Danny felt like cursing like a sailor as the undead kept clawing and pushing at the semi-truck he and Mindy were currently standing on top of. He was so thankful that these zombies were too dumb to figure out how to climb up to them. That relief was short-lived, however, when the racket alerted a few nearby ghosts to the area. Mindy screamed when three glowing green octopuses suddenly flew through the walls and began circling them, laughing menacingly.
Danny glared as he pulled out his sword to defend himself.
The light shined off the green blade and as soon as the octopuses saw the sword, they screamed and quickly flew away. Mindy gave him and the blade a confused look, but Danny shrugged. He didn't know why ghosts were scared of this sword, but he wasn't complaining. He was almost certain that this sword was the main reason they hadn't seen many ghosts since the start of the outbreak.
Suddenly the zombies gave the semi-truck a particularly hard shove, and Mindy almost fell off.
She would have been devoured if Danny had managed to catch her. He pulled her back up and looked around for a way out. He briefly considered jumping over the group of infected and escaping through the door, but he abandoned that plan when he saw more and more infected crawling under the door. Within seconds the entire garage was filled to the brim with the undead.
"Great, now what?" He asked, seeing no escape route.
"Skylight." She said, pointing at the said skylight. He grabbed at the skylight but it was stuck. Thinking quickly, Danny used his sword to smash through the glass. Mindy jumped up and used the pick to climb up to the roof, then helped pull Danny up. Once they were out of the garage, Mindy jumped to the adjacent rooftop, using the pick to help her climb up.
"Jump!" She called Danny when she saw he was still on the garage roof. Gulping down his fear, Danny jumped to the other rooftop and grabbed onto Mindy's outstretched hand. She helped pull him up. Soon they arrived back at the school, and Danny lept down through the hole in the ceiling.
"Come on," Danny said when he saw she was still on the roof.
"Later, something I gotta do first."
"What?!"
"Catch you later." She smirked and made to leave.
"Wait, you've still got the battery!" Danny shouted, tempted to jump up and grab her.
"Yeah, I think I'll hold onto it, make sure you don't leave without me." She glared as she readjusted her grip on the bag. "See you back in class!" She smirked before running off. Danny tried calling after her, but she was long gone. He didn't know what the hell was she doing. He considered going back out into the alley to chase her down, but he could hear the sounds of the infected right outside the door.
He wasn't going out there unless he had a damn good reason.
With no other choice, Danny walked down the hallway towards the classroom. Hopefully, Dash and Kwan had gotten the door open. Just then Bucky, Dinkleberg, Patrick, and Mrs. Puff ran inside, each holding gas cans.
"Little help here?!" Bucky yelled at the teen and Danny froze when he heard the zombies chasing them. There were so many. They dropped the heavy gas cans and the hatchet. Danny, Patrick, Bucky, and Mrs. Puff pushed the doors closed as the infected tried to get inside. The doors got stuck on a zombie's head.
"Fuck, the doors won't close all the way!" Bucky yelled as they kept pushing.
"Danny, do something!" Patrick shouted as he felt his strength giving out. Danny quickly pulled out his sword and stabbed the infected, reducing it to a puddle, and they successfully closed the doors, but the zombies still tried to get in. Danny picked up the hatchet and stuck it between the handles. The three adults stepped back and despite the infected trying to push in the doors, the hatchet kept them shut.
"Think that'll hold?" Patrick asked.
"It damn well better."
"You got the fuel!" Danny smiled when he saw how many gas cans they had.
"Let's not start high-fiving each other just yet; let's get the hell back to the classroom," Bucky warned as they gathered up the gas cans, and all four returned to the classroom. There they found the jocks still trying the get the door open.
"Hey! How'd you guys make out?" Kwan asked when he noticed them.
"We got the fuel," Bucky replied and they put the cans on the desk.
"Awesome! Good job, guys." Kwan smiled, but nobody responded. They just wanted to get out of here. Bucky frowned when he saw Dash still trying to get the armory door open.
"How're you doing with that door?"
"Not so good," Dash admitted, grunting at the effort he was putting into it.
"Here, let me give you a hand." The man sighed and he tried to help Dash with the door. As he did this, he glanced at Danny. "You get that battery yet?"
"Yeah, Mindy has it, she should be back here soon."
"She'd better be," Bucky grunted and they all settled into a comfortable silence. While Dash and Bucky worked on the door, Kwan and Patrick began making small talk, trying to distract themselves for a bit while they waited for the others to return. Danny was standing by the door to the hallway, whether to keep an eye out for the others or to watch out for danger, he didn't know.
He felt his mind wander to the kids and Spongebob back at the house.
They thought this place was secure, but they had been wrong. What if they had been wrong about the house being safe? Should he have brought the kids with them the Atlantis? What about Mindy? For all he knew she could have been keeping another way out of the city to herself and was escaping with the battery. Or what if she was currently cornered somewhere and being eaten as they speak?
That was the only battery they had found.
If it was gone then they could just abandon all hope now and resign themselves to their fates. Danny was suddenly snapped out of his troubled, racing thoughts when he sensed someone approaching him. He looked up and saw Mrs. Puff walking over to him.
"Hi?" He said, not knowing what she wanted. Since they met he got the impression that she hated his guts.
"Hey, Danny, I just wanted to say thanks for all your help back there; I don't think we would have made it without you." She said with a genuine smile.
"We're all on the same team." Danny smiled and silence fell on them again. "So, you're a cancer survivor?" He finally asked.
"I was diagnosed seven years ago and have been getting treatment ever since." She sighed, looking down sadly. "Just when I was starting to get better, when I thought there might be some hope, all this happened." She almost laughed coldly. "I lost my whole family, I'm the only one who survived; funny how things work out, huh?"
"How long have you known Studwell?"
"Only a couple of months, he ran our support group when Atlantis was set up but when Atlantis started killing us off, it was Studwell that helped us escape." She explained. "I don't know what I, or the other survivors, would have done without the doctor; he's the one who held us together, kept us alive." She confessed and Danny nodded in understanding.
"So, what do you think about this whole Atlantis situation?"
"I'd rather not talk about it; too many awful memories." She scowled out into the hallway as if it was full of all the people who had hurt her. "Even being back here gives me a bad feeling."
"Even now, with everyone dead?"
"I've got no sympathy for what happened to these people." She spat more harshly than Danny had ever heard her. "They weeded out the sick and the old, even children, those least able to defend themselves so that they could save their own skins; whatever happened here, however, Atlantis fell, I consider it poetic justice." She laughed bitterly.
"Damn, that's cold." Danny frowned growing more and more disturbed by this woman.
"It's how I feel and if you'd seen what I've seen, you'd feel the same." She glared at the teen. "Maybe you should find where Mindy went with the battery." She suggested and Danny didn't try arguing with her. After telling the others where he was going, Danny headed out into the hallway. As he walked along, he passed the door that led out to the playground. It sounded like there were even more zombies out there.
Danny headed to the nurse's office and froze when he saw several zombies surrounding the door.
He quickly crouched behind a piece of furniture. Sandy and Studwell must have been trapped in there. Danny picked up a stone and threw it at one of the infected's heads, drawing it and the others' attention toward him. As they slowly stumbled towards him he successfully killed them with his sword. Once he had finished with them, he entered the office, only to be greeted by Sandy pointing her gun at him.
But she quickly put it away after recognizing him.
"What the hell happened?"
"They wandered into the hallway after we got inside, I think they heard us rooting around in here." She growled in frustration. "The whole place is infested, they're everywhere!"
"Calm down, I took care of them; what about the meds, did we find what we need?"
"Yeah, that's our other problem, take a look." Studwell sighed and showed Danny a large safe that was sealed with a padlock that needed a code to unlock. "Looks like they were keeping all the prescription meds in that safe and it's locked up tight. Maybe with enough time they could break the safe open, but Danny didn't know how much of that they had. It would be a hell of a lot quicker if they just knew the four-digit combination.
They could just guess the combination, but that would take even longer than breaking it open.
Danny considered trying to look somewhere else for medicine. But then he realized that this place was too overrun. No, that safe was their best chance.
"I doubt they just wrote it down and left it here for us ta find." Sandy hissed. "We should just try busting it open, we don't have any other choice."
"You get started, I'll take a look around, see if I can find anything useful," Danny said and he started searching for the code. He looked around the whole office and all he was able to find was a bed, a copier, some medical files, and a bunch of papers with no code on them. There was a phone and a clock but these things were broken or had no power. At one end of the room was a camcorder.
It looked like it would have had a view of the keypad.
Danny wondered if it caught someone punching it in. Unfortunately, when he opened the camcorder there was no tape inside. The teen kept looking around and he found some dried blood on a printout and the floor. It looked like there was a trail of it, from the safe to that camera over there, then out the door. Danny once again found himself thinking what the hell happened here?
He soon found some drawers and a first aid kit but was disappointed to find that they were already picked clean.
Out of ideas, Danny headed back over to the doctor to see if he had gotten the safe open.
"How's it coming?"
"Slow, too slow." Studwell groaned. "I'm worried that by the time we manage to get this thing open, it may be too late."
"How much time do you think Spongebob has, doc?" Danny asked, feeling his fears for the kids rising once again. Studwell stopped messing with the safe and turned to look the teen straight in the eye.
"You want my medical opinion?" He asked and after a moment of hesitation, Danny nodded. "The sooner we get him some strong antibiotics to start fighting that infection, the better; let's just leave it at that." He all but pleaded and Danny nodded again in understanding.
"I just wanted to thank you for coming with us, and for all your help; I really appreciate it."
"Don't mention it." Studwell dismissed. "It's times like these we've got to help each other the most, right? Or we're no better than those Atlantis sons of bitches."
"I hear that."
"Look, we don't have time to just sit around, we need to get this safe open." The doctor waved him off and Danny stepped back. He considered talking to Sandy but she just glared at him so he quickly returned to searching for the code. He decided to flip through the medical files for literally anything. Most were mainly empty with a huge red stamp that said the patient was terminated.
Danny quickly threw out those files until he reach the end of the pile and found the file for someone named Anna.
He opened the medical file and inside was a report, a picture of a woman, along with a videotape. Danny almost danced for joy when he took the tape and put it in the camcorder.
"Guys, come look at this." He said and the three of them gathered around to view the recording. The video started and they were greeted to an image of the nurse's station with a young woman sitting on the bed with a doctor standing beside her. Danny immediately recognized him as the body Mindy absolutely brutalized in the alley.
"It's day eighty-two since the outbreak, time fifteen forty-seven." The doctor said once he was sure the video was recording. "Doctor Manowar in consultation with patient Anna Correa."
"Why are you recording this?" The woman, Anna, asked.
"Regulations, the boss has ordered me to keep records of all medical examinations and consultations." The doctor replied as he sat on a chair and faced her. "I need you to brace yourself, Anna, the sonogram confirms that you're pregnant."
"Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God..." Anne started crying and placed her face in her hands as she sobbed.
"The rules are very clear and the termination is mandatory." The doctor continued as he stood up and made towards the safe. The others got excited to see if they could learn the code.
"You don't have to tell them!" Anna cried and he stopped. "Tell them it was just nausea, that you gave me something for it and it went away; this is my problem, not yours." She begged desperately and the doctor moved away from the safe, much to the trio's dismay.
"If the boss finds out that I concealed a pregnancy..." Manowar trailed off, dreading the consequences in store for him. "I'm so sorry, but these are the rules; I'm gonna give you a sedative so it'll make the procedure easier on you."
"I don't want the procedure! I want my baby! I can't do this! I can't do this!"
"Anna, you don't have a choice." Manowar glared as if annoyed by her defiance. "Now, if you like, you can take some time with this, but I need you to come back no later than tomorrow or I'll have no choice but to inform the boss myself." He warned and Anna ran out of the room, sobbing loudly. The doctor sighed heavily and walked behind the camera.
The recording ended and Danny took the tape out.
"Damn it, we almost had it!" Studwell glared.
"W-What tha hell kind of place was this?" Sandy stammered in horror.
"Like Mindy said: the worst kind."
"Maybe there's another tape? Keep looking." Studwell said with determination and returned to trying to break the safe open.
"I recognize that doctor; he was one of the bodies out in the alley by the auto shop," Danny mentioned.
"Maybe ya should search it and see what he's got on him," Sandy told him and Danny nodded and left. He waited by the door to the alley, listening in case any zombies were waiting on the other side for him. After he was sure the coast was clear, Danny went down the alley and entered the shack. As he was about to climb on the shelves, an infected suddenly attacked him.
Danny cried out and pushed it to the ground and a TV fell on the zombie's head, killing it.
Taking a second to catch his breath, Danny climbed the shelves and jumped over the fence. The body was still lying at the end of the alley, but an infected was now there, munching on it. Danny quickly stomped on its head, killing it. After making sure there were no zombies around, aside from the ones still stumbling around in the garage, Danny bent down to examine the body.
It was the guy.
He searched the doctor's corpse and found another tape and piece of paper that said the doctor's name and the number code 6-26-30. This might be just what they needed. He looked at the numbers but didn't think they were for the safe. Studwell said the safe combination was only four numbers. Just then he noticed more zombies approaching. It was time to go. He ran back into the school.
The alley was overrun so there was no way he was going back out there again.
Danny was about to return to the nurse's office when he remembered that bloody locker they had passed. It had been at the back of his mind since they found it. It was the only locker around that was still locked. Quietly scurrying down the halls, Danny soon found the locker again and smiled when he saw that it had the doctor's name on it. Taking a chance, he used the code on the locker and almost did a happy dance when it opened.
Inside he found another tape.
Hopefully, the safe combination was on one of these.
"I found two more tapes," Danny told them when he returned to the nurse's office.
"Put it in," Sandy said and Danny inserted the tape and they watched the recording. When the video started they saw Anna sitting on the bed and Manowar was glaring down at her.
"Have you made a decision?" The doctor demanded, looking more and more done with this woman.
"I thought you said I didn't have a choice." She spat, refusing to look up from the floor.
"Well, technically you do." He replied. "You can terminate the pregnancy or leave Atlantis; of course, that would be a death sentence for both you and your unborn child." He warned her and she sighed heavily.
"Maybe that's best." She admitted, finally looking up at him with hate and tears in her eyes. "I stayed up all last night thinking about this; why are we even trying to survive, to keep on living, if this is what it takes? If this is what it's turned us into?"
"I don't make the rules." He shrugged off. "Maybe one day, when things are different, you can try again, but for now, today, we have to do this." He said, leaving no room for questioning, as he turned away and inputted the code into the safe. All of a sudden, Anna had a look of madness on her face. She grabbed a medical tool, stabbed him in the stomach, then the chest, and took his gun before running out of the room.
Gunshots and screams were heard in the distance, and Manowar collapsed to the floor.
Danny removed the tape and an uncomfortable silence descended upon them. Now they knew what happened to Atlantis, and, more importantly, they got the combination. Suddenly Sandy burst into tears. That was hard to watch. As cruel as it sounded, Danny couldn't help but think of it as justice. He now knew what Mrs. Puff had meant. It looked like the sick system these bastards had cooked up to protect themselves wound up destroying them.
Studwell knew that he wouldn't shed too many tears over it.
Nobody said anything though, and Studwell inputted the code, unlocking the safe.
"We're in back business folks." Studwell grinned as they started taking supplies. There were antibiotics, morphine, bandages, and all kinds of medical supplies. They took as much of them as they could carry. Sandy didn't care as long as they got the meds for Spongebob. "This is more than enough for your people and mine; let's get going!" He beamed and he and Sandy left, but Danny stayed.
He found a third tape in a locker outside and maybe there was something else on there.
Deciding not to take too long Danny put the tape in the camcorder and viewed the recording. The video started in the office and showed the doctor zipping up his pants and, much to Danny's shock, Mindy buttoning her jacket. They were both flushed red, a little breathless, and their hair and clothes were a mess. It didn't take a genius to figure out what had happened.
After he straightened his clothes out, the doctor cleared his throat.
"Listen, as fun as this was, I have to put a stop to this little arrangement so this is the last I can give you."
"Why?" Mindy glared, fear in her voice.
"The boss had someone down here yesterday taking inventory; he's really cracking down and I just can't risk it." He said as he opened the safe.
"We had a deal!" She shouted, taking a threatening step toward him, but he shoved her back.
"Yes, we HAD a deal, and we don't anymore." He scowled, giving the medicine to Mindy.
"My Dad needs this medicine!" She cried, getting hysterical. "Without it, he'll die or he'll start showing symptoms and they'll take him away!"
"I'm sorry, I've done all I can, but I have to look out for myself here." He snapped and slammed the safe closed, signally the end of this interaction and their deal.
"Yeah, that's the Atlantis way, isn't it?" She spat hatefully at the spineless doctor and left, purposely bumping into the doctor on her way out. The video ended and Danny took out the tape. It took him a second to process what he just saw. When he did he decided to drop the tape and stomp on it. Once it was destroyed, he left the office. He was about to head to the classroom when he suddenly heard something drop behind him.
In a second, he whipped out his sword and turned to face the threat, only to find it was Mindy.
"You scared the shit out of me! Where the fuck have you been?" He glared as he put his sword away.
"Sightseeing." She smirked before taking the battery out of her backpack and handed it to the teen. Danny took it, but then he noticed that Mindy was holding a photo in her hand. It was a picture of an older man who looked a lot like Mindy but was bald with a long auburn beard.
"What's that?"
"Nothing." She squeaked and quickly hid the photo behind her back.
"You can quit with the act; I know you're from Atlantis." He said, confronting Mindy about her lie.
"What? Who told you that?" She growled, feeling threatened.
"I saw you on a tape; why'd you lie to me?"
"I said there were stories about Atlantis, I never said that's how I knew about it." She defended herself. "I never lied to you and even if I did, so what? I don't owe you anything."
"You saved my life twice, but you can't tell me the truth?"
"Are we really gonna do this now?"
"I guess that's up to you." He challenged, refusing to let this go. The two of them had a staring contest, a test of wills, for a few more seconds before Mindy sighed in defeat and finally blinked.
"I used to live here with my Dad." She said. "When the dead started walking and Atlantis shut itself in, it seemed like a pretty good deal at first; we were safe, and we had everything we needed to survive, but then the rules started coming down." She remembered when it was announced that no one who couldn't justify their place, earn their keep, or required special care could stay. "My Dad was diabetic and we kept it a secret but in the end, it wasn't enough and that's when I got out."
"What about your Dad?" Danny asked, almost scared to hear the answer. Mindy gritted her teeth as tears welled up in her eyes.
"Atlantis would always talk about how their system worked, how anything was better than dying, but I saw what they'd already become." She spat, trying to hold in a sob. "I wished I saw it before it was too late and they came and took my Dad away." She sniffed and wiped away the tears. "This is all that I have left of him." She said and showed him the photo. "I didn't have time to take it before I got out; I just wanted it, okay?" She glared at him as if he would mock her for admitting this.
"It's okay, I understand." He reassured gently and looked back at the photo. "You look a lot like him." He smiled and she returned his smile, appreciating his sympathy. All of a sudden, they heard some bells start tolling loudly nearby. Mindy looked around in surprise. It was usually her that rang those bells.
"I think that's our cue to get the hell out of here before we become dinner," Danny said and she agreed with him. They headed back to the classroom to meet up with the others. As Danny and Mindy were about to turn the corner, however, Dash suddenly jumped out with a hatchet, ready to smash their heads in. They all screamed until they realized what was happening and none of them were in any danger.
"Sorry, sorry! I just got spooked by those bells, and then I heard someone coming!" Dash profusely apologized.
"What the fuck Dash?!" Danny yelled, still feeling his heart racing like it was in a marathon.
"Bucky and I still can't get the door open to the armory so he sent me out to look for something we can use to bust it open and I found this." Dash rambled nervously as he held up a small hatchet. A very familiar hatchet. Danny paled when he realized this.
"Uh, Dash... where did you get that?"
"I found it." The jock smiled, feeling proud of himself. "It was stuck in the door handle at the end of the hallway back there." He added and pointed to the doors down the hall behind him. The doors that led out to the playground. The doors that were keeping a hoard of the undead from swarming into the school. The doors that were starting to creak open. Danny almost threw up when his mind comprehended all this.
"SHIT!"...