This is the twenty-first chapter of the zombie serial The Dead Life. You can learn more about the story over at the project hub. This series originally ran on Haunted MTL but is being edited and updated in the lead-up to new installments to continue the story.
You can read the prior chapter here.
Day 25
Edgar had been scouting the school district office for a couple of days now. His shifts at the Kim Family Storage rooftop perch across the street had allowed him to take in the layout and observe the local ghouls and their aimless wanderings.
The entire grounds seemed locked up – all gates had been padlocked shut in a hurry, except for one rolling gate that had nearly been demolished by a school bus that had burst through at some point during the chaos of the first few days of the dead. Now up close to that very same rolling gate, Edgar saw that the bus tires were shredded. Unmistakable brown trails of dried blood marked the dusty yellow surface on the outside and the windows from the inside. Behind one of the brown streaks, there was motion… one of the dead was still wandering around within, seemingly pacing up and down the aisle, content with a small domain.
Despite his size, he had managed to stay low on foot, crouching and crawling between vantage points around the block and always warily shifting his gaze around. When these creatures were not alert and moaning, they ran eerily silent. He had nearly had a close call as he crawled past the front office of the storage yard and did not see a ghoul walk out from between a pair of abandoned sedans in the road. That had been the first day of scouting, and it had rattled him so much that he shouted and alerted a few more in the area. He had fled back to the storage lot for safety, and he and Bob had picked up the trio of stragglers that had followed from behind the safety of the metal gate.
Edgar would not make such a mistake again.
Based on Edgar’s observation, the only point in and out that was walkable was the busted rolling gate, but that area also had a pair of nearby wandering ghouls in addition to the ghoul within the bus.
It was manageable, but what concerned him most were the sounds he had heard from inside the district office, echoing out between the buildings of the district campus. Periodically, there was shouting and the clanging of pipes and slamming doors, punctuated by a series of moans from the ghouls. He hadn’t heard these things until he had begun poking at the perimeter, and even then, it all sounded so faint.
Edgar was unsure of the disposition of the survivors, if he was hearing what he thought he was, but the clamor was great. He was sure it was more unknown people than he was willing to deal with on his own, especially given the incident with the police car. He’d been lucky with Bob and Dani, and lucky again with the new ones, Mary and Alicia. Sooner or later, luck would run out.
The good news was that the patterns the ghouls seemed to follow were aimless but also felt almost regular, as though they would reach some boundary, invisible or not, and reverse course. Today would be the day he would test that and work his way into the district grounds to see what he could find.
There was no rush. He wouldn’t push it. He wasn’t in a hurry to die. He woke up with a start more than once these past few days, remembering the swarm of ghouls clinging to his car a week ago – remembering the back seat of the car and the condition of the woman he was sure he’d known.
Edgar came in low, practically on his hands and knees, following along the side of the bus, out of sight of the closest ghoul ahead. When he was close enough, he squeezed himself under the bus. If it hadn’t been due to consistent starvation, he would have been unable to do that. The most fucked of blessings. He was still the biggest person in the camp, but he felt smaller than he had been before everything changed.
He shuffled quietly on his belly under the bus and toward the front. Pausing, he watched desiccated feet shuffle back and forth; the sticklike legs were in tattered slacks, and one foot was socked but without a shoe.
He watched the ghoul’s motion until it came close enough. He pulled a small camping hatchet from the back of his pants and grabbed at one of the legs, tugging hard. Instead of dragging it under, the leg snapped off, and the ghoul fell to the ground. Black blood splattered, and Edgar quickly tossed the broken leg away.
“Fuck,” he whispered. He scrambled out from under the bus and grappled the waist and back of the ghoul as it thrashed. With an overhead swing, he brought the blade to the back of the skull with a sickening thwack, cracking the rotting skull open before the ghoul even made a sound. Pausing for a second to see if it was done thrashing, he scrambled to his feet to the other side of the bus, peeking out from the front, wary of any movement.
That hadn’t gone as planned. Edgar glanced down at a bus tire, noticing it was so shredded that it could not be an easy fix. He wondered about possibly replacing it, but realized where he was in relation to the bus. Sure enough, Edgar stood in front of the open door. He crouched and held silent for a moment. The ghoul inside must have been in the back because there was no sign of it.
He took his hatchet and flicked away some blood. He tapped the handle at the first step, crouching against the side of the bus. The wait was agonizingly long for the ghoul to spill forth, enticed by the sound. When the creature arrived, it tripped down the stairs, crumbling into a dusty, rotten heap. Edgar pinned it down on the ground with his knee on its back and gave it a couple of violent thwacks with the blade. All that was left of his handiwork was a oozy dark puddle and rubbery nuggets of brain matter, looking like the world’s worst plate of scrambled eggs.
He glanced around, and the other ghouls who “patrolled” this space had wandered off. There was a gap if he wanted to push.
The facility would take a long time to clear at this rate. With no ghouls in sight, and his exit seemingly opened behind him, he pushed forward, taking a low run toward the first building, which appeared to be the school bus depot.
The building was a small outbuilding combined with what appeared to be a large carport meant for bus maintenance. There was no sign of wanderers, so he ducked into the small office that seemed to operate as a dispatching area. The place was a wreck, but there were no signs of life except for some smears of blood on a table. Peering out of the office, he saw the school buses that occupied the large parking lot. There were three parked in the large lot, and a lone bus in the bay that appeared to be mid-repair. Other buses had been out on the job when the place had gone into lockdown, Edgar figured. But the remaining three were just what he was hoping to find – if they were still operational.
He turned his attention back to the small room. There were a couple of computers on desks, a couple of phones, a small table, and some chairs. Little else, beyond, but he checked behind the desks anyway. He was surprised to catch sight of a minifridge, but then realized what was in there had probably become little more than sludge.
Curiosity won out, however, and he crouched down, opening the door. The scent of rot punched him in the face, nearly knocking him onto his ass, but the sight of a sealed can of cola won out. He snatched the can up and slammed the refrigerator shut, gagging all the while.
After a few moments where he could collect himself, he studied his can of cola. It had picked up a little odor from the fridge’s contents, and he ineffectually attempted to wipe away any grime on his pant leg.
He turned the can over and saw it was a diet soda. He grimaced at the idea of a diet soda, but also realized there wasn’t much of the stuff left in the world in the long run. Sugar was sugar.
He checked the date on the label, and sure enough, it was good. Worried about what the can may have picked up from the condition of the minifridge, Edgar spat on the rim and then whipped the can as cleanly as he could with a corner of his shirt. He cracked the tab and took a sip of the sickeningly sweet cola. Content, he took it down in a couple of huge gulps.
He finished the last sips and set the can beside him. All this time, there had been no sound coming from anywhere outside of the office. He rose to his feet, glanced out the door, and turned his attention to the bus in the bay.
From what he could tell, the tires appeared fine. He saw the engine hatch was open and couldn’t eyeball much regarding the engine’s status right now. He made his way to the side of the bus with the door and nearly shit himself when he saw a body hanging down over the stairs.
If it had been a ghoul, it would have moved – but it was just a body. Was it the driver? Or was he a mechanic? Leaning in, Edgar saw that the man appeared to be neither. He wore what used to be a pale green dress shirt and a tie with brown slacks. The man didn’t strike Edgar as someone who actually had much to do with the maintenance or operation of buses. Based on the computers in the room, Edgar figured that the man had a dispatcher.
What was the story here? Edgar had been thinking a lot about the ghouls and bodies he’d seen, wondering about past lives and final moments. He knew why. That car had rattled him in a way he couldn’t quite explain. Since then, he couldn’t help but consider stories.
The body did not appear to have any major wounds from behind. Curiosity gave way, and Edgar grabbed the shirt at the collar and pulled the corpse from the doorway. He turned the body as best he could, and caught a leathery face frozen in shock and fear. He also saw a screwdriver jammed into the chest.
Edgar’s head spun with theories, but he settled on the story that maybe the dispatcher and the mechanic were fighting about something in the chaos. Maybe the mechanic ended it.
Edgar just wanted things to have some kind of reason.
Edgar plucked the screwdriver free and flicked the gunk from it. It was a longer piece of kit, and he figured it would be worth holding onto. Inside the bus, it was relatively clean, beyond the exposure to open doors and windows.
Yet, there were still no signs of what was wrong with the bus, if anything. The keys were in the ignition, but there was no clear way out without moving the bus from the gate or opening another gate. For now, he’d let this one sit in silence, but took the keys with him. It was lucky that the driver hadn’t taken the keys with him.
Edgar made his way to the closest building, which seemed to be some sort of administrative spot. The lot was dotted with other cars, which might be useful – he clocked each one and added it to the mental inventory he had been taking. He kept his creeping, crouched movements, ducking past wandering dead, and made his way to a glass doorway.
The doorway itself was in good condition, but he noticed that things had been piled up against it on the other side, serving as a makeshift barricade. He saw some desks, chairs, and boxes. The handles of the doors had been lashed by what looked like a belt and jacket.
The barrier was just about waist-high, and fabric had been strung across to hide anything within, outside of the small slivers of space between the barricade and the fabric. Edgar wasn’t sure if the ghouls could see anything, but he understood the impulse. He’d considered lining the fencing with cardboard back in the storage yard.
Realizing he’d come this far already, Edgar kept out of sight and approached the door, placing his ear to it.
Sure enough, there were voices.
Raised voices.
Shouting.
Gunshots.
“Fuck, fuck.” Edgar scrambled away from the door, falling over a couple of times, dashing his way back toward the garage area, keeping as low a profile as possible. It was amazing he hadn’t drawn any ghoulish attention in the scramble so far.
Sure enough, dreadful moans seemed to echo all around, and the sound of muffled gunfire from inside continued to pick up. He ducked around the corner into one of the bays and watched as shattering glass scattered over the walkway where he had just been, and office furniture and boxes tumbled out with a pair of people.
Edgar watched the two run for their lives, a man and a woman. Both were thin. The man, already bloodied and clutching an arm, seemed to shield the woman’s body. The woman’s shirt was torn, a breast exposed.
A third man spilled out of the same doorway and fruitlessly pulled a revolver trigger over and over. His face was covered in blood, and his steps were lurching. Out of ammo, he picked up his pace like a crazed beast, striking the first man on the head. He overtook the woman, grabbing her by the hair and throwing her to the ground.
Edgar saw him climb on top of her and club her with the revolver; the other man, who had been brained, quickly tackled the man with the revolver, clubbing at him.
Edgar threw himself out from behind the wall of the garage and ran toward the scene as the two men struggled over the woman, but four ghouls had begun approaching them from behind some parked cars.
“Watch out!”
Edgar waved and cried at them, but the two men played out their drama, ignorant of him. It was too late; the ghouls converged and fell upon the struggling men, tearing them apart.
Edgar watched in horror as greasy fingertips slashed at the gunman’s neck, and hot blood burst forth. In a second, another pair of hands grabbed at his scalp and began pulling out clumps of bloody hair. The gunman hadn’t been as fortunate with two ghouls falling upon him and sinking rotten, yellow teeth deep into the neck and shoulder. Edgar was shocked at how strong and quick the monsters moved at the prospect of fresh flesh.
Each man was stripped of skin and tissue by teeth and fingertips. He’d watch a ghoul take a bite and tear strips and ribbons of flesh free, only to see flesh roll out of open mouths, where the ghouls would then go back, sinking in their teeth even deeper. Edgar had never seen the things feed so directly. He felt like he was about to vomit, but Edgar swallowed down the acidic bile that rose in his throat and cautiously approached the group to see if he could at least help the woman.
The ghouls were distracted by their eating frenzy, and the sounds of the men’s screams masked Edgar’s heavy steps. As he was within a few feet of the gruesome scene, he noticed the woman moving. Her face, however, told a different story and amounted to little more than a bloody bowl – he swore he could see white teeth in a puddle of flesh where a face used to exist. The gunman’s revolver had smashed her nose and teeth, and she was drowning in her blood. Her gargles terrified Edgar.
He closed the gap between them and, tears in his eyes, brought the ax’s blade down on her face, smashing what was left of her head into three wet chunks. He cried as he put her out of her misery and, when finished, whirled around and smashed at the skull of the closest ghoul. His swing was wild and glanced off bone. He doubled down and struck again, sinking the blade deep into the ghoul’s temple.
Edgar flew into a rage, striking any head he saw in a pile, and after a few moments and a couple of near bites, had brained every single one of the ghouls and the men for good measure. He instinctively grabbed the revolver and absentmindedly pulled the trigger a half dozen times, hoping at least a single shot was left.
There was nothing there. He knew that.
But the compulsion was too great.
He tucked the gun into his pants and noticed the commotion had begun to pull in a few stragglers. How had there been even more of these fuckers hidden away? He grabbed the long screwdriver from his belt loop and clumsily rose to his feet, winded.
This scouting trip had become a catastrophe. He wouldn’t chance the district office. It was time to leave.
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Them analogys of tasty food with gorey heads, yum