There were green painted rails that followed down three cement stairs, and outlined and turned off this way and that down the small maze of different pathways. I knew nothing about machinery. There were dials, gauges, pipes. No idea. I wasn’t even sure I would recognize a generator if I saw it. I assumed it looked like one giant car battery. A positive and negative lead…

“Gene?”

Something grunted. Groaned. I reset my grip on the hilt of my sword. I felt my breathing go quick, shallow. “Gene?”

“Chase?”

I spun, bringing the blade around fast, hard.

“Chase!”

I stopped, lost my balance doing so, stumbled forward and into a rail. I’d come a breadth away from chunking into Gene’s ribs. “What the fuck!”

“What are you doing?”

“Fixing some of these wires. Trying to anyway. Going to have to get some electrical tape, do some splicing.” He held them up. “They’ve been ripped out of electrical box, and the panel’s a mess. I’m not sure I can fix it. The generators are up and running, for now anyway. Someone did this. I hate to think it’s one of our people.”

I wasn’t about to play any finger pointing game. I knew it wasn’t any of my people. He could be suspicious all he wanted. It was his people I did not know, his people I did not yet trust. “The mud, though, that suggested someone just came in from outside. Or, from somewhere wet and muddy. We should check the nearest doors. All the doors, actually. Did you check the whole school before? I mean, like the entire school top to bottom, left to right when you locked the place down initially?”

“I did. I do. We check everything regularly. Last night, they would have gone around checking classrooms, making sure windows were closed, locked. Doors, too. No one besides us is in here. Couldn’t be.” He bit his lower lip, pressed fists against his hips and looked around. I’d swear you could visibly see his confidence level descend.

“Char,” I said, just before Gene and I emerged from the Mechanical Room and back into the hallway. I knew she was tense. I did not want to give her any reason to accidentally swing.

“Everything okay in there?”

I shook my head. “Someone messed with the wiring. Bad. We’re going to check the doors around here. See if we can figure out how someone got in.”

“Someone got in from out there?” Char shifted weight from foot to foot. I touched her shoulder. It was meant to mentally steady her. She shrugged the hand away. She was no longer fourteen. That age was gone. A simple number that meant absolutely nothing anymore.

“Place was locked up good,” Gene said. “Andy and your man, Dave, they would have said something this morning.”

Of course, they would have. I was not sure why the fresh mud tracks didn’t alert Gene to the fact that whoever it was that had breached the school had just done so, or had so recently done so that they left a trail. “Let’s get back to the others.”

“I don’t, ah, I need, I’m gonna need a weapon.” Gene must have been comfortable with his notion that no one else could be inside the school. I hadn’t even realized he’d walked the halls unarmed. I don’t know that I’d ever go anywhere, ever again, without my steel.

I handed him a machete.

“These lights just went off, which means the person can’t be that far.” Gene held the blade by his side. His white knuckle grip revealed the panic he felt. I heard it in the way his voice cracked when he spoke.

There was only one set of prints that were too smeared to indicate whether they were coming or going. “We’re going to check it out, Gene. Just not yet. Not now. They either knew we’d send a few to check the mechanical room for the problem, or knew that the lights going out would cause some chaos. Either way, what they wanted was an opportunity to strike. We’ve been divided. It’s a ploy. They got us three away from the others. Let’s not get surprised, okay? Char, you stay right behind me.”

“Got it.”

Not sure what I heard first. Someone, somewhere, screamed. There was also a raggedy mix of gunshots that echoed down the halls, bounced off metal lockers and square-tiled walls. The high school was under attack.

#  #  #

I led as we ran from the Mechanical Room toward the cafeteria. There was no way to prepare for horror. With the screams, and guns being fired, it was bound to be a mess.

“Whoa, wait!” I held out my arms as I skidded to a stop before rounding the last corner.

“What?” Gene said, and panted while bent forward as if trying to catch his breath.

Charlene answered the question. “We have no idea what’s going down. We can’t just, just -- barrel in there. Gotta take a peek, see what’s what.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Exactly.”

At the next corner, I laid down on my belly and inched forward. Peeking around the corner, I was not sure what I expected to see. Gunmen in black ski masks holding our families hostage. I suppose that is what a part of me thought might be waiting for us.

My imagination had failed me miserably. Kia, the woman who had comforted me yesterday while Gene stitched my side, was on her back. Someone straddled her waist. She had both hands planted on his head, forcing his mouth away from her throat.

“Shit.” I pushed forward, legs kicked trying to get me up and propel me toward Kia.

“Dad!”

“It’s zombies! It’s motherfucking zombies!” I charged, sword raised. I wasn’t sure I’d make it in time. Kia bucked, thrust her hips up, and twisted. It was enough to force the thing away from her neck. I swung my sword at its head. The force of the blow cut clean. The head rolled off the shoulders and landed with a splattering plop. Thick dark blood oozed from the corpse as Kia knocked it off of her and back-crawled away.

I held out my hand. “Are you okay?”

“The others are in the cafeteria!” Kia pulled herself up, looked around on the floor and found her 9 mm by the wall. The cafeteria was around the next corner. “I had them barricade the doors. I was on my way to warn all of you.”

“How many? How many are we talking?” I led the four of us toward the next corner. The cafeteria would be roughly thirty yards from there. My sword was up, blade on my shoulder.

“A lot, seven, eight? I don’t know. Ten?”

The lights in the hallway flickered and went out.

I looked back.

“The Mechanical Room. Want me to go fix it?” Gene started to turn around.

“No. Stay with us. We’re done splitting up. We don’t need the lights on. It’s day time.”

“They’re doing this? Those things?” Kia said.

I nodded. “It seems that way.”

“That’s crazy. I mean, that’s just impossible,” she said.

“It’s not,” Charlene said. “They’re either remembering, or they’re developing survival skills. Whales hunt in packs and communicate attack plans as skilled as generals. Saw it on Discovery, or Animal Planet.”

“She’s right,” Gene said, as if my daughter’s comments needed confirmation. “Think I saw the same--”

“Shh,” I said. “Listen, we need to round this corner and hit them fast. The school’s no longer secure.”

“We need my bus,” Gene said.

“Not now,” I said. “One thing at a time. Let’s clear the hall outside the cafeteria and then figure out where to go after that.”

“The gym,” Gene said.

“Not the gym,” Charlene said. “We need to get out of the school. We’re trapped in here. This building is no longer safe.”

She sounded as aggravated as I felt, and did nothing to hide it from her tone of voice.

“How much ammo you have?” I said.

Kia clapped a hand against her jeans. “Two more clips.”

“Okay. Should be good. We’ll do this together. On three. Ready? One. Two…”

Chapter Seventeen