The decision to find Shelby had been an easy one to make, and the entire crew had agreed. Because she did not change after being bitten her blood was a hundred times more valuable than that weapons cache back in Columbia. If the Doc was right, and only testing her blood would be able to tell, she just might be the one person to stop the further spread of this madness. That was why we had to get her to Blacksburg.
John Roman Elementary School was a typical modern school building, an ugly two-story brick box with a wide set of steps leading up to boarded-over glass doors. Tall glass windows had lined the wall before the end, but they were now boarded up. Dark patches on the concrete walks could be seen here and there; indications of the carnage that must have happened here during those last days, though some of it seemed a bit more recent.
"I don't want to leave Shelby out here alone any longer than necessary," I whispered to the crew. With a nod to Sam, he eased open one of the boarded up glass doors. I moved forward covering high, with Tito covering low. Once we were inside, the rest of the team moved in behind us, keeping a close watch. Just inside the doors to the school were wide staircases leading up and down. Carol and Bob moved to the right to cover the staircases on that side, while Jeremy and Kim covered the left. "Sam, take Carol and Bob. Search upstairs. Phil, take Jeremy and Kim. Search this floor. Tito and I will search the lower floor. Maurice, set up here and cover our exit."
Sam had joined us the first time we pulled into Blacksburg. He was the oldest member of the crew, but never failed to pull his own weight. Before the end, he had worked at the RJ Reynolds Tobacco warehouse in Gaffney, South Carolina and referred to his life as normal. One night in Blacksburg, over drinks of Old Man Kipling's hooch, he had told me about rushing home, as the news reported riots and violence, to find his wife eating their daughter. He had fired all 5 rounds from the revolver he carried into her, but she still kept coming. Somehow, he managed to get to the bedroom. While she beat on the door, he got the shotgun from the closet. When she burst through the door, he finally gave her peace. That's how he referred to killing the dead, giving them peace. Thinking the worst had happened, he was shocked when his mangled daughter attacked him as well. Armed with the revolver and shotgun, he had survived on his own long enough to join up with other survivors led by Roy. He was one of the original founders of Blacksburg Outpost, but a bad case of the wandering feet had him approaching me to join my crew.
"Which way do we go?" Sam and his team were standing at the top of the stairs they had just climbed looking down the two hallways that extended to either side. The upper floor was laid out like a huge V with the staircases in the point. "I don't think we should split up. So we will take the right hall. Carol cover the right side, Bob the left."
Slowly, the team made its way down the hall, checking each empty classroom as it went. Many of the classrooms had been emptied of the original classroom furniture and converted into living quarters by the survivors who had called this building home at one time. Other classrooms had been converted to storage area and were filled with furniture, clothing, and other assorted items.
When the team reached the end of hall, they had found nothing. A couple of truly dead bodies had been found, mostly the result of gunshot wounds, but no little girl. "Lets move back to the stairwell and check out the other hall." The team followed Sam's lead as he moved back down the hall past classrooms they had already investigated.
When they reached the main stairs, they stopped and looked down the second hall. About halfway down the hall, the hall was closed off about halfway down with a crudely built wall with a door whose construction was obviously post-apocalyptic.
Slowly the team began to move down the hallway. At each door, they would stop and listen for movement, then slowly ease the door open. Carol covered the left side from a kneeling position, while Bob covered the right from a standing one. Sam took care of opening the door and covered the center of the room. Each room was cleared one by one, until the team reached the door that had been built across the hall.
Hearing nothing behind the door, Sam slowly opened it. At first, no threats could be seen. Then Bob caught a glimpse of movement in the far edge of the room. "Movement at the rear of the room," Bob whispered, warning the rest of the team.
"I'm clear," responded Carol. Her side of the room was nothing but empty space filled with old chairs and desks. She kept her M4 carbine up on her shoulder with her cheek welded to the stock. With both eyes open, she saw a full view of the room in front of her with the red dot from the rifle's sight superimposed over the image.
"Light," warned Sam as he turned his gun light from its dim setting up to bright. In the light could be seen a zombie in the far corner of the room. Once it had been a middle-aged man dressed in a tweed coat, now it was just rotting flesh dressed in rags. It started towards the team only to come to a halt as its wrist was caught short. In the light, Sam could see the gleam of the cuff and chain that held the zombie. The zombie kept pulling at the cuff, trying to get to the warm blood-filled flesh of the team. "Looks like someone was experimenting on this zombie." With a cracking noise, the zombie's wrist finally gave way and it stumbled forward, leaving its hand behind. A quick shot from Sam's silenced M4 blew the zombie's head apart and dropped it to the floor. "Good riddance."
Faintly, the sound of a grenade explosion from the floor below could be heard. "Everyone, back to the stairs!" Sam ordered. Bringing up the rear, he followed Carol and Bob back down the hallway. Even though they had cleared these rooms, he kept his eyes peeled for any danger. When they reached the stairs, they flattened themselves to the outside wall. Bob led the way, his eyes and M4 covering the area in front of him. Carol took the middle; her area of responsibility was the center of the stairwell and the flight of stairs below them. Sam brought up the rear, making sure nothing surprised them from the floor they had just been searching.
"Jeremy, you cover the left flank. I have the right. Kim, keep a good watch on our rear. I would hate for something to sneak up on us." On the main floor, Phil held the gaze of each of his team in turn until he was sure they understood. A long wide hallway divided the main floor of the school with doors on both sides. Just to the right of the main entrance, the first set of doors led to the administration offices.
"Kim, watch the hall. Jeremy, follow me in, but leave the door open and stay in sight of Kim. I will check out the offices." As Jeremy turned the doorknob, Phil eased the door open using the muzzle of his suppressed M4 rather than his hand. Just as the door swung completely open, his sights were filled with the teeth of a dead man. Pulling the trigger blew the dead man's head apart, but had he opened the door with his hand his fingers would be missing. Pushing forward, Phil swept the room with his rifle. As no other targets presented themselves he started to move deeper into the room.
"Phil, I think you need to look at this." Jeremy was kneeling down beside the body of the dead man Phil had just shot. "This is a recent corpse, a bandit from the looks of things, not from the original fall of the school."
"Alright, everyone keep their eyes open." The look on Phil's face told Jeremy that the bandit's corpse worried him. "Let's find the girl and get out of here." With a nod from Jeremy, Phil made a quick pass through the administration offices and finding nothing, led everyone back into the hallway. The next couple of doors proved to be empty classrooms.
"Nothing here." Frustration could be heard in Jeremy's voice at the last in a long chain of empty classrooms. Only the three sets of double doors leading to the gymnasium remained to be checked.
"Most likely the girl is on one of the other floors, so let's check the gym and then pull back to the main doors." With nods from Kim and Jeremy, Phil moved towards the first set of double doors. The doors had been damaged at sometime, with the left hand door hanging crooked from a broken hinge.
Easing the right hand door open, Phil peered into the darkness of the gym. The only light in the gym was coming from a series of small windows just under the edge of the roof, which left the gym shrouded in gloom. Engaging the light mounted on the handguard of his M4, Phil began to move slowly forward into the gym. Kim and Jeremy turned their lights on as well and followed him.
"Holy Shit!" Jeremy's curse behind Phil would normally have startled him, but he had already seen the same thing Jeremy did. The gym was full of the dead. By the looks of the zombie standing in the light from Phil's gunlight, these dead had been bandits of some kind as opposed to school children or faculty.
At first the zombie seemed totally unresponsive, then it let out a low moan, which was answered from the darkness beyond it. Turning, it began to approach Phil. Phil began to back up, but others of its kind joined the zombie and Phil's team was quickly hemmed in.
"Back to the doors! Kim, Covering fire!" Phil's words were drowned out as both Kim and Jeremy started firing into the crowds of zombies. Phil backed towards the doors, firing single shots and short bursts with his M4 rifle to keep the zombies back.
"I've got the door!" Kim yelled to Jeremy and Phil. She shifted from the right side of the doorway to the left in order to concentrate more fire into the crowd of zombies that were beginning to push forward. Jeremy made his way back to her, trusting her to keep the zombies from getting behind him. Once he made it to the door, they both continued to pour gunfire into the crowd of zombies, trying to keep them off Phil.
"Let go you, bastard!" One large zombie had closed with Phil and grabbed the barrel of his M4. Phil fired repeatedly into the dead man's gut, but he refused to let go. Releasing his grip on the rifle, Phil grabbed the razor sharp machete he carried across his back and buried it into the zombie's skull. Letting the zombie fall with both his rifle and machete, Phil drew the military issue M9 Berretta he carried. Shooting another zombie between the eyes, he continued backing up towards the door.
"Get Down!" Hearing Kim's screamed order, Phil dropped to one knee. The chatter of Kim's M4 sliced over his head, but even so he continued to drop zombies with well-placed shots. "Come on, now!" Kim ordered and Phil scrambled back through the doors into the hall. Jeremy primed a pair of grenades and threw them into the gym. Once the explosion had settled, Jeremy and Phil used riot straps from Jeremy's kit to secure the door. Hopefully, they would hold long enough for the entire team to get clear of the building.
Tito led the way down the stairs, his suppressed M4 ready to fire if a threat presented itself. I followed a couple of steps behind him, also ready to handle any threat we might encounter. At the bottom of the steps was a set of wide double doors, which were swaying slightly.
"Boss?" The question in Tito's voice was plain. Why where the doors swaying? It could just be airflow, but neither of us believed that.
"We go forward," I replied. "Just stay alert, I hope the doors mean Shelby went this way." The door led into a long hallway. With no lights working, and no windows the hallway was pitch black. "Light sticks," I whispered to Tito. We each pulled out several of the old "break and glow" light sticks. With a snap, each stick slowly began to glow a bright green. We tossed the sticks down the hallway until we could see all but the very end. Moving forward, we checked the first couple of classrooms, all were empty.
The last door before the double doors at the end of the hall was a solid, compared to the classroom doors with their large glass windows. Tito reached forward to turn the handle, as I pushed the door with the muzzle of my M4. The door gently swung open to reveal the darkness beyond. As I kept watch, Tito snapped another light stick and threw it into the room. As I entered the room, I was struck from the side and fired as I turned.
"Well, that's one dead ... mop!" Laughed Tito as he used his foot to lift the mop up from the floor to show me. The room was a janitorial supply closet with shelves of toilet paper, towels, and cleaning supplies.
"Did you hear that?" Tito whispered. I stood still for a moment, ears straining. Then I heard what Tito had heard, the plaintive meow of a kitten followed by the "shhhh" sound of someone trying to make it be quiet. Moving fast, I pushed through a set of double doors about midway down the hall and into the kitchen beyond. Again I heard the meow and located its source as a broom closet just inside the door.
Signaling to Tito, I reached for the closet doorknob as he moved to cover whatever might be inside. As I snatched the door open, I found Shelby crouched down in the corner with something wrapped in her shirt. "Shelby!" I cried. Shelby ran into my arms as I knelt down. In her arms was a scrawny kitten that let a loud meow as it was squeezed between our bodies. Picking her up, I motioned Tito to lead the way back into the hallway and out of here.
"James!" Even as I stopped, I could hear the suppressed snarl of Tito's M4. Through the swinging doors came the shambling forms of several dead. From the looks of the clothing and gear they wore, these were the bandits that had attacked the survivors who had made this school their home. Retreating towards Shelby and I, Tito kept up a steady barrage of short burst, each destroying the head of at least one of the dead.
"Back into the kitchen!" I yelled at Tito as I added my firepower to his. Shelby stayed attached to me, holding onto my belt as I walked backwards. A huge dead man, dressed in what were once leather pants and a vest, rushed towards us. A burst to his head flayed most of the flesh from the side of his face, but failed to stop him. Through the missing flesh you could see the gleam of metal. "Oh great, a zombie with a steel plate in his skull," I mumbled. Lifting my M4, I reached underneath the handguard and pulled the trigger on the M203 40mm grenade launcher mounted there. The launcher was loaded with the standard US Military's black and olive buckshot round and steel skull or not, the 2000 pellets in the 40mm rounds tore the zombie's upper torso apart and removed his head from the rest of him. The round also did enough damage to the surrounding dead to buy us a minute to retreat into the kitchen.
"What the hell is going on down there?" Phil's military background came through when he got that drill sergeant voice going. He must have heard the loud bang from the grenade launcher and was worried about what was going on down here.
"We have a large number of dead down here." I told him over the radio. "They have cut us off from the main stairwell and we are retreating back through the kitchen." A few short bursts stopped the dead that were trying to push through the kitchen doors. "Is everyone accounted for up there?"
"Yeah, but I hope you found the girl. She is not on the main or upper floors."
"Got her! Get everyone out of the building and back to The Traveler. I have an idea and this is going to get messy!" Over the radio, I could hear Phil curse and then start giving orders to get everyone back to The Traveler. Turning to Tito, I grinned. "I have a plan."
I chuckled at the rapid fire Spanish cursing that Tito started when he saw my grin. But any worries about my plan were cut short as the dead finally burst through the kitchen doors. We both rained short bursts into them to try and hold them back. "Shelby, Tito! Open the gas valves on the stoves! We gonna have us a zombie roast!"
As Tito and Shelby opened the valves, I kept the dead at bay with well-placed bursts. When my M4 ran dry, I could already smell the gas. Drawing the razor sharp machete I kept for when encounters got real personal, I yelled at Tito. "Time to go, folks!" Killing one of the dead who got too close with a hard slice from the machete, I retreated through the cloud of gas and caught up with Tito and Shelby at the kitchen's rear door.
"All in all, I think the world needs less ethics and more fire." I quipped as I flicked open a zippo lighter I carried among my gear and threw it into the kitchen. I had read that line on the NaMo website once long ago and had always wanted an excuse to say it. The lighter spun through the air, then bounced off the top of the stove. When it passed through the free flowing cloud of gas, the gas ignited creating a firestorm in the kitchen. By the time the gas ignited, I had already fled after Tito and Shelby through the double doors and into the open dining area.
The concussion from the exploding gas slammed all of us to the floor. "Holy Shit!" The kitchen doors had been ripped from their hinges and thrown across the room, just missing us as they passed overhead. The inside of the kitchen area was awash with flames, thought I could still see some of the dead moving about. "Let's move!" Grabbing Shelby, Tito and I ran for the rear steps leading up towards the main floor.
The stairway was clear and we took the steps in twos, the young Shelby dangling between us like a rag doll. Even as we left the stairwell and raced down the central hallway towards the school doors, smoke was beginning to billow up from the floor below. "Come on, Come on!" I yelled at Tito. As we burst through the front doors of the school and back into to the open we could feel the tremors from secondary explosions. The rest of the team was waiting at the bottom of the steps.
Even as we began to retreat back to the waiting Traveler, the dead began to boil from the burning school. Immediately the team began to fire on the approaching crowds of the dead. Many were on fire, and as they bumped into each other the fire would spread. Yet, they kept coming. Two of the M60s on this side of The Traveler opened up since they could fire around us. The heavy firepower cut into the crowd of the dead, but whoever was manning the guns was shooting low and the dead would get back up, even with gaping wounds.
"Let's get out of here!" Phil hollered as we scrambled back aboard The Traveler. Yet even as we did, I noticed he had Shelby's pink bicycle over his shoulder. As soon as we were aboard, Regina put the big rig into motion and headed us south.
As we moved I could hear the rear M60 continue to fire, with each burst followed by a string of curses. Moving back to the rear of the vehicle, I found Karl manning the machine gun and cursing not at the dead, but at the gun. "Karl, you were shooting awful low back there."
"This damn gun is stuck!" The frustration in Karl's voice was thick. "It will swivel side to side, but I don't have any up and down movement. I couldn't move to another gun, you were in the way." As he stood up from the gun, he kicked at the mount.
"Let's see what's wrong." I checked the movement of the gun myself and you could feel where it would hang as you tried to raise the muzzle. Lifting the hatch that covered the gunport, I was shocked when one of the dead lunged through. It had once been a young man whose throat the dead had torn out and whose body ended at the waist. As the creature lunged at Karl, he slammed his elbow into its mouth. Its broken teeth clamped down on his elbow. Luckily, under his shirt, he wore a thin puncture resistant undershirt. Designed to protect police officers from knives and needles, the shirt would resist the teeth of the dead for a while which was why we all wore one. Even as I drove my knife down into its skull, Karl grabbed the sides of its head one handed and snapped its neck with a violent twist.
"Get this damn thing off me!" As I threw the corpse out the hatch and slammed it shut, Karl pulled off his shirt and undershirt. I could not see any tears in the undershirt, and no punctures on his elbow. As we finished checking his arm out for bite marks, the M60 flopped up and down. Looking at each other, we both began to laugh.
Knowing what was coming, Karl stripped his shirt and undershirt off. I checked his arm and hands well looking for any indication that the dead man had bitten through to him. I did not find any breaks; the undershirt had held and kept the dead man's teeth out of his flesh.
That evening, I sat on the roof of The Traveler, thinking. In the two years since the dead began walking, mankind had started pulling itself up by the bootstraps and I liked to think I was helping. People like Roy at Blacksburg and Mike at Lancaster were slowly putting communities back together again. Folks like me and a few other traveling traders kept supplies flowing and communications open.
The best hope mankind had at this point was to keep building fortified communities and create a network of outposts across the land. As long as the outposts were outside the old major population areas, the dead did not seem to be as much of a problem. I don't think government outside of each individual outpost would be needed for many years to come. And when it did, the old Constitution of the United States of America would be a good place to start, with certain issues strengthened to stop the empowerment of the federal government, which happened the first time around.
Morning dawned clear and bright. My decisions made, I setup the large antenna for the shortwave radio. No CB would reach Blacksburg from here. "This is The Traveler, calling Blacksburg. This is The Traveler calling Blacksburg. Anyone awake up there? Over." Blacksburg kept someone in the radio room all the time. With the shortwave booster built into The Traveler and the huge antenna at Blacksburg we should be able to make contact.
"Traveler, this is Blacksburg. Reading you five by five. Blacksburg One is on his way. Over." Whoever the radio operator was, they had already alerted Roy that we were calling. Probably because he was in the main building anyway this time of the morning doing the administrative tasks needed to keep an outpost the size of Blacksburg going.
"James! How the hell are you?" A pause followed with no "Over". Roy had never been much for protocols anyway, not unless they meant survival then he could be all business.
"Surviving. I've got some good news and some bad news to report. The bad news is we lost Tony during a refueling stop in Columbia. The good news is I have found the Doc's package. Young girl about thirteen, she was bitten and recovered. Verified. Over"
A minute passed while Roy digested the information. "James, I will let Suzy and the kids know and we will hold a memorial service." Several month's earlier, Tony had married one of the widowed ladies at Blacksburg and adopted her kids. "I have sent someone to get the Doc. We'll see what he says about the package. Over." The seriousness in Roy's voice could be heard through the static.
"Roy, I am planning to head on into Charleston. Once I see what's there and try to find my sister, I will head back towards you. It could be a couple of months before I get back your way. Over."
"Doc's here. He wants you to return immediately. But I understand your plans. Doc wants to talk to Carol for a minute. I think he wants her to conduct some tests 'til you get back here. Luck and hold for the Doc. Roy out."
Giving the mike to Carol, I looked at Shelby asleep in one of the seats. I would get her back to Blacksburg or die trying. Vaccines meant that we could start seriously clearing the dead out and start rebuilding. In the meanwhile, I would have Carol start drawing some blood on occasion and storing it in the refrigerator we got from Blacksburg during our last stop there. If I knew Doc, he would want lots and Shelby was not going to be treated like some lab rat he could stick a tap into and drain dry.
As The Traveler pulled out onto Interstate 26 and headed south, I sat in the passenger side seat and thought about what lay ahead. I hoped to find my sister in Charleston and then transport her and her family back to the Lancaster Outpost. Then take little Shelby to Blacksburg to see Doc. Plus, I had to make a living while I was at it finding outposts to trade with as we went.
With a crackle and hiss, I could hear the CB come to life. "This is a group of survivors located in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Does anyone hear us?"