5 miles.
"Turn right"
10 miles.
"Turn left."
Those were the only words spoken for the first half of the trip. I had my hands on the wheel, and she had her hands on a crumpled city map. I knew we should have grabbed a few CD's from the stash back at the zone, but too bad so sad; we rode in silence. Until...
"Oh, wait wait, turn left there too!" She suddenly yelped, pointing through the windshield at a rusty stop sign.
As we passed it.
Well, good thing we were the only functioning car on the road for miles. And it'd be a shocker if there was another car! See, Rosita and I were the ones sent by Deanna to a new scavenging location. It's a shopping plaza or something, I think. I don't know. All we got was a map with a few dots on it. And normally, she'd have sent Glenn along with us, but he is still recovering from an injury to his leg. I overheard Maggie begging Deanna not to send him out with us tonight. I don't blame her; I think Glenn deserves a break, despite how amazing of a runner he is. But it's a shame Maggie, also an amazing runner, wasn't assigned to come along instead!
Not like Rosita and I can't handle ourselves, though. Obviously.
After spinning the car around and getting on the right road, Rosita finally said something different.
"It's gonna be up ahead, according to this-" she shook the map in her hands, " -looks like it's located right after the next intersection. We'll hit this one, and then we'll do the one that's marked about 5 miles from here."
"If we have time." I muttered, looking at the sky through the windshield; it was past 4:00 for sure. The sun was going to set soon. I didn't help that it was starting to get very cloudy. "We probably should have held this little trip off until the morning."
"Maybe." She said.
Then soon enough, there was point A.
And boy, was it intimidating.
"A high school?" Rosita asked, sounding the hell does she want us to scavenge a school? Do we need sticky notes or something?
"There's gotta be a good reason..." I said, parking the car on the side of the road, "And it can't be that overrun if she's confident that two people can handle what's inside."
"I hope she's right..." Rosita put the map on the dashboard and cautiously stepped out of the car. From where we were, we could on see two or three walkers ahead of us, and they didn't seem agitated at all.
"We're clear, just keep things quiet." I said as I, too, stepped out of the car and met Rosita at the hatchback. We got our guns, our gear, and our empty bags(for what we find). I made sure we both had working head lamps(more effective than flashlights), and extra batteries, because with the sun now setting, it was pretty much set in stone that we'd be scavenging in the dark. It wasn't my favorite thing to do at all, but this was the mission we were given.
As we approached the school building, we could instantly tell that the place had seen some dark times. But it didn't look too bad; there were no gaping holes in the walls or anything. There was just a lot of rotting bodies, and dried gore. Once we were at the main entrance, we saw more bodies piled on the stairway leading to the door. And that's when I looked up and got our first clue as to why Deanna sent us here.
A big sign above the door said, "EMERGENCY EVACUATION HERE. REMAIN CALM AND REPORT TO THE GYMNASIUM."
"You think this place held up until everyone was rescued?" Rosita asked.
"I don't think so." I moved a few limp bodies away from the door with my foot, "It looks like everyone was trying to run out all at once. Or get in."
"So much for remaining calm." Rosita sighed. "Ready?"
"Mmmhmmm."
We both lifted our guns up, and proceeded slowly though the unlocked doors. We were as quiet as we could because it was important to listen for walkers.
"This gymnasium is either going to be a gold mine, or a death trap." I whispered. "If it's not worth the struggle, or we need more numbers, we leave and come back some other time. Okay?"
"We'll see." Rosita said. "There's also smaller areas of the school to check, you know."
We wandered the main hallway - looking for a sign or something to direct us to the gym. But the first thing we came across was the nurse's office, and we decided to check for first aid stuff in there.
"Door's locked. We're gonna have to break it if we want in." I said, "Is it worth it?"
"Yeah. If it's locked, that means no one's been inside for a while. Plus, we really need bandages, alcohol pads, and pain killers. We never have enough." Rosita walked across the hall and pulled a fire extinguisher out of it's case. "Stand back."
I moved away from the door, and Rosita began to bash the door handle with the fire extinguisher.
One. Two. Three.
It seemed like every time she swung the heavy tank down on the metal handle, it made more noise.
Five. Six. CRACK.
The handle broke off and the door opened. She took two steps inside, and whistled. Sure enough, we heard two walkers groan and walk towards us from the back of the room.
"No guns. Just knives. You know the deal." She commanded; beating me to it. I already had my knife in my hand anyway.
When the two walkers could be seen in our flashlight rays, we both ran at them at once and drove our knives into their skulls. They both hit the ground, and we got a better look at them.
"One's a nurse. The other must be a patient." I crouched down next to the nurse.
"She must have locked herself in here knowing she'd turn." Rosita began to check the nurse's pockets, and I saw her smirk a little when she pulled out a large ring of keys. "But it looks like we won't be smashing anymore handles." She said, jingling the keys. "I'll go in and search, seeing as I know what we need from here... Wanna keep watch?" "Sure." I replied.
So I spent about 15 minutes standing by the door like a bouncer, listening to Rosita humming quietly and searching drawers in the office, and also listening for activity in the hallway.
"Hey, we've got some inhalers here!" She suddenly said, happily. "For Danny... poor kid can't run very far without one of these..." I heard her shove a handful of stuff in her bag and zip it close.
"And-" Her footsteps grew louder, and suddenly she appeared in my flashlight's ray. "I found these." In her hand was an all too familiar, and all too important, blue package.
They were pads. Also known as: a fucking miracle.
We both chuckled a little, she put them back in her bag, and then said, "I think we're good here. If we have time, and room, we can come back for more... Have you heard any walkers?"
I shook my head, "No, but I think I hear some rain out there."
She paused to listen for it too, then said "I wouldn't worry it about that yet."
Continuing on, we came across many other classrooms before finding a long stretch of lockers - most of them opened. Several backpacks were on the floor, and there were water logged books and papers scattered about.
But then, we saw one, lone body lying in the middle of it all a little ways down. He was dead, but still alive. Rosita approached him and drove a knife into his skull before he could even think to get up and bite one of us.
"Yep, there was panic here." I muttered, bending over to search a backpack. At first I thought it was all books until I zipped open a pocket and found an MP3 player with headphones. Half-charged.
"Mine!" I said immediately, stuffing it in my pocket.
"I hope it's full of terrible pop music." Rosita sneered, jokingly. She picked up a backpack of her own and dumped its contents onto the ground. There was nothing good, but we still took the empty backpack itself.
Next, we came across a half open locker covered in bumper stickers. Some were funny, some were offensive, sand some were funnily offensive. Once I opened it all the way, I was happy to find this really neat leather jacket.
"Ooh! Also mine!" I exclaimed, grabbing it and tossing it on over my t-shirt. It was a little big, but it still smelled like leather. Daryl's gonna be jealous! Plus, there was no way a walker could effectively bite through real leather this thick. It's like armor.
"Hey, don't worry, we'll find you one in the lost and found!" I chuckled, but Rosita didn't comment. Instead, she crouched down and picked a crumpled map of the school off the ground. Everything was color coded by highlighters; this was totally the work of a freshman.
"Sweet, now we've got keys AND a map." I said, "Things are looking good for us now!"
"Uh-huh." She nodded, shining her flashlight on the paper. "So right now, we are here at room 108. The cafeteria is down the hall to the right. And the gym is way on the other side of the school, it looks like."
"Okay, any other points of interest?" I asked.
"No. That gym will have tons of supplies if no one has gotten to them yet. We gotta focus on that for the most part." Rosita explained. "But first, the cafeteria is worth checking."
"Right." I said.
Getting into the cafeteria was no problem. One of the doors was open, and there were minimal bodies to step over. But once we were inside, we were met with something unpleasant.
"Jesus, it does NOT smell like corn dogs and tater tots in here-" I commented as the two of us covered our mouths and noses. It wasn't just the smell of the dead bodies that was bad(actually, we were pretty used to that), it was also the smell of whatever rotten food there was in the kitchen.
"I don't know if we should check this. A couple cans of peas isn't worth this crap." Rosita muttered. Basically, she said what was originally on my mind. But I had a different idea.
"We don't have to take any food out of here, you know." I replied, "there's other stuff. Follow me."
We proceeded to the back, where we found a bunch of plastic utensils and plates. Another seemingly random set of things that are actually pretty useful.
"Huh. Alright!" Rosita said, satisfied. She put them all in her bag. "Now, let's-"
BOOM!
Rosita and I dropped low as a massive wave of thunder came rolling in over the building - it was so wild, the tables in the cafeteria shook.
"Holy SHIT!" I yelled, and then we both looked up at the ceiling as if we were looking for the storm.
Oh, there was one hell of a storm coming.
And one hell of a storm it would be.