Stay Dead: A Novel (8 page)

Beyond the ruined storefront windows were the
ransacked innards of what could’ve been fancy shops and quaint
corner delis at one point. Calmly parked cars still remained on the
street and some shops which, according to the window signs, were
open for business.

There hadn’t been any lurkers, or survivors,
or even a stray dog, only the emptiness. It was a ghost town
plucked from the pages of a western yarn with a modern aesthetic.
The convoy passed several cross streets and didn’t bother to turn
down any of them. Instead, they continued to the end of Broadway,
which was marked by the post office. The road then formed a circle
around a statue of a firefighter carrying a hose over his shoulder.
It looked like copper or tarnished brass, was very large and had
benches surrounding its foundation. They too were covered in
newspapers and other garbage. The circle opened in the back to
reveal a park and the rest of Broadway which looked like a quiet
little chunk of suburbia that you’d see portrayed in a television
sitcom.

They continued traveling down the road, past
the park. Just beyond the park was a school, a modern building with
a brick façade. There were two sets of oversized double doors on
the front of the building and a fenced in area at the back. Down
the road, about a quarter of a mile, was a library, and then the
start of a housing development. Anything beyond that was lost in
the growing darkness of the evening.

Jon-Jon came to a stop in front of the school
and the rest of the convoy followed suit. Jon-Jon, Boone, Eddie and
soon a mess of folks gathered on the lawn of the school. Some
people were looking for some comforting words or even a pep talk.
They didn’t get one. Jon-Jon grabbed a flashlight out of his bag
and grabbed his pistol. He grabbed Shorty by the shoulder and
whispered something in his ear. Jon-Jon then walked away and Shorty
followed.

The two of them approached the school. The
others talked amongst themselves and paid them no attention.
Walking close to each other, they were now at the side of the
school building. Jon-Jon shined the light into the first window. It
was an office room, perhaps belonging to someone in administration.
It looked clear and undisturbed. They moved over to the next
window, which was the first in a long series of similar windows.
Beyond those windows was a classroom, clean as a whistle, chairs
and desks were neatly lined up and even the chalkboard had been
washed. With each set of windows it was the same deal. At the back
of the building, Jon-Jon leaned into the fence, moving his
flashlight back and forth in an attempt to see what—if anything—was
beyond the fence. Shorty stood almost on top of him. They could see
two soccer goal posts in the distance, and glimmers behind that,
which they assumed was the flashlight reflecting off the other end
of the fence. All seemed well.

Shorty and Jon-Jon rejoined the group.
Jon-Jon turned to his side and noticed a shadow moving to the side
of them. He heard the crinkle of leaves and sure enough emerged a
dead creature from the darkness. It was a woman, a younger looking
woman, who, apart from being dead, didn’t appear excessively
damaged like many of the other creatures they had encountered. She
was almost attractive. She walked with a stagger, and her head
twitched violently to one side and back, only to repeat the action
again. Without the twitching had one could easily see how the dead
things were able to do so much damage: she looked hurt and in need
of help, and a few days ago any one of the group would have tried
to help her.

Jon-Jon grabbed one of Judy’s pipes from her
and he turned to face the broken-neck-bitch. He swung into the
woman’s throat propelling her onto her back. Judy came up from
behind Jon-Jon, brandishing her other pipe and began to beat the
woman’s head into the ground. The two of them mashed her into a
puddle of soft mush and red earth. They finished the job before
anyone else could be of help. The dead woman’s hand continued to
twitch as they walked away.

Jon-Jon quickly looked around and noticed a
few more moving shadows. He headed for the doors to the school. The
others followed. Everyone left their cars carrying whatever they
could, crying children included. They needed to put some solid
walls between themselves and the creeping shadows of death that
seemed to follow them everywhere. If Death himself showed up with a
scythe it wouldn’t be a surprise. It might even make more sense.
The main door was locked, and too solid to try to budge open with a
shoulder. They then made a mad dash to the far side of the building
that they hadn’t checked, but was clear when they drove past it
initially. It remained so.

Two dead things started moving toward them
from the street. One looked like he could be the custodian of the
school. The other was a fat man wearing flannel pajamas and a tank
top revealing the gaping wounds in his throat and chest. Dried
blood covered the front of his body as well as his exposed arms.
Frankie and Eddie took care of the fat man as Damian, Shorty, and
Joseph cleaned up the janitor. Jon-Jon continued to the side
entrance toward the fence. It was locked as well, but this one had
a small rectangular window with chicken wire inside the glass. He
looked through the window with his flashlight. It was dark inside,
but he didn’t see any movement. He started bashing through the
window with Judy’s pipe. The wire made it difficult, but he broke
through it eventually. With Scott and Judy watching his back,
Jon-Jon put his hand through the window. He tried to be careful,
but even so, he cut and scraped his hand and forearm. By the time
he was able to open the door his cuts and scrapes became deep
wounds screaming for an infection. He pulled his arm out, nearly
crying, and blood flowed profusely from his cuts. Judy gasped and
quickly rummaged through her bag, pulling out a spare shirt to wrap
around his arm.

The rest of them had finished off the fat man
and his friend and caught up just in time to head into the
building. Shorty took the lead, as Judy and Scott tightly wrapped
Jon-Jon’s arm. Boone followed behind Shorty with his flashlight. So
far the coast was clear, no noise, no moans, no scratching, only
the sounds they themselves made and the silence inside. The door
they entered led directly into what the sign next to the door
called the A-wing.

Eddie and Frankie were making sure everyone
got inside safely and keeping a few eyes out for any of the kids
that may have been lost in the shuffle. They’d both seen it happen
early on and were not interested in witnessing another occurrence.
Once everyone was inside they got together a small group, including
the two of them, to scout ahead.

The group consisted of Boone, Shorty, Ben,
Eddie, and Frankie. Jon-Jon wanted to go ahead with them but Judy
had insisted he not. It was best he take it easy and focus on fully
stopping his bloodied arm by resting and applying pressure. They
headed down the hall toward the back of the building as the others
stood huddled just beyond the door.

Ricker and Dawn were smoking before they
could even catch their breath and Jon-Jon took Dawn’s side and
eventually a few drags of her cigarette. The kids were terrified
and lately that was the only expression except exhaustion their
faces could seem to muster. Eddie’s mother, Janice, was holding
together fairly well and took it upon herself to watch over many of
the kids. Everybody helped of course—especially Dawn and Gerty—but
just helping the kids deal with what was happening was enough to
tire anyone out. No one fully understood what was going on. They
could only explain what they were seeing but it was hard to explain
such things to kids when the ones doing the explaining didn’t
believe what they were seeing. The best they could hope for was a
place of relative safety, and now, they hoped the school would be
that place for a little while. Though had any of them been fortune
tellers, they would’ve stayed at home.

They had checked every door going down the
corridor and had come up bone-dry in their search for living dead
squatters. The corridor wrapped around to the right and on the left
were a set of double doors that headed into the cafeteria. They
slowly opened the doors and were greeted by a large clean room with
a view of the fenced in grounds at the back of the school. Windows
went from waist high to a few feet from the ceiling. Tables and
chairs were neatly stacked into the corners of the room and on both
sides were doors that exited to the grounds. Both doors were
locked. Centered between the back exit doors was the kitchen and
registers. Beyond the stacks of trays and a series of ordering
windows, deep inside the kitchen were three large freezer doors and
a giant refrigerator—the only dead things in those were unlabeled
meat patties and flattened roaches. They left the large room the
same way they entered it and headed to another door that led to the
basement.

Boone and his flashlight led the way down the
stairs to the lower level. Ben crisscrossed his flashlight’s beam
over Boone’s. Shorty was right behind Ben. Eddie and Frankie held
the back of the line. Shorty had his pistol ready in one hand and
his crowbar in the other. They stood at the bottom of the steps
with their ears listening for noise. Experience had taught them you
could sometimes hear a lurker before you’d be able to see
one--especially in the dark. Not a sound. They continued into the
initial room. Once they began searching the rooms they noted that
most of the rooms were for storage; filing cabinets and old desks.
They came across a break room that was conveniently labeled
‘maintenance only’. The room had some unopened soda bottles and
moldy bread on the dirty microwave. The boiler room followed that
and it too was labeled as such with a big red sign on the door.
They cautiously opened it, Shorty and Ben kept an eye in the other
direction. The boiler room was quiet and the pipes weren’t hissing
or steaming. It was very clean and looked as if the maintenance
had, in fact, been maintaining it. Shorty and Ben now stood in the
doorway while the others quietly and quickly looked around.

Upstairs, Scott, still dizzy from the
collision, along with Judy, Alexis and Joseph, guided the rest of
the gang in the opposite direction from Boone and the others, to
the gymnasium. Alexis and Joseph had been holding the back of the
line. She held a flashlight and had a knife easily accessible in
her pocket. Joseph was no more than a foot away and brandished a
pistol.

Given the size of the school, the gym was not
as big as one would think. Toward the left hand corner of the room
was a large stack of gymnastics mats. They were in various sizes
and a multitude of colors—all dingy, however. They would make an
excellent place to sleep for the night, no one in the group had
seen a mattress in some time, and this was the closest they were
likely to get any time soon. There was also a rack of basketballs
against the wall. To the right of the basketballs was a corridor
which led into the locker rooms. Once they checked and cleared them
they headed back into the gym, toward the gym’s entrance. After
they checked the rest of the floor they came back to the
gymnasium.

Scott and Judy waited near the door where
they had entered the school, while Alexis and Joseph hung around
the gymnasium entrance. They would wait there until the others
returned from the basement. There was no other floor and no visible
access to the roof.

After a few minutes the group returned from
the basement. They met up with Scott and Judy and followed them to
the gymnasium.

“Everybody listen up,” Boone spoke loudly but
not yelling. “We’re going to stay the night, it’s safe. I think
it’s best for everyone if we all stay inside.”

“Should we just leave our cars the way they
are?” Ricker asked.

“Yeah, leave your cars as is for now—so long
as they’re off, we’ll worry about them come daybreak. For now just
rest up.”

Everyone settled down. There were more than
enough mats for everyone to use, and they did. People grouped up
and spread out around the gymnasium floor. The children were
freaked out being inside the school. They were used to a school
being safe, bright and full of people making noise. This, to them,
was another sign of the world they knew disappearing. Alexis,
Janice, and a few others did what they could to comfort the
children as much as possible, but it wasn’t the easiest thing when
they needed comforting just as much.

Boone left the gymnasium by himself. He
walked over to the door where they came in. He peered out the
window, which was now lying in pieces on the floor mixed with
Jon-Jon’s blood, and noticed shadows moving in the distance. He
took a deep breath and took twice as long to exhale. He had no idea
what he was doing anymore. He used to have an idea about what to
do, but it seemed no matter what he did people died. Their deaths,
each and every one took a chunk out of his will and now he was left
feeling uneasy and defeated. Going ahead wasn’t a good idea, but
there was no going back.

Outside, under the cloak of night, the school
became a lighthouse to the undead vessels lost among the debris of
a world in ruin. Somehow they knew, either by scent or noise, or
some omniscient knowledge. The living dead knew that life was
somewhere inside that building, and they wanted it. With hands
stretching outward and stiff legged movements pulling them forward
they moved closer.

For those who couldn’t sleep, or needed
something to do, there was a gathering outside the gymnasium. They
got together anything that could be of immediate use. They sealed
up the window Jon-Jon broke and began barricading any other weak
spots they could find. They worked diligently as the others
rested.

CHAPTER
6: No place like
home