Dead Living (35 page)

She almost took a step out of the storeroom.
A corpse came out of nowhere, behind the open door. It grabbed
Sam's hair and had its teeth almost to her neck before Larry put
his gun to its head and pulled the trigger.

The closeness of the shot hurt Sam's ears.
She pulled back into the storeroom and dropped to a knee.

“What the hell is
he
doing
out
there?” Larry asked.

She looked up to see Aaron still among the
undead, fighting walkers with his bare hands. He would shoot one at
range with an arrow, then knock another to the ground.

“Aaron!” Larry called. “Get your ass in
here!”

Aaron looked in the direction of the voice
calling his name, and so did every walker on the field that wasn't
already eating.

“Shut the door,” Sam said. “Trust me, he'll
be fine.”

“What about Amanda?” Derek said.

Sam said nothing. Her lower lip shook at the
thought of the walkers tearing into the young girl.

Larry grabbed the door to close it, and a
hand grabbed his wrist. A walker pulled itself around the door,
followed by three more.

“Help!”

Sam was on her feet and moving. She wrapped
her arms around his waist and pulled with everything she had, but
he didn't budge. Four more walkers grabbed Larry, one by the shirt
collar. More walkers slowly made their way to the open storeroom
door.

Someone tackled the walkers holding Larry
from the side. Larry and Sam fell backward onto the floor as the
grip on him loosened. She looked up to see Richardson climbing to
his feet. He grabbed two walkers that were close to the door and
threw them to the ground.

“Richardson!”

He took a step toward the storeroom. Larry
was climbing to his feet to help him inside.

No one saw the walker approach Richardson
from the side. It bit into his hand and ripped his pinky finger
off.

Richardson screamed in pain as he cradled his
hand. Larry shot the walker in the head, Richardson's finger still
in its mouth. More walkers slowly funneled toward the storeroom
door.

He looked at Sam and Larry with sad eyes. His
face went stern as he accepted his fate.

“No!” Sam shouted.

The last thing Larry saw was Aaron being
swallowed up by walkers in the distance.

Richardson slammed the storeroom doors in
Larry's face.

*****

Aaron saw everything from across the field.
He couldn't get to Richardson in time. The undead didn't harm him,
but they were so thick he had trouble moving.

He finally managed to push through the
corpses and saw Richardson lying on the ground not far from the
storeroom. A walker chewed on his arm while he beat on it with his
free hand. Another walker dropped to its knees and started ripping
at his clothes.

“Get away from him!”

Aaron threw both walkers off Richardson. The
stump where his finger was shot blood across the grass. Aaron
hooked him under the arms and started dragging. He only made it a
few feet before another walker fell on top of them. Aaron had to
let go of Richardson to push the walker away.

Some corpses still headed for the storeroom
door, while others moved toward Richardson.

“
Get out of here, Aaron,”
he said.

Richardson watched as another walker came
from Aaron's left. The corpse didn't go for the young man at all.
It tried to walk around Aaron to get to him. Richardson saw it with
his own eyes.

“I knew there was something special about
you.”

Aaron said nothing. He tried to drag
Richardson again, but the walkers were just too many. He shoved one
away, but another fell on Richardson's chest. It took a bite out of
his shoulder.

Aaron kicked the walker and dropped to his
knees to put pressure on Richardson's wound.

Richardson felt a tugging at his feet. A
walker was trying to bite his leg.

He reached into his coat and pulled out his
gun. He slipped it into Aaron's hand.

“Saved one bullet for myself,” he said.

Aaron felt tears welling up in his eyes. He
looked down at the man he respected, the man who had spent the past
twenty-three years saving people's lives.

“You take care of them,” Richardson said.
“You and Samantha both.”

Aaron couldn't speak. He could only manage a
nod.

Richardson took a deep breath, then gave
Aaron a nod of his own, telling him he was ready.

Aaron put the gun to Richardson's head and
killed for only the second time in his life.

He stood up and shouted. He threw the empty
gun against the school's brick wall as hard as he could. He was
numb as walkers moved around him to get to the storeroom doors.
They pulled on the handles, but the doors didn't move. Other
walkers feasted on fresh kills littered about the field.

Aaron thought for a moment he might have lost
his mind, as he could have sworn he heard crying.

He scanned the field, and thought he saw
something through the horde of undead, not too far from the fence.
It was a small figure laying on the ground in a fetal position.

Aaron ran through the walkers, pushing them
out of the way. He was stunned when he saw who it was.

Amanda hugged her knees to her chest and
cried. The backpack she'd taken from the storeroom with Derek and
Nikki lay just next to her. She kept her eyes shut tight, not
wanting to look at the horror around her. A corpse picked at a
fresh dead body not too far away.

“Amanda?”

He bent down to touch her shoulder. The
little girl flinched and hugged herself tighter. She reminded him
of himself just after his family died.

He looked up at a corpse as it walked by,
ignoring both of them.

He pulled the girl into a sitting position
and checked for any injuries. She still kept her head buried in
between her knees.

“It's me, Aaron,” he said. He gave the girl a
hug. “You're gonna be okay.”

She pulled her head up enough just to reveal
her eyes. “The monsters-”

“Listen to me. You're like me, sweetie. The
monsters won't hurt you. Remember last night at the Pit? It's the
same with you.”

Amanda sniffled. “Where is everybody?”

“Don't worry about that. Let's get you out of
here.”

He picked her up in his arms. She opened her
eyes just enough to point at the backpack on the ground.

“I got that for you.”

He picked it up off the ground and heard
metal clanging against metal. He carried her to one of the trucks
parked near the gate. He opened the door and slid her into the
passenger's seat.

“Okay, Amanda. I want you to stay here, okay?
I'll shut the door and crack the window for you a little. You'll be
safe here.” He heard the metal in the backpack one more time.
“What's in here?”

Aaron opened the backpack to see it was full
of knives. One of them had a striking resemblance to the blade Sam
was so fond of.

“Did you take this from Sam's room?”

She nodded.

Aaron patted her on the head. He surveyed the
schoolyard again. Walkers beat on every door they saw, while others
wandered in through the open front door. Some of the former
residents of Lexington stood up and searched for fresh meat.

He clutched the backpack in his hand.

“Amanda, you might have saved everyone.”

She smiled proudly.

“You're gonna hear a lot of noises. Just stay
in here, and don't come out till I get you.”

She hugged him around the neck. “Please don't
die.”

“No chance of that.”

He closed the truck door.

Aaron had a lot of work ahead of him.

*****

Sam looked at Larry as he nearly pushed the
storeroom doors open. She ran to his side and grabbed his
wrist.

“We can't go out there,” she said.

“Richardson is out there.”

“Richardson is dead.”

Derek looked at the both of them from behind.
“What about Amanda?”

There was more light as candles were passed
around and lit. Sam turned to look at the teenagers and slowly
shook her head. Derek held Nikki in his arms as she cried against
his chest. Behind them, Sam could see the rest of Lexington's
survivors. Six months ago, she barely knew any of them. Now, the
only ones she didn't know were the former slaves they just brought
home. People huddled together and cried. Others were too shocked to
do anything, just leaning up against the walls. James walked around
and checked everyone.

Sam knew lives had been lost, but the
storeroom was still packed full of people. Larry stood next to her.
Carrie sat on the floor with the kids. She tried to climb to her
feet, wounded leg and all. Mary was locking the other entrance to
the storeroom that led inside the school's halls. Travis checked
and reloaded his gun.

Somewhere, she knew Aaron was still
alive.

The fight hadn't been lost yet.

They all looked to her.

“Okay,” she said. “First things first. Secure
both exits. Make sure they can't open. Wrap chains around the
handles, whatever you gotta do. Do we have anything to nail some
tables to the doors?”

Travis lowered his eyes. “Uh, no. I took all
the nails to work on the smokehouse. They're out there.”

Sam sighed. She grabbed her gun from her
waistband. “Fine. Now, who here has been bitten?”

No one said a word. They went to work
following Sam's orders. Larry's hands shook as he wrapped a chain
around the outside exit's handles. He could hear the corpses on the
other side, pounding on the door.

“I'll take that as no one is hurt. But if
someone is, and they're hiding it, all you'll end up doing is
killing us all. So please, last time, is anyone injured?”

Silence. Derek and Nikki stepped up to
Sam.

“What do you want us to do?” he asked.

“Take the kids and Carrie. Go to the girls'
locker room. Take some of these tables, barricade yourselves
in.”

“It's gonna get dark soon,” Nikki said.

“I know. If they get that far back, it means
we're dead. If it's dark, they won't be able to see. You'll have a
chance to maybe get out.”

Nikki wanted to cry more, but she held it in.
“Okay.” She turned toward the children and tried to put on her best
smile. “Let's go guys. We're gonna go in another room.”

Carrie leaned against the wall with her
weight on one leg. “I'm not going,” she said. “I'm staying here and
fighting.”

Sam never did like Carrie. Now she had a new
respect for the woman.

Mary walked up to Sam and gave her a hug.
“I'm glad you're alive.”

Sam returned the hug quickly. “You too. Did
you get that other door locked up?”

She nodded.

Sam looked over everyone again. “What weapons
do we have?”

Travis laughed sarcastically. “Just what we
have on us. Most of the rifles are gone.”

Sam saw the knives Nikki and Derek had on
them when they ran outside. She picked them up and started handing
out what she could.

“Samantha, this is ridiculous,” James said as
he took a knife. “Did you see how many of them there were? We're
just waiting to die in here.”

She put a hand on his shoulder. “If we're
gonna die, I want to kill as many of those things as I can.”

He took a breath, then slowly nodded.

The doors that led into the school started
shaking. The chain held, but the doors cracked open enough for a
hand to slip through.

“Make every shot count,” Sam said. “Use
blades first, if you can.”

Sam pointed to the other door leading
outside, and several people ran over to watch it. Their numbers
were divided fairly evenly. They had a good number of people
watching both doors.

The inside door cracked a little further, and
more hands slipped through. Travis beat at them with the butt of
his empty rifle. Sam and Larry pushed on the doors as hard as they
could. A walker managed to get its head halfway through. Larry
stabbed it through the forehead, and remembered to pull the knife
out. Sam shut the doors completely, but she knew that wouldn't last
long. Even with her and several others pushing against it, the
doors shook.

“Wrap that chain tighter! Do we have anything
to lock it with?”

Larry shrugged. “No, we don't. We never kept
any locks.”

Sam looked to the other side. “How are you
guys doing over there?”

“Not too bad,” Mary called. “This door, they
have to pull to open it. They're not too good at pulling.”

“Some of you come over here then.”

They kept them out longer than Sam thought
they would. The problem was Sam and everyone grew tired, a problem
the walkers didn't have. Weak or not, they could push forever. Sam
ended up dividing everyone into shifts to hold the door. Thirty
minutes passed.

Hope began to dwindle.

“Samantha, this isn't working,” Larry said.
“We have to run.”

“There isn't any other way out.”

“We should fight then.”

Before she could respond, the door flew open
on the other side. The walkers finally managed to pull it open.
There were screams followed by gunfire as walkers flowed into the
storeroom.

A few walkers died, but not enough. Sam felt
the door shaking at her back as two corpses barely missed grabbing
Mary and Carrie.

Sam noticed some walkers moving toward the
locker rooms.

Toward the children.

“No!” she shouted. “Everyone get over here!
Don't lead them to the kids.”

The rest of Lexington grouped near Sam,
trying to stay as close to the wall as possible while still
blocking the door. Her shout drew the corpses' attention, as the
walkers shuffled in their direction. Some still had fresh gore on
their faces and hands from earlier kills. Travis and several others
opened fire, dropping a few of them.

Sam couldn't count their numbers. She thought
they had a chance to make it out of at least this battle, but
they'd lose many people.