“…three!”

We rounded the corner and I counted eight zombies. They stood pressed against the glass wall of the cafeteria. Their flat palms left muddied prints on the glass. It baffled me how they’d staged and carried out such an elaborate attack. Somehow, the things figured out how to gain entry to a locked-down school, find the Mechanical Room and cut power to the generators, twice. It was like they knew that doing so would divide the group into two, and yet now they struggled with pulling on the door handles to enter the cafeteria.

If Charlene was correct, and I suspected she was, they had gained advanced animal-like survival instincts. This filled me with renewed fear, and meant we still didn’t know our enemy, didn’t have a clue what we were up against.

“Spread out some,” I said. “But not too far.”

“We’ve got this,” Charlene said.

“Are you a good shot, Kia?” She shrugged. “With them that close, I can hit them.”

“Head shots?” Charlene said.

“I can only do the best I can.”

It might have been an honest answer. It wasn’t a comforting one. “Okay. You are going to concentrate on taking them out. Head shots. Once you fire, the element of surprise is gone. If they’re the fast ones, they are going to come at us without much time for reloading. Have your clips handy, okay?”

Kia immediately moved one clip to each pocket so that they protruded slightly. She checked her weapon. “We’re good.”

“Gene, Char, we’re going to start toward them. Just a few feet out. Skirt the walls, okay? Char and me on this side. Gene, you’ve got that side.” I wasn’t separating myself from my daughter, and he didn’t question it. “We don’t want to get in Kia’s line of fire, but we’ve got to be ready to take down the ones that get to close. Kia -- don’t you shoot us, got it?”

“I won’t,” she said.

The tension was tight. Thick. I smiled. “I’m going to need you to cross your heart.”

“I do. Cross my heart, and hope--”

She stopped, looked away. Killed the mood I’d tried to set. “It’s okay. I believe you,” I said. “I’m gonna give you the honors. I want you to start the melee for us.”

Kia held the hand gun out, arms extended. She lined up her shot. Closed one eye. Her finger rested on the trigger, about ready to fire.

“No!” It was Gene.

Kia fired, but had jerked her arm. The shot went wild. I spun around.

The hallway was filled with zombies. They were down a ways, but closing the distance.

“Where did they come from,” Charlene said.

The eight by the cafeteria heard Gene, heard the gunshot, and knew we were there. Did they also know we were sandwiched between hordes? Of course they did. Their strategy appeared flawless. They’d outthought us all. Son of a bitch.

We were nearly cornered.

“They’re fast,” Charlene said.

It wasn’t the approaching flock behind us. I looked at the cafeteria again. Those eight moved with agility I’d not seen exhibited before. If they had rigor mortis in their animated corpses, there was no visible sign of it negatively impacting their speed.

“Kia!” I said.

She let out two, three shots. She hit nothing. Wasn’t completely her fault. The things ran, but normally. Their balance was askew. Heads bobbed up and down; wobbled side to side. We didn’t have time for this.

“Back the way we came,” Gene said.

“No,” Charlene said. “The cafeteria.”

There was no time to discuss it. Charlene wasn’t waiting for a vote. I couldn’t argue anyway. She, again, was right. If we went back the way we came, our two groups might never reunite. Our safety was in numbers. Even the zombies knew that.

I followed my daughter.

She ran at the first zombie and dropped to her knees. She swung the blade as she slid on the floor. She let out a howling cry as she cut the legs out from under the creature, severing above the ankles and below the knees. The thing dropped. Its mouth had been open. Teeth slammed into the tiles and skidded across the floor and left a splooging trail of dark, thick blood. The zombie was far from dead, the brain was unscathed. Rattled, but secure inside a decaying skull. The immediate threat, however, clearly had been neutralized.

With the hilt near my ears, the sword’s blade pointed toward the drop ceiling squares, I swung and chopped off a woman’s arm. I was unable to easily free my sword and thought it might be lodged in its ribs. I let go of the long sword, and snatched the hunting knife from the sheath on my hip. I grabbed a fistful of the woman’s hair and yanked her head forward and down. I buried the serrated blade into the back of her neck, felt steel saw across the spine. She collapsed at my feet.

The gun fired. A zombie close to me jumped back several feet. The bullet hole in its face bled. It opened its mouth and moved toward me.

I stepped on the woman’s back for leverage and pulled my sword free.

Another shot took the approaching zombie down. The front of its skull exploded. Bone and brain fragments sprayed around me. I closed my eyes, and shielded my mouth and nose with my forearm.

To my left, Charlene held the sword in one hand, and with the twenty inch machete, she cut free the bowels of one zombie, and then swept out its feet with a kick of her own. When it fell, slithering around on its own intestines and guts, she planted a foot on its skull and pounded the tip of her sword into its ear.

If we were not in the middle of some crazy battle, I’d have laughed at Gene. He handled the machete I’d given him like he was French and in the midst of a duel. With one hand on a hip, he stepped and back stepped, and swung the blade out in front of him, cutting into and chunking away pieces of the creature’s flesh. It might be his style, but we had no time for technique.

“I’m out!” It was Kia. She held her gun up in the air. Not sure why she did that. I could not recall her firing off more than a handful of shots. Somehow, I’d managed to miss three clips worth of ammo being used.

“Chase!” Allison was at the cafeteria doors. She held it open, waved us over. “Come on!”

“Go, guys. Go!” I said, ordering them to push past what was left, ignore what came at us, and just get to the cafeteria.

Charlene ran to Kia, “Go,” she said.

Kia was out of ammo, and my daughter had the sword ready to defend them both. The two ran for the door. Gene and I were right behind them.

I heard the other zombies, the ones that had been coming down the hall. They sounded enraged. Their screams and moans echoed and filled the hallways. The only saving grace, the only thing that kept this from becoming a slaughter instead of a minor victory, was that the other creatures were slow. Very slow.

As Allison closed the cafeteria doors, Melissa wedged a mop through the handles.

A mop.

That was what had kept them at bay before we’d turned that corner. A mop.

“They came out of nowhere,” Dave said. “As soon as you guys left. It was almost like they were waiting for you to go check out why the lights malfunctioned.”

“They were,” I said.

“What?” Andy said, standing between Michelle and Robert.

“Those things fucked with the generators,” Gene said. He wrapped an arm around his wife.

“There’s got to be thirty, forty of them, Dad.” Charlene stared at the wall. “That glass won’t hold them.”

I remembered going to a rock concert, when being on the floor as opposed to in seats was cool. Only once, did I venture to the front. The stage was set off by a waist-high rail that worked as a fence. Security stood between the two sections; the audience and the performers. Once the main act hit the stage, the force of thousands of people was crushing. There was nowhere to go. My waist was pressed into the rail and felt like circulation was cut off to the rest of my body. Breathing became difficult and I wasn’t the only one. A girl by me passed out. Security had to physically move people away. They pulled her under the rail and ushered her away to paramedics standing by. The band actually stopped several times and asked everyone to take steps back, so they wouldn’t crush the people up front. While the idea was thoughtful, the safety concerns were lost on the fans.