that James really was the fastest one of us. He also was, in truth, easily the loudest of us – and usually without realizing it. I often wondered if he actually had a hearing problem of some kind, since it seemed that he usually spoke in a somewhat louder voice than the rest of us. That, or he just didn’t know how to keep his voice down and all-too-often got overly excited while he was talking. Considering he had ADHD, either of those hypothesis were entirely possible, and it could very well have been some kind of a combination, since it also seemed like he was hard of hearing at times. Other times it was as if he had perfect hearing, so… it was kind of hard to be sure which it was.

Next in speed and lung power was Lea, which almost seemed like an odd combination considering that she was about the closest thing to a designated markswoman that we had. However, just like with her shooting, she could keep moving at speed and for a decent amount of time. She was about the only person that I’d ever seen catch up to James, though it had taken both of them being loaded down with about forty pounds. Of course, we found out later why she was able to do it – she regularly ran with that same weight on her back, so that when she ran without the weight, it was much easier.

It also explained why she never seemed winded after the running portion of PT in the mornings. She made it harder on herself during her practice sessions and it was thus easier during the exercises at school. Meanwhile, James didn’t practice running that way, and thus was actually feeling the weight, while it was normal for my cousin. To top that off, it also gave her a greater lung capacity and enabled her to be louder when she wanted to be. Normally she was pretty quiet, but she definitely had a pair of lungs. Though most guys just noticed that she was, in one male’s words: ‘the perfect combination of tits, ass, and deadly accuracy.’ And in case you’re wondering, the guy that said that? Yeah, she punched him in the throat after school – she had actually rather liked the comment, but at the same time, she couldn’t let it go on principle.

“Okay, so tell me this then, geniuses: how do you plan to get to the cars? Or out of the parking lot? The roll gate to the parking lot that connects it to the inside of the school is locked. The gate that you go in and out of with the cars is a roll gate that takes one of those clicker things to open. You guys don’t have the keys or a clicker – none of us do since Boss’s keys and such are in his office. If I’m gonna risk my neck, you two better have some kind of plan that you can actually pull off first.” Admittedly, this made me balk for a moment. He was right, after all. Chien, however, didn’t miss a beat.

“I can pick that lock with a bobby pin and a screwdriver. It’s not complex or anything.” Both of those statements were true. I’d seen Chien pick locks plenty of times when we had to get somewhere and couldn’t (or at least didn’t want to) wait for the keys to be brought to us by one of the staff members. He also just so happened to keep a couple bobby pins on his person, and being that he rarely needed to pull out that little trick unless he was around us he didn’t bother carrying a screwdriver. I had one that was good enough mixed in with the other little assets of my multi-tool.

“And the roll gate?” James asked, and got an interesting sort of reply in the form of Sweet giving a quick whistle to get my attention, and then tossing me the keys to Mr. Malone’s car – whatever the hell it was that the man drove. Thankfully it had a little alarm activation and deactivation button on the key ring. “Don’t tell me. Let me guess. You’re going to get into Mr. Malone’s car, grab the clicker, and use it to go in and out of the roll gate with Chien’s El Camino, right?”

“Basically.” Chien grinned, though I tilted my head.

“We never said anything about the El Camino… How…?”

“Only thing you guys could load up. Your old Charger might fit everything, maybe, but you’d have to cram things, and then you’d still not be able to haul much. With the El Camino you can put the guns in the cab and all the supplies in the bed.” James had his moments. They were rare and not all that profound for the most part, but his deductive abilities were often not in question – though they could be surprising nonetheless when he used them.

“Yeah… that’s true…” I said in grudging admittance.

I had to admit, at least to myself, that I didn’t like when someone was able to get one over on me – even if it wasn’t really so much getting one over on me as giving simple answers that I should have known. I suppose that was one of my main faults. I had trouble admitting that others were right when they were the same people that usually looked to me for the answers to life’s questions. I suppose it stemmed from the rather ironic fact that I rather disliked having somehow become a strange sort of authority on life. I didn’t understand why people looked to me like I had the answers to everything, and then when it came to other things they could so easily make me feel the fool without even meaning to.

The fact that people looked to me as some sort of counselor was a dubious honor, for even when I did give good advice, it was rarely followed. It was ignored in favor of the advice of someone else who was, arguably, more qualified – and yet somehow the more qualified person seemed to give the worse advice of the two of us. Yet, they still came to me when they followed the advice of another, and asked me what went wrong. They asked me why it didn’t work like it was supposed to. Worse were the times when I gave rather flippant or even sarcastic suggestions for things that could be done – and only then did they follow the advice. In those moments they would come to me and ask why I had given them poor advice, and there was little that I could say to them. It was usually something akin to ‘I didn’t; you just took my words as such.’ They rarely were happy with this reply, but I really couldn’t care about that. Wasn’t my fault the only time they followed my words was when I wasn’t actually advising them on things.

“Alright… I’ll do it. I can’t believe I’m going to fucking do this, but I’ll do it.” James sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, clenching his eyes shut as he let out a slow breath. “You two owe me so much for this; words cannot express how much!”

“You survive and I’ll make sure you get a Snickers and a Coke.” I smirked.

James grabbed up the slicer once more – it really did seem to fit him, I must say; probably the most iconic weapon we had really – and headed toward the back door of the room; figuring that there would be less of the living dead at the rear than at the front. From where Chien and I were, I have to say that the judgment was sound. He stopped at the door just long enough to look at me and point the slicer at me.

“I’m holding you to that, Roy…”