A gunshot sounded off from far away and Robbie wondered if it was the distant sound of hunters, young drunks shooting beer cans in a backyard somewhere, or had this thing stretched beyond the campus and now people were out there fighting for their lives? He’d been thinking this was confined to the Stonewall Forge campus, but if this spread to the nearest town, it could keep going. Whatever this was.
They weren’t far from the Stonewall statue when lights popped on all around them. It was the courtyard lights, and Robbie figured they must have been on an automatic timer. That meant the motion sensor lights for the hallways would be on too. This could be bad. More than ever, he considered turning back and hiding inside the music room. They could do this in the morning.
Nitsy froze in place with him as the lights popped on, but then she continued walking toward the auditorium, her fingers interlaced with his.
The hall around the corner from the music room was dark when they entered. At the far end was the auditorium entrance. To their right was the dormitory area and to the left, all along the corridor, were classrooms.
No people were in sight, which meant none of the creatures were either.
Nitsy took another step into the hallway and the lamp above their heads popped on. In reality, it was only a slight flicker, but it seemed so loud. Bathed in light without warning, Robbie was forced to put a hand over his eyes and squint. When his vision cleared, he saw the wall between two classes, to their left, was slathered in blood.
It started with a handprint like someone had slapped the wall, but then the hand kept going, smearing the mark several feet before stopping and slapping the wall again a foot or so later.
A few feet ahead, on the concrete walkway, they came across a puddle of blood.
More blood on the wall a few feet further.
As the corridor opened up to the same grass-covered area Robbie and Nitsy had run from earlier, bodies came into view. None were on their feet. Elias still lay in the bushes below the broken balcony. Other bodies littered the lawn.
The closest to them looked as if its fingers had tried to claw the hair right off the top of its head. Like the kid had dug at his own scalp so hard he’d nearly peeled it off. Skin hung to the side of his head like a haircut gone horribly wrong. The barber put the clippers too close to the skin and sliced it right off in a jagged groove. His face was crushed at the nose and jaw like someone had taken a baseball bat to him.
Maybe we weren’t the only ones to survive.
It looked like this kid, this thing had tried to attack someone, and the attacker blasted him in the face with a pipe.
A few other bodies were in the same condition. Their skulls were broken open like someone hit them hard to finish them off.
The heads. Just like fucking zombies, man. You have to go for the head.
He’d always known he was right. They were zombies. Brain-seeking zombies. And here they were trying to find a bucket of phones. All it would take was one bite and they’d be goners. They couldn’t let these things get that close.
Robbie gripped the handle of his machete and followed closely behind Nitsy. His eyes were still on the dead body-riddled lawn when she stopped in place, causing him to bump into her. He unwittingly made an “umph” sound as their bodies collided. When he looked ahead of her, he saw why she’d stopped.
A figure stood at the end of the hall, past the auditorium door, silhouetted in the lamplight at its back, staring right at them.
“Do you see it?” Nitsy whispered.
He couldn’t miss it. It stood hunched over, long hair hanging down at both sides of its face, and its hands were out at its sides, fingers curled, like it was a feral beast waiting to attack. Its shoulders rose up and fell down with each strained breath.
“It’s looking at us,” she added.
“We knew we were going to have to take them on,” he said. “Now’s as good a time as ever.”
His words sounded tough and brave like he was a badass zombie killer, but inside he felt bile rise to the top of his throat. He was seconds away from vomiting all over the place. He knew they would face these things, but he hadn’t counted on seeing one this early, this clearly, and this calmly waiting for them to advance. He’d imagined them like they were in the auditorium, rushing the mob, growling, and screeching as they devoured their prey.
That’s what we are. We’re prey.
Robbie had been afraid several times in his life. Bad things had happened to him. He’d once gotten stuck at the top of a Ferris wheel. He’d been with a date, too, which only made matters worse. He’d never been afraid of heights, but he wasn’t very fond of them either, so when he looked down and saw the people in the amusement park looking up at them, he was scared. But, he’d known someone would eventually get them down.
Another time, when he’d hopped over a fence to swim in a neighbor’s pool with his friends, they’d thought the neighbor was gone for the weekend. It turned out the whole family left except the dad. He pulled a shotgun on the trespassing hoodlums. Robbie thought he’d shit his pants in that pool, but he didn’t. He was confident the guy would do nothing more than call the cops. Of course, he wouldn’t actually shoot them.
This time, standing there staring at the infected woman at the end of the hall, he felt none of that faith things would work out. He’d seen so many kids attacked in the auditorium, many of whom probably called out to their parents or God, and they hadn’t made it out unscathed. Robbie and Nitsy did because they ran.
If they ran this time, it would mean they’d failed.
“Walk slowly toward the door,” Robbie suggested, realizing they needed to go ahead and get this over with. The longer they stood in one place, the more likely they were to encounter more of the creatures.
As they stepped softly toward the auditorium door, the infected woman at the end of the hall didn’t come closer. It was like she wasn’t aware of their presence. The woman’s body moved in mechanical-looking jerks like whatever had possessed her body wasn’t capable of manipulating it in smooth motions.
Her head tilted and she stared up at the ceiling while raising her left shoulder. Then her shoulder fell and her right lifted. Each stuttered move seemed thought out, one right after the other, like someone was controlling her with a joystick.
Bizarre. And how isn’t she seeing us right now?
Nitsy continued down the hall, and Robbie followed with his machete raised. If the woman suddenly saw them and came running, he’d be ready.
She never came. Nitsy reached the auditorium door and leaned against it. Robbie nodded to tell her to go ahead. She closed her eyes and pushed the door inward. It opened smoothly, without any noise, and plunged them into darkness once again. Robbie closed the door carefully, and it let out an audible click as it secured itself.
Robbie squeezed Nitsy’s hand with the sound and stared into the darkness. If any of the creatures were in here, this would be the moment they would attack. But the room remained silent.
The only light inside came from the film that was still on pause. On screen, President Kennedy had his finger raised in mid declaration. Bluish light shined across the rows of scattered chairs where Robbie was sure he saw bodies strewn about.
Bodies of kids who’d actually died instead of being turned.
Some would have been trampled, a few might have broken their necks in the fall, or perhaps they even had fright-induced heart attacks. Robbie wasn’t sure if that were possible, but he’d seen the fear on the kids’ faces as the infected lashed out at everyone in the auditorium, and he imagined it could’ve stopped their hearts.