My imagination had failed me miserably. Kia, the woman who had comforted me yesterday while Gene stitched my side, was on her back. Someone straddled her waist. She had both hands planted on his head, forcing his mouth away from her throat.
“Shit.” I pushed forward, legs kicked trying to get me up and propel me toward Kia.
“Dad!”
“It’s zombies! It’s motherfucking zombies!” I charged, sword raised. I wasn’t sure I’d make it in time. Kia bucked, thrust her hips up, and twisted. It was enough to force the thing away from her neck. I swung my sword at its head. The force of the blow cut clean. The head rolled off the shoulders and landed with a splattering plop. Thick dark blood oozed from the corpse as Kia knocked it off of her and back-crawled away.
I held out my hand. “Are you okay?”
“The others are in the cafeteria!” Kia pulled herself up, looked around on the floor and found her 9 mm by the wall. The cafeteria was around the next corner. “I had them barricade the doors. I was on my way to warn all of you.”
“How many? How many are we talking?” I led the four of us toward the next corner. The cafeteria would be roughly thirty yards from there. My sword was up, blade on my shoulder.
“A lot, seven, eight? I don’t know. Ten?”
The lights in the hallway flickered and went out.
I looked back.
“The Mechanical Room. Want me to go fix it?” Gene started to turn around.
“No. Stay with us. We’re done splitting up. We don’t need the lights on. It’s day time.”
“They’re doing this? Those things?” Kia said.
I nodded. “It seems that way.”
“That’s crazy. I mean, that’s just impossible,” she said.
“It’s not,” Charlene said. “They’re either remembering, or they’re developing survival skills. Whales hunt in packs and communicate attack plans as skilled as generals. Saw it on Discovery, or Animal Planet.”
“She’s right,” Gene said, as if my daughter’s comments needed confirmation. “Think I saw the same--”
“Shh,” I said. “Listen, we need to round this corner and hit them fast. The school’s no longer secure.”
“We need my bus,” Gene said.
“Not now,” I said. “One thing at a time. Let’s clear the hall outside the cafeteria and then figure out where to go after that.”
“The gym,” Gene said.
“Not the gym,” Charlene said. “We need to get out of the school. We’re trapped in here. This building is no longer safe.”
She sounded as aggravated as I felt, and did nothing to hide it from her tone of voice.
“How much ammo you have?” I said.
Kia clapped a hand against her jeans. “Two more clips.”
“Okay. Should be good. We’ll do this together. On three. Ready? One. Two…”
Chapter Seventeen
“…three!”
We rounded the corner and I counted eight zombies. They stood pressed against the glass wall of the cafeteria. Their flat palms left muddied prints on the glass. It baffled me how they’d staged and carried out such an elaborate attack. Somehow, the things figured out how to gain entry to a locked-down school, find the Mechanical Room and cut power to the generators, twice. It was like they knew that doing so would divide the group into two, and yet now they struggled with pulling on the door handles to enter the cafeteria.
If Charlene was correct, and I suspected she was, they had gained advanced animal-like survival instincts. This filled me with renewed fear, and meant we still didn’t know our enemy, didn’t have a clue what we were up against.
“Spread out some,” I said. “But not too far.”
“We’ve got this,” Charlene said.
“Are you a good shot, Kia?” She shrugged. “With them that close, I can hit them.”
“Head shots?” Charlene said.
“I can only do the best I can.”
It might have been an honest answer. It wasn’t a comforting one. “Okay. You are going to concentrate on taking them out. Head shots. Once you fire, the element of surprise is gone. If they’re the fast ones, they are going to come at us without much time for reloading. Have your clips handy, okay?”
Kia immediately moved one clip to each pocket so that they protruded slightly. She checked her weapon. “We’re good.”
“Gene, Char, we’re going to start toward them. Just a few feet out. Skirt the walls, okay? Char and me on this side. Gene, you’ve got that side.” I wasn’t separating myself from my daughter, and he didn’t question it. “We don’t want to get in Kia’s line of fire, but we’ve got to be ready to take down the ones that get to close. Kia -- don’t you shoot us, got it?”
“I won’t,” she said.
The tension was tight. Thick. I smiled. “I’m going to need you to cross your heart.”
“I do. Cross my heart, and hope--”
She stopped, looked away. Killed the mood I’d tried to set. “It’s okay. I believe you,” I said. “I’m gonna give you the honors. I want you to start the melee for us.”
Kia held the hand gun out, arms extended. She lined up her shot. Closed one eye. Her finger rested on the trigger, about ready to fire.
“No!” It was Gene.
Kia fired, but had jerked her arm. The shot went wild. I spun around.
The hallway was filled with zombies. They were down a ways, but closing the distance.
“Where did they come from,” Charlene said.
The eight by the cafeteria heard Gene, heard the gunshot, and knew we were there. Did they also know we were sandwiched between hordes? Of course they did. Their strategy appeared flawless. They’d outthought us all. Son of a bitch.
We were nearly cornered.
“They’re fast,” Charlene said.
It wasn’t the approaching flock behind us. I looked at the cafeteria again. Those eight moved with agility I’d not seen exhibited before. If they had rigor mortis in their animated corpses, there was no visible sign of it negatively impacting their speed.
“Kia!” I said.
She let out two, three shots. She hit nothing. Wasn’t completely her fault. The things ran, but normally. Their balance was askew. Heads bobbed up and down; wobbled side to side. We didn’t have time for this.
“Back the way we came,” Gene said.
“No,” Charlene said. “The cafeteria.”
There was no time to discuss it. Charlene wasn’t waiting for a vote. I couldn’t argue anyway. She, again, was right. If we went back the way we came, our two groups might never reunite. Our safety was in numbers. Even the zombies knew that.
I followed my daughter.
She ran at the first zombie and dropped to her knees. She swung the blade as she slid on the floor. She let out a howling cry as she cut the legs out from under the creature, severing above the ankles and below the knees. The thing dropped. Its mouth had been open. Teeth slammed into the tiles and skidded across the floor and left a splooging trail of dark, thick blood. The zombie was far from dead, the brain was unscathed. Rattled, but secure inside a decaying skull. The immediate threat, however, clearly had been neutralized.
With the hilt near my ears, the sword’s blade pointed toward the drop ceiling squares, I swung and chopped off a woman’s arm. I was unable to easily free my sword and thought it might be lodged in its ribs. I let go of the long sword, and snatched the hunting knife from the sheath on my hip. I grabbed a fistful of the woman’s hair and yanked her head forward and down. I buried the serrated blade into the back of her neck, felt steel saw across the spine. She collapsed at my feet.
The gun fired. A zombie close to me jumped back several feet. The bullet hole in its face bled. It opened its mouth and moved toward me.