door, then I stuck my head through.
“They don’t carry weapons.” was all I said as I moved into the room. I didn’t even look at the man who struck my crowbar. Tommy had arranged men by the door and men in the bleachers. Two more were acting as bait, and we were going to have our hands full in a minute. I took off my Enfield, and placed it on the top of a milk cooler. I put my carbine next to it and limbered up my crowbar. It was when I looked around that I got my flash of inspiration.
Along the west wall of the commons was about twenty large lunch tables, folded in half for easy storage. I grabbed one and wheeled it over to the entrance, and unfolded it so it was perpendicular to the entrance. Tommy looked at me strangely, but I just grinned at him. I motioned for three more tables to be put along side this one, and signaled the men on the bleachers to move higher. They looked at me the same way Tommy did, but didn’t argue. I told him to grab another table and put it near the entrance, but don’t open it.
I told the other men to act as bait on the end of the tables and had a few more wait by the sides of the tables, ducking down so as not to be seen easily.
The ghouls walked in slowly, never taking their eyes of the men on the end. They shuffled and groaned and stayed where they were supposed to, between the bleachers and the tables. They groaned loudly, and hurried as best as their infected legs would take them.
When there was about twenty of them, I yelled “Push!” and I shoved the table from the other side. The men all pushed and managed to pin all the zombies against the bleachers, effectively immobilizing them. The men on the bleachers worked their way down the line, smashing in heads and crushing skulls. Tommy had moved the last table in front of the door, and was desperately holding it against the horde that was behind it.
“Hurry!” he shouted as the table lurched and a grey arm reached around to try and grab.
“Pull back the tables! First positions!” I pulled on the table and repositioned it, seeing that the other tables were in the same spot. Tommy pulled back the upright table and allowed twenty more zombies into our killing zone. We pushed the tables and trapped the next ones, and the killing began again.
By the time we had finished, we had used the tables eleven times. Tommy pulled back the upright and looked out. There were no more zombies in the hall. He looked at me and I shrugged. Maybe we had won. But we couldn’t know for sure.
I ducked out into the hall and worked my way to the back entrance. There weren’t any ghouls lingering back there, so I cautiously looked out. Duncan and his men were sitting on the ground, taking a breather. I stepped out into the sun and several men jumped. I could only imagine what I looked like. Goggles and balaclava, gloves and crowbar, and covered in zombie goo up to my elbows. GQ all the way, baby.
“What’s the status?” I asked, sitting down next to Duncan.
“Well, with you out here, I think we may have actually done it.” Duncan said, to the half-hearted cheers of the men on the ground.
“You might be right.” I said. “But if we want to live here, we need to clean out the corpses.”
Duncan groaned and fell back on the grass. “Come on, mom, I’m tired. No wanna got to school!” Considering where we were, that was actually pretty funny.
I laughed with the rest of the men and got to my feet. Duncan followed suit and the crowd of us headed back to the piles of corpses we had made. I instructed the men to use their tools and drag the bodies to that baseball diamond up on the hill. It was a distance, but a necessary chore. We couldn’t risk the virus getting too close. I then went to the janitor’s closet and gathered up as many cleaning supplies as I could. We would need to wash down everything as best as we could. I sent two men to the creek with buckets to get water while I rummaged around the garage. Finding a can of gasoline, I gave it to the men dragging the bodies away and told them to burn what they could. With any luck, that would stave off any chance of infection.
I went back to the garage and rummaged through my trailer. I reloaded my SIG magazines and my carbine magazines, mentally wondering how many I had shot. Not nearly enough, I thought, as I went back into the hallway. Tommy was supervising the cleaning of the gym and the commons, and we were doing well. I wandered over to him and asked what I thought was a dumb question. “Did you go upstairs yet and let them know we had been successful here?” I asked, expecting him to confirm that he had.
Tommy laughed out loud. “I thought you did. Oh, geez, they must think the worst!” He laughed again.
I chuckled with him. “I figure they must have looked out the window at some point and saw us dragging bodies out of the building.”
Tommy nodded. “You’re probably right. You want me to go up?”
“No,” I said. “I’ll go up. We need to get some more help down here anyway. Did you send anyone to sweep the building on the outside for stragglers?” I asked
“Duncan’s with them now, although they haven’t found any yet.”
“Good enough. See ya.”
Tommy waved me off and I headed to the stairs. As I went past the atrium, Charlie was there, dragging two dead ghouls by the collars of their shirts. Our eyes met and he nodded. I nodded back, the understanding between us clear. He was saying ‘thank you’ and I was saying ‘you’re welcome’ in that expressive way men had.
I reached the stairs and stuck my knife through the crack between the doors. It took some work, but I managed to sever the zip ties holding the doors closed. I stepped into the stairwell and shouted up the stairs. “Hello?”
“Hello! Who’s that?” Came the reply.
“It’s John! We did it! Can I come up?” I asked, poking my head around the stairs and smiling at the two nervous-looking gents at the top of the stairs.
They both relaxed visibly, and waved me up. When I reached the top of the stairs, both men insisted on hugging me. While I wasn’t much on displays of affection between guys, I found I didn’t mind this so much. I grinned at them and went into the hallway. One of the men ran down the hall, shouting that we had done it and people streamed out of the classrooms. I shook a lot of hands and received a lot of hugs. There were a lot of questions, but I raised my hands for silence.
“Hey all! Listen up! We have a lot of cleaning up to do before we can call this place home, so anyone with gloves or a crowbar head downstairs and help drag the bodies away for burning. Anyone who wants to help with the cleaning of the floors and walls, go see Charlie by the atrium. Just so you know, this is not the last fight we will have, but we won this time and learned a lot, so we will be more ready when they come again.”
Someone asked, “When will they come again?”
All eyes turned to me. “Could be tomorrow, could be today. We learned a few tricks, so next time we won’t lose as many.
“How many were lost?” came the question. I knew it was coming, but that didn’t make giving the answer any easier.
“We lost 27 to the zombies, so we will need people to help bury them.” I let that sink into the silence that followed. “But their sacrifice is not going to be in vain. We will survive and we will beat these zombies. I have no guarantees except my word. I promise you that we will survive.”
I saw several nods and sent all the men downstairs to help with the cleanup. I was going to go shortly, but there was something I needed to do first. I scanned the crowd and saw Karen standing at the far edge. I caught her eye and she nodded, motioning me to a classroom. I followed her in and she pointed to a small bundle in the corner. I went over and sat down next to my sleeping son. I picked him up gently and held him to my chest. I couldn’t stop tears from flowing and I held his sleeping form tighter. I did it, Ellie. I kept my promise. I thought to myself, bending my cheek to Jakey’s head and dampening his hair with tears.
I held him quietly for a while, just taking him in, then I put him back down. He shifted in his sleep, turning on his side and letting out a long fart. I grinned. Just like Jake.
I headed out of the room and thanked Karen for watching him. She smiled and said “Anytime. He’s a good boy.” and went back into the room. I went back downstairs to lend a hand with cleanup, and it was nearly dark before we finished. We could hear several moans out in the neighborhoods, so we knew we had more work ahead of us.
I sat down in the teacher’s lounge with Duncan, Tommy, Charlie, and several others. The families and the rest had been assigned rooms on the second floor, and most people had just collapsed from exhaustion. Hauling corpses was surprisingly tiresome. I had chosen a room on the ground floor, and Jake was sleeping there for the night, surrounded by his blanket and favorite teddy bear. We had spent a good deal of time reinforcing the doors
