Diaries of the Damned (6 page)

Lord Jesus, help me.
Leon thought to himself as he rose to his feet. The sound of the growls broke through the mental barrier. Trembling, Leon held his arms out, sweat dripped from his body, yet he shivered with cold. His heart thundered so fast it felt as if it vibrated rather than beat. He swallowed; his throat was dry and rough, his tongue a sticky mass that sat useless in the base of his lower jaw. One shaky shuffle and he was on the edge.
Ok Leon, just one more,
he tried to prepare himself, when out of nowhere, a police car with lights and sirens blazing came careening into view. It came in a straight line down Upper Queen Street, the main road that led into the supermarket complex. The car mounted the curb, and crashed clumsily into one of the non-shopper, pay and display ticket machines. The sound of the crash caused the entire group to turn. Without so much as a moment’s hesitation to ponder the quandary, they set off toward the car. As Leon watched, his head swimming against a black current that threatened to pull him out to sea, he thought for a moment that the zombies moved quicker; that they ran from the supermarket, eager to integrate themselves in outside world.

During the scuffle, the creatures had broken both the driver and passenger side windows. Slipping from the roof, Leon lowered himself to the passenger side, keeping himself hidden behind the truck. Leon heard a couple of growls behind him. When he looked, the two walking corpses were some way off; he had time.  Sliding his arm through the broken window, he opened the door and climbed inside. Fumbling beneath the steering wheel, Leon ripped open the covering that hid the electronics from view. He struggled to pull a knife from the bag that rested on the floor between the seats. Their emergency kit ensured they were ready for any situation, even the rise of the dead it would seem. With the ignition wire cut through and the ends exposed, Leon closed his eyes and said a silent prayer. He had not hotwired a car since he was a young rebellious teenager. The wires came together and the engine jumped into life.

Leon exhaled, sat up in the seat, and gasped as his eyes met those of the recently deceased girl from the shop. She had crawled up the front the vehicle and held on via the wipers. Throwing the ambulance into reverse, Leon sped back and screeched to a halt. The monstrous parody of the girl lost its grip and slid to the pavement. Without hesitation, Leon put the ambulance into drive and floored the gas pedal. He felt the bump as he drove over the zombie, and in the rear view mirror saw the flattened torso, while the head seemed to burst like a balloon. Leon knew that it had been a child, but also knew that it was a new world which had begun to bloom. One that embodied the kill or be killed sentiment.  He gave a chuckle at the thought; he laughed until he cried, then he just cried. Leon drove through a torrent of tears, afraid to stop the vehicle, unable to stop the anguish inside his head.

The real craziness started the moment he left the retail park. Zombies moved in all directions, the pack instinct of the supermarket mob - who had pulled the unconscious police officer from his car, and ripped him apart - was gone. Zombies ambled along their own shuffling course, in search of the scent of living flesh. Of course, they all
turned to look at the speeding ambulance, but Leon did not plan to stop for anybody. He mowed down any creature that got in his way. All around him people were screaming, the echoes of terror creeping through the broken windows and echoed around the ambulance like a cold wind through an old house.

Leon came to a junction of the main road; a crossroads in his journey - in his life. He could see how quickly the dead had spread and how the law and order of civilization crumbled. Every small shop he passed was looted, or in the process thereof. Leon witnessed the small
Pakistani owner of a corner shop burst through the door after a pair of fleeing youths. His turban had unraveled and dragged behind him sodden with blood.

Leon knew that he would not be able to rescue both his daughter who was at school, and his wife, who was home for the day, preparing their house for a showing. They harbored hopes of completin
g that sale before the summer, having already bought a newly built home on the outskirts of the city. He had told his wife to keep their daughter home from school, but she had stayed the night with a friend, and they had been unable to contact the parents to discuss it. The school later confirmed that both girls had arrived that morning, and that the quarantine order was in full effect within campus boundaries. Classes had been relocated to the main building wherever possible. There had been a general air of overreaction with regards to the warning. Even Leon had found it somewhat unbelievable…until now.

Leon looked both left and right, debating which way to go. With a heavy heart, he took a deep breath, and turned in the direction of the school. 

Leon’s daughter Keisha went to a private school in a small satellite town. She received a full scholarship to attend; they would never have been able to afford it otherwise.
Maybe it has not reached them
, Leon thought as he sped through the back roads.

The school was a large old family estate, with the main house being home to the main teaching area. Three other buildings had been added, or in the case of the sports hall, converted. Two square structures, the science building and the computer lab stood side by side along the main drive, directly before the main house, and the car park.

Leon felt his heart sink as he turned into the driveway and immediately ran down a young boy; he could not have been more than twelve, a little older than his daughter, who stood in the middle of the road holding a human arm, munching on the raw flesh without a care in the world.

Leon feared the worst, but continued his drive anyway. The long entrance road that led to the school took him past the two sports fields; one was set as a rugby pitch, the other as a football field. The rugby pitch, which was at the bottom of the drive was empty, the football pitch however showed something interesting. The net nearest the road had three zombies trapped in it. The arms and legs caught and twisted into the netting.

They could not have done that to themselves,
Leon thought. A small ray of hope broke through the cold, suffocating cloud of hopelessness that had enveloped him. 

The main school building was a mess. The windows had been smashed, and it looked as though there had been a small fire in one of the classrooms on the second floor of the building. The car park was full, and the large playing field opposite the main building was filled with the undead. At least a hundred students wandered aimlessly in search of their next juicy meal. There were teachers there too, but when Leon caught sight of Abigail, his daughter’s best friend, he slammed his foot on the brakes and brought the ambulance to a sudden stop. The noise attracted some attention, and Leon was not about to wait for another supermarket situation to happen. Leon said a silent prayer for Abigail, and started moving again. Rolling along slowly, he tried to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. There was no way he could turn around; he needed to drive the long looping road, which would take him to the front of the school, into the car park. There was no other choice.

The crowd drew closer, following him like groupies. By the time Leon pulled up in front of the school, the entire populations of the playing field had noticed him and had turned his way. Leon was about to drive away when he saw movement coming from inside the school; from one of the windows on the upper level. He slowed, leaning forward to gaze up at the building.
It is probably just one of them,
Leon thought. He had scanned the group, looking for his daughter, but out of all of the zombies he had seen, she did not appear to be among them.

The movement came again, from the window. It was a man, and he was very much alive. Upon seeing the ambulance, the window opened and a white linen sheet appeared.

“Help us,” the plea was weak, for fear of attracting even more of the undead, but Leon heard it loud and clear.

For the second time that day, Leon took a dangerous chance. He jumped out of the ambulance and sprinted into the main building, leaving the ambulance running. He closed the door, but doubted the creatures would have the intelligence or the will power to turn away from the prospect of a fresh meal long enough to even try to steal it.

The heavy front door opened with a struggle, and Leon ran in, tripping into the pile of desks and chairs and that been stacked before the door in a crude attempt at a barricade. There were three dead bodies on the floor; zombies, their heads lined against the opposite wall. Their blood was a thick black jelly that cooled on the heavy natural stone floor. There was a growl at the door, and Leon reacted just in time to slam the door shut, trapping the left hand of the young, newly dead student that was trying to climb through, severing her hand at the base of the finger. What made Leon’s stomach churn most of all was that the fingers continued to squirm on the floor like fat maggots.

The school building was quiet. The pounding of hungry fists was a constant beat, but Leon already found himself growing numb to it. He walked over and looked through the window. The ambulance was still there. None of the zombies even paid it any mind. There was a group of about five of them by the front door. One girl, who must have been in her final year peered through the window, her nose pressed against the glass. L
eon recoiled; tripping backward, falling to the floor.

“It’s ok, she can’t see you,” a voice whispered, eliciting an even greater start from Leon. “It’s kind of like one way glass. It has a special coat of some sort of paint. You can only see through if you peer hard. Those things just aren
’t that smart,” the voice continued.

Leon spun around, and saw an elderly man standing in what had, until a few moments earlier, been a closed doorway.

“Who are you?” Leon asked, picking himself up from the floor.

“Please, not so loud. If they hear you
we are all dead,” the man whispered nervously. He glanced around, as if uncertain whether the coast was clear. Once he was satisfied, he scurried from the hall and quickly led Leon into the darkness of the room, and quietly shut the door behind them.

The gloom was overwhelming, and Leon began to fear he had made a mistake following the man, when suddenly, the lights went on revealing the full extent of the situation.

The room was a small classroom, probably one of the private study areas that the older kids used in the build up toward exams. There were three desks, and at a quick count eleven chairs in the room. Leon deduced that they had not all originated from the same place.  A student, several of whom were dirty and bruised, occupied each stool. Only one girl was spotless; she had in fact been the girl who saved the teacher, who, in turn saved the students. She had been using the room, as was rightly so, for a study area. When she had heard the screams she went to investigate only to be just in time to see the headmistress eaten alive.

While she had been both directly and indirectly responsible for rescuing the students, she had quickly shut down. She raised her head to study Leon. He saw all of the fear she worked so hard to keep bottled up. As if recognizing this fact, the girl nodded at Leon, and returned her gaze to the book, which she clasped to as if it were a life preserver.

Leon looked around the room, but couldn´t see his daughter anywhere. Yet, the fact that he had found survivors gave Leon hope.

`Who are you?” t
he older man asked. When Leon turned to face him, he saw that the man held a large carving knife before him, ready to strike if the answer given was not good enough.

“Hey, hey, I’m alive; I’m not going to hurt you.” The knife had startled Leon, and it threw his thought process off-track. “I’m looking for my daughter. Keisha, Keisha De Guzman,” Leon kept his voice calm, but could not take his eyes off the knife. Leon was not afraid of it; he had st
udied martial arts for a number of years and worked out regularly, unlike the teacher, whose potbelly stretched his shirt buttons. If it came to a fight, Leon could take the knife without problem, but he did not want that. The kids had been through enough.

“
It’s okay, Mr. Matthews, I know Keisha. We are…were in the same English literature group,” one of the girls spoke up.

The teacher looked over at the girl and lowered the knife. “Ok,” he said, clearly upset at the arrival of someone else.

Leon turned around to look at the girl. He did not recognize her, but then again, Keisha had many friends. “Have you seen her?” he asked, aware of how pleading his tone was.

The girl, a white girl whose skin was brown with dirt and blood, lowered her eyes to the floor. Her school uniform was filthy and she had her arms wrapped around herself. “No, sir, I haven’t seen her since… since they came.” She stumbled over her words, eager to have them spoken so that she could return to silence.

Leon felt his heart sink, and it must have shown on his face.

“There are
other groups though,” a tall girl spoke up. Her left arm was caked in blood, and she had the beginnings of a good black eye. The swelling occupied the right side of her face. Yet a fire burned behind those eyes, a determination that the others noticeably lacked. It was then that Leon realized how, to look at them, the group had already given up hope.

“Where? How many are there?” Leon asked. He was eager to be out of the room. Defeat was contagious, and he had no plans on giving up.