The eerie familiarity of the situation made me shiver.
Of course there was one of those things right around the corner. It hadn't discovered me yet, but soon enough it would be able to smell me. Damn zombies. I was trapped. There were walkers surrounding the building and quite a few on the inside of the old high schoo.l
I had come in with hopes of scavenging supplies: food, water, medicine. Anything I could find that might possibly help ease the danger and discomfort of our current situation. MY current situation. It almost made me sad to think about how alone I was; everyone in the group I had been traveling with had succumbed to the virus. I was almost sad, but at the moment I was focusing on not peeing my pants as I heard the walker around the corner sniff the air and turn to face the wall I was standing behind.
Coming to a school was probably not a very safe idea; public places were always crowded with walkers. But I had been running out of options. Evert easily accessible store or safe house had been looted, ransacked, staked-out, or overrun. Supplies were running low everywhere.
I held my breath as the walker shuffled closer, making sick, gurgling noises deep in its throat. My hands clenched around the red fire axe I had found beside an overturned fire truck down the street. My hands were slick with sweat and I prayed to whatever god was listening that the axe didn't slip out of my hand when I attacked the corpse.
It stumbled a few steps closer and I took an involuntary step back. My movement cost me, though. It alerted another walker at the end of the hall that I hadn't noticed. I heard its growl as it began shambling towards me on what appeared to be one broken leg and one leg with no flesh on it.
It was still about halfway down the hall from me when the walker around the corner popped up, startling me enough for the axe to slip through my fingers. It sat on the ground right next to me, so I bent to retrieve it, but I was sure any other walkers in the halls would have heard the clatter. I panicked and swung at the reanimated body. Luck was on my side. The wedged blade of the axe lodged itself deep inside the head of the walker.
I reveled in my triumph for one second too long. My axe was still stuck in the head of walker #1 when walker #2 decided to go for a surprise attack. Sneaky bastard. He growled right in my ear. I jumped and walked to the other side of the dead walker's body, putting it between the still semi-alive walker and myself. I tried yanking the axe out of the walker's head, but it was stuck fast and the second walker was getting closer. Trying to avoid the creature's mouth, I shoved it back, buying myself very little time. The brains of the first walker was like black quicksand. I soon gave up on pulling the axe free and ran back around the corner where the first walker had come from.
Big mistake. There were about 4 more walkers at the end of this hallway who looked up at me, acknowledging my presence after I growled in frustration.
I ran back around the corner, narrowly avoiding the grasping hands of walker #2. I sprinted as fast as I could to a set of blood-stained stairs cluttered with desks, filing cabinets, and papers with grades ranging from 96 to 32. Most were F's. I took the time in the middle of running from what caused the end of the world to be disappointed in the teenage generation. I mean, sure, i was never the worlds best student, hell i was far from it, but a 32, really? They could afford to study a little more. Or at least they used to be able to. I almost shook my head in disappointment, but then I remembered what was chasing me.
I raced down flight after flight of stairs, not daring to look back as the sound of dead pairs of feet multiplied.
I was finally on the high school's ground floor. All I would have to do is round a few corners to the entrance hall, get out the front doors and speed out of town in my big red pickup. I turned one corner and heard a few more walkers joining the mob behind me.
Just as I thought it was weird that there were no walkers ahead of me, a group of 6 stepped out of a classroom. I sidestepped them as I ran but the small move slowed me down dangerously. I stepped on the side of my right foot, putting my full weight on it. Searing pain shot through my ankle. I let out a brief cry of pain, but didn't allow myself to stop. I just slowed down a bit, unable to keep the same speed with the injury. I limped on the wounded foot as I ran. They were sure to catch me if I kept this pace up.
I turned the last corner and found a wall of at least 15 zombies blocking the entrance. Shit. I cursed my luck as I realized this was it. This was the end. I leaned against the wall next to a janitor's closet and closed my eyes in defeat.
I heard them closing in around me. I heard the hungry moans of the undead. I heard the janitor's closet door open and a hand shot out and yanked me hard, pulling me inside.
I fell to the floor of the janitor's closet, which was oddly spacious, and the door slammed shut behind me. I had been prepared to be eaten, but these tall figures were alive. They weren't moaning, stumbling, or oozing. And they were talking.
"Keep quiet," one of them said, crouching down low. He sounded like a very young boy. Not quite an adult, but not quite a child. Maybe a very small teenager.
I nodded, though I figured he wouldn't see it, since there were no lights on in the closet.
There was a man standing by the door, looking out the foggy glass at the shadowed silhouettes of the walkers in the hall. There was another two men here, one a heavy-set man and the other tall and thin.
The tall, thin one offered me a hand and I shakily accepted it. Who were these people? I didn't know if I could trust them, but they had saved my life, so I was grateful to them.
We stood in darkness, me leaning heavily on the back wall, for what felt like days but was actually only an hour, before the walkers gave up, too confounded with the concept of a doorknob to give any more thought to the promising meal on the other side. The man by the door took a few steps away from it as the last walker shuffled away, moaning in confusion and hunger.
"You bit?" asked the one from in front of the door. His Georgian drawl made me want to smile or laugh, but the danger and overall scariness of the situation made me rethink the expression.
"No. No, I'm not bitten. But I think I sprained my ankle. I was running and stepped on it wrong." I explained in a whisper as a few walkers stumbled past the door.
I saw the man with the thick accent nod his head.
"How do we get out of here?" the tall man asked.
The young kid said, "There should be some air ducts in here somewhere that lead to the roof. If you can help me get the grating off, I can crawl through them a bit and figure out an escape route and then I'll come back to get y'all when I've made sure the coast is clear."
The man with the accent started to object, but the taller man cut him off with a harsh whisper. "Now is not the time for you to be having trust issues, Daryl. Its either we let Glenn scout up ahead or we die. Which one'll it be?"
I heard a slight growl from Mr. Accent (or Daryl as I had just discovered), but he nodded one short, curt nod.
Then we began searching the walls of the room for the grating over the air vent.
"I think I found it," I whispered, feeling around the edges of a large, square piece of metal with slits in it. All 4 of the other guys came over to feel the thing.
"Its screwed to the wall," the tall guy said in a disappointed whisper.
"This is a janitors closet. There's gotta be some tools 'round here somewhur," Daryl drawled, walking over to where we could see the outline of a box beneath one of the shelves. He pulled out two different sized screwdrivers and handed one of them off to the tall guy. They began unscrewing the grating, trying to be as quiet as possible. It only took a few minutes before the screws fell into their hands and they could lift the grating off and set it in the corner.
The young man, Glenn, hoisted himself inside the air duct where he fit easily and began crawling down it. I saw him pull out a small handgun as he crawled away.
I turned back to the others and noticed they, too, were armed. The tall guy had a shotgun, the heavier looking one had a baseball bat, and Daryl had some kind of weapon that was not easily identifiable in small, dark spaces like janitors closets.
The tall man came forward holding out a hand. "Officer Rick Grimes."
I shook his hand and said, "Keagan Brooks."
