Zombie High Chronicles (Book 1) (8 page)

Flynn looks at the assembled group before speaking. “You seem to be the only one around here who knows stuff.”

“So?”

“So that means we need you.”

“For what?” I lean back in my chair and stretch my arms up over my head. I notice Ember’s sideways glance at my exposed abdomen and smile. Yeah, she liked what she felt earlier, but I am firmly denying that the feeling is mutual. “None of you know how to survive, you don’t open your eyes to the obvious and you would just slow me down. I don’t need you and I sure as hell don’t need your help.”

“Then why are you still here?” Tyrel speaks up as he shifts Isa in his lap.

“I keep asking myself that and I’ve yet to come up with a good reason. But while I’m here all I want is to serve my time and be left alone.”

“Tough.”  I look up in surprise to see that it is Coleman who spoke. He wears a stocking hat pulled down low enough to hide his unruly hair but not the bruise that has taken over his right cheek.

“What the hell happened to you?”  Normally I wouldn’t care but I kinda like the kid. He has a mind for strategy and that could come in useful. These other sheep are nothing more than a casualty waiting to happen, but he has potential.

“Got smart with one of the guards at the testing center.”  

I grin back at him. He took the beating like a man and that is something I can respect.

“Sergeant Waterford?”

“Nope. Sargent Bonneville. The one with the mustache that looks like a caterpillar curled up on his lip and died.”

I chuckle. “Yeah, I know the one. Smells like black licorice.”

“That’s the one.”

“Do his injuries amuse you, Roan?” Tyrel’s sharp tone cuts through the light-hearted mood with a precision that instantly sobers me.

“Amuse me? No, but they are a reality that all of you will face soon enough.”

“Like hell, we will.”  Everyone turns to look at Kensley, shocked that she’s actually joined the conversation. “What? Not all of us think that the soldiers are a menace.”

“That’s because you’ve slept with most of them,” Bex snickers.

“The point is,” I interrupt before a catfight breaks out, “is that if you go searching for a truth that no one wants you to discover then you’re going to be met with resistance.  That resistance doesn’t always look pretty. If you think you are prepared to walk down that path you need to know what you are getting yourself into. You have to ask yourself if this is really what you want.”

I pause to look each person in the eye. Most stare right back though a few look away and I know that they will be the first to go when the crap truly hits the fan. “This isn’t a game that you can call a timeout on when things get rough. Those soldiers have a job to do and those guns are very real. No do-overs. No going back. No extra lives to bank on.”

“We know,” Flynn says, leaning in close as the others try to feign disinterest when one of the teachers walks by and calls out that there are five minutes remaining before classes resume.  “That’s why we need someone like you around. Someone who knows what he’s talking about.”

I tap my fingers against the table, weighing out my options. Either I can tell them to take a long hike off a tall cliff and hope they don’t get in my way when things fell apart, or I could weed through them to find talent and enlist them to help me. If they get hurt or killed along the way...well, they did volunteer after I warned them of the danger.

“If we do this, and I’m not saying that I’m agreeing, I need to know that you will follow my orders. This is not a democracy. You either do what I say when I say it without question or get out of my way.”

I can tell a few in the group don’t like my terms and make a mental note of each of them. They will be the ones to wimp out or throw me under the bus when they are pressed to act.  “Think it over and let me know. It’s no skin off my back if you all just bugger off and leave me be.  In fact, I encourage you to do that.”

Two soldiers open the mess hall doors and the teachers call out that it is time to head to class. I rise first and head for the trash can. Chucking my partially eaten MRE through the air, it hits the side of the plastic can and splatters the back of Sergeant Tompkins head, where he sits eating.

He slowly raises his hand to wipe the smear of tomato sauce from his buzz cut his.  “Sterling!”

“What?” I shrug as he shoves his chair back and turns to glare down at me. I’m a pretty well-built guy but Tompkins towers over me by at least three inches and fifty pounds. Not all of that is muscles, thankfully.  I settle back onto the balls of my feet. “I think it’s improvement. The red really brings out the color of your eyes.”

I brace for the impact when he lunges but he hits like a wrecking ball and knocks the wind straight out of me as we plummet the floor. All around me, I see dozens of shoes racing forward to form a circle while a chant of “fight, fight fight,” drowns out the teachers’ demands for a return to order.  Fat chance of that happening.

My head slams to the side as I take a right cross to the jaw that leaves that whole side of my face numb. I stumble back but quickly regain my footing and sidestep the second punch. Tompkins is thrown off balance but his wild swing and I quickly gain the advantage of speed over meathead Tompkins. He lumbers toward me with his arms held wide but I duck under his swinging arms and slide across the floor on my knees.

“Get back here!”

Pulling myself upright, I turn and brace myself against one of the dining hall tables and wait.  The instant he comes into range, I lift my legs and slam my feet into his stomach. With a loud groan, his knees buckle and he goes down, clutching his belly.

Grabbing hold of his head, I slam my knee into his chest but he is prepared for my attack and shoves me off. I hit the ground hard but use the momentum to roll back to a crouch. As he grabs for a chair to hurl at me, I kick out my right foot and take his legs out from under him. He roars as he slams to the ground.

The crowd goes wild around me but I don’t allow myself to feel anything more than trepidation. I’ve just poked a very angry bear and to celebrate now could be my downfall. I have to be careful in how I proceed because if I mistakenly allow Tompkins to get his hands on me, I’ll be up shit creek without a paddle.

“Roan! Roan! Roan!” Shouts of my name rise around me as Tompkins feigns a dead leg and grabs onto my foot. He snags his fingers through my laces and yanks me off my feet.  

I twisted and turned as he tries to gain a hold on me, his weight bears down on me from above. Curling inward to protect my ribs, I suffer through his well-placed punches and wait for my moment. The instant it comes, I hit him with an uppercut to the jaw that sends him sprawling backward. He shakes his head as I roll up to a crouch and wait.

“I told you Road would fight dirty,” Vaughn crows from somewhere behind me but I ignore him. Distraction is the last thing I need right now.

A second later I see Tompkin’s hand reaching for his gun and I dive forward, taking him off guard with a shoulder to the gut. I drive him to the floor with enough force to knock the gun from his hand. It spirals between the feet of the onlookers.

“Move!” I roar as I shove legs out of my way as I crawl toward the gun. I have just looped my finger through the strap when Tompkins latches onto my leg and yanks me back. With my free leg, I aim a kick at his nose and feel a satisfying crunch followed by him releasing his grip on my ankle.

By the time he has his hands clasped around his bleeding nose, I have the muzzle of the gun pressed to his temple.

“Give me a reason,” I grow through a fat lip that has begun to swell. I will feel that in the morning. I’m also forced to favor my right side where the soldier managed to land a couple key punches but I try not to show it. He might be a meathead but he has a wicked punch that tells me at one time someone taught him how to street brawl.

“Alright son,” a voice calls from my right and I turn to see Tompkins’ partner looking down the sights of his gun at me. “Drop the weapon and back away.”

“Sure,” I spit to the side and taste blood. “You wait until your boy here is on the ropes before you stop the fight.”

“Lower the weapon, kid. I will not ask again.”

The radio at his side crackles to life and those standing closest fall silent. I glance down at it when a voice comes through loud and clear. “Containment breach in Quadrant 5. Lockdown sequence initiated.”

I see fear birth in the soldier’s eyes a split second before pain erupts along my left  jaw. My knees give way and I crash to the floor, sending spikes of pain shooting up through my knees just before my head connects with the tile and darkness took over.

6

I really gotta stop letting people hit me.

Long before I open my eyes, I know that I am no longer in the mess hall. The scent of food has been replaced with a thick musk that hangs heavily in the air. My skin feels almost moist and I flinch when a droplet of liquid lands in the corner of my eye.

“Hey! I think he’s waking up!”

I groan aloud, not because of the headache that is currently trying to part my brain into two jagged hemispheres, but because someone had the bright idea of letting Sammy act as my nurse. He is the last person I need beside me when I first wake up from being knocked unconscious.

My jaw feels swollen and as I slowly open and close my mouth, I hear a small click of bone on bone and wonder if it’s been knocked slightly out of alignment.

“Have you ever been hungover before, Sammy?” I press my fingers against my temples to try to relieve the pressure there.

“Uh, no. Of course not. I’m only fifteen.”  

“Well, let me clue you in on a little fact. When you are around someone with a hangover or a possible concussion, you do not yell unless you are willing to accept the bodily harm that will be inflicted directly after. Got it?”

“Oh, sure thing, Roan. No more yelling.”

His beefy hand wraps around my arm and helps me slowly to a seated position. I hang my head, waiting for the pounding to lessen before I crack open my eyes. It is dim in the room, a fact which I am most grateful for but the instant I realize where we were, the gratitude vanishes and is replaced by a fear that worms its way through my intestines.

“We’re in the fallback shelter.”  It isn’t a question Tyrel and Austin nod all the same from where they sit on cots in front of me. Folded blankets lie on the opposite end of their makeshift beds, along with a folded white sheet and a paper thin pillow.

“Damn,” I groan and clench the edge of my cot. The metal frame digs into my legs but I prefer that pain to the one currently attempting to swallow my head whole.  “How long have I been out?”

“Six hours, give or take a few minutes.”  I recognize Ember’s voice nearby but don’t look up to find where she is seated.

“And Tompkins?”  My throat feels like I haven’t swallowed in a while. I need a drink and not of the water variety either.

Tyrel is the one who speaks this times. “Tompkins’ friend got him on his feet and out of the door while we tried to rouse you. The teachers all huddled together in the corner to discuss the radio message but we all knew it was bad. They were really freaked out. Especially when a group of soldiers stormed in and ushered us right down here. They spoke with Mr. Turner for a moment, ordered us to sit down and shut up and then locked us inside.”

I glance over at Flynn. “The radio message said there was a containment breach, right?”

He nods and glances toward where Poppy and Willow sit close together on a cot, with Coleman staring off into the distance. “Coleman’s dad was the voice on the radio. At least that’s what he thinks. I don’t see how that’s possible though since he’s just a janitor. There’s no way a civilian would get ahold of one of the radios.”

“Yeah. Coleman’s probably just overreacting. You know how whacked out he is right now. I hear you hallucinate when you go through a detox. The kid is probably seeing all sorts of things right now,” Vaughn says.

I sit up and stare him down until he flinches and looks away. I slowly look at each of the people around me. Somehow the entire group seems to have remained nearby, though some sit a little further away due to the lack of cots in our areas.  “Anyone else want to look at the bright side of things and ignore the obvious?”

When no one answers, I clench my hands together. “A containment breach isn’t something the soldiers would joke around about. You saw what happened. This place went into immediate lockdown and I’d bet my iPod that everywhere else did the same. Something they don't want to know about just happened and we need to know what that is.”

“How?” Ember says and throws her legs over the side of her cot to sit up. “We are stuck in this hole. I don’t know if you’d had a chance to look around yet but there is one only way in and it’s through that massive metal door.”

Now that she mentions it, I turn my head to look around me. The ceiling is low and cobwebs still hang in a couple of the corners. The space is obviously only partially converted and the cots were set up in a rush. There are none of the straight lines or tightly made beds here. This is a hodgepodge of supplies thrown into a single room and then abandoned.

The only thing that does look complete is the big ass door Ember mentioned.

Gritting my teeth, I turn away from the exit. “If Coleman is right and he did hear his dad’s voice then that means whoever’s radio he borrowed probably no longer needed it.”

“Like they left it behind?” Vaughn asks.

“As in they are dead, idiot,” Meran speaks up and I turn to look at her. There is a faint bruising around her right eye. Her skin is pale and she sits hunched over with her arms wrapped around herself, almost like she is trying to cradle an injured arm or shoulder. Flynn watches her out of the corner of his eye and I remind myself that I need to have him try to pry some information out of her about what happened after she was removed from Mrs. Gentry’s home.

Vaughn’s eyes widen and he smirks. “Right, because that seems so much more plausible than Coleman jonesing for  a sugar bender.”

“Do you ever think before you speak?” I growl and turn on Vaughn.

His smirk falters and he glances at several people around him before finally shrinking back into himself. He draws his legs up onto his cot and leans back against the wall.

I take a steadying breath and remind myself that getting angry is only going to make my headache worse.  

“Do you think someone went nuts and shot up the place?” Tyrel asks. Isa sits so close to him that she’s practically in his lap. Their fingers are laced together and he has a protective arm around her back.

“No.”  I reach under my bed and retrieve my boots. It hurts like hell to bend over and tie them but I need to be ready for anything that comes through that door. “You can’t have a containment breach unless there is something needing to be contained. So either the docs are playing mad scientists with whatever caused the outbreak or…”

I turn to look at Coleman and see him take a long, deep breath before he finishes my thought, “or there was
something
in that lab that got out.”

Sammy looks back and forth between us but I remain focused on Coleman. His eyes are swollen and rimmed with red. I know that his line of thought proceeded mine long before I awoke. He’s had time to theorize what happened to his dad and whether or not his luck may have just run out.

“Either way, this is bad, right?” Darby asks in a soft voice. I look around, confused as to where she spoke from and see her curled up in a small ball on the cot directly behind Tyrel. She speaks again when she realizes that everyone has turned to look at her. “That’s why they have locked us in here? To keep whatever it is out there out?”

I can’t tell if Darby’s naiveté is genuine or if she is just being annoyingly hopeful.

Raising my hand, I point to the exit door. “That right there is a blast door, Darby. Nothing is getting in or out without us knowing about it.”

“So we are safe?” She slowly pushes up to a seated position and tucks her feet under her, pulling her blanket taut over her knees.

I meet Tyrel’s straight gaze before I shoot a pointed glance at the three soldiers standing nearest the door. “From what is outside, yes. But we are not truly safe while they are here.”

“So what do we do?” Isa asks.

I smile. “We make a plan.”

The tension in the air mounts with each hour that passes. It is impossible to feel the natural progression of the sun while buried under the ground in a windowless concrete and cinder block room, but I am sure that night will be falling soon. Sitting with my back propped against the wall, I pick at the white gauze that has been wrapped three times around my head. I'm not sure who bandaged me up but I know that I’d trade the wrap in a heartbeat for pain meds.

Not long after my stomach begins to growl in protest, our history teacher, Miss Stewart starts passing out small bottles of water and beef jerky. I can't  help but smirk in response to Poppy and Willow asking for a vegetarian option out of respect to the poor innocent cows that were cruelly sacrificed as I bite off half of my stick.

I feel Ember’s eyes on me from time to time but I don't look her way. It is better not to encourage that. She seems lonely as she sits off by herself and I find myself wondering what her story is. We all have one. Flynn might even know it but I'm not about to pry, or show that I care. Ember seems just nice enough for me to know she is all kinds of wrong for me.

“Did you see anything before they brought us down here?” I ask a while later after the ringing in my ears has subsided a little.

Four sets of eyes look my way but only Tyrel speaks. “The soldiers were moving the buses to park them end to end lengthways between the two fences. They blocked our view of the street and the gate beyond when we marched past.”

“Smart.” I curl my knees up into my chest and tug the scratchy blanket up under my chin. It is cold in the basement.

The rattling of the exposed metal piping overhead ceased an hour before, which tells me that all reserves have been rerouted to supply this room from the main school, but as I look around I fail to see any heaters. The soldiers never had a chance to finish prepping this space.

“What else?”  I need intel to gauge just how royally screwed we really were. “Did you see any soldiers running our way? Was there any gunfire? See smoke? Did you hear any further radio transmissions?”

Tyrel scrunches up his nose in thought but it is Isa who answers. “The soldiers appeared to be heading away from the school, apart from those already stationed here. I think I saw a fire in the distance. Maybe they were just called back to put it out and will return to let us out soon.”

“Not likely.”  It would be too easy to allow myself to hope so I force myself to focus only on the facts.

Perhaps they really did lock us in as a precaution. Maybe they were able to handle whatever the breach was before it spread. It could all be over already...or it could just be starting.

“What do you really think happened out there?” Tyrel leans in closer, replacing Sammy at my side who has wandered off in search of more beef jerky.

“I think those quacks in the hazmat suits messed with the wrong thing and it came back to bite them in the ass.”

“Literally?”

To that, I do not have an answer. Everything I know about zombies came from a writer’s imagination or a Hollywood film set. How am I to know what is real and what is fantasy? It is all speculation until it becomes reality.

“My house mom was taken this morning,” Tyrel whispers as he casts a cautious glance over his shoulder. “They kept it quiet with only a small group of soldiers. I doubt the neighbors even heard a commotion.”

“So everyone went peacefully?”

“No. My mom fought back.”

I lower my head when his voice cracks. “I'm sorry.”

He wipes a hand over his mouth. “The sun had barely breached the edge of my window when I heard boots on the stairs. I was just shoving my legs into my pants when they burst in, looked around and then backed out again. I managed to get to my door in time to see my mom yanked out of her room by her hair.

When I close my eyes I can still hear her screams as they dragged her down the stairs. They didn’t even let her get dressed before they hauled her out into the street. My dad tried to reason with them, but the man with a clipboard said she was the one and they chucked her up into the back of a truck. When she tried to flee she took a hard blow to the back of her head. There was a lot of blood, Roan.”

“If she's anything like you, she's a fighter. She will make it out of this.”

I didn't really believe that. Not if she had been labeled as
infected
. More than likely she has already been disposed of.

Or maybe not. I guess a lot depends on whether or not she lived long enough to get caught up in the containment breach drama.

As I sit in silence, watching Tyrel worry his hands together, I begin to wonder if there is a period of delay before the bloodwork shows a positive result for infection. If so, does that mean that  Tyrel may have come in contact with the same contaminant and brought it with him into the school?

“What about your house mom?”  

I hadn’t realized that he even had one. Since his entire family and part of his father’s staff arrived together I just assumed they would be given their own house together. It doesn't make sense that his group would be split up unless…

“Of course! They are part of them.” I slam my fist down into the cot, feeling the vibrations ripple up from my fist.  “Don’t you see? The group homes, the rules, the parents already in place when we arrived...these people are spies for the government!”

Tyrel frowns. “That seems a bit far-fetched,don't you think? Why would they go to that much trouble to cover it up?”