Death After Death (Book #2)

Chapter Eight

Max had built up an image of the school in his mind. An old, crumbling shell of a building, with towering black gates and a large oak door. He imagined crows flying in formation above, and rain plummeting through gaps in the roof. His idea of an 'abandoned school' had been severely warped by horror films from his childhood.

It was just a normal school.

"What's the plan?" Karl asked, looking beyond the rest of the group to Dawson.

It was clear that the young boys looked up to her, despite the gentle ribbing.

"Go in, get the food, come out?" Dawson suggested.

"Simple, I like it."

The five of them carefully encroached past the school gates, and scampered up to the main doors. One solitary plank of wood was nailed very deliberately between them.

"Well that's always a good sign," Max mumbled.

"I really think we should turn back. Guys?" Rodney whimpered from the rear of the team.

"I know it's a risk, but we need the food. I think the days of a risk-free meal are over I'm afraid," Dawson announced. "I say we go in through here, and make our way slowly through the building. Between the five of us we can cover every angle, watch each other's backs. First sign of trouble and we get the f**k out."

"Sounds good to me boss," Karl chimed, lifting his spear into the air like a warrior ready for battle.

"Any trouble and we're out," JJ reiterated.

Rodney mumbled and groaned, but put up no argument. He knew that without the others, he would have perished long ago. He was a liability, and well aware of it.

Dawson glanced to her right, seemingly awaiting Max's seal of approval. It appeared that he had already earned a glimmer of respect from the cold soldier.

"Lead the way," he said approvingly. 

Dawson stepped forward confidently, and eased the plank away from the entrance with her thick butcher's knife. The sheer power possessed by her rather small frame was impressive, as she made short work of the wooden blockade.

"After you, ladies."  

Max smirked, he was glad to have her fighting on his side, that's for sure.

Everything that had disappointed him about the appearance of the school vanished as Max plunged into the gloomy corridors of Victoria Primary School.

Dust, glass and debris covered the dingy grey floors, as Max's boots crunched with every step. Rows of lockers were dented and tipped onto their fronts, blocking the narrow corridors. Cheap square roof tiles covered the ceiling, some smashed, some completely missing, exposing the pipes and darkness beyond.

This was more like it.

"I used to f*****g hate school," Dawson grumbled, weaving between the guys to lead from the front.

"Not one of the popular kids, ay Daws?" Karl teased with a cheeky elbow to his leader's side.

"Oh, pipe down Karl, you were in the f*****g chess club," JJ jabbed.

Even Rodney sniggered.

"Let's just get on with this," Karl mumbled.

"Okay, I'll go first, Rodney just behind me, boys watch the flanks, and Max bring up the rear."

After a few mutterings of agreement, Dawson set off down the main corridor to her right.

Unable to know for sure where the cafeteria was, they decided to parade off in no particular direction until they stumbled across it.

Max stared through the door windows as they slunk past rows of classrooms. It was like peering through small gateways into the past. He could imagine thirty or so children, all sat at their desks, eyes fixed on the teacher at the front of the room explaining algebra or the Crimean War or whatever. It was nice to picture a simpler, more perfect time, but also depressing to realise that it may never be seen again.

In reality, the desks were toppled and smashed to pieces, floating in a sea of discarded paper and books. An education hastily abandoned for survival. The rooms screamed mass panic.

How many had escaped? How many were still alive? Max didn't ponder over these questions for too long. Why bother, when the answers were so devastatingly depressing.

He imagined Lizzie as a thirteen-year-old kid, walking these corridors as he did now, chatting to mates, probably telling any annoying boys to get lost. He imagined her going to class, sitting in detention, eating lunch, being a normal kid. He imagined the bell ringing at the end of the day, and Lizzie skipping out the main door. He imagined her looking for her father amongst the chattering crowd of parents.

He didn't need to imagine not being there. That was the reality.

"Big man! You with us still?" Karl said, waving his hand in front of Max's face.

"Yeah, yeah. Sorry."

"Eyes front!" Dawson called as they rounded the next tight corner.

Max snapped back to attention and pushed past Karl to reach the front of the group, following Dawson's gaze, around twenty metres down the corridor. All five of them inhaled sharply together, and stared on in worried silence.

In the middle of a crossroad in the hallway stood a small girl, alone. Her shoulders shook up and down, as if she was sobbing, but she remained facing away from them.

"Hey!" Dawson whispered.

The child didn't respond.

"How's she meant to hear that?" Karl asked.

"I'm trying to get her attention Karl, not the whole bloody building!" she hissed back.

"Ohhh, okay, I'm with you," Karl replied, before plucking up a small chuck of brick from the ground and lobbing it towards their new classmate.

The rubble smacked the girl on the back, and tumbled to the floor with a soft patter.

"What the f**k was that?" Dawson exclaimed, finding it hard to keep to a harsh whisper.

"You wanted to get her attention quietly," Karl shot defensively.

"And you thought lobbing a stone at a young girl was the way to go?"

"It did a job," he shrugged.

Dawson was just about to lay into him some more, before JJ piped up and tugged at her arm, "Daws, she still hasn't moved."

"This doesn't feel right," Max admitted.

"None of this has felt right. You all said the first sign of trouble and we'd leave!" Rodney complained.

For once, Max agreed with Rodney's sheepish attitude, "He might have a point Dawson. She didn't even flinch when Einstein's stone hit her."

"There's no trouble yet, just let m-" Dawson started before the shivering Rodney interjected.

"Yet being the operative word there!"

"Look, she might just be a terrified little girl, who knows how long she's been locked in here. Just let me carefully check her out, if she's a corpse, we can leave."

She didn't wait for permission, as she tip-toed towards the sobbing child.

"This is stupid," Rodney muttered under his breath.

Dawson approached, bit by bit, craning her neck in an attempt to get a glimpse of the girl's face.

"Hey, I'm Dawson, what's your name?"

Silence.

As she got to within a few feet, she noticed the hands of the girl were covering her face.

"Aw, don't cry. We're here to help," Dawson said with all the comfort and care she could muster.

Still there was no response. Dawson reached out and placed a warm hand, softly on the girl's shoulder, "Why don't you tell me your name, ay darling?"

The girl's body stopped shaking and her hands slowly dropped from her face, as she turned towards Dawson.

"That's it sweetie, no need to cry."

Dawson expected to see a petrified ten-year-old girl, eyes sore from crying all alone for God-knows how long.

She was right about the eyes.

But they weren't full of sadness or loneliness, these eyes glowed a dark red with hunger, set against a canvas of pale, peeling yellow skin.

"s**t. Trouble! TROUBLE!" Dawson yelled.

She had seen a clicker's face up close before, but somehow the sickening animalism of these creatures was magnified ten-fold by the empty shell of a child.

Dawson could have sworn she saw the girl's mouth curve into a wide grin before those teeth came clicking down together.

"Daws, get back here now! Time to g-!" JJ shouted across the hall, the air stolen from his mouth before he could finish.

The solemn clicking emanating from the child's mouth had developed an eerie echo, and echo which was growing louder by the second.

Suddenly a wave of rotten child corpses crashed around the corner behind them, the tiny bodies cascading as one unstoppable tsunami. The soft clicks rebounded round the walls like the horrifying scuttling of spiders.

"Stay there! We're coming to you!" Max screamed, yanking Rodney by the collar and dragging him after the twins who were already sprinting towards Dawson.

But Dawson's eyes were not on her fleeing friends. As she held the small girl's chomping face at bay with a firm grip round the neck, she glared with horror down the corridor dead ahead, then to her right, then left.

Three more hordes of starving children came tumbling down the halls from all directions, desperately grappling to be the first hungry mouth on the scene.

Max and the rest of the group came skidding to a halt, leaning towards each exit in turn before realising their hopeless fate. They were stuck in middle of the cross roads, with all lights on green, and nowhere to run.

Dawson was still motionless, face to face with the young schoolgirl, and Max knew someone had to take charge if they were going to have any hope.

He yanked her up straight, and grabbed the child by the back of her clothes, flinging her down one of the corridors towards her fellow army of predators.

"Dawson, you take straight on! Karl, JJ, take a side each, I'll cover the way we came! Rodney, look around for absolutely anything we can use and any f*****g way out of this mess!"

After a few seconds to thaw off from the frozen state of fear, everyone leapt to their stations, and Rodney began hastily scanning the surroundings between wails.

Max withdrew his bat and steadied himself for the oncoming attack. Somehow a blade seemed too brutal for him to use against children, but he had to get that out his head; these weren't children anymore.

The narrow corridors at least meant the clickers could only pour forwards in groups of three or so, but that did little to improve Max's confidence.

As his wave surged to within a few feet, he drew his bat back behind his head, as if waiting for a pitch, before swinging with every inch of strength and energy coursing through his veins.

The bat slammed into a small boy's skull with a nasty, hollow clunk, before sweeping through and smashing into the necks of the following two. All three of them were sent crumbling to the floor, which seemed to even halt the progress of the rest of the pack.

Max jabbed the end of the bat powerfully into the bridge of one kid's nose, sending a fountain of blood spraying across the walls. He then crunched the wooden bat down onto the top of its skull, feeling the c***k of bone reverberate down the grip.

Max chanced a quick glance behind him. The others were all just about keeping their attackers at bay, but the situation looked dire.

"Rodney, give me some good news!" Max screamed as he planted the heel of his boot against the chest of one particularly rotund child.

"I can't see anything!" he cried. "There's no way out!"

Max swore under his breath as he twisted the bat in his hands, smacking one clicker in the face with the end, before hitting another with the handle.

The piling bodies were definitely slowing down the flow of undead on his end, but it was still only an extremely temporary solution to their surely imminent death.

"Karl, chuck me your pool cue!" Max demanded between strikes.

"It's a f*****g spear!" Karl yelled back as he thrust the blunt end into a girl's face to keep her at arm's length. It appeared none of them felt right slaughtering their assailants, even if they were only children in looks.

"Just do it! Now!" Max cried.

Karl threw the cue down to Max's feet, retrieving a metal pipe of some kind from his waistband as a replacement.

Max snatched up the long wooden pole, flipping it sideways and jamming it against the wall either side. It was long enough to overlap the wall on both ends and act as a barrier between him and the clickers.

"Rodney, I need you to come and hold this! Just push them back and don't let them gnaw at your fingers!"

Before Rodney could argue, Max had pulled him over and shoved him in front of the cue. In his defence, he did as he was told.

Max thrust his bat into the hands of JJ, who was struggling to keep his lot back with merely a couple of small blades.

Dawson was fighting well, dispatching each clicker in turn with clinical strikes to the temples. With a crowbar in one hand, and her thick knife in the other, the bodies were tumbling at her feet. The only problem was their reluctance to finish off the undead, and as a result, they kept clambering back to their feet.

It was only a matter of time before the living were pushed back by the dead.

Max was scanning desperately, looking for any sliver of a way out. The ceilings were too high to reach, and even if they weren't, the tiles were weak and flimsy; there was no way out there.

The walls were covered in old notice boards and posters, with no doors, windows or even lockers in reach.

The only slightly useful thing was a dusty fire extinguisher, hooked to the wall next to Dawson.

"Dawson, on your right!" Max bellowed above the chorus of clicks and brutal battle.

She shifted swiftly to her left, creating room for Max to join her. Her arms pirouetted through the air like an elegant dance, and her feet were constantly moving to adapt to each attack. It was mesmerising to watch; she was some fighter.

Max had no time to spend on admiration though, as he tore the extinguisher from its wall frame and ripped out the safety pin. He just prayed that it was in working order.

He lifted the spout and pointed it directly down the middle of the group of children before clamping his hand down on the trigger.

White foamed spurted out the nozzle, drenching the clickers and knocking them back slightly. It hadn't provided the punch Max had desired, but it seemed to mess with their senses. He put an arm across Dawson and eased her back, and his ploughed into the front of the group.

He shot and covered as many of them as he could whilst crunching others in the face with the end of the metal cylinder. They seemed completely disorientated as the last of the foam dribbled from the end.

Max dropped the nozzle and planted both hands on the metal, sending it crashing down on as many skulls as he could. A set of small teeth plunged into his ankle, and he cried out in agony, before driving the extinguished down onto the clicker's head.

More bites came from different angles and Max became a one man wrecking ball, sending as many undead to the floor as he could.

Sets of teeth hung from his arms, refusing to unclamp from their prey, until Dawson cracked a crowbar across their temples.

"On us now!" She ordered, wading through the path Max had so bravely forged.

Rodney didn't need asking twice, immediately dropping the pool cue and hurtling after Dawson. Just as quickly, Karl plucked it back up from the floor and followed suit behind his brother.

The clickers from the other three corridors weren't far behind, clambering and trampling over their fallen comrades in the quest for fresh flesh.

Max struggled to run with his wounds, but was soon propped up by Dawson and JJ on either shoulder. They had found a way through the waves, but the chasing pack was catching up fast.

"What do we do?" Karl hollered.

In perfect timing to answer his question, before anyone else could, a door swung open at the far end of the corridor.

"In here! Quickly!" A girl in school uniform urged.

Without a split second's thought they sprinted towards the safe haven of the door, slamming it, and the hellish nightmare, shut behind them.