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William walked very slowly toward his brother. He looked so ill on so many levels that Nancy found herself feeling absolutely sick for him. He was saying something to his brother, but he spoke so low that she couldn’t hear him from where she and Greg stood at the door. He raised his pistol in one hand, then thought better of it and used two hands to make it a steadier shot. His arms were shaking. Nancy couldn’t help but think that he was going to miss if he didn’t calm down and aim. The zombie that had once been Aaron was snarling at the gun as if he’d like nothing better than to chomp off the hand that was holding it.

BANG!

The sound shocked Nancy. With a strange taste in her throat she realized that she hadn’t been expecting him to actually go through with it. The growling and spitting stopped suddenly as the back wall of the room was painted with blood and hunks of flesh and hair. Greg’s eyes went wide and he couldn’t stop himself from gagging loudly. Nancy felt faint, but she took a deep breath and steadied herself. With the zombie threat gone, she stepped forward a little further. A morbid curiosity was taking hold of her. She found herself staring at the body that had slumped against the wall and slid down to the floor.

William turned to Marshall with tears pouring down his face. The older man nodded his approval and empathy. William hung his head in sorrow.

“Let’s go now, son,” Marshall suggested.

They were so distracted by the horror in front of them, that no one noticed there was something amiss in William’s stance. “No, sir,” he said, shaking his head. “No, I won’t be going anywhere anymore. I have one bullet left. Thanks for listening to my confession.”

It happened so quickly then that Marshall barely had time to let out a shout of protest. William lifted the gun to the underside of his chin and pulled the trigger. Nancy screamed. Greg dropped to the floor, unable to hold it back anymore, and vomited the previous night’s dinner all over the classroom floor. The contents of William’s head joined those of his brother’s on the wall and ceiling. Marshall’s hand, which he had thrown out in alarm, dropped back to his side. He stood there and stared for a long time.

Nancy slowly lowered her hands from where they’d landed over her mouth as she’d screamed. They were wet. She realized she was crying.

“Come on,” Marshall whispered. There was a hoarse note to his voice. “Let’s get out of here. There’s nothing we can do now.”

Chapter Six

Nancy and her companions spent the next 24 hours in a state of perpetual silence, nervousness, and cabin fever. They nibbled on the last of the good fruit, wandered the building - avoiding the basement - and otherwise tried not to talk about what had happened. Marshall kept quiet mostly out of respect for the youngsters’ feelings. Both Nancy and Greg, though neither would admit it, had been deeply disturbed by the incident. Nancy in particular couldn’t stop thinking about the pain and fear that had driven William to suicide, and she wondered if it would ever come to that for her. Would this thing get so bad that she just couldn’t handle it anymore? Was there an invisible line in her subconscious just waiting to be crossed? A line that would make her decide that survival was no longer worth it?

They were solemnly eating a quiet dinner when Greg’s ears perked up. “Do you guys hear that?” he asked in a hushed voice.

Nancy leaned to the side and listened. It was distant, but it sounded like a bird chirping at regular intervals.

Marshall frowned. “I don’t hear it,” he admitted.

“It sounds like a phone,” Nancy told him, frowning. “It definitely sounds like a phone.” Before the men could get in another word edgewise, she’d taken off at a run through the halls. Following her ears, she sprinted toward the principal’s office. They hadn’t thought to check the phones when they’d shown up at the school, so she was praying that it would keep ringing. She felt like it had been years since she’d spoken to someone on a phone, and she felt strangely giddy just to hear the familiar tone of a call coming through.

The office door was wide open, thank goodness, or they might not have heard the ringing at all. Nancy slid in the room, almost toppling over the desk, and collapsed into the chair while snatching up the receiver. “Hello?” she panted desperately.

For a moment there was only silence on the other end. “Hello?” Nancy asked again. Perhaps it was a glitch in the phone lines?

“N...Nancy?” came back a small, frightened voice.

Nancy’s eyes went wide and her throat felt dry. “Terri?” she croaked. Greg was just making it to the room as the name left her lips. His mouth dropped open in a strange mixture of surprise and disgust.

“Nancy...” said Terri-Lynn, her voice interspersed with sniffles and weak little sobs. “I’m...I’m so glad I got a hold of you... I heard you saying that you were going to a school, but I didn’t know which one so I’ve been calling them all...”

Nancy was stunned, partially because she couldn’t believe that Terri-Lynn had tracked her down and partially because - and she was only realizing this now - she had honestly never expected to hear the other woman’s voice again. “Terri, what are you-?” She didn’t know how to voice what she was thinking.

Terri-Lynn snorted loudly, a disgusting, pitiful noise. She was crying quite a lot from the sounds of it. “I wanted to talk to you,” she said. “I wanted to say that I’m sorry.”

For a moment Nancy said nothing. What
could
she say? That she forgave her for locking them out of the safe room and leaving them for dead? She didn’t. Not by a long shot.

“It’s okay if you don’t forgive me,” Terri-Lynn continued, almost as if she could read Nancy’s thoughts. “I just wanted you to know because, I’m not... I’m...” She let out a sob that she’d clearly been repressing for the sake of the conversation.

Nancy’s heart softened, though just a little. “Terri, what’s wrong?” she asked.

Marshall had finally caught up. Greg gave him a meaningful look while shaking his head. They stayed outside the door but couldn’t help listening in.

“Not long after you left the power went out,” Terri-Lynn said through the sobs. “I couldn’t stand to be there alone in the dark, so I left the kitchen. I was trying to decide what to do when these bikers came by and smashed in the front windows. They wanted the alcohol. They were crazy, Nancy! It almost seemed like they were having fun!” She let out a strange, strangled laugh. “They saw me and grabbed me and took me with them, and I was sure they were going to rape me, but when we got back to their garage some zombies had gotten through the door and they decided that they were going to fight.”

Nancy’s could almost see it in her mind’s eye; a gang of gruff guys on choppers riding through a hoard, guns blazing, chains whipping.

“I ran into the building,” Terri-Lynn continued. “I managed to kill one with a knife I grabbed off one of the bikers’ belts.” She let out one sharp laugh. “You’d have been proud, I bet.”

The picture she’d been imagining left her mind and Nancy felt her vision going funny. There was something very wrong with this story, and she didn’t think she wanted to hear the rest of it.

“He got me good, Nan... I’ve been bleeding, quite a lot. I don’t think 911 even exists anymore because I can’t get through, and I don’t even know where I am to ask them to come for me anyway. The bikers, I think they’re all dead, and I can hear the zombies downstairs. I can’t get out. I just... I just wanted to say that I’m sorry, before...before I can’t talk anymore.”

Nancy couldn’t hold in the sob that rose up her throat. Memories of better times with her friend were rolling through her mind. She desperately wished that she could turn back time, fix this stupid mistake. Greg looked away from her sorrow. He slid down the door frame of the office until he was sitting on the floor with his head in his arms. Marshall put a hand on the boy’s head and stared stubbornly at the ceiling.

“I forgive you...” Nancy whispered into the phone. Her voice cracked a little on the last word.

There was a long silence during which Nancy was scared that Terri-Lynn hadn’t heard her, and then the reply came: “Thank you Nan... Thank you so much...” There was a crash over the line as the receiver fell to the floor.

“Terri?” Nancy asked. Then, with more panic, “Terri?! Terri! Terri!!” She screamed the name again and again until Marshall appeared at her side and took the receiver out of her hand. Nancy’s face was covered in tears that she couldn’t remember crying. In her desperation she pounded her fists on the desk, over and over until her skin was red and numb. Eventually, while Greg listened miserably from the doorway, she collapsed on the desk and sobbed until her eyes went dry.

For the next two days Nancy was inconsolable. Marshall and Greg allowed her to be alone in the office for a while before attempting to talk with her, but she wouldn’t have any of it. She ate in silence from the plates they brought her and spent most of her time laying on her cot in the nurse’s station, staring blankly at the wall, unable or unwilling to talk about what had happened.

On the third night Marshall awoke sometime past midnight and noticed that she was missing. He quickly woke Greg and they began searching the school in a panic, trying not to fear the worst. Eventually they noticed an open maintenance exit and found her on the roof.

It was a windy night. A shining three-quarter moon was hanging in the sky, blocked only partially by the smoke from a few fires smoldering somewhere in the distance. Nancy was laying down on her stomach near the edge of the roof, staring down at the streets below.

“What the hell are you doing up here, missy?” hissed Marshall as quietly-but-sternly as he could. He and Greg spied the zombies below, wandering about the streets, and crouched down next to Nancy to avoid being seen.

“Don’t worry,” she whispered back. “They don’t ever seem to look up unless they hear something.”

Greg looked at her incredulously. “You’ve been sitting up here
observing
them?”

Even Nancy herself seemed to think that her actions were a bit off, but she nodded. “I’m...trying to understand, I guess,” she admitted. “This whole thing is so, so insane.” She stood up and stalked off to the center of the roof and began pacing back and forth in a huff. “Why did the dead suddenly start coming back to life? Why do they attack and kill the living? What is the
point
?” She was getting dangerously close to yelling. Marshall and Greg cringed and began hushing her. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m just...frustrated.”

“We all are, sweetie,” Marshall assured her. “It’s an awful, impossible, unreasonable thing that’s happening here, but all we can do is keep trying to survive.”

Nancy sighed. “It’s just...” She turned and plunked herself down hard on the granite roof. “I don’t know. Part of me thinks that there’s no point. Part of me just wants to get it over with.”

Suddenly Greg rushed forward, spun Nancy around by the shoulder, and slapped her hard across the face. She stared at him in shock, barely feeling the pain. Greg’s eyes were filled with tears. “Don’t you
dare
say that,” he growled. “Don’t even think about it! I’ve lost my entire family to this thing and I will
not
lose you too just because you’re upset about your friend. This is just...
no
.”

His last word had a finality in it that rang in Nancy’s ears. She dropped to her knees. Tears that had nothing to do with the redness of her cheek began to well in her eyes as she wrapped her arms around Greg’s legs and sniffled into his jeans. The tables seemed to have turned quite suddenly in this relationship. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’ll keep trying.”

They would never know what the trigger had been - had they been too loud on the roof, or perhaps it was just plain bad luck? - but the following evening they realized that the zombies’ attention had been brought to the school. The trio had been making their way toward the cafeteria for dinner when they became aware of a steady thumping noise coming from the foyer. Marshall took the handgun and experimentally peeked around the corner toward the main doors. Nancy watched his shoulders deflate before leaning out around him. She groaned to see that a teenage girl, blood running out of her mouth and half of her hair torn off, was leaning against the door’s window and hitting her dirty hands against it over and over.

“Maybe if we ignore her she’ll go away?” Nancy suggested, but in her heart she knew better. One way or another the zombie had decided that it wanted beyond that door, and that was all it seemed to take. She would probably keep beating on the door for all eternity, or until the glass shattered, whichever came first. And then more would come.

“That’s Maggie Lidster,” Greg said to himself. His face had gone quite green. “She’s in my Physics class.”

“Not anymore, she isn’t,” Marshall retorted, though not unkindly. He backed away from the foyer and sighed again. “We can’t do anything about it now. If I shoot her I’ll only break the window and attract more of them, and I wouldn’t suggest dashing out until we have a plan. For now I guess we should just wait and see how this progresses.”

They agreed, reluctantly. That night they took their dinner (somewhat stale peanut butter sandwiches) to the nurse’s station and barricaded the door before going to sleep.

The next morning Nancy was the first to wake. She had half a moment of blissful ignorance before harsh reality fell on her like cold rain. Her eyes went wide and she rushed over to shake Greg awake.

“What, what?!” he shouted in alarm, and woke Marshall in the process. Then he quieted and his eyes filled with fear.

The steady thud of Maggie Lidster’s relentless pounding had turned into a waterfall of banging, undead hands.

They avoided going near the foyer at all, lest catching a glimpse of live humans drive the zombies into a frenzy. Instead they headed straight for the roof, where they peered over the edge to find a crowd of no fewer than fifty zombies banging and clawing at the front of the building. Nancy felt decidedly ill.

“I don’t think they’re going to go away,” Greg mumbled under his breath.

“What do we do?” Nancy groaned.

Marshall was shaking his head, a motion that filled Nancy and Greg with dread. The older man had become like a parent figure to them, and to see him staring down at the hoard without so much as a single comment was exceptionally disconcerting.

They watched for a long time while the zombies beat away at the building. Every so often another would join from nearby, drawn by the crowd. From their vantage point on the roof they could see that there were quite a few more slowly and steadily making their way down the long road from either end. Finally Nancy decided that if one of them didn’t make a move, they might end up sitting here until the zombies broke down the doors. “We’ve got to leave,” she established.

“But-” Greg wanted to argue, but he couldn’t make a reasonable stand.

“They’ll get in eventually,” Nancy said aloud, even though the situation scarcely required explanation. “They’re tireless. They’ll stand there all night and all day just banging away, with more showing up all the time. It might be a while, or it might be any second, but either way they’re going to get in and we don’t want to find ourselves trapped in here when it happens.

“But how are we going to get away?” Marshall inquired. “We’ve lost our car.” He gestured toward the vehicle down the street, still crumpled against the Mustang where they’d left it.

This stumped Nancy. She didn’t really care to make their escape on foot. She and Greg would definitely be able to outrun the zombies for a little while, but Marshall would tire more easily. And for that matter, she and Greg would tire
eventually
, while the zombies never would. Not to mention the fact that they were down to one gun with limited ammo, and their blades wouldn’t do them a whole lot of good if they got overtaken by the swarm.