Dead Outside (Book 1) (16 page)

He
just saluted me sarcastically and went back inside the shed.

I
flipped him off as I walked away, even though he probably didn’t see it, it did
make me feel a little better.

By
the time I got back to the house Sarah and Roxie were folding up blankets and
sheets in the living room, despite Sarah probably still being mad at me. It wasn’t
like I could avoid her. “How’s the food and medicine gathering going?”

“Already
finished,” Roxie answered. “We’re packing up bedding now, and that’ll be
everything we need from here.”

I
probably shouldn’t have been surprised. There wasn’t much left here, and it was
still not even ten o’clock yet, which gave us plenty of time to block off that
school today. “Good, then we leave in an hour.”

Chapter Sixteen: School

11:30
AM, July 8

Nick
wasn’t entirely pleased about leaving today, but I wasn’t going to sit around
and waste another day when we could be safer somewhere else.

I
was driving my truck with Sarah riding shotgun, which was more than just a
figure of speech now. She didn’t seem as mad at me by the time we left, and I
wasn’t going to remind her, so I just drove silently. Nick and Roxie were
following close behind us on the four-wheelers.

We
found two stereos in the house to use as distractions. Sarah was holding one,
and Nick had the other. I stopped at the crossroad leading to the school to
drop ours off. Nick and Roxie continued on past us to drop the other stereo off
on the opposite side of the school.

I
flipped it on, cranked the volume all the way up, then pressed play. It was so
loud I almost fell over. In retrospect I probably should have used some ear
plugs or something. I didn’t waste any time getting back in the truck.

My
ears were ringing something awful, but I could still hear the rock and roll.
Sarah looked over at me and laughed, “You
would
play AC/DC.”

“Well
I wasn’t exactly going to blast Katy Perry,” I said sarcastically.

“Yeah,
you wouldn’t want to leave behind your favorite album would you?” she teased.

“You
know it,” I responded sarcastically rolling my eyes. “Now let’s focus, this
ain’t exactly going to be easy.”

I
drove slowly in front of the school. I went here for four years as a student,
and had been working here as a substitute teacher for almost three years.

I
knew the hallways better then anybody, every classroom and closet was committed
to memory. The school’s main building was horseshoe shape around a central
courtyard with the open side facing east. The fourth side of the courtyard had
three smaller buildings closing it in. The Gym was the building furthest north,
then the Library in the middle, then the cafeteria to the south. The auto
garage and wood shop building was behind the library and cafeteria. The student
parking lot was on the north side of the school, and the bus loop was on the
south side.

All
we had to do was drive buses into the walkways between the buildings, lock all
the doors and it would be completely enclosed.

We
stopped in front of the entrance to the student parking lot which was just
north of the school. Nick and Roxie were already on their way back from
dropping off their stereo.

I
glanced over at Sarah. She looked back and gave me a reassuring smile,
“Everything alright?”

“Yeah
I’m fine,” I shrugged. “How about you? Coming back here must be pretty tough.”

She
also shrugged, “Alright I guess. I did see a lot of death here, but I have to
move on eventually right?”

I
nodded, and then noticed Nick and Roxie were pulling up next to us. Nick was
gesturing toward the open gate, so I rolled down the window, “What’s up?”

“The
road is blocked,” he pointed out. The parking lot was packed full, and not just
the spaces, cars filled up the aisles in between as well. I noticed that the
sidewalk was clear though. “We can’t exactly drive over those cars, and there
are a lot of those things in there.”

I
just smirked, “Road? We don’t need a road.” I turned the wheel sharp and hopped
the curb, driving half on the sidewalk, half on the grass, completely avoiding
the cars.

She
just shook her head, trying in vain to hold back the laughter. "I don't
think that's the quote you were looking for."

"Eh,"
I shrugged with a smirk, "close enough."

There
was quite a large gap between the gymnasium and the main building, so my truck
fit through it no problem. Once I drove through the gap I was in the center
courtyard. I tried my best to avoid them, but bodies were everywhere, and the
truck bounced as if they were speed bumps.

I
didn’t waste any time once we reached the center of the courtyard. I shut off
the ignition and Sarah and I both got out of the truck. Nick and Roxie pulled
up right behind us.

Roxie
shut her four-wheeler off, but Nick kept his running. “Come on, we’ll ride this
to the buses, we can get this done faster.”

“Good
idea,” I nodded. That would save us some time for sure, I hopped on and he sped
off so fast I damn near fell off.

We
stopped in the middle of the bus loop. There was enough space between two of
the buses for me to turn one and drive it out. I was mentally crossing my
fingers that the keys were still in it. I hopped off the four-wheeler and
pushed the door open on the bus. Nick stayed where he was, keeping an eye out
for any wandering zombies.

The
driver, or what was left of him, was still in the driver’s seat. Most of his
limbs were gone, just bone with bits of meat and tattered clothing hanging off.
It turned its head and started snapping its jaws at me, but there wasn’t enough
muscle left to move his body toward me, other than to snap at the air.

I
aimed at its head and fired. The rest of the bus was clear. There was blood all
over the floor, but no more bodies. The driver’s body didn’t weigh much anymore.
I tossed it into the aisle between the seats. The keys were still half hanging
out of the ignition.

I
turned the key and heard the low rumble of the engine firing up. I looked over
at Nick and gave him the thumbs up, “Follow me! I’m gonna block the way we
drove in so none of the ones in the parking lot follow us in.”

He
nodded in agreement and backed up so I had room to get out. I turned the wheel
as hard as I could, but still scraped the bus in front of me.

Some
of the zombies in the neighborhood across the street from the school were
already stumbling toward where we drove in. I ignored them. Once we blocked off
all the gaps between buildings they wouldn’t be able to get in.

I
could hear gunshots from inside the school, which meant they either followed us
from the parking lot, or were coming out of the school.

I
hopped the same curb to get around the cars in the parking lot just like I did
with my truck. The bus was awkward to handle, but I was getting the hang of it.
The space between the buildings was smaller then the length of the bus so I
pulled up against the side of the main building, so close that I could hear the
metal side scraping the brick building.

Nick
gave me the thumbs up that the space between the buildings was blocked, so I
shut down the bus and got up. The side door was now blocked by the wall of the
gymnasium, so I went out the back emergency exit, which I made sure to shut
after I hoped out.

There
were at least twenty zombies coming after us, but now that this area was
blocked I didn’t need to waste ammo trying to take them down, so I sprinted to
Nick’s four-wheeler and hopped on. “Go!” I yelled as he accelerated. We were
going so fast I had to put a hand on my hat so it didn’t fly off.

Rather
then try to dodge the zombies that had followed us in he drove around the
school in the opposite direction, through the grass behind the school. We only
had to block four more spaces between the various buildings, though we would
need at least two buses to block off the area between the lunch room and the
main building.

The
second bus was empty, but like the last one there was blood all over the place.
The key was lying on the floor next to the seat.

“Nick,
let’s fill up these hallways in a clockwise motion,” I yelled to him as I fired
up the second bus, “So the zombies don’t follow us in any large numbers.”

He
gave me thumbs up. “Better hurry then, that big group by the parking lot was on
a mission.”

I
shut the door and drove the bus around the bus loop on the sidewalk. Going
around this time I noticed even more zombies following the way we had just
drove around the school. It didn’t take me but a second to decide to just run
them over. Each bump was more satisfying then the last one.

The
rear or east side of the school was relatively devoid of even corpses on the
ground, but we needed to cover all our bases. I parked the second bus same as
the first, only this time blocking the walkway between the gymnasium and the
library, then got on the four-wheeler to get the next bus.

The
next bus didn’t have any keys in it so I hopped back out to get in the next
one. The rest of the buses were empty, just the dried pools of blood, maybe a
bone or two. I drove them to the other walkways that needed blocking, between
the library and the auto garage and wood shop, and blocked them.

The
last walkway was the one between the cafeteria and the main building. We’d
already driven one bus up against the cafeteria but needed this one to close
the rest of the walkway and outside eating area so that it was entirely blocked
off. This time I was backing up to the spot rather then driving forward into it
so that the door led inside rather than out, otherwise I would be stuck
outside. Nick was already inside the courtyard guiding me in.

I
felt the bus jolt as I hit the one behind me. I shut off the ignition just in
time to hear more gunshots coming from the courtyard. I didn’t bother getting
on the four-wheeler. We weren’t but fifty yards from Sarah and Roxie. Nick shut
down his four-wheeler and did the same.

There
were at least a dozen new bodies around the courtyard. Roxie was aiming my .22
rifle at one of them on the second floor. She missed with the first shot, and
then dropped it with a second.

“Nice
shootin’, Tex!” Nick hollered in a crappy Texan accent.

Roxie
shot him a look, “I’d like to see you hit one from that far in one shot.”

“Alright
kids, lets get working on clearing these classrooms and making sure any doors
leading outside are locked.” I started refilling my clip after taking care of
the zombies in the buses. “It looks like all the bottom floor shutters are
down. I made sure to look at all of them while we were parking the buses. The
master keys should be somewhere in the main office. From here on out we all
stay together until we’ve cleared the entire grounds.”

I
was expecting one of them to make a joke, or salute or something, but I could
tell by their faces they knew how serious this was. We weren’t playing a video
game, this was really life or death.

The
front office was completely dark inside. We brought flashlights just in case
this would be the case, especially with all the window storm shutters down. I’d
been to this school plenty of times while substitute teaching, so I knew where
the keys were kept. I grabbed four copies, one for each of us. Roxie found a campus
map to help us cross off the rooms as we cleared them.

I
let Sarah use my pistol. I decided that using my baseball bat would help us to
save what little ammo we had left.

The
main office, guidance office, and attendance office were clear. There were a
few bodies on the ground, but they either had bullet wounds in their heads, or
didn’t have heads.

After
we made sure the attendance office was clear we set the map down on one of the
tables. “Okay, so we all know the school is broken up into these buildings, the
main horseshoe shaped building. The offices and the history department are the
west side, where we are now. The science and art classrooms are on the north
side. The Math and English classrooms are on the south side. And then we have
the library, cafeteria, gym, and other separate buildings on the East side” I
looked back up at everyone else. “Where do we start?”

“The
army set up a triage center in the Health and Science classrooms here,” she
pointed at the map. “If anything, that’s where they will be the most congested.
They sent anyone who was bitten there.”

“Well
that’s as good a place as any to start,” I looked at the map again. “All the
classrooms on the outside edge of the school connect to the ones on the inside
through the Teacher Planning rooms, so we won’t have to go outside again.”

We
left the office and went into the first classroom on the north side. It was
just as dark as the offices. I went in first. Nick was right behind me, and
then Roxie behind him. Sarah stayed at the doorway to cover our rear so we
wouldn’t be surrounded.

There
were medical supplies galore, on shelves and on the floor. The army sure left a
lot of stuff when they left, just like Nick said. There were five zombies
walking around. I expected there to be more, and from the looks of it there
was. Blood was everywhere, on the floor, the walls, even the turned over cots.

I
hit the closest one hard with a swing to the left side of its head. It fell to
the floor but still tried to get back up. Nick and Roxie stepped in front of me
and took care of the rest as I swung the bat down on the first one’s head
again.

The
rest of the classrooms followed a similar pattern. We went in, took care of any
zombies, and then locked the doors behind us.

It
felt like one of those movies with army guys entering a room, and methodically
taking out the targets inside. Maybe watching those movies and playing those
video games is what kept us alive this long.

We
were almost out of ammo after clearing the first floor of the north side, there
had to have been at least forty of them in the various classrooms. After
clearing the last room, we went back to the truck to refill our weapons, drink
some water, and just clear our heads for a few minutes.

The
heat was brutal. I’d worked outside in the summer before sure, but this was
something else. There was nowhere to hide from it. I thought about firing up my
truck just for the air conditioning inside, but we couldn’t waste the gas.

I
was sitting on the tailgate of my truck, wiping the blood and brain matter off
my bat when Nick stood up, “If we’re going to do this let’s get it done, we
still have a lot of rooms to clear.”