In the Lone and Level Sands (39 page)

“We can keep reinforcing the walls,” Johns
said. “Maybe we should do a ring system, walls within walls. And
have the exits and entrances not line up, so if something gets
in—”

“It doesn’t get very far,” Max said.

“Exactly.”

“Well, gentleman,” Lou said, “I recommend
for now, we focus on the task at hand.”

“Okay,” Ortiz said. “The kid and I will go
right, into the humanities and resources building. You and Johns
take the mess hall. I imagine that’s where most of the zombies will
be.”

“Why’s that?”

“There’s food in there.”

Lou laughed. “Well shit, son. When you’re a
zombie, there’s food everywhere!”

“In any case,” Ortiz said, “you and Johns
get through the mess hall. When you’re done, head for the MS
building.”

“Sounds good so far,” Johns said.

“The kid and I will go through HR. We’ll all
meet up in the library and clear it out together. I’ll give a
signal, and we can go in from opposite sides, and meet in the
middle. Once that’s done, we’ll take out the tornado shelter
together.”

“All right. Remember boys, there is no
tomorrow,” Lou said. The three soldiers tapped guns together, and
then they split up. Max followed Ortiz a few steps, then looked
over his shoulder at the others.

“You don’t need to look back,” Ortiz said.
Max looked at him.

“What’s all that ‘no tomorrow’ stuff about,
anyway?”

“It’s kind of our way of saying goodbye. It
reminds us that we don’t have anything left to lose. And we don’t
look over our shoulders. If that has to be goodbye, then no
regrets. It is what it is, I guess.”

Max didn’t feel like he had nothing left to
lose. Even now, he felt like there was something he had to hold on
to. He was beginning to feel the sickness in his stomach return,
the burning in his eyes and the ache of a hollowed heart. Max
pushed these thoughts aside.

There is no tomorrow.

As he thought it to himself, he still wasn’t
sure he liked it. But it seemed comforting, in an odd sort of way.
He decided to turn his attention away from his mind and focus on
the outside world for a while.

“You only gave us one building,” Max
said.

“You think your gun skills are good enough,
yet? Which reminds me.” Ortiz took Max’s assault rifle and handed
him a handgun instead, along with a few magazines. He slung the
extra rifle over his shoulder like it weighed nothing at all.

“No, it’s not that,” Max said, feeling up
his new gun. “Are those guys going to be okay alone?”

“Don’t worry about them,” Ortiz said.
“There’s nothing in this school we haven’t already dealt with
tenfold, I guarantee that.”

They reached the door of the HR building.
Ortiz tried to look in through the tiny window, cupping his hands
over his eyes to block the glare.

“See anything?” Max asked.

“I see… another set of doors.” Ortiz opened
the door into a small room with another set of double doors on the
other side. He walked over to it and peered in through the window.
This time, there was no glare to worry about.

“Anything?”

“It’s darker than hell in there,” Ortiz
said. “But I definitely see something moving.”

“Why didn’t they come out when they heard
the gunshots?” Max asked.

A zombie roared as it hurled itself against
the window. Ortiz shouted and jumped backward, immediately aiming
his gun. He didn’t fire, and Max was starting to panic, his heart
still racing from the surprise.

“Because,” Ortiz said, lowering his gun. He
stared through the window. The zombie beat its hands against the
door and window, roaring and pressing his mouth to the glass. He
was smearing blood, pus, and saliva all over it, and his breath was
fogging it up. “They can’t open doors.”

Max stared through the glass at the zombie,
its eyes burning with rage. There was nothing human in there
anymore, nothing truly alive, but Max couldn’t help feeling that
killing it was, in some way, wrong. He tried to ignore it.

“This may be easier than I thought,” Ortiz
said. “Okay, here’s the plan. We’re going to clear this hallway
first. I can see stairs to the upper level, and I imagine anything
hearing the commotion will be heading down those stairs to get
us.”

“What about the classrooms?”

“We can worry about the individual
classrooms later. First, the hallway. I’m going to open the door
and fire. We’ll take care of our friend here, first.” Ortiz
gestured to the zombie on the other side of the glass. “I’m going
to need you to help cover me from the side, where the stairs
are.”

“I really don’t think you want to depend
that heavily on me,” Max said.

“Don’t worry. Chances are I’ll see them and
shoot them before you’ve even noticed they’re there. But this will
be good practice. Are you ready?”

Max nodded. “I don’t think so, no. But yeah,
I guess.”

Ortiz smiled. “Don’t worry about it so much.
You’ll be fine. Let’s go.”

Ortiz opened the door. The zombie got half a
growl out before he shot it in the face. He stepped into the
hallway, motioned for Max to follow, then opened fire. Max entered
the hallway and stood behind Ortiz. He pointed his gun toward the
stairs to the right, but didn’t see anything. He looked to his
left, down the hallway.

“Don’t worry about that, I’m covering you!”
Ortiz said. Max turned back to the stairs, and a group of zombies
was rushing down them. Ortiz turned and fired at them, dropping
them all before Max could even aim. Ortiz turned his attention back
to the hallway.

A few seconds took forever to pass, and then
everything fell quiet.

“Do you think we got them all?” Max
asked.

“All of the ones in the halls, yeah.”

“Sorry about earlier.”

“Don’t be. If I yell, it’s because I want
you to hear me, not because I’m mad. Anyway, you’re going to have
to learn to trust me. If I need help, I’ll tell you I need help,
okay?”

“Got it,” Max said. He wasn’t sure he could
change his behavior that simply, but he made a mental note to
try.

“Okay. I’m going to run upstairs real quick
and check that hallway, then I’ll come back down here. I want you
to wait for me, okay? If anything happens, and you feel you can’t
handle it, just call for me, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I’ll just be gone a minute. Be
careful.”

Ortiz headed up the stairs, and Max felt his
fear increase with every step. For the first time in a while, he
was very alone. More alone than when he woke up in the woods, and
more alone than when he woke up on the floor of a blown-up
apartment building, ears ringing and delirious from the blast. Now,
he was wide awake and more aware. More alone.

It got quiet, and it seemed darker than
before. The only light came from the windows on the doors at the
beginning and end of the hall.

Max listened for Ortiz, and didn’t hear
anything from the stairs. He did, however, hear a small shuffle
from the hall. He turned to look, and a zombie was crawling toward
him from under a pile of bodies. It grumbled. Max thought of
shouting for Ortiz, but then he had a different idea. The zombie
was, after all, crawling, and wasn’t making much progress. It was a
good fifteen feet away, too.

The zombie groaned. Max lifted his gun and
tried to line up the barrel and the zombie. It looked right, but he
checked again, and then again. By then the zombie had moved, so he
adjusted his aim.

Max sighed and lowered the gun. The zombie
moaned. Max took a breath and aimed the gun one more time. He lined
everything up, then pulled the trigger.

The shot rang loudly through the hall, and
Max watched the bullet pockmark the linoleum a few inches away from
the zombie. He lined up and fired again, and missed by even more.
Max took a breath. The zombie was closer, and Max thought of
heading out the door and waiting for Ortiz to come down the stairs
and take care of it, but he shook the idea. He wanted to prove he
wasn’t useless, to himself and to the soldiers. It was just one
zombie, and an incapacitated one at that. He lined up again, and
pulled the trigger.

The zombie’s head exploded, but Max saw his
own shot mark the ground, closer than the two before, but still no
dice.

Max turned and saw Ortiz on the stairs,
lowering his gun.

“You could’ve called me,” Ortiz said,
stepping down the stairs.

“I wanted to try for myself, first,” Max
said.

“Good. You’re learning. By the way, you’re
aiming with the wrong eye.” Ortiz started down the hallway.

“So now what?”

“We’ll clear out the classrooms. Should be
simple. Open the door, shoot the zombies, close the door. Think you
can manage?”

“I’ll try,” Max said.

“I hate to sound rude, but if we’re ever
going to meet up with the others, we’re going to have to split
up.”

“Okay, that’s fine.”

“Great,” Ortiz said. “I’ll check the
classrooms down here, and you check the ones up there. Meet me at
the bottom of the stairs at the end of the hall.”

“Upstairs?” Max said.

“Something wrong?”

“No, it’s just… When you said ‘split up’, I
thought you meant different rooms, different sides of the hall. I
didn’t know you meant the whole floor.”

“You can stay with me if you want. Lou and
Johns can hold their own.”

“No, it’s fine. I can take the
upstairs.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I’m sure.”

“Okay. Again, call me if you need anything.
If something goes wrong, try to get to an empty room and shut the
door, okay?”

“Okay,” Max said. He headed up the
stairs.

It was darker upstairs, but as far as Max
could tell, there were no zombies. He hadn’t heard gunfire while
Ortiz was up there, so the hallway being empty made sense. Max
swallowed his fear, pressed on, and reached the first door. He
peered in through the window. The room was dark and the desks were
in disarray. The only light was pouring in through a window across
from the door. Max saw no motion, but he couldn’t see much of the
room.

Max took a few breaths and gripped the
handle of the door. He squeezed, and then squeezed harder. His head
said turn, but his hand just squeezed. Max closed his eyes, then
started to turn the handle. He forced his eyes back open, turned
the handle all the way, and opened the door a lot more slowly than
he wanted to. He took a step forward, raised his gun, and looked
around.

The room was empty. Max backed out and
closed the door.

There was no door across from the first
class because of the stairs, but the rest of the hall was divided
evenly, with classrooms directly across from each other.

Max went to the door of the room next to the
empty one, grabbed the handle, and squeezed after seeing nothing
through the window. He turned the handle, opened the door, and
stepped in. There was a zombie in the corner of the room, and it
growled as it turned to face him. Max aimed, and the zombie rushed
forward.

Max told himself to pull the trigger, but it
wasn’t happening. He closed his eyes. He heard the frantic breaths
of the zombie as it rushed across the room, shoving desks out of
the way. Max opened his eyes. The zombie was right in front of him.
He yelled as he pulled the trigger.

The bullet went through the zombie’s head.
Blood splattered all over Max; all over his clothes, all over his
gun and his hands. It got on his face, some landed in his mouth. It
was in his hair.

The zombie went down. Its hands, still
reaching forth, grasped and brushed against Max as it fell. They
dragged along his clothes, smearing old and new blood all down
them. The zombie hit the ground and stopped moving.

Max wanted to scream. He spat the blood from
his mouth. He spat again, and then again and again, and the taste
was gone but the feeling was still there. He wiped his hair and
face. The blood smeared and didn’t come off.

Max looked around the room. It was clear. He
slammed the door shut, then walked across the hall. His hand
touched the handle, and for a moment, he thought he’d never turn
it.

The sound of Ortiz’s assault rifle exploded
from downstairs. It echoed through the halls and became all Max
could hear. His head was splitting. His heart began racing. For no
reason he could find, Max screamed.

He opened the door in a frenzy, stepped in,
and turned. Two zombies. He started shooting, and they both fell.
He shut the door and turned to the next room. He opened it, and a
zombie on the floor reached for his foot, like it knew he was
coming. This made Max feel strange, the closest he could think to
the feeling was that it offended him. Max kicked the zombie in the
face, and it rolled over. He pointed the gun downward and shot it
in the head, then stepped into the room.

Max turned, saw another zombie, and fired.
He missed a few times, then hit it in the head. More blood
splattered onto him. He spat, but didn’t bother with his skin or
clothes.

Max shut the door and headed for the next
room. He cleared it, spat blood or just spit (he wasn’t sure), and
headed for the next. He opened the door and saw five zombies. Max
fired and took two out, then heard his gun click. He shut the door
and reloaded. The other zombies scrambled against the window,
trying to get through, unable to work the door handle. Max pressed
the gun to the glass, right between one zombie’s eyes, and pulled
the trigger.

The window shattered. The zombie’s head
exploded, and glass went flying everywhere. Almost all of it went
into the room, but Max was sure he felt some tiny fragments land on
him. Maybe it was just blood.

The shrapnel from the glass pierced the
other two zombies, who shrieked and stepped back. Max opened the
door as hard as he could, knocking one of the zombies down. He shot
the other, and then turned to the one on the ground. It was
starting to turn toward him, but Max shot it in the back of the
head. He spat air, and shut the door.