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Everyone filed in, and we began to clear classrooms as we made our way through the school. There still weren’t any zombies, and that was starting to make me nervous. Where the fuck were they? Just as I thought maybe we got it all wrong, I turned a corner and reached the cafeteria. I skidded to a stop. “Fall back,” I whispered as I dove around the corner. Holy fuck. Henry and Caleb looked at me curiously and poked their heads around the corner. Their faces paled as they retreated, Henry indicating everyone to back down the hall.
Zombies were packed into the school cafeteria like sardines. I was pretty sure the majority of the town was there. Sometimes, I hated being right.
Chapter sixteen
Wereconvenedfurtherdownthe hall, safely out of hearing range of the trapped zombies. Even so, we kept our voices low.
“It must be the entire town,” Henry said, echoing my earlier thoughts.
“Damn close to it,” I agreed.
“Ok, why don’t we clear the rest of the school, and then we can decide what to do with the cafeteria,” Henry suggested.
The school had a second floor, so we went up the stairs near the emergency exit and cleared the second floor. We ran into some zombies trapped in the classrooms up here, which was oddly relieving. It was absurd that the entire town had themselves locked inside the cafeteria. I hadn’t missed the chain on the door when I got my first look. We descended the stairs on the other side of the cafeteria and cleared the gym and administrative offices.
We gathered in the faculty lounge, spreading out on the dusty furniture. Pike pulled me into his lap as he sat in an armchair, sending a cloud of dust into the air and making me cough. I waved my hand to dispel the dust cloud while one of Henry’s men spoke up.
“What if we just leave them? That’s a lot of zombies. How are we even supposed to handle that?” he asked. I could hear the fear in his voice. It had been a long time since anyone had faced a hoard of that size.
“I think leaving them is a mistake,” I replied. “I don’t want to deal with them any more than the rest of you, but I don’t want to deal with them at home even more. Never mind the damage a hoard like that would cause to the properties. The risk that we might lose someone is too great. If we deal with the issue now, we can control it.”
“I agree with Bailey,” Henry said. “We can’t let them remain. This is a ticking time bomb. I’m just relieved that they haven’t broken out of the school yet. We would have been overrun in minutes.”
“The real question is how are we going to do it?” Boone said.
“We need a way to funnel them out of the cafeteria and through the front doors. That way, we can control the flow and take them out as they emerge,” I said, thinking out loud more than anything. “Maybe place people in the classrooms to create a gauntlet.”
“I think you’re onto something,” Henry said. “I bet we could find everything we need at the home improvement store. We should head back there.”
Everyone agreed, so we went back up the stairs to circumvent the cafeteria. Once back at Lowes, Henry handed out orders for materials we needed to collect. I volunteered to head to the gardening department. I was sure I had seen something we could use to take out the zombies. The guys followed me, and I whooped triumphantly when I found what I was looking for. The display said that they were called Spading Forks. While I wasn’t sure what they were used for pre-apocalypse, I knew they would be perfect for stabbing zombies through the head from a safer distance.
We grabbed all of them and brought them back to the trucks. A large stack of plywood was already in the back of the pickup truck. We added our forks to the truck as well.
“Oh!” Pike said excitedly. Before I could respond, he took off down an aisle. It didn’t take long for him to return, his arms filled with plastic packages. “Walkie-Talkies!” he exclaimed. We started ripping the packs open and popping batteries into them. I started turning them on and testing them once we had a bunch ready.
“You’re a genius, Pike,” I praised. This was going to help us in a big way.
“Hey!” Caleb said, “What if we get a more powerful set for home? Henry could keep one, too, and then we would have a way to communicate.”
“I like the way you think,” Mike, one of Henry’s men, said, coming over to us. “But you’re thinking too small. What we really need is a couple of short-wave radios, not walkie-talkies. I bet this town has an electronic store somewhere. Once we get the zombies taken care of, I’ll scout for one.”
“Thanks, Mike,” Henry said. “I think that should be a priority. We’ve always severely lacked a way to communicate farm to farm without physically sending someone.”
“I agree,” I said, thinking of Matty, who usually went between the farms the most playing messenger. I may end up seeing him less frequently, but it would mean he was safer, which is a trade-off I’m willing to make.
We got back to the school, and we made quick work of setting up the plywood boards across the doorways. Before locking the men into the room, we made sure that the windows were opened so that they could quickly escape if the zombies broke through. We propped the front doors open, and everyone surrounded the doorway outside.
Boone handed me the bolt cutters but didn’t release them when I took them. “Be fast. Be careful. You get those doors open and then bring that pretty ass back here pronto,” he ordered.
“I’ve got this,” I assured him. He hadn’t been happy with me when I volunteered to be the one to release the zombies, but I made it clear that his arguments were pointless. I was doing this. Boone finally let go of the cutters, and I winked at Ethan as I walked back into the school. “Look sharp, boys,” I said as I went to the cafeteria.
When I reached the corner, I paused to give myself a few minutes to breathe. One of the reasons I volunteered to do this was because I was smaller than the rest of them. I was also quieter. But the main reason was that I didn’t trust anyone else to do the job. I crouched down and then peeked around the corner. They had been stuck in the cafeteria together so long that they weren’t moving, going into a hibernation-like dormancy. I expected that to end quickly when they realized I was there.
Staying low, I crept to the double doors. Thankfully, the cafeteria wall was half wall, half window, so they wouldn't notice me as long as I stayed silent and low. I held my breath as I lifted the bolt cutters to the padlock and cut through it. I waited for a reaction, but it didn’t come. The chain jingled a little as I removed the padlock, and I heard the zombies inside start to stir. I froze as I looked up and saw a zombie at the door, sniffing at it. He pushed against the door slightly, making the chain rattle again. I placed the lock on the floor and debated the best way to do this. I could try to do it slowly with the slightest sound or yank the chain in one go and run. I opted for the second one since I didn’t want to be crouching down by the door if they suddenly realized my presence and pushed through the doors.
I grabbed the bolt cutter and the end of the chain. I counted to three and then sprung to my feet. If zombies could be surprised, this one would fall in that category as I suddenly appeared in front of it. I didn’t stick around for it to recover as I ran for it, pulling the chain off the doors. I heard the doors slam open as the zombies followed.
I pulled a knife out as I turned to ensure they were still on my trail. As they passed the first classroom, they started to fall as the men within took them out silently. I run through the doors, and Caleb grabs me and pulls me to his side, handing me a fork thing from Lowes. We kept the funnel tight but gave the zombies a little lead so they didn’t clog up the door.
