I stepped on the woman’s back for leverage and pulled my sword free.
Another shot took the approaching zombie down. The front of its skull exploded. Bone and brain fragments sprayed around me. I closed my eyes, and shielded my mouth and nose with my forearm.
To my left, Charlene held the sword in one hand, and with the twenty inch machete, she cut free the bowels of one zombie, and then swept out its feet with a kick of her own. When it fell, slithering around on its own intestines and guts, she planted a foot on its skull and pounded the tip of her sword into its ear.
If we were not in the middle of some crazy battle, I’d have laughed at Gene. He handled the machete I’d given him like he was French and in the midst of a duel. With one hand on a hip, he stepped and back stepped, and swung the blade out in front of him, cutting into and chunking away pieces of the creature’s flesh. It might be his style, but we had no time for technique.
“I’m out!” It was Kia. She held her gun up in the air. Not sure why she did that. I could not recall her firing off more than a handful of shots. Somehow, I’d managed to miss three clips worth of ammo being used.
“Chase!” Allison was at the cafeteria doors. She held it open, waved us over. “Come on!”
“Go, guys. Go!” I said, ordering them to push past what was left, ignore what came at us, and just get to the cafeteria.
Charlene ran to Kia, “Go,” she said.
Kia was out of ammo, and my daughter had the sword ready to defend them both. The two ran for the door. Gene and I were right behind them.
I heard the other zombies, the ones that had been coming down the hall. They sounded enraged. Their screams and moans echoed and filled the hallways. The only saving grace, the only thing that kept this from becoming a slaughter instead of a minor victory, was that the other creatures were slow. Very slow.
As Allison closed the cafeteria doors, Melissa wedged a mop through the handles.
A mop.
That was what had kept them at bay before we’d turned that corner. A mop.
“They came out of nowhere,” Dave said. “As soon as you guys left. It was almost like they were waiting for you to go check out why the lights malfunctioned.”
“They were,” I said.
“What?” Andy said, standing between Michelle and Robert.
“Those things fucked with the generators,” Gene said. He wrapped an arm around his wife.
“There’s got to be thirty, forty of them, Dad.” Charlene stared at the wall. “That glass won’t hold them.”
I remembered going to a rock concert, when being on the floor as opposed to in seats was cool. Only once, did I venture to the front. The stage was set off by a waist-high rail that worked as a fence. Security stood between the two sections; the audience and the performers. Once the main act hit the stage, the force of thousands of people was crushing. There was nowhere to go. My waist was pressed into the rail and felt like circulation was cut off to the rest of my body. Breathing became difficult and I wasn’t the only one. A girl by me passed out. Security had to physically move people away. They pulled her under the rail and ushered her away to paramedics standing by. The band actually stopped several times and asked everyone to take steps back, so they wouldn’t crush the people up front. While the idea was thoughtful, the safety concerns were lost on the fans.
That’s what was happening now. We, the eleven of us were the rock stars. The zombies, our biggest fans. They didn’t care that the people against the glass were being flattened. It didn’t keep the ones being crushed from still licking and trying to bite through the glass.
“We don’t have long. Charlene’s right. The glass, it won’t hold,” I said.
“It’s Plexiglas. It should hold. They shouldn’t be able to break that,” Gene said. “Holy shit.”
“Holy shit, what?”
“Gregory. It’s Greg.”
I looked around. I did not see anyone new in our group. “Gene, what the hell are you talking about?”
Gene walked up toward the lunch tables, around them and right up to the glass, all the way at the right of the wall. He pointed a finger at the flattened nostrils of a man whose face looked like a dog had attacked him. The skin on his cheek had peeled back and hung loose toward his own throat. “That, this guy, he’s Greg. Gregory,” Gene said. He shook his head, smiling.
“I guess I’m missing the funny here, Gene.”
“The generators. Greg did it. He’s the one --this guy right here-- that’s my partner. You know what I mean? We worked together. Day in, day out, the last several years. If anyone was going to know how to screw around in the mechanical room, how to do some real damage, it would be him, Greg. That son of a gun,” Gene said.
“He’s a not human anymore, he’s one of those things,” Melissa said.
The monsters had organized. They’d plotted an attack, and pulled it off. If it didn’t scare the shit out of me so much, I’d be impressed. “We need to find a way out of here. Out of the cafeteria.”
“And go where?” Dave said.
“We should get my bus,” Gene said.
“Where’s a window?” Allison said.
“In the kitchen, back here,” Megan said. She ran, taking Allison.
“Got a door back there, too,” Kia said. “They use it for deliveries. Take out the trash. That kind of thing.”
Allison returned. “We’re surrounded. I mean--surrounded.”
“They are in and all around the building,” Megan said.
Dave, Charlene, Allison and I had our weapons. I saw a few rifles. “How much ammo do we have?”
Gene shrugged. “A lot.”
“Here?” I said.
“Yes. It’s there, stacked in the corner. There’s more in the gymnasium, and some by the front office, too. Tried not to keep it all in one place,” Melissa said.
“That was good thinking,” I said. “What we really need is a plan. Because right now, I can’t see a way out of this room. I mean, other than making a run for it, I have no idea what to do next.”
Allison walked in a big circle around the room. She chewed at the skin on the corner of her thumb. I hated when she did that. “They breached the school,” she said. “As much of a haven as this place seemed, that’s gone now. I know I was looking forward to staying here, but we can’t.”
“We could push through the doors,” Robert said. “Shoot a path to the gym. Collect up the rest of our stuff…”
“Not going to work,” Andy said, took off his baseball cap and scratched at his head. “We have the fast ones in that hallway. It’s one thing if they chase after us, and we have time to run, but pushing through all of them stacked right there, it’s a death sentence. I don’t see a way of getting through them without some of us at least getting bit. I don’t know about any of you, but I don’t want to get bit.”
“No one wants to get bitten,” Michelle said.
No one was arguing. Voices were loud, though. Getting louder.
“We have backpacks,” Megan said, “gathered them earlier from lockers and left in the hallways. Dumped the books and stuffed them each full of supplies and stuck them in the dry storage room. Maybe we should hand those out?”
“That’s a good call,” Kia said. “I’ll grab them.”
“What’s in the backpacks?” Charlene said.
“Each has basic First Aid stuff, band aids and alcohol and gauze with tape. Some granola bars, couple cans of food, and other nonperishables. Perfect to hold you over for a few days, not much longer,” Gene said. “Why don’t you and Melissa go and grab them?”
“I have one idea,” Charlene said. She spoke softly, as if unsure anyone would take her idea seriously.
“What have you got?” I said.
“Gene, you said your wife was on her way to pick you up from work here at the school, right? So where is her car?”
“Right out back,” Gene said.
Charlene told us the rest of her plan. It wasn’t the best idea, but might prove the only plan plausible enough to work.