DEAD: Darkness Before Dawn (28 page)

The two met at the bannister of the stairs and tried to peer down. Besides being too gloomy, there was not much field of vision.

“I will go first, you watch my back. We can leap frog each other at the landing and then as we move down the corridor,” Trent said in the young girl’s ear.

She gave a nod and stepped aside so he could go first. Once he reached the landing, she crep
t down and then past him to the ground floor. It was in that moment that it struck her; they had not even bothered to see if this place had any sort of sub level or basement.

Once she
signaled the way was clear, Trent came down and pointed left with raised eyebrows. That seemed as good of a direction as the other. The floor plan of this building was a giant “U”. They would make sure the left path was clear and then come back and check the right.

“I am going to the corner. You keep your eyes peeled…if any of the doors open, you should see a glow on the floor,” Trent said and then crept away, his back almost glued to the right hand wall.

It felt like it took an eternity, but at last he reached the corner and peeked around. He looked for what seemed like an inordinate amount of time to Heather. That stretch of hall was maybe thirty or forty feet long and the doors on both sides were shut and boarded up. What else was there to see?

At last he turned and came back. “Not a damn thing…I’ll check the other—”

“You checked your end, now watch my back…I can do this,” Heather cut him off and headed away before he could object. She found it humorous that some people still clung to the “old” ways.

She was a girl…she was just a kid…

Well she had been surviving this zombie apocal
ypse just like everybody else, thank you very much. She could certainly go to the end of the hall and look around a corner.

She reached the end and took a deep breath before peeking. She was only mildly surprised to discover that the area was em
pty. But if it was not here, and certainly could not have gone up the stairs without them seeing it…then where was the source of that sound?

A scream came from outside
causing Heather to spin back towards Trent. She was less than pleased to see that he had already taken off for the main exit. She understood that somebody might be in trouble, but it might also be a trap. In any case, he had just abandoned her to go investigate the source of the scream.

Machete in hand, He
ather sprinted to catch up. She reached the main doors that would allow her to exit the building and skidded to a halt. She recognized the groans of the undead coming in what sounded like considerable numbers from outside. For a moment she considered pulling the chain back into place and leaving Trent to his fate.

After a few seconds of deliberation that
surprised her in just how prepared she was to let another person die, Heather pushed the door open just a crack so that she could see. Sure enough, on the street in front of the building, at least a hundred of the undead were passing by. They looked focused on something just ahead of them and to her left; that would be back the way they had originally come from.

Another scream shattered the silence…this one from the d
irection that the zombies were moving. Heather struggled with her decision now that she could better hear the scream. She had no doubt that it was female…and young.

“Dammit,” she growled and stepped outside.

Immediately, several of the undead turned her direction. Heather did not wait; she chopped down the closest ones and then made a dash in the general direction she had heard the screams come from.

“Go to the end of the building and turn right!” a voice yelled from above.

Heather had almost forgotten about Aleah being on watch. She glanced up and saw the woman jogging along the roof, staying parallel to her as she came up on a zombie that was just starting to turn to face her direction when she plunged the heavy tip of her blade into the back of its skull.

Side-stepping the corpse as it fell, she shoved another out of the way as she reached the corner. The
recognizable sound of a blade shattering a skull came just a split second ahead of her actually turning the corner and a debris-strewn parking lot. The broken remnants of a Cyclone fence still stood in some places, but was gone for the most part.

The mob of zombies had turned this way as well and Heather spotted Trent just as he
vanished around the far corner that gave way to the back side of the school and the macabre playground that would never again see children engaged in hopscotch, foursquare or dodge ball ever again.

She had looked back here when they first decided to settle in
this school and had been given a chill. The playground had become a sort of killing field at some point. Rotting corpses littered the area, each with black stains around the head that looked oddly like the sort of full head halos that were often depicted on religious figures in classical paintings. It had struck a nerve for some inexplicable reason and she had not looked out there again. Even when she stood her watch, she looked out across it, but refused to let her eyes be drawn down into it.

There were fresh kills strewn along the way. A brief obse
rvational insight hit her as she ran past all the downed corpses. She could tell that many of the bodies had been rotting in place for quite some time. The fresh kills barely leaked anything, but they had not turned the near black color of those that had been truly dead. An out-of-the-blue thought hit her;
How come these zombies are not rotting away to nothing
? But it was wiped away as another scream came; this one was followed by a howl of what could have been rage, fury, or just simply Trent’s version of a war cry.

Heather saw Aleah pulling ahead of her up on the roof. She picked up her own pace and rounded the corner to discover Trent up on a large Dumpster with a smaller figure crouched at his feet. Zombies had completely surrounded the Dumpster and were all trying in earnest to get at the pair.

She recognized the diminutive figure a split second before Aleah yelled out, “Rose?”

The girl’s head popped up and a million thoughts seem
ed to fight for position in Heather’s mind all at once.

Where were the others?

Had they all been killed?

Had the group been forced to sca
tter?

“Hey! You walking bags of rot…come and get some!” Heather shouted.

She jumped up and down, waving her arms without really being sure any of that was making any difference. Now that she had their attention, Trent was making quick work of the monsters. She was glad they were so stupid. She moved in and helped put the zombies down as quickly as possible.

“Hurry up, here come the rest!” Aleah called down.

“How many?” Heather yelled back as she planted her booted foot in the chest of her latest kill and yanked her blade free.

“Too many!” was Aleah’s worried response.

“We will need to go all the way around the building and come in from there,” Trent said as he dropped his shoulder into what had been a morbidly obese woman.

Naked, she looked like a wax figure left out in the desert sun as her folds of dead flesh seemed to sag
even worse than they probably did in life. She tottered for a second and then fell with a meaty splat. Her head snapped back and hit the asphalt hard. A small trickle of dark fluid oozed from the behemoth of a woman, but not enough damage had been inflicted on the brain to actually end its existence. However, its size had it struggling like a turtle on its back.

Trent was grabbing Rose and pulling her from the Dumpster when a hand snaked out from a few of the bodies that he had a
ssumed all to be dead. The yank was not much, but between his not expecting it and his feet tangling in all the limbs scattered about—not all of them attached to torsos—he fell back.

The impact did not entirely knock the wind out of him, but it came close and was enough to momentarily stun him.
He gasped and tried in desperation to suck air into his lungs, but simply could not get enough. As he lay there practically helpless, he saw a head emerge from the meaty debris.

“Trent!” Heather screamed in panic. She knew that without his help, either she or Rose…or both…might go down. Pushing past a few of the zombies that had turned and were closing in on the downed man, Heather grabbed his hand and yanked him free of the pile. The sound of teeth clicking together sounded a split second later.

“Thanks,” Trent barely managed to croak.

“Later.
” Heather stepped around and jabbed the tip of her blade into the top of the zombie’s skull. “And you!” She pulled the blade free and jabbed it in Rose’s direction. “You have some explaining to do when we get inside.”

Rose nodded and jumped down off the Dumpster. She had the decency to look more than a little embarrassed. The trio headed off around the far corner of the school. They reached it just as the tail end of the herd was passing.

“Damn,” Trent whispered. “How many you think are in this zombie mob?”

“A few hundred at least,” Heather said dismissively.

“You make it sound like no big deal.”

“It isn’t if they don’t know where you are. Zombies are st
upid and easy to distract. The problem is that most people panic. That makes them do something rash like run into someplace where they get trapped,” Heather said matter-of-factly.

“You ain’t even a little scared?” Rose asked. “I been jumped by gangs, attacked by angry girlfriends…and for the past several months, I’ve lived in a graveyard, but when those things had me cornered, I was so afraid…I am pretty sure I wet my pants.” Trent glanced over with a raised eyebrow. Rose met his look with one of her own. “Don’t you be acting all tough…you don’t think I smell your little accident?”

“Enough!” Heather snapped. “We don’t have time for this. We have a clear path and need to go now.”

Without waiting, Heather scurried to the corner of the buil
ding in a half crouch. She peeked around and waved for the other two to follow. Without looking she disappeared around the corner.

Rose and Trent took off, the sounds of the head of the zo
mbie parade coming up on their heels. By the time they reached the corner, Heather was halfway to the doors; she was using the trees and bushes for cover, and was now almost even with the last couple of stragglers at the tail end.

Both of them jumped when they heard shouting. It took them a moment to figure out that it was Aleah. Obviously she was on top of the building and had moved back to the rear of the school. She was trying to pull the zombies
’ attention away from pursuing her friends on the ground.

The two finally made it inside, easing the door shut behind them. Heather was standing there waiting and had her finger to her lips. As quietly as possible, the barrier was put back into place against the door.

The trio headed up the stairs, each of them feeling an overwhelming sense of exhaustion as the adrenaline ebbed and eventually dissipated.

As soon as they were on the top floo
r, Heather spun with an angry expression. “What the hell were you thinking, Rose?”

“I—” she started.

“You better have a damn good reason for leaving the other group…like they had better all be dead!” Heather paused, a stricken look crossing her features. “They aren’t all dead are they?”

“No, but—” Rose began, but was cut off
once more.

“
You could have gotten yourself killed…and all of us in the process. How can you have lived so long into this and still be so stupid?”

“I’m not st—”

“Trent almost got torn apart trying to save you, and you better hope that mob wanders off. If they close in on this building, they will draw others in no time and Kevin is in no shape to move, which means we either abandon him and hope for the best, or we wade out into a few hundred zombies and hope we can take them all down…or we run.”

“I know, bu—”

“You struck me as somebody smarter than this,” Heather scolded.

“I—” Rose took a deep breath when she got cut off again. She was not used to this
sort of thing and she could feel some of her “old self” starting to creep to the forefront.

“Why on earth would you come here and bring a gee dee herd of zombies on your heels, that—” Heather was angrier than she had been in a long time. And for some reason, this girl wasn’t saying a single thing to make her any less mad.

“Heather!” Aleah called as the trap door that led to the roof was opened and a set of legs started down the ladder. “Gather everything we can carry. I will need Trent to help me, we have to leave!”

Everybody turned to face the woman as she let go and dropped the rest of the way to the floor. Her face was flushed and her eyes were wide.

“What is it?” Trent asked hesitantly; he was not sure he really wanted the answer by the expression on her face.

“Millions!” Aleah breathed. “That little group was just the trickle of the leading edge.”

“That was what I was trying to tell you!” Rose spat. “We were just north of some huge highway merge Interstates…Ninety and Ninety-four, I think. Catie had climbed up the ruins of some apartment building that looked like it had taken a direct hit with a missile or something. Half of it was gone, but there was this open stairwell, like an emergency fire exit or something that still stood and went up six or seven stories.