CHAPTER FIVE
Reminder to all university staff: the Violence in the Workplace annual training will be taking place next week. Please make sure to check your assigned days and times. If you’re bringing your personal weapon to training, please arrive 30 minutes early to have it checked by instructors. Research staff, please remember to bring any PPE you wear for the additional required Violence in the Laboratory training session held afterward.
—Memo from the University of the South’s
Human Resource and Training Department, 2049
There was something oddly satisfying about watching someone put a round through the head of a shambler on her very first try.
While King Dale was figuring out how to cross a river, I was busy teaching my young protégé how to shoot shamblers. Like Sister Ann had predicted, the girl was a natural. All of the training we’d done to this point was on the line. Could the eleven-year-old shoot and kill something that had once been a living, sentient being? Shooting targets were one thing. A man—one naked, covered in sores, and frothing at the mouth notwithstanding—was far different from a piece of paper.
“Breathe out, relax,” I’d murmured in Ulla’s ear moments before she took the shot. “That’s not a person anymore. That’s a thing that wants to eat us. It’s not a real person, just a monster. We shoot monsters. You understand? Good. Now inhale—don’t tighten your shoulders, okay?—and start your second slow exhale. In the middle somewhere, when you’re starting to relax, just gently squeeze the trigger and—”
The sharp report of the rifle almost caught me off guard. The shambler dropped like a sack of potatoes. It twitched once and lay still. The .270 round, unlike the 5.56 fired out of Baby, accomplished the job with only a single shot. The birds in the forest around the clearing went silent as the gunshot echoed loudly. I carefully hid my smile and waited to see if the young girl remembered our lessons.
Ulla did not disappoint. She popped out the hearing protection and scanned our surroundings, keeping a careful eye out for any stray shamblers that might have been drawn to the rifle fire. We waited for two more minutes but there was no keening wail of a hunting shambler looking for its next meal. Not seeing any, Ulla carefully pulled the bolt action back, ejecting the spent shell. I snagged the hot shell in midair and juggled it between my hands, blowing on it. Yeah, it was pretty stupid, but I didn’t want it dropping to the ground below and getting lost in all the dry leaves. Causing a fire because we weren’t paying attention? No thanks. If we survived the subsequent forest fire, Sister Ann would kill us.
“Okay, so that was the only one we’ve seen so far this week,” I told her. “What does that mean?”
Ulla shrugged and carefully set her rifle down. She began to slowly sign: No more shamblers?
I wish, I didn’t say. No need to crush the girl’s spirits just as she was starting to come out of her shell. The last sign was one we’d been forced to make up, since it took too long to spell it out and neither of the sign language books had the word zombie in it. Making a walking motion with two fingers, then curling it to a ball as it fell to the open palm is pretty self-explanatory, if you ask me. Signing was still the only way she would communicate. Which was a shame. She’d been a little chatterbox before her sister Celin had been killed.
On the positive side, my signing was improving by the day.
Since King Dale wasn’t making a move toward the campus just yet, Sister Ann had declared it was perfectly fine for me to continue working with Ulla. I wasn’t a pro, not by any stretch of the word, but I could help her with the basics. I was in dire need of someone else who was willing to shoot them when one wandered too close to the campus. Fortunately for my sanity, Ulla seemed perfectly happy shooting them. Or at least fine with it. Either way, it meant less work for me.
She nudged my ribs with an elbow and repeated her question. It means no more shamblers. Right?
“No more that we can see,” I corrected her gently. “Remember there’s those other kinds that like to hide. They usually run from the others but sometimes . . . you know how a cornered animal is dangerous? Just because they try to hide doesn’t make them any less dangerous. You understand?”
Ulla nodded at this. Silent she might be, but the girl wasn’t stupid. Not by a long shot. Another reason why she was the perfect choice to learn the nasty business of shambler eradication.
Sister Ann always seemed to be right.
“Okay, looks clear,” I told her after another few minutes of relative quiet. The birds were singing again and the sun was just starting to dip behind the Blue Ridge Mountains. Sunset was about half an hour away, maybe less. With clouds spotting the horizon, it promised to be a beautiful one. I sighed. Back before the Fall had occurred, sunset was my favorite time of the day on the mountain. Sometimes, when the last rays of sunlight hit the trees just right, it made the entire mountain appear to be on fire. It was fleeting, but beautiful.
I shook off the memories. We didn’t have time to dwell on beautiful things anymore. There was too much to do, and not enough time to do it in. The world had ended and here I was, wasting time. We needed to scoot. I didn’t want to be in these woods after dark. Not because I was afraid of shamblers, no. Well, maybe a little concerned about them. I was more concerned with the growing number of bears I’d seen in recent weeks. They seemed to be growing bolder and angrier since the world had pretty much ended. Probably because shamblers attacked them on sight, and I was willing to bet bears held a grudge. Humans are the dominant species, my ass, I thought. “Let’s get back up to the school.”
Ulla nodded again and carefully slung the bolt action rifle we’d taken from Mr. Stitmer’s gun safe across her chest. It was a little big for her, but she would grow into it. Plus, there was no way I was giving up Baby. Double-checking the strap to make sure it was secure, the skinny little blonde began to shimmy her way out of the hunter’s blind to the ground below. I waited for her to get about halfway before I followed down the metal ladder.
Once down, I noticed Ulla was scanning our surroundings. Good girl, I thought. There were only three other trees nearby, but none of them were large enough to hide a person behind. This particular deer blind was out in the middle of a field near but not visible from the main road that ran past the Moose Lodge. I’d seen more shamblers down here than anywhere else—except for the day when all hell broke loose up on campus. For some reason the shamblers preferred the overgrown field near the Moose Lodge. I wasn’t about to complain. As long as they stayed away from campus, I couldn’t complain too much.
Thank God Mr. Stitmer had been an avid hunter with plenty of disposable income. The man had had one hell of a hunting addiction that we were benefiting from.
It was a bit of a hike back to school. If we took the main road, we could be there in less than thirty minutes. However, the main road was still dangerous, since it was also the easiest path through the mountain and out toward West Virginia. Since Covington was the largest town in almost all directions for at least forty miles, it made sense the shamblers would head for it.
For safety’s sake, we followed the old railroad tracks that ran beside the creek to the back of the campus to the secret entrance. There was a narrow hiking trail up the sheer cliff face that was impossible to see until you stepped on it. Eventually the creek joined the Jackson River, which was just another reason for us to keep that entrance a secret. No need to give the self-proclaimed King of Appalachia another direction to come at us.
Assuming he ever figured out how to cross the Jackson, at least.
I would say that King Dale was quickly becoming the boogeyman, except for the fact there were still shamblers wandering around the wilderness and in Covington proper. Many of the girls were whispering about the nightmares they were having. Not me. Not because King Dale didn’t bother me, but because I’d stopped having nightmares after I blew off Sister Margaret’s head with a shotgun when she’d turned.
Ulla and I made great time thanks to the railroad tracks. It was easy to get lost in the woods behind the school if you didn’t know where you were going. The tracks were washed out as well, but that was farther down the line where it used to cross the Jackson River and continue on into the town of Clifton Forge. I’d triple-checked them, just in case, because I didn’t know if anyone would be able to cross there. One could, theoretically, but it was really dangerous. If I absolutely had to cross the river, I’d pick somewhere else to do it at.
Are you going to tell Sister Ann I didn’t catch the empty cartridge? Ulla signed after waving her hand to get my attention. I shook my head.
“That’s why we’re a team,” I replied as we left the tracks and began hiking up the narrow path. I’m pretty sure it was older than most of the buildings at the school and had once been a main path for the school. Nobody had ever tried to widen it to allow cars, even though it was the only route onto the campus that wasn’t ever in danger of flooding.
Ulla smiled a little at my comment. It wasn’t much but it was better than the emotionless robot who’d been following me around the past few weeks. She was coming out of her shell.
Thanks, Maddie, she signed. I gave her arm a quick squeeze.
“Anytime, kid.”
When I’d first arrived at St. Dominic’s, I’d hated all the other girls. Not that I liked them much better after the Fall, though. They were all so full of themselves, big-city girls in small-town Virginia. They acted like they were better than everyone else in town. Okay, once upon a time I had the same attitude. I mean, come on. I was from Cali. Orange County, to be more precise. My parents had annual passes to Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm. This was rural—and when I mean rural, I mean “I hear banjo music, paddle faster” rural—Virginia. The land of DNA tests before you date anybody just to see if you were related.
I wish I were kidding.
The area eventually grew on me, though, like Sister Ann promised it would. Especially after Sister Ann took some of us new girls on a hard-core camping trip up to the top of our mountain. Suffice to say that, after the camping trip in the mountains with just Sister Ann, me, and three other girls, I came to a better appreciation of both the area and the school. It took a while but eventually I bought fully into what the school was trying to teach. More importantly, I started to believe I could do better. There was something more to life than simply coasting along.
As Sister Margaret had said: try your best, rise above the rest.
I really missed that old bird sometimes.
We saw two spotters up on top of the cafeteria and waved. They waved back and disappeared from view. Experience told me they were younger girls who were coming down to see just how well our shambler hunt had gone. The most recently dispatched shambler had been wandering around, clearly confused by the lack of food in the area. However, with Dunlap Creek being one of the cleanest creeks around, there was plenty of water to be had. Which was all that they seemed to need. Though we hadn’t spotted a nest, it was clear that the shambler had started to settle in. Eventually it would have found the campus’s main entrance and wandered up the road in search of a midmorning snack.
That would have been bad, so the decision was made to take it down before it could make it that far.
The two girls came out from the side entrance of the cafeteria. I recognized them immediately. On watch today were Lea and Melinda. They were clearly glad to see us back. Neither of the girls were armed with more than a radio but I knew from experience that someone else was watching their back from up on the rooftop. Probably Kayla, though Emily had recently started standing watch with one of the rifles we’d found. Considering the amount of responsibilities Emily had around the school, though, I knew her watch-standing days would be few and far between. Still, she tried to help, so I would be forever grateful to our little wannabe engineer. Well, I also enjoyed showers, and since Emily was the one responsible for our well having electricity to draw water up out of . . .
Best. Person. Ever.
Even if the water was cold. It was clean. That was all that mattered to me.
“What’s new?” I asked the two as we paused at the converted tennis courts. The raised planters within looked pretty dead, except for the last of the pumpkins. Kayla had been overjoyed when she found the seed packet and planted them. We hadn’t expected anything but they’d grown. Though they were still on the small side, Kayla said that we could harvest them in a few more weeks when they’d be ripe.
“Rohena’s sick,” Melinda stated without preamble, brushing her long, raven-colored hair from her face. She was one of our Philadelphia girls who’d never get to go back home. Apparently, Philly had descended into anarchy and burned before the lights went out. Hooray for the City of Brotherly Love.
My hand tightened on the grip of Baby. Not this crap again, I thought. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to shooting another turned student. “Sick-sick, or just sick?”
“Fever.” Lea looked afraid. But then, Lea always looked like she was perpetually terrified of something. Shamblers? Terrified. Scraped knee? Frightened. Early dinner? Scared. I think it was just her natural default expression. Me? I’ve been told I have an excellent RBF. “Sister Ann thinks that it’s some sort of spider-bite infection or something. There’s a big red spot on her ankle.”
Okay, so I wasn’t going to have to shoot another one of the girls. To be fair, I didn’t exactly like Rohena, but still . . . cleanup sucked. And it gave the younger girls nightmares. “Did she want to see me?”
“Yeah, she told us to tell you to go see her when you got back from bagging that shambler,” Melinda said, nodding. “Did you get it?”
“Did you?” Lea asked as well.
“Ulla got him,” I responded, jerking a thumb at my young protégé. Ulla blushed and looked away, embarrassed. “One shot. Right through the head. Bam. Beautiful. Shambler brains everywhere. I couldn’t have done any better.”
Instead of being impressed, though, the two girls exchanged wary glances. I realized just then I’d royally screwed up. Shame filled me, as well as embarrassment. Ulla, the girl who everyone already thought was weird because she stopped talking, was now like me in their eyes. A killer. Someone to be shunned and avoided. I knew the younger girls were afraid of me, and now? They’d fear Ulla the same way.
I glanced over at Ulla. There was a look on her face that suggested she might have realized what I’d just done as well. However, the flinty stare she gave the other two made me think she was tougher than I’d initially thought. Or maybe she just didn’t give a crap about their opinions. Not just physically tough, but emotionally as well. Sure, she signed instead of talking, but Ulla still communicated with us. That had to count for something.
Right?
“Don’t worry about them,” I told her once we were out of earshot and continuing along the path to the dining hall. The two middle schoolers would call it a night before too long and join us. We wouldn’t be undefended, though. The nice thing about living on a mountain in the middle of nowhere is that the dark is a natural defense as much as the creek and river were. So far as we knew, King Dale’s crew didn’t have any sort of night vision devices on them. Granted, we also hadn’t known about the BearCat thing, but who figured he’d steal a police vehicle? Flashlights we would spot from a long distance, and we always had at least one person on duty throughout the night. Usually Rohena, since she was a night owl anyway.
If she had an infection and was sick, though . . . that meant someone else would have to stay up. I already knew who that would be. The only question was, who would Sister Ann foist on me for the night?
Stuck-up bitches, Ulla signed with a glance back toward the two girls on watch. I tittered and adjusted Baby on its oversized sling.
“Who taught you that word?” I asked, sling situated for the time being. Ulla stared ahead for a long while before she carefully replied in sign.
Snitches get stitches.
I cracked up. Ulla smiled. A cautious smile, sure, but it was progress. Sometimes, laughter was the best medicine of all.
Once Ulla cleaned her rifle and left it secured on the rifle rack in my room, she found her way to the common area in the bunker. A few of the other girls her age were quietly reading in the candlelight before bed. The bunker was naturally dark, thanks to the lack of windows, but with the candles it was bright enough to read. The twins, Finlay and Fiona, were both studying a chemistry book together and whispering. Part of me wanted to see what they were cooking up, while the other part wanted to run away in fear. I’m not ashamed to admit that the twins frightened me a little.
Ulla joined them and I wandered into the smaller room where the student council usually met. Since it wasn’t our normal night, most of the council members were probably in their rooms. Lucia, however, was sitting at the head of the table, her feet propped up. She blinked and looked at me as she hid something under the table.
I looked at her suspiciously. “Whatcha got there?”
“Nada,” she replied. She tried not to have a guilty look on her face. Fortunately, I was getting pretty good at reading facial expressions.
“Really, now.”
“Okay, fine . . . promise not to tell Sister Ann?”
“I’m not gonna promise crap until you tell me what it is.”
Lucia sighed and brought her hand up. She was holding a can of ginger ale. “So if I share this with you, is it considered cannibalism?” she asked as she took a sip from the can, her eyes locked on mine. “Or is this one of those ginger exceptions you get, like when you steal the souls of boyfriends who wronged you to add to your freckle collection?”
I was sensitive about my freckles, but not that sensitive. “Gimme.”
Lucia smirked and passed it over. I took a long pull and nearly choked. The ginger ale was flat and tasted funny, but it had sugar. Oh my God did it have sugar. My head started buzzing immediately. I passed it back and emphatically smacked my lips at her. “Ahhhh.”
“Nasty puta,” she grumbled as she finished the rest of the ginger ale in one swallow.
“Hey, language,” I said, looking around. Sister Ann wasn’t in earshot but the nun had a scary tendency to simply know when we’d used foul language. She tolerated the signing, though, since it helped Ulla with her language skills. It’s why we usually signed out our swear words. Ignorance was bliss.
“She’s in the back,” Lucia told me as she seemingly read my mind. “I found a whole shelf of those canned chickens upstairs in one of the staff apartments, and some of these. Grabbed a few cans for myself. Never was a fan of ginger ale but . . .”
“Wait, hold up,” I stopped her. “You went in an apartment?”
Sister Ann had told me not to clear those yet, since we didn’t know if anyone had died in them. The only thing we did know is that none of them had any shamblers in them. If they did, we’d have heard it by now. Sister Ann had instructed all of us to stay out of them, saying it wasn’t the proper time yet. Too soon, I think, were her exact words.
“Just the end one. Ms. Whitney’s room.”
Oh, that one was probably safe then. Ms. Whitney, the middle school government and ethics teacher—don’t laugh, St. Dominic’s still took its education seriously, even if half the girls had bad reading scores before coming up the mountain—had been one of the first to die of the Pacific Flu at the hospital. She’d lived on campus but had no family. None of the sisters had gotten around to packing up her small studio apartment, since the flu then ripped through campus and started turning random people into shamblers. In hindsight, it was one of the apartments we should have cleared early on and would make an excellent place to live—once we were certain no shamblers could get up the stairs, at least. The apartment was next to a fire escape, which theoretically meant a shambler could climb in.
Maybe.
“What’s up with Rohena?” I asked, changing the subject. The idea of going through a dead woman’s stuff gave me mixed feelings. Then again, I hadn’t even hesitated for a minute when we cracked open Mr. Stitmer’s gun safe, so there was no need for me to be a hypocrite and say anything to her.
“Spider bite, looks like,” Lucia said, frowning as she tossed the empty can into the trash. Sister Ann was very strict about keeping the living areas clean, every after the end of the world. “Might be a black widow. No idea.”
“Damn,” I whispered.
“Language,” Sister Ann said from right behind me. I didn’t jump, though. After three years of this I’d grown accustomed to her simply appearing out of nowhere. However, instead of scolding me further, she moved around and wrapped an arm around Lucia’s shoulders. She pulled her close. “I really didn’t want those apartments rifled through yet, Lucia.”
Somehow she knew. There was no way she could have heard us beforehand. Sister Ann was terrifying like that.
“There’s no shamblers in there, ma’am,” the slim Latina stated. Sister Ann shook her head slowly.
“I’m not worried about you finding shamblers in any of them,” the nun corrected gently. “Some of the support staff who lived in those apartments had families. Tell me: did either one of you see the Yox family at all on the day of the Fall?”
I frowned, thinking back. It’d been pretty chaotic, and since I’d been forced to kill my best friend—and some nuns—my memory of that rainy spring day was a little blurry. However, I couldn’t remember any member of the Yox family around the campus during those frantic few hours.
“I’m worried about the families you might find in those rooms,” Sister Ann continued as a creeping realization came over me. “I’m worried what you might find will be something you can never forget.”
“I watched Miss Badas—uh, Maddie brain our valedictorian with a freaking field hockey stick,” Lucia stated boldly. I didn’t say anything. Lucia didn’t get it, not yet. I think I understood what Sister Ann was trying to say. “I’m not worried about seeing dead people.”
“Dead people, no. We’ve unfortunately seen plenty of that since these trials of faith began,” Sister Ann said, her tone soft. “But seeing a desiccated child corpse, not even five years old, who’s never going to get to see the sun again, nor play out in the field, or celebrate his sixth birthday? Little Jacob was adorable and all the girls loved babysitting him. You watched him a few times, too, didn’t you? How are you going to handle finding his body, dried out—or worse, rotted, damaged? Eaten? Can you remove him and bury him if this happens?”
Lucia opened her mouth, then shut it quickly. I could see her thinking long and hard about it. After a full minute her shoulders trembled. Tears formed in her eyes. She covered her face with her hands and shook her head. “No. I couldn’t,” she whispered.
“Nor should you have to,” Sister Ann said, not unkindly. “I know it’s difficult sometimes, and my methods don’t always make sense, but there are still some things I can protect you from. That’s one of them.”
Always teaching. Once upon a time I’d looked up to my parents as role models. That changed when I grew up. As I got older and more rebellious, I’d stopped looking up to any adult as a positive role model. Until I met Sister Ann, at least.
“How did Ulla do today?” she asked, changing the subject. The point to Lucia had been made. There was no need to press the issue any further. Not now, at least. “Did she listen to you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied automatically. “No problem whatsoever.”
“Did she take the shot?”
I nodded. “No issues.”
“And after?”
“Uh . . . we walked back?”
“I meant, how did she react after shooting the shambler?” Sister Ann clarified for me.
“Oh. Uh, fine, I guess,” I answered, shrugging. Ulla had actually done pretty well, all things considered. No tears, no shaking or anything like that. In fact, she’d done better than I had. “She’s a tough kid.”
“The odds are, it’s going to affect her later,” Sister Ann warned. “Be there for her.”
“Of course.”
“Meanwhile, we have a bigger problem on hand.” Sister Ann ran an open palm across her face. “Rohena’s spider bite is looking infected. I don’t have any antibiotics here. I don’t even know what type to get her, or what. I never wanted to ask either of you this, and I doubt you’ll find any, but . . . I need you to go through the admin building and see if there is any penicillin in the nurse’s office. Or any meds. Both of you.”
Startled, I shared a look with Lucia. The admin building was still considered a no-go zone, especially after Tammy. Besides which, other than the reception area, we hadn’t really gone deep inside. There were too many unknowns inside, with a dozen rooms and a basement that had probably flooded since the Fall—as it did every time it rained. Water and dark places usually meant shamblers. The two-story building was not something I was looking forward to exploring, and even Sister Ann had said to stay out of it.
Until now.
“Sister . . .” Pausing, I looked cautiously at Lucia. She had a frightened look on her face. It wasn’t an unreasonable response, either. I’d killed shamblers before, and more than a few in front of her. How would she react if it all went to crap while inside and it was just the two of us? Would she panic and freeze up? Would she bail and leave me there, alone?
“I’m good,” Lucia said. She must have read the look on my face perfectly. The girl was, like the rest of us, different from when she first arrived on campus. “We need those meds, right?”
“If they’re even down there,” Sister Ann reminded her. “I don’t know. I know there was an inventory of what we had in there, but Sister Mary Theresa had it, and . . . we need to double-check.”
“Too bad we don’t have a nurse up here or something,” I said. “Or a doctor.”
“I pray every day we find someone who fits our needs,” Sister Ann replied. I knew she meant it, too. One of the other girls once told me that the nuns at St. Dominic’s used to pray for four to five hours a day. At that rate they could cover every person in Alleghany County in their prayers.
The nuns probably had prayed for them all, without hesitation. They were good like that.
“When do you want us to go?” I asked.
“Immediately,” Sister Ann said. “Rohena is burning up and it’s getting dark. Ibuprofen only goes so far. I need aspirin and, if we have any left down there, penicillin.”
“I’ll take a bag,” Lucia said.
“I’ve got three spare mags for Baby,” I added. “Should I take more?”
“Three should be enough. We’re going to secure the bunker until you return,” Sister Ann stated as she looked at the two of us. The concern was evident upon her face. Beneath it, I recognized her determination. As much as I enjoyed annoying the crap out of Rohena, I didn’t want to see her get sicker. Or die. If there were meds down there in the admin building, we’d find them. “Please hurry, but be thorough. Meet me in your room in five minutes. And Maddie? Make certain you both use the restroom before you leave. Trust me.”
The admin building was less than two hundred yards from the cafeteria, but felt like two hundred miles. With daylight fading, we had to hurry. The lower level of the building, according to Sister Ann, was very dark at night when there was no power. Any shamblers hiding there would be impossible to see until they were right on top of us—or if we were very, very lucky.
Considering how things had worked out in the past, I wasn’t putting much faith in my luck quotient.
There was just a little bit of light remaining when we reached the front entrance. It looked like we had maybe another fifteen minutes, tops. Lucia had a backpack slung over her shoulder and a flashlight. I had Baby, three spare magazines, and nothing else. The plan was for her to load up any meds we found while I provided site security. Quick and easy, get in, get out. Sister Ann had been adamant about that part.
Because we were in a hurry, we screwed up right out the gate. It was my fault. With the amount of experience I had killing the damned things, I should have known better. Or at least, remembered the stupid door.
“Quick, clean,” I reminded Lucia in a low voice as we carefully walked up the concrete steps to the door. Though warm out, it wasn’t nearly as hot as it’d been before the storm hit.
“Got it.”
“If we find shamblers, stay calm. I’ll shoot them.”
“Yeah.”
“Seriously. Try not to panic if something happens.”
“I know.”
She was clearly terrified. I couldn’t blame her. It was starting to get to me as well. Normally by now we were locking down the cafeteria. Being out this late, when it was rapidly growing darker by the minute, was unnerving. Plus, we both had plenty of bad memories of this place after the Fall. Though we hadn’t really gotten along, Tammy had been Lucia’s friend. The shambler that had gotten her had come out of nowhere just as she stepped on the porch of the building.
I shoved the image away. We needed to focus. With a deep breath and silent prayer, I pushed on the partially open door and we slipped inside.
The interior was darker than outside. Though there were plenty of windows in the office area, they all faced east, so none of the setting sun helped light it up. Lucia gently closed the door quietly behind us. As it did, though, a bell jangled merrily from above. My eyes widened in surprise as she jerked her arm back. The ringing echoed throughout the old building.
“What the hell?”
“Crap.” I’d completely forgotten about the bell attached to the doorframe. The last time I’d snuck in here I hadn’t bothered closing the door.
A low, guttural moan responded to the bell from somewhere in the darkness. Lucia spun around, trying to locate the source. The flashlight seemed to light up random spots, creating a terrifying and surreal scene. For some reason a Latin phrase popped into my head.
Exultant lusibus clava immortui—the nightclub of shamblers. Or something like that. Latin was a weird language and my brain always got a little manic when terrifying things occurred around me.
Lucia somehow managed not to blind me when she turned back around a third time. She looked about as scared as I felt, and I was rarely afraid when fighting shamblers. A second moan responded to the first, which turned into the all-too familiar keening howl of a shambler on the hunt. Swallowing, I had Baby up and ready before I could blink. Neither of us could see them yet but they sounded close.
Real close.
“There! Shamblers!” Lucia screamed, shifting her flashlight toward the opposite side of the receptionist’s desk. I pivoted, just as Sister Ann taught me, and raised Baby up as I identified the targets. Two shamblers were staggering out from behind the reception desk, their movements sluggish. I didn’t recognize either of the emaciated figures immediately. It didn’t matter.
I squeezed off three shots, centering the green dot on the lead shambler’s chest. Each round impacted solidly and the shambler fell to the ground, moaning but struggling forward. The damned thing was determined. The other was getting closer. Shifting slightly, I fired off four more shots and the second one dropped as well. This one died immediately. The first continued to crawl across the floor, leaving a long, bloody smear on the tile. It continued to gasp and growl as it crawled closer, desperately trying to get to us.
“Stay back,” I warned, my ears still ringing from the gunfire. As much as I’d wanted to put on my hearing protection, I knew that I’d want to hear any shamblers that might be hiding in the building. Keeping out of arm’s reach, I carefully aimed and fired another shot into the top of the wounded-but-alive shambler’s head. It finally stopped moving.
My heart hammered in my chest. I was breathing heavily and starting to sweat. I wiped my nose on my sleeve. That was the closest a shambler had gotten to me since Tammy had died. There was a reason I tried to find deer stands up in trees to shoot them from.
“What if there are more?” Lucia asked fearfully as my eyes drifted around the office area. Monsignor Dietrich’s office door was open, and it was dark inside. The odds of another shambler hearing the gunfire and not coming to check it out were low, but not impossible. We needed to be in and out, quick, but watch our backs at the same time. Being trapped inside the admin building with shamblers popping out behind us was a recipe for dying messily.
“Just stick close to my back and keep an eye out for me,” I told her as my heart rate began to slow down. I tried to ignore the quaver in my voice. Maybe Lucia hadn’t noticed it. Once I had my breathing under control, we slowly walked toward the darkened office. Aiming Baby carefully, I entered and saw it was still neat and orderly, just how I remembered it being from my first few days during my intake process. Just to be thorough, I checked behind his desk as well. No signs of any shambler nest. Apparently the duo had been happy camping out behind the secretary’s desk in the front office. Breathing a small sigh of relief, I checked the drawers for any extra bottles of aspirin or anything like it. There was a bottle of Benadryl but nothing else useful. Snagging it, I tossed it to Lucia, who caught it and quickly stashed the plastic bottle in her bag.
“What else is up here?” she asked. I tried to recall Sister Ann’s directions for the first floor before answering.
“There’s a bathroom down by the stairwell and a conference room. Nurse’s office is downstairs.”
“I know that,” she hissed. “Do we need to check the other rooms up here before we go downstairs?”
“Yeah.” For a quiet moment I lamented Monsignor Dietrich’s death. He’d been a really nice guy and had been fair in the decision-making process. Plus, he’d decided to take a chance on the girl everyone back home had called “Mad Maddie.” Though I doubted he could have seen this outcome, he must have seen something in me nobody else had. Not even me.
Poor old guy. Requiescat in pace, Padre.
“Shit.”
“Language,” I murmured automatically, my eyes drifting up to the crucifix mounted on the wall behind the monsignor’s desk. I could hear Sister Ann’s voice in my head gently correcting Lucia. The woman was insidious like that. “Room’s clear. Let’s go.”
After exiting the office, I closed the door to protect it from any potential future shamblers. It would make it easier to secure later if—no, when we would come back. We carefully avoided the two dead shamblers I’d shot as we continued down the hall. They were dead but still bleeding, and the tile flooring was bound to be slick when wet. Idly, I wondered if I should find one of those yellow “Caution: Wet Floor” signs to prop up.
Fortunately for us, it didn’t look like either the bathroom or conference room had been opened during the Fall and there might not be any rude surprises inside waiting for us. Still, we had to be careful. Shamblers had a nasty tendency to survive what would kill regular people.
With the hall secure and no sign of any other shambler responding to the sound of gunfire, we slowly moved toward the rear of the building and the stairwell. Since I was the one who was armed and more than willing to shoot a shambler in the face, I led the way. Honestly, I was just glad Lucia hadn’t run away yet.
We hit the bathroom first. Thankfully, it was clear. I treated it the same as the office. It had one of those self-closing mechanisms on it so it couldn’t stay open. Which was probably why it was clean and empty. Curious, I checked the water pressure. It was still good, which was odd. I hadn’t known the well pump was connected to the admin building as well. I made a note to talk to Emily about it. If we were wasting electricity keeping the well pumping to all the buildings, maybe she could rewire everything so the hot water heater worked again.
Or did it run on gas? Damn it. I knew I should have paid more attention to Emily’s talk on the stuff.
The conference room door was closed, too. Pushing it open slowly, I peeked inside. It smelled bad. Like, really bad. Someone had died in here, though not too recently. Keeping Baby at the ready, I slipped into the room and checked the near corner first. It was the only part of the room I couldn’t see when opening the door. Sister Ann had told me that if I was ever clearing a room by myself, check the blind corner first. Lucia came in right behind me.
A naked, partially rotted corpse was propped up against the wall. Nearby, clothes had clearly been ripped off and piled up on the floor. Judging by the uniform on the ground it had once been a student at St. Dominic’s, like me. Apparently she’d been in the conference room for some reason when she’d been turned into a shambler and hadn’t been able to get out. I didn’t recognize her, though. Not that I made much effort. It was pretty nasty. My main concern was that she didn’t get up and try to eat us.
“Skylar,” Lucia whispered, her eyes on the body. So much for that mystery. The brunette had been in my history class. Not in the same cottage, though. I knew her, but only in passing. She hadn’t been into field hockey.
“Nobody else,” I replied, checking under the large meeting table. It was clear. Skylar had been the only person trapped inside. Thank God. I didn’t want to deal with any more bodies at the moment. I checked the conference door. It was covered in scratches. Deep gouges ran up and down the solid wooden door. Shambler-Skylar had tried real hard to get out. The sight was a sad one, but I’d grown used to these things over the past six months. Seeing things like this caused my heart to harden. It took a lot to rattle me these days. “Clear.”
“No meds. Let’s get out of here.”
“No. We need to go downstairs, remember? Nurse’s office.”
“Shit,” she swore.
I didn’t correct her language this time. We backed out and headed to the stairs. The lower level was a bit isolated from the rest of the building, thanks to the heavy cinder block and concrete structure. Sound was muffled and distorted, so the possibility of a shambler not hearing the gunshots were there. When they’d built this place way back in ancient times, the intention clearly had been for it to stick around longer than the builders. Plus, some mad genius had probably considered making it a bunker like the cafeteria before changing their mind.
How this building passed inspection by the fire marshal was beyond me. It had been a death trap before the Fall.
It was almost pitch black in the stairwell. Lucia shined her light down and we waited for a minute for a shambler to show up. To emphasize the point, I tapped the butt of Baby against the guardrail. The loud pinging sound echoed down into the lower level. Still nothing. We waited another full minute before I was convinced. If there was a shambler down there, it wasn’t one of the fast, energetic ones. I motioned for Lucia to stay on my left before we started our descent.
Going down the stairs and keeping Baby ready was a small problem. Lucia kept jerking the light up and down with every step, not keeping it level anywhere. The random laminated signs on the walls—a notice about worker’s compensation, FML something, and a large one talking about federal labor laws—kept reflecting Lucia’s flashlight back into our eyes. I finally had to stop and wait for the purple blobs to fade away before we kept going.
“Sorry,” she hissed.
“Keep it low, waist level,” I told her. “If something moves, tilt the light up at its face.”
“You think . . . you think there’s a shambler down here?”
“Probably not. One would have come running already.”
“But—”
“Hey, we’re good,” I tried to reassure her. “Let’s grab any meds and get out of here.” And keep that damn light out of my eyes, I didn’t say.
The layout to the lower level was simple. There was a single long hallway that ran beneath the length of the building with rooms on both sides. The right side of the hall had two offices and a storage room, though Sister Ann hadn’t been too certain what was stored in it. The other side had the nurse’s office, two more offices, and the donations closet. I’d only been down here once before, when I’d gotten sick during the early days of the Pacific Flu and recovered quickly.
Lucky me.
The nurse’s office door was partially shut, but there was one of those rectangular windows built into it, so I peeked inside. A small slit window near the ceiling allowed in fading daylight, so it wasn’t as dark as the stairwell. It stank in here as well. There was a small cot, a desk, and a chair all next to a floor-to-ceiling cabinet, which looked locked. I couldn’t see what was on the shelves but there definitely was something in the med cabinet. No signs of any shamblers, though there was another door in the room.
Thinking back, I vaguely remembered puking my guts out in a bathroom when I had the flu, and that I’d crawled from the cot to do it. The mysterious door probably led to it. Still, it was worth checking out after. I sniffed to confirm. The smell down here was just as bad as it’d been in the conference room. Could stink seep through concrete? Something to ask Sister Ann about.
Lucia wiggled the light to get my attention before shining it down the hall. We still had seven other rooms to clear, and time was of the essence. Neither one of us wanted to be down here when it got fully dark.
Three of the office doors were locked. I tapped on each one with a knuckle and listened, but there was no answering noise. Either it was empty or a shambler trapped inside had long since died. Since we didn’t have keys there was no point in forcing the issue. It quickly became routine. Approach a door, test the handle. Locked, I would knock twice and listen. No response, move on.
The storage room was unlocked and chock full of goodies. There were bottles of bleach, ammonia, toilet cleaner, detergent, and other supplies we could use. Paper towels were stacked high on shelves, the top almost reaching the ceiling. I didn’t know what we would do with it all at the moment, but eventually when we cleared and cleaned the cottages, the supplies would definitely come in handy.
The clothing closet/donations room was also unlocked and stuffed to the gills with clothes and personal supplies, like tampons and pads. I nearly squealed in delight. There were camo jackets and shirts neatly folded up in a pile, and multiple pairs of almost-new hiking boots laid out on another rack. It was like Christmas come early for me.
“Since we cleared it, you think we get first dibs?” Lucia asked.
“We better,” I muttered, eyeballing a pair of hunting pants that looked like my size. They had pockets everywhere. There were also a pair of hiking boots that intrigued me. I did not know hunting camo and pink could work, yet here we were. “Maybe I can finally quit parading around like a dirty old man’s wet dream.”
“That’s nasty.”
“Yeah, well . . . not like anyone had a size zero pair of jeans just laying around.”
“A zero . . . ? Bitch.”
“I love you, too.”
The final office wasn’t locked, but it appeared as empty as the others. We checked the desk and the cabinet, but both were locked tightly up. Unlike Monsignor Dietrich, the sisters who’d worked down here with the admin people had followed the strict drug protocols they had here on campus and kept everything locked up either in their private rooms or the med cabinet in the nurse’s office. Which was both smart and inconvenient. One day, though, we were going to have to clear the convent rooms behind the school.
I was dreading that day.
“You smell that?” Lucia asked, wrinkling her nose in disgust. I sniffed and shrugged.
“Might be another body down here somewhere,” I murmured and closed the door. The admin building might be worth using in the future, once the shamblers stopped coming up to campus. The cleanup upstairs would be a pain, but no worse than some of the younger dorms were going to be. Easier, in fact. Other than the mess I’d caused in the reception area upstairs and the partially rotted body in the conference room, the building was remarkably clean.
Working our way back down the hall, I pushed open the nurse’s office door. Earlier I noticed that the stench in here was pretty bad. Now that I was inside, it was arguably even worse than the conference room. The smell was an all-too familiar one. It was the smell of death and rot. Looking around, there was no sign of any other bodies. Whatever had died nearby had the decency to do it out of sight. Hopefully it was a possum or something in the air-conditioning vents.
The nurse’s office was abandoned. Lucia flashed her light around and it reflected off shelves mounted on the old brick wall. The shelves—locked tight behind thick glass—were stocked full of goodies. I didn’t know if any of them could help Rohena, but at least we found medicines. This trip had been extremely fruitful.
“There’s a shit ton of meds down here!” Lucia exclaimed excitedly as she shined the flashlight around at the shelves. “I don’t even know what half this stuff is! Oh, aspirin! Hey . . . I think I found it! Amoxicillin! That’s like penicillin, right?”
“I guess? Hurry up. I want to get out of here,” I told her as I kept an ear out for any other shamblers. So far, so good. Other than the two on the main floor, we appeared to be in the clear. Though the horrid smell was worse in here than the hall. Surprising, that. Though there was a steady buzzing sound nearby that tickled the edges of my memory. I looked around the nurse’s office as Lucia began opening the drawers, looking for the keys. It was pretty much how I remembered it, except for the small puddle of water coming in from beneath the partially closed door to the bathroom.
“Where’d Sister Ann say the keys were kept?” Lucia asked me. I sighed dramatically.
“Right-hand middle drawer,” I reminded her, my eyes on the door. There was a background noise coming from somewhere nearby. Also like an electrical buzzing, the same that the fluorescent lights used to make. It bugged me. Every instinct I had was screaming at me to run, to get out of there. My hand tightened on Baby’s grip. There was an indescribable evil here. Thoughts of rehabbing the admin building for future use had gone out the window. I just wanted to get the hell out of there. “Hanging from the hook on the left. Pink tape on the key.”
She began digging in the drawer. “How do you remember this stuff?”
“Because I paid attention.” And I had Sister Ann remind me again while you were in the bathroom, I didn’t say as I looked her way.
“Fou—”
“Sssh!” I hissed at her, holding up a hand. Lucia froze, the medicine cabinet keys in hand. Had I heard something? My eyes drifted back to the bathroom. The buzzing sound remained steady and constant. Had the noise come from in there? What was making the noise? The odds of a shambler hiding in there were slim, but not none. I brought Baby up and slowly crept to the partially closed door. My heart hammered heavily in my chest. The horrid stench grew worse. I knew what I was going to find, but at the same time I hoped I wouldn’t. With the barrel of Baby, I pushed the door the rest of the way open.
On the tile floor in a large puddle of water lay the emaciated, half-eaten corpse of a child. Lying in the water, it had partially rotted, though the top half appeared to have mummified slightly. There was a swarm of flies near the feet. The stench was overpowering, and made me gag.
The impromptu inspection continued. It grew more horrifying with each passing moment. The child’s short blond hair was partially ripped off, like something had been in the process of eating him before being interrupted. Lucia gasped and covered her mouth as she recognized the boy. I did, too. One mystery of that fateful spring day was solved. Little Jacob had hidden in the nurse’s office, hoping that the scary monsters wouldn’t find him.
They had.
“This is what Sister Ann was worried we’d find in the rooms,” I whispered and gently closed the door. The buzzing sound ceased. Lucia was crying. It was hard for me not to as well.
One day we’d come back and give little Jacob a proper burial, but not today. We needed to focus on saving the living.
“Get the meds,” I managed to choke out. My eyes burned and my throat felt dry, as if I hadn’t had a drink of water in years. We needed to flee, burn the place down, and never come back. Ever. Fuck clearing the building. It should be burned to the ground. “All of them. Hurry.”
Lucia nodded, her cheeks wet from tears, and unlocked the cabinet. She began dumping all of the meds into the bag, not even paying attention to what they were. Let Sister Ann figure it out. I didn’t want to spend another minute in there. Neither did Lucia. We had what we came for.
Whispering a silent prayer for little Jacob, we headed back upstairs. Fortunately for the shamblers, none lingered where I could shoot them in their faces.