The Failed Coward (5 page)

“What the fuck happened to you Ring?”  Most of the staff here at Auburn Lake Preparatory Academy simply called Adrian “Ring.”  That was his last name.  As she asked him, she eyed the head to toe blood spatters and smears on his face and clothing.

Adrian Ring looked down at his clothing and after a second to let the situation soak in he looked up at her and smirked. “It’s kind of shitty out there, and I’ve had a very long day in that shit.”  He nodded in the direction of the bridge that led towards town.

Amy swallowed hard.  His expression said a lot.  Ring was a veteran, Army she thought, and she knew the scuttlebutt on campus said he had been in the shit in Iraq.  If he said it was bad, then it was bad.  Really bad.

Adrian looked at the other parents with a mixture of sympathy and disgust.  Much like the other staff at the school the parents were often tolerated with disdain.  They were usually rich, usually assholes, and almost always got in the way of their children’s education and happiness.  Amy noticed that the longer Adrian was there, the less afraid of him they became.

“What’s happened here today?  I was hoping this place would be empty.”  Adrian asked Amy as he slowly assessed the campus, looking for danger.  His wariness and experience with danger was as obvious to her as a street sign.  She felt safer and safer with every moment’s passing.

Amy filled him in as the summer’s heat faded into the comfortable June night.  She had to stop a few times as they heard loud booms emanating from the direction of the school building Dan had headed to.  The parent’s frantic demeanors nearly leapt out of control.  Adrian calmed them down with a simple shush and a stare.  Amy couldn’t believe his presence and calm, even as she told him about the horror of watching the car crash turn into a horror scene.  All he did was nod at her, and smile gently as the emotions came back.

She suddenly wished she’d talked to him more before today.  He was a pillar of strength, and she desperately needed someone strong to lean on.  After she’d stopped for the last time to listen to a gargantuan series of shotgun blasts, she told Adrian about the situation in the school building.  He stood there, impassive in the face of the parents pleading to him for help, until finally he spoke to all of them.

“Get in your vehicles, or get in a building.  It isn’t safe out here.  I’m going to go to the classroom, and make sure that moron doesn’t kill a kid, or kill Mrs. Goodell, and I might even stop him from killing himself.”

That elicited a small burst of nervous laughter from the parents.  Amy didn’t think any of them would lose sleep over Dan getting shot.  Amy smiled at Adrian as he turned to her last.

“Get safe inside.  I’ll be back in a bit.  If I’m not back after twenty minutes, try calling the cops, or just get the hell out of here.  This is bad news Amy, and things will never be the same again okay?”  His big brown eyes looked right into her core, and even in the waning summer light she saw the fear inside them. 

He was scared just like her, but he had the guts, the skill, and the willpower to do what needed to be done.  She envied him immediately, and felt disgusted about herself all at the same time.  Her thoughts raced to Jason as she walked inside the Admissions building. 

Jason and Adrian were cut from the same unbreakable cloth.

*****

Gunfire tore the relative silence apart not long after.  Just as the first handful of missing kids came streaming across the campus towards their thankful parents there were two loud booms from the building.  Amy flinched powerfully when the noise of the heavy shotgun blast reached them.  All she could think about was if Adrian had been shot.  Amy dimly wondered if her heart could take being walked away from by one man today, and the loss of a guy she may or may not have just realized she had a crush on.  She struck the thoughts from her head as the kids ran into the clutching arms of their parents.

Amy forced a scared smile as the parents who had greeted their children wept for joy.  She watched the agonized faces of the parents that hadn’t gotten their kids yet too.  They stood still, pleading eyes fixated on the distant glass double doors of the three story brick classroom building, waiting for their beloved kids to come running through it at any time.  Amy suddenly felt like an enormous piece of shit for making fun of them all these years.  Experiencing their pain step by step made them seem awfully human.

Just as one of the fathers began to sob, fearing the worst, the front doors of the building burst open and several more of the kids stumbled through, obviously injured.  Together they supported each other as they hobbled the hundred or so yards to the admissions lawn.  The parents were frozen with worry for the longest time, but one by one the remaining family members burst out of the admissions lobby and ran to their children, grabbing them and offering what aid they could.

One of the young girls being carried by her father was hurt badly, and Amy knew she’d die.  Amy motioned to a clean spot in the grass and the father rested his bloody, frail girl down.  She was porcelain skinned, and the tiny wounds from the shotgun pellets she’d been peppered by stood out powerfully.  They oozed her dark red life in a dozen streaks all over.  Her blouse had been ripped asunder by the shockwave of the blast, and her developing teen breasts had caught the worst of it.  Her heart was directly in the path of at least five of the small wounds.

Her father spoke to her in a panic, lifting her limp head to face him. “Isabel, Isabella baby, don’t go, don’t go to sleep, daddy is here now, and we’re gonna go see mommy at home in a bit.  You just gotta stay here with daddy a little longer okay baby?”  The father’s voice trailed off as his daughter’s eyes glazed over, and all the life drained from her body.  Her head slumped into his hands, utterly devoid of the spark of life.  The father was silent for a time, and then issued a scream that nearly broke all the glass on the shattered campus.

Everyone, Amy included couldn’t help but join in his tears.  The tiny girl’s death hit home for all of them after the anxiety of waiting so long for their own children.  Amy wiped her eyes clear of the tears and in a moment of typical Amy selfishness, she made sure little Isabelle, or Isabella hadn’t been bitten.  She saw no bite wounds on her body, and breathed a silent sigh of relief.  The father doubled over on top of his baby girl and let his tears flow into her barely covered, destroyed chest.

One by one the parents fell to the ground hugging their kids.  The outpouring of relief and emotion was raw, tangible.  Amy picked out bits from their conversations and tried to piece together what happened in the classroom.

“Dad that guy shot the teacher, and his own kid.  Dale was a fucking zombie dad.”  A young boy.

“Mom I’m shot in the leg, I got hit, geez it feels like bee stings.”  A girl, a senior from the sounds of it.

“Are we going to the summer house on the lake or what?  Mom, Dad, it’s an island, we can be safe there I think.”  Another boy, maybe a junior Amy thought.

“Mom, I was bitten up there by that fucking jock asshole Dale.  Why the fuck would he bite me?”  A young boy-

Amy snapped to reality when she heard that.  Her head twisted to the side to find the face of the young boy who’d just said that.  He was off to the side and sitting cross legged, holding out his arm to show his worried mother the handful of large round bite wounds on his arms and shoulder.  Amy opened her mouth to yell out a warning, but she was interrupted by a chirp from the grieving father.

“OW!  Isabel!?”  The father sat back on his haunches and looked down at his previously dead daughter.  She was stirring, and now Amy could see her mouth was covered with blood.  She’d bitten her father on the shoulder as he wept on her chest.  She turned her head on the grass with predatory menace and stared up at him.  Her eyes were white and glassy, and they regarded the bitten father with a vaguely confused expression. 

“Isabe-“  The father exclaimed with joy, but was cut off as his beloved little girl snatched at him, and yanked his neck straight to her perfect, dentist corrected, snapping teeth.  Amy watched in the faint orange street light haze as a stream of dark red blood shot out onto the grass.  In the light it looked like oil.  The father choked out a gagging wet plea for her to stop, but his weight went limp, and he came down fully onto the little girl that had just snuffed his life.  In his final moment of strength, he managed to roll off her, setting her free.  With the same evil, predatory grace, she slowly rose to standing, and regarded the rest of them with the same confused, white eyed glare.

The parents and children fell backwards, crawling away from the monster that had just slain its own parent.  Blurts of dismay and fear wracked the parents as little innocent and dead Isabella stepped calmly over her father’s body.  Amy shuffled away on her back, trying to get towards the heavy door of admissions that represented safety.  Her elbows moved off the soft green grass and scraped across the brick walkway leading up to the door, and Isabella turned her head as fast as the crack of a whip to her.  Isabella’s lips trembled almost in feral joy, and she pounced on top of Amy. 

Amy pressed upwards with all her might, grabbing the thin shoulders of the dead teenager.  The corpse’s strength was diminished from life, but her whole mass was on top of her.  Amy grabbed fistfuls of the torn blouse to have to something to hold on to, anything made for a better grip.  After a few seconds of struggling, keeping the girl’s mouth far from anything she could bite, Amy decided to roll savagely to toss the girl aside and make her break for it.

She was interrupted by a sharp stabbing pain on her shin.  Amy let loose a bloodcurdling scream as she felt each individual tooth sink into the thin layer of flesh on her leg.  A burst of adrenaline surged through her suddenly, and with tremendous effort, she heaved the girl to the side.

She was betrayed by the blouse.  The thin fabric couldn’t deal with the adrenaline pumping in her veins, and when she ripped the shirt aside to toss poor, dead Isabella, the fabric ripped apart, letting the little girl fall directly on her.

Amy didn’t have the time to scream.  She watched Isabella’s mouth open with a dim realization she was about be murdered. 

Amy’s mind slowed as the little girl’s blood covered mouth descended with unholy accuracy right for her exposed throat.  The pain in her leg had gone, despite the fact that she could still feel a distant tugging and ripping on the meat there.  Amy’s mind put two and two together and realized it was likely Isabella’s father.  He too was dead, just like the daughter that had killed him.  And now, just like Dan Haggerty had said just a bit ago, those dead people were eating her too.

Isabella’s mouth hit her with a vaguely sexual wet slap, and Amy felt the hard surface of her teeth clamp down like a vice on the soft skin near her trachea.  The pain was a white hot flare that ran deep into her skull and blinded her.  With detached emotion she felt her heart flutter in her breast.  Out of the edge of her eye and the corner of Isabella’s mouth she watched a dark, oily jet of her own blood fly up into the night.  It came down on top of the both of them, hitting her fully in the face.  It didn’t feel like oil on her skin.

Through red tinted eyes she watched what she could see of Isabella’s face gnaw at her neck.  Amy wondered as life slipped from her if all those phone calls she ignored earlier was Jason trying to get in touch with her.  To tell her he loved her one last time.  Maybe to tell her he was on his way to rescue her.

Her knight sewn of unbreakable cloth.

Darkness wrapped around her.

There was no tunnel, and no white light.

Just darling Amy, sweetest Amy, afraid, and all alone in the void.

March 8
^th

Today is a better day. It wouldn’t have taken much to improve over the past few days though. I guess saying today is a better day is a lot like saying I wiped most of the dogshit I stepped in yesterday off my shoe. Just most.

I dunno. Today is actually a much better day I suppose. Mike and company finished up our trade today before they left for home, and we started talking about something that intrigues me a great deal. I’m sort of shocked I hadn’t thought of this in depth more as well. It pays to talk to friends about stuff. Amazingly, they have useful input. Hooray for not thinking in a vacuum.

So after everyone woke up and became largely coherent, we had a small breakfast. Gilbert showed up early, and we had enough supplies to make more pancakes for everyone. Mike actually dug into the trade shit he brought over strictly to help feed everyone. He didn’t ask for anything in return either. Nice guy.

After we ate, Mike sent Gavin and LaFrenz out to patrol the campus to make sure there weren’t more wandering undead moving about. While they were gone, we finished up our trade.

We refilled all their empty water jugs, as well as ten more gallon jugs they had gotten during the time since our last trade. Mike asked for dish detergent, some laundry detergent, and wanted some canned fruit for the kids. He also mentioned that they would be needing baby food soon, and I dug out the stuff I’d amassed as well. He was very pleased to get what I had. He also mentioned that they would require formula and such as well, so if we could get more of that for them, that’d be great.

So I ponied up all that crap, and in return, he gave us three bottles of milk, one dead chicken, a dozen eggs, five gallons of gasoline, five boxes of milspec 9mm (250 rounds), and a spare IOTV they had from the guard base. I guess they have more vests back at the school, and Mike said he’d be willing to hook us all up with vests over time.

Once we completed the trade and talked about trying to find a more substantial way to transport lots of water as well as retrieve gas from another gas station, Mike made his first diplomatic gesture to us from their new leader Lisa Goldman.

Lisa and Mike both thought that we should abandon campus, and relocate to the Westfield school. After hearing their well thought out sales pitch, and taking a few breaks to run to the windows after hearing gunshots, I politely told him I wasn’t interested in moving, and Gilbert said the same. After a quick exchange, Patty and Abby both said they had no interest in going anywhere as well.