This Would Be Paradise (Book 1) (5 page)

“Well you’re welcome to stay with us for the time bein’,” Ethan offered.

“I wasn’t aware you owned the school.” I smirked and watched as Ethan rolled his eyes.

“No, I mean we can’t stay here forever. My family has a huntin’ cabin ‘bout three hours west of here.”

“Well how nice of you. Is that the famed Southern hospitality I’ve heard so much about?” I grinned.

“Yes ma’am,” Ethan smiled, purposely exaggerating his Southern accent.

“How come you didn’t just head there in the first place?”

Ethan ran his hand through his hair. “Well for one, the school was closer. And I wanted to see just how bad the situation was before I headed out by myself with Chloe.”

“Did you get your answer?”

“Unfortunately.”

“What’s a poutine?” Chloe’s questioning voice carried over to us, but the last thing we felt like doing was laughing.

I rolled over for the millionth time tonight, as I tried to get comfortable on the cot, which was proving impossible. What the hell did they make these things from? The collective hate of customer service workers? Zoe was snoring away beside me and I punched her in the arm to get her to stop. She spluttered for a few seconds then rolled over and resumed her snoring, which harmonized with the other people snoring all over the room.
Geez, they could start a band.
I sighed, knowing I wouldn’t get more than a few hours of sleep tonight if I was lucky. Being a light sleeper ensured this.

“Can’t sleep?” Darren whispered from his cot.

I was going to give him a look that said
You don’t say?
but realized it would be lost on him in the darkness of the room. “What gave it away?” I instead whispered back sarcastically.

He chuckled. “You a light sleeper, too?”

“Yep.”

“I’m not, but you two are keepin’ me up,” Chloe said sleepily from her own cot.

“Sorry,” both Darren and I apologized before resigning to our fate of getting no sleep.

It seemed like I had been out for only a few minutes rather than the hours it actually had been, when the shrill sound of a screaming woman woke me from my light sleep. I sat up quickly, the change in altitude causing my head to spin.

No sooner could I get the sound, “Wah?” out of mouth before Zoe started to yell at me. “Grab your bag, we have to go!”

Everyone was springing into action, and more screams erupted. The police that were stationed in the lunch room were running around panicked, waving their guns in the air.
I’m pretty sure that wasn’t in the police training guidelines.
I jumped up and pulled my backpack onto my shoulder. I went to grab my rolling suitcase, but Zoe stilled my arm.

“We’ll never get out of here with our suitcases.”

I looked longingly at my zebra striped suitcase already missing it and its contents, but I knew Zoe was right. I nodded and glanced around to see the others all geared up with their backpacks on and ready to run.

“What’s going on?” Chloe asked, her eyes wide as she surveyed the chaos.

“We just gotta get outta here, that’s all,” Ethan said calmly to her, placing his hand on her head gently.

A gun fired somewhere in the school causing people to duck and scream, which seemed to be the knee-jerk reaction to a gun shot.

“Guns are never a good sign,” Darren said flatly.

I was too focused on trying to find a path through the madness to roll my eyes at his redundant statement.

“We need to get somewhere out in the open; being in a crowd like this makes us an easy target,” I said while scanning the three exits out of the room.

“An easy target for what?” Zoe asked.

“The infected people, a stray bullet, et cetera,” I listed off.

“She’s right.” Ethan nodded, and I was glad someone else was thinking at the moment.

“How about the main doors?” Zoe asked pointing to the biggest exit.

“All right, let’s go and meet up in the parking lot across the street if we get split up,” I said on the spot and we started to move toward the exit.

I took lead with the others in tow; Ethan had his hand wrapped tightly around one of Chloe’s. We were pushing our way through the throng of people when they all started to push us back the way we had come.

“What the hell?” I muttered, and then I heard it.

The groaning and snarling that accompanied the infected. People were screaming bloody murder as a group of infected people stumbled through the large exit doors, latching onto the unfortunate souls that were within reach.

“Infected! Go back!” I yelled, and we turned around to try and reach the exit that was on the other side of the room.

I was now trailing behind the others with Zoe leading us out. I looked back to see a bunch of people go down with the infected and the remaining police men were trying to take aim, but were finding it hard with all the live bodies in the way. As one infected lunged at a cop, he fired a couple of rounds into the sick man’s chest, but all it did was put the infected on his ass. It slowly got itself up from the cold linoleum like a toddler learning to stand up, much to the shock of the cop who was gaping at the scene before him. No living person could have taken that many bullets to the chest and still be breathing let alone up and moving around.

Dark blood trailed down the infected man’s shirt, dripping onto the floor, as he lunged for the policeman again. I had a sickening feeling I knew exactly where this was going, but luckily the cop’s partner took aim and shot the infected in the side of the head, sending a pulpy mess into the air. The body fell down sideways from the impact and both policemen just stared at the corpse as if waiting for it to get back up again. But it remained still, the oily blood pooling out around its head in a morbid halo.

“Come on.” I felt Ethan’s fingers dig into my wrist as he pulled me forward.

Chloe had gone silent, her eyes wide with fear as she clung to Ethan’s hand. I pulled my arm free from his grasp as I picked up the pace, leaving the grotesque scene behind me. Zoe waved at the entrance, indicating it was clear. We burst into the hallway lined with rusty lockers, the other people from the lunch room right behind us. Since the school only had one floor, we didn’t have to worry about stairs, just navigating the narrowed hallways.

We followed Zoe, trusting that she knew where she was going. I didn’t pay any attention to which turns and hallways we used to get to the multipurpose room when we had entered the school, but Zoe always managed to notice those things. In fact, I couldn’t even tell you what direction we were running in; to me straight forward was always north.

We reached the end of the hallway only to be faced with the choice of left or right, and unfortunately neither direction gave a hint as to where a door was located. The corridors were empty of people; there weren’t even any rent-a-cops roaming the halls like I had seen them do yesterday.

“Left!”

“No right!”

We heard screaming from the crowd behind us, not being helpful at all. I looked at Zoe and clearly she had no idea which direction to head.

“Right,” Ethan said as he took the lead.

Our little group followed him plus a few more of the people behind us, while the other half of the group went left. I hope I didn’t live to regret this or worse, didn’t survive long enough to regret this. Further down the corridor I could see blood smeared on the lockers and a few unmoving bodies on the dirty floor. People gasped, and Ethan hauled Chloe closer to him trying to steer her sight away from the horrifying mess. We took a sharp left, and were greeted with the sight of the light reflecting on the linoleum floors from the entrance doors.

As we were about to round the last corner and reach the entrance doors, I heard the snarling and banging before I saw them. A horde of the infected were pounding and clawing at the doors trying to get outside. From the looks of it, they were once people who had sought refuge in here. Some still had on backpacks and bags, while others were wearing their pajamas.

As a group, we stopped in our tracks looking at the obstacle that blocked our escape. One of the infected turned, somehow sensing we were there, and started toward us. The others soon followed, but before we could turn to run back the way we came, the two cops from the lunch room were shooting off rounds into the approaching group of infected. They must have been in the group that had followed us.

The loud gunshots reverberated off the concrete walls, and I had to cover my ears in an attempt to block out the sound. The bullets hit a few targets right between the eyes, causing the bodies to sink to the ground in a heap. Others tripped over the fallen, struggling to get upright once again.

“Let’s go back – I think I saw an emergency exit along that last hallway!” Darren yelled right beside me and I could barely make out his words from all the noise and the ringing in my ears.

I nodded and yanked Ethan’s arm to get him to follow. Zoe was already looking back around the corner we had come from. Some of the people had run backwards while others stood transfixed by the scene at the doors. We ran back down the corridor that had the two dead people fallen on the floor. As we passed their slumped forms, one corpse started to stir.

“Keep moving!” I yelled as Zoe stopped in front to stare.

One reached its mangled hand up toward us, and Darren stomped down on it as hard as he could. The infected didn’t cry out or scream like a normal person would have at the pain; instead it snarled and tried to reach us with its other hand. We all knew what Darren was going to do next as he raised his boot clad foot high above the infected person’s head.

Ethan grabbed Chloe and pushed her face into his chest so that she didn’t see. I almost wished I could have done that as I watched Darren’s boot come down and the infected man’s head explode like an over-ripened watermelon. It made a sickening sound of bone and cartilage snapping as blood and brain matter splattered all over the floor. Zoe gagged, as Darren shook off his messy boot, and Ethan gulped audibly as Chloe clung to his shirt.

I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to react; my emotions were almost dulled as a result of the last couple of days. To be honest, I was more disturbed by the way that Darren had taken no time at all to think about stomping the thing’s head. The fact that he seemed more concerned about the mess on his boot, than what he just did to a person, worried me. Still, I was the first to recover.

“Come on, we can’t stop.”

I took the lead, stepping over the mess trying to avoid getting any of it on my own shoes. The other body remained still and judging from the condition of the corpse, I had a feeling she wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon. Her legs and arms were badly chewed up, muscle and tendons were exposed through the open wounds making it almost impossible for her to move properly if she ever woke up again.

I saw the word EXIT glowing and sighed in relief that Darren had been right about the door. I pushed on the latch, and a loud siren went off indicating that we had opened the door. I squinted against the morning sun that momentarily blinded me. When I could finally open my eyes fully, without the searing light snapping them shut, I looked upon a scene straight out of a horror movie.

The street was devoid of moving cars; all the ones on the road had been abandoned. Some stood with doors hanging wide open and blood-stained windows. The police and emergency crews that were originally stationed outside the school had either left their post, or worse. One of the tall buildings a few blocks away had massive flames shooting out of it. Helicopters were flying overhead, and I could hear the sound of rapid gunfire coming from somewhere pretty close. I was no gun expert, but I was sure that was the sound of assault rifles not just measly hand guns.

“Where do we go?” Zoe asked panicked, running her hand through her hair violently.

We all spun around looking for answers. I suddenly remembered mine and Zoe’s joking banter about weapons. As much as it was meant for taking our minds off everything, it was also true. We needed weapons of some kind and we needed them now. My mind ran through the possible stores that would have anything like that.

“You remember that outdoor sports store we passed on our way back to the hotel the other night?” I asked Zoe.

She nodded, “Weapons?”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

“So you’re suggesting we run further into the city instead of away from it?” Darren asked skeptically.

“Well how else do you suggest we find any weapons?” I asked sharply, the stress starting to get to me.

“Along the way, out of the city,” Darren said as if it was a sure-fire plan.

“There is no guarantee we will find something along the way,” Zoe reasoned.

“There’s no guarantee we will find anything at that store. For all we know, it’s already been looted or worse, and we’d be trapped in the thick of everything,” Darren said throwing his arms in the air.

As much as he was being a dick about it, Darren was right. But there were no guarantees for any plan at the moment.

“He’s right. We can’t head further into the city. There’ll probably be more sick people congregatin’ there,” Ethan’s Southern accent became more pronounced. “There’s a huntin’ store further near the city limits, I doubt it’s been touched. We can stop there on the way to my cabin.”

“Okay, well how do you suggest we get there?” I asked calmly.

Before Ethan could answer, Chloe piped up, “We brought Ethan’s truck.”

“Where are you parked?” Darren asked Ethan.

“The public parking lot behind the school.”

“We would have to run around to the back and hop the fence to get there,” Zoe said, looking off into the direction of the public parking lot.

“We don’t have any other choice,” Darren pointed out.

“All right,” Zoe said after a beat, taking a step toward the back of the school. “Let’s go then.”

“One second,” Ethan said, letting go of Chloe’s hand.

He ran to a car that had been abandoned on the sidewalk and pulled open the driver’s side door, hitting the latch to pop the trunk. He ran to the back and rummaged through the trunk, pulling out a tire iron.