Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 3): Mitigation Book 3) (40 page)

On another of the buses from which a Claymore mine had been detonated, the side of the vehicle had started to give way. At first, the windows fell from their frames and then seams began to open as rivets loosened and welds separated. Leaning across the larger window apertures, the unfortunate souls in that bus forced the weakened side of the vehicle free. It didn’t collapse fully like an opening drawbridge but it opened enough to spook the men and women fighting within it. They panicked and tried to withdraw, which only invited more disaster.

The storm of death around them began to rage and intensify, the dark clouds swirling uncontrollably. Scared and desperate people ran in both directions screaming and pointing and shooting mostly blindly. They shot at every shadow while from behind the shadows, the undead continued their assault.

Like frightened eyes, searchlights and flashlights scanned the ground and the heavens but found only more and more ugliness emerging from the night. Carter walked from defensive pocket to defensive pocket trying to calm his troops, but he was finding it hard to compete with the chaos.

Pulling out all the tricks at his disposal, Carter began handing out Molotov cocktails to those standing around him. “Light ‘em up! Light ‘em up!” he kept shouting.

Carter knew the battle was not going well, but also that it was far from lost. There just seemed to be so many of the undead. There simply weren’t enough bullets. They needed to get creative in dealing with them. If only he had a handful more Claymore mines. There
were
some more, but the Colonel had other intentions for them.

There was no use trying to ignore the battle raging in the front of the school. The horrific sound, filled with terrified screams and echoing gunshots, defied Jerry’s and Emma’s best efforts. The locked gate stood between them and another smaller car lot situated around the school’s receiving area. The gate was secured with a heavy, intimidating lock and an equally imposing chain. Neither Jerry nor Emma had on them a tool capable of dealing with either the lock or the chain.

“Now what?” Jerry whispered. “Do we shoot it off?”

The shooting on the opposite side of the building might mask their own gunshot, but there was no guarantee. If a guard had been posted to cover this entrance, shooting might just alert them to Emma’s and Jerry’s presence. They could ill afford finding themselves in a firefight. They needed to get in and get out as quietly as possible. That was their only chance.

Thinking all of this in an instant, Emma answered, “No, we climb.”

Jerry, desperate to find Claire, slung his rifle over his shoulder and started to climb. The gate sagged and swayed too much, so they ascended a section of chain link fence with what appeared to be a wooden fence of sorts behind it. He hooked his fingers and forced the toe of his boots into the crisscrossed openings in the stiff, twisted wires comprising the fence. He pulled and pushed himself up.

Once atop the wall, Jerry paused momentarily to survey the area. He appeared to be looking down at basketball courts but there was something else toward the middle. It looked like dog kennels or something. He couldn’t be sure but he thought that perhaps there was something or someone in the cages.

Emma, feeling exposed and vulnerable while she climbed, pulled herself up next to Jerry. She looked back over her shoulder to prove to herself that her fears were unfounded and saw nothing but empty space. They hadn’t been followed after all.

She whispered, “C’mon, let’s go find your girl.”

They climbed down carefully, though the presence of the wooden fence posed new challenges. On Jerry’s second step, his foot slipped and he fell painfully to the ground below.

“Fuck!” he screeched as the pain from his ankle and the bottoms of his feet crept up the length of his spine to his brain.

“You okay?” Emma called to him.

Shaking his head and rubbing his ankle, he answered, “Yeah, but watch that last step. It’s a bitch.”

It was darker down below the height of the wall, as if the moonlight dared not venture so deep. It felt as if Jerry had fallen into a well of shadows. He stepped tentatively through the dark hoping for dear life that he wouldn’t run into something.

Emma leapt down behind Jerry, startling him and causing him to jump. “Sorry,” she partly giggled the word in a rare moment of levity. More seriously, she asked, “Where’s your flashlight?”

Jerry felt like a fool. With the flashlight in hand, he clicked it on and pointed its beam into the gloom. The light reached out and found the kennels they had spied from the top of the wall. Both Jerry and Emma recoiled slightly when the festering, rage-filled faced suddenly filled the light. It snapped its jaws closed hungrily and aggressively several times, pressing its face roughly against the bowing fence, which gouged darkening troughs in its skin.

“What the hell?” Emma’s gasped.

Jerry wondered aloud, “Pets?”

Panning the light left, they saw a recently dead body with a still spreading pool of blood around it. Jerry looked at Emma and cocked his eyebrows. The dead man looked like a soldier, probably one of those militiamen. He didn’t look like a zeke to Jerry, so he found himself very curious about what had happened to the man.

Emma approached the dead body cautiously. Leaning over him, she began to search him. From a deep pouch attached to his belt, she pulled a pair of ammunition magazines. They weren’t the same size as her rifle’s but the bullets looked to be the same caliber. Ammunition was ammunition. She stuffed the clips into her backpack and continued her search. He had cigarettes, a lighter, a small flask with what smelled like whiskey in it, an MRE ration kit, and some other odds and ends. The search took her a mere moment, but their proximity to the zeke kennels were making both of them uncomfortable.

They needed to get in the school and find Claire and the kids.

When Jess burst into the library, her breathless entry caused a gathering crowd at the door to scurry into dark corners like roaches fleeing the light. They uttered weak, surprised gasps as they retreated deeper into the bookshelves. Many had survived similar, if slightly scaled back versions of the battle outside and the desperate sounds were reviving suppressed fears. Their collective psyche was largely broken, as was their morale. They were a scared herd of prey, corralled into a trap and waiting to die. The sad truth was that most of the people hiding in the library were well aware of that fact and their probable fate but they were paralyzed with fear.

Jess, standing alone in the entryway, scanned the library for anyone who might help but not a single soul looked at her. They avoided her gaze as much as they avoided the reality of the struggle happening outside the school. They were detached and dispirited. Not a one of them was willing to engage her. No one was even willing to acknowledge her.

That wasn’t good enough for her and she didn’t have time for subtlety. Unfortunately, as she started to speak, she was overcome with emotion and began to sob, drenching her words and the fire of her passion. She said to everyone, “I’m taking those kids outta here. I could use some help. Those kids could use some help. This is our chance. They killed Royce and any of us might be next!”

Her plea was met with silence, other than an embarrassed sniffle or a throat clearing cough. To which she continued, “This is no way to live. We’re all prisoners here. This is our chance to get away.” Still nothing.

Jess waited for a second or two, hoping that guilt would work its magic. She was a mother and was adept at using her daughter’s sense of guilt to influence her decisions and actions. She was pulling out all her tricks to encourage someone to step forward. She was more than a little concerned about taking those kids out beyond the walls, especially at night and even more so without the aid of another adult pair of eyes and arms.

She waited until she was certain that no one was willing to be that person. Something in her belly turned and crawled up into her chest and then into her throat. “No one? Not one of you? You all make me sick! Fucking cowardly pieces of shit! Every one of you. You
deserve
to be prey. You deserve what you get.”

She was again only met with breathing and the staccato pops of gunfire outside. Jess allowed a disgusted, single, silent laugh to find its way to the surface. She shook her head in frustration and walked back out.

The children had been waiting in the hallway all that time. The littlest boy was standing near the wall and messing with a small rectangular object which appeared to have been taped there by someone. The wires which led away from the device had also been taped to the wall. Little Paul seemed to be tracing some raised letters on the object with his tiny index finger. Jess signaled to all the children to gather around her so they could get on their way. They needed to use the distraction, whatever it was, to their benefit.

“What about Claire?” Danny asked.

“Claire?”

“She’s the woman who was with us. She needs your help too. We can’t just leave her here.”

“You’re right...?”

“Danny. My name is Danny and this is Jules and Paul and Nikki.”

Jess nodded to each in turn and then continued, “Danny, you’re right. We need to get her outta here too. We need to go find her but I don’t think we have much time.”

Lucky for both of them, Jess was very familiar with the school. Her daughter had already attended two years of high school at Skyview, which had afforded Jess opportunities to be in the school. She knew of some shop classrooms on the far side of the cafeteria. They were somewhat removed and in a blind corner away from the more trafficked areas of the building. It would likely be a good place to hide someone. She thought that maybe some other folks who had been brought to the school under similar circumstances had started out there.

Jess’ footsteps echoed in the dark, cavernous room as she ran toward the shop corner. She rounded the corner and was surprised when the fist came out of the gloom and struck her squarely in the face, hitting her with all the fury and force of Thor’s Hammer, drawing blood from her nose and tears from her eyes. She was instantly unbalanced and thrown backward, gliding awkwardly across the slick tiled floor. The rifle she had taken from Mel clattered away from her, sounding like a squad of tin soldiers wearing plastic boots running across the floor. It came to rest well out of sight, not that she could see anything at the moment anyway.

With her eyes filled with fearful tears and her chest empty of breath, Jess began to panic. Try as she might though, she couldn’t get herself back to her feet. When she heard the chillingly calm voice emerge from behind her disorientation, her panic nearly climbed to full blown attack.

With icebergs chilling his speech, Sullivan said coolly, “Yeah, I don’t think so bitch. It’s way past visiting hours.” Apparently pleased with his creativity, Sullivan produced a poisonous snicker. Despite the bludgeoning he had just dealt to Jess, Sullivan’s breathing had never changed and his heart rate never fluctuated. He was as cool as frostbite and just as hospitable.

Danny recoiled from the terrifying man and tried to shield the other children at the same time. They all retreated clumsily, tripping over one another as they did, inextricably knotted together like a basket of crabs.

Sullivan smiled and said to them, “I was always good with kids too. They always learned to respect me or pay the price. You kids not like your kiddy kennel outside? I guess I’ll just have to come up with something better next time, huh?”

Danny found enough courage to demand, “Where’s Claire? What’d you do with her?”

Sullivan took out a large hunting knife from a scabbard hidden under his jacket and acted as if he was picking his teeth with the enormous blade. He asked absently, “Was that her name? We never got around to formal introductions I guess. Tell you the truth, I wasn’t that interested. No, I was curious about a completely different side of her. And let me tell you; she was remarkable.”

Sullivan looked at Danny, who was barely visible in the darkness. “You want to see her? Or what’s left of her, I should say. Help yourself. She’s inside.”

Danny wanted to run into Claire and get her out, but Sullivan’s grin froze him in his tracks, with a slight sensation of vertigo and nausea. It held all of Medusa’s menace with the power to change men to stone.

Sullivan laughed and leaned forward so that he was towering over the still huddling group of children. He hovered like a vulture awaiting the fateful moment of its carrion promise. Sullivan relished those moments and the accompanying sense of power that surged in his veins. There was no narcotic he had ever tried which produced the same effect.

“Is she...?”

Sullivan again laughed a toxic chuckle. “D’you wanna know if she is okay? Or just alive? There’s a big difference, ya know. The Colonel...he ordered me to keep her alive and I guess I did my best, but I kinda lost track of her in all my fun.”

The man’s laughing did not return, but the sneer had never left. It was still painted across his face like a grim splash of dark graffiti.

Jess was still not recovered enough to get back to her feet, but her mouth was well on its way. “Such a tough man, torturing a woman. She was probably tied down too.”