This is it. Go out with a bang.
Andre would fight to the finish, even if that meant putting a bullet in his own head at the last second. Both of the infected students were coming fast, and Andre wasn’t going to be able to get off another shot before they reached him. This was the end, but he’d take at least one of them with him. Andre was preparing his final shot when the cafeteria door crashed open behind him.
Robbie stepped out with the rake in his hand. Eggo was right behind him with a large kitchen knife. Nitsy wielded a broomstick, Bradley held a lunch tray out like a shield, and Phyllis clutched a rolling pin. Andre would have laughed if the situation weren’t so dire. It was like his backup had arrived, and it was the Scooby-Doo gang.
But this wasn’t funny. They were all putting themselves in grave danger. The monsters kept coming at them until a horn blared from somewhere in the distance. It came from a car or a truck, and it was loud enough that it caused the creatures coming toward them to stop and look at the gate and the land beyond.
Andre would look for its source in a second, but first, he used the distraction to plug a hole in the male infected student, right between his eyebrows, and then put one more bullet in the female whose shot to the chest had only delayed her attack.
With the immediate threat eliminated, Andre looked out at the field in front of the campus and saw the animals had stopped moving. Whoever was blowing that horn was going crazy, honking it like a madman.
The lights on campus flickered, turning on and off like a lightning storm on earth. Thomas was well aware of the system in place at Stonewall Forge, and he also knew students weren’t allowed to roam the grounds this late at night. That meant something was definitely going on there. The infected people and animals had made their way over there. He only hoped he wasn’t too late.
In Pa’s pickup, he felt like he was driving a tank. With its giant grill out front and the bed of the truck weighed down with heavy equipment, he was going to destroy everything in his path, and he had his sights on the glowing orbs of the animals’ eyes reflecting his headlights.
They stared directly at him, and for a moment, he hesitated. Only because he’d never seen so many animals in all his life. He’d seen black bears and he’d come across plenty of possums, but this was the craziest thing he’d ever encountered. It was a sea of sickness. Four-legged creatures with fur that moved on its own, and they were all watching him, wondering if he would have the balls to go through with this. He’d show them.
“Come on, motherfuckers!” he yelled, ignoring Ma’s constant pleas to watch his language and be a respectable young man.
There was a time and place for respectable, and it wasn’t right now.
Thomas blew the horn again and stepped harder on the gas. He had no intention of slowing down. He wanted every bear, every wolf, every fox, every raccoon, every dog, and every other beast to step right up and see what he had to offer.
Let them come. Let them turn toward him and try chasing him back up onto that roof. No, he’d cowered enough for one day. Now, it was time to take action. He would get his revenge. As Pa always said, “It’s time to man-up and take what’s coming to you.” Pa always said it with his belt wrapped around his fist, but the words meant the same no matter what weapon you were wielding, and right now he was wielding a hammer on four wheels.
“Come on, baby,” Thomas said aloud as he grew closer and closer to the animals.
They didn’t move like he expected them to. They didn’t run when they heard the blaring of the horn. They didn’t flinch with the revving of the engine. They stood their ground, and Thomas smiled insanely in his adrenaline-induced heroism.
The campus was coming up quickly with its wrought-iron gate. Thomas had no intention of trying to drive through that thing. No, he’d stick with killing whatever person or animal was out here in the yard.
A yard he’d mowed and weed-whacked nearly every single day since he was ten years old. He remembered Pa finally letting him work the push mower while Pa sat on the riding one. The push mower was always good at getting the areas around the trees.
Two tears fell from Thomas’s eyes at the thought of never seeing that mean old bastard again. The old man might have handed out a good ass-whoopin’ from time to time, and he might have had very few kind words, but he was Thomas’s father, and he knew he’d miss him. Same with Ma.
Through clenched teeth, Thomas yelled, “Yes! Stay right there in front of me you sorry sacks of shit. Take what’s coming to you!”
It was an elk out front of the rest. Large and with big antlers, it stood its ground, puffing out its chest and glaring back at the headlights like it couldn’t believe Thomas had the balls to approach it head-on.
“You want some of this?” Thomas called out, noticing there was a skunk right behind the elk. He hated skunks.
The elk seemed to want some of this because it didn’t budge.
Thomas pointed the truck right at the long line of animals, gripped the steering wheel, and held on for dear life as he smashed the front grill right into the elk. The thud was loud, and Thomas jerked in his seat, but he didn’t take his foot off the gas. There were so many more animals to mow down.
The skunk was small, and Thomas wasn’t even sure if the truck hit it. The small black bear he definitely ran into. His truck was a bowling ball cracking pins as it drove through every animal in that line. He crushed skulls, penetrated bodies, and mowed down everything in his way. None of these four-legged creatures stood a chance against Thomas’s battle tank.
In his headlights, he saw each animal fly to the left, to the right, and right down the center, and he never stopped. He kept going. Until he reached the end of the animals and his headlights shone on the small group of people headed to the campus.
There, in front of him, was Pa and Ma, both mindless zombies looking back at him. He should have continued forward and taken them out, but he couldn’t. At the last second, he chickened out and jerked the wheel to the right. The truck was moving too fast, and that sudden turn caused it to hit clumps of dry grass. The vehicle skidded sideways until the tires caught the earth hard and the truck flipped over on its side.
Thomas bounced around the cab. Random items took flight with him. He saw an old cheeseburger wrapper, a ballpoint pen, a red lighter, and a cardboard cup used to catch his father’s tobacco spit. The cup hit the seat as the truck flipped and brown, wet, muddy filth coated the seat and Thomas’s arm and leg.
When the truck finally came to a rest, Thomas sat up and gagged. He fought the urge to vomit and climbed out of the cab. His head was pretty banged up. Blood trickled down from his forehead, ran over his cheek, and dripped on the grass.
“Hey, you all right?” came a loud, barking voice.
“Pa?” he asked.
Deep down, he knew it wasn’t his father’s voice, but it sure sounded like him. The disgruntled way he always spoke. Thomas stood there next to the truck and stared at the grassy lawn around him. Dead animals lay on the ground behind the truck. A few that weren’t dead were mewing and whining, dragging themselves across the ground.
It took him a second to remember what happened.
The sound of a gunshot brought him back to his senses. His ringing ears began to clear some and he heard random voices behind him. Thomas turned to see a big man with a rifle walking toward him with a group of teenagers right behind him.
“He looks stunned,” one of the teenagers said.
“I recognize him. He was with the caretaker.” This girl was bald. Her face seemed familiar.