Stephanie and Her Premature Armageddon.

Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5 

            The group approached the chem lab on foot with their weapons drawn. Some lights flickered in the lab. The four crept up slowly and grabbed the door handle. The eased the door open and Danny stepped inside. “Whew! What’s that smell?” He asked as he flipped on the lights. A whole class of hungry angry and foaming zombies growled back at the survivors. “Oh.” Said Danny. “You guys are in college and you’ve never learned to brush. That’s just sa-“ He was interrupted as Stephanie grabbed his shirt and pulled him out of reach from a close by zombie. She stabbed the zombie through the neck and backed out the door and slammed it shut. She sheathed her sword, turned Caleb around and grabbed the last cocktail out of his pack, along with the lighter.

            “A zombie’s worst nightmare.” Said Stephanie as she lit the rag.

            “What a closed door?” Said Danny.

            “No.” Said Stephanie. She handed the lighter back to Caleb. “Me.” She kicked open the door spilling over the eager zombies who piled against it. She hurled the cocktail into the center of the room and closed the door again as the unlucky undead were enveloped in flame. After the initial burst she opened the door again and charged in decapitating the newly blinded hostiles. The rest of her team joined in the fray and cleared through most of the room. About half way through their battle the sprinklers turned on and doused now smoldering and mostly headless zombies. “Caleb! Go shut that off!” She called over the noise. Stephanie turned back to her victims and finished of those in range while Caleb kicked open another door to search for the shut off valve. “John search for some good stuff to gear up with.” She called to John.

            “How about this?” He asked pointing to a large container of liquid nitrogen. She smiled a mischievous grin, re-sheathed her sword, and strode over to the tanks.

            After some tinkering and modifications made when Caleb came back from shutting off the sprinklers, they had made two small rigs of a liquid nitrogen pack that would spray a straight stream out a hose that ran down the users arm. Their rig was simple. It was a pack that strapped to the back with two tanks of liquid nitrogen streaming into a pressure valve taken from a methane dispenser, which fed into a hose with another valve at the end for firing. They stocked up on more Molotov cocktails and headed out the door. They gathered in the parking lot around Stephanie.

            “Ok. Here’s the plan. We have rations. We have some weapons. We have a vehicle, and we have hundreds of people up there that could need our help,” she said pointing up to the housing. “Now there should be some glow sticks in the emergency packs, so everyone break one and hang it around your neck somehow so we can identify each other in the dark.” She handed them the glow sticks and a few small cracks shakes later, everyone was slightly illuminated.

            “Won’t this make us more visible?” Asked John.

            “Exactly.” Said Stephanie. “We need to make sure we aren’t hacking at each other to pieces. Our weapons are just as lethal to us as they are to them, even more so actually because they only die if their head is destroyed. We are obviously more vulnerable than that. So let’s play this smart and not make any mistakes ok?” She asked.            

            “No problem.” Said Danny folding his arms to look cool and leaning against a car. The car’s horn began to blare. Danny had accidently set off the alarm.

            They heard them. The horde screamed at the disturbance. They were coming. The rest of the chem department was aware of their presence now, and the music and drama department was honing in on their position with a ravenous hunger. Danny hastily jumped away from the car. Everyone glared at him. “I can fix this!” He said. He turned to Caleb. “Caleb, remember that time last year Ross in the room?” Danny asked.

            “Oh, with the-“

            “Ya! Because of the-“

            “And it made the big-“ Caleb motioned something large with his hands.

            “Exactly!” Exclaimed Danny.

            “I don’t follow you.” Said Stephanie.

            “Get the hand sanitizer.” Said Danny, drawing his sword and holding it horizontally. Caleb reached into his pack and withdrew a large pump dispenser. He quickly squirted an even line of sanitizer all down the blade on both sides. Danny grabbed his own lighter and held the flame to the base of the blade. A beautiful blue flame raced across the whole surface of the swords blade and cast dancing shadows across the parking lot. Just as the horde poured into the asphalt battle arena, Danny charged towards the throng. He slashed powerfully sending brilliant blue arcs across the sky. He twirled and bounded off the sides of cars. He vaulted over headless foes to make others join the number on the ground. He twisted and turned swinging his sword ceaselessly from one victim to another. They could not get within two feet of him, for his sword was too fast and his feet ever fleeting. Even if he did not slice their heads off, the flame quickly spread across their body and engulfed them till they lay on the ground in smolders. Within a few minutes the only standing figure left was lightly illuminated by a small green glow around his chest, and a brilliant blue flame along the sword to his side. The blue licked up the blade of the sword for a few seconds and then faded as its fuel was consumed.

            “Sweet!” Shouted Caleb. But their victory was short lived. Another legion was on the way. The group crawled into the dozer and tried to start it up, but the engine wouldn’t turn over. The dozer was out of gas. Stephanie grabbed some cans from the back and began to fill up the tank. But the swarm was coming fast.

            John turned a knob on the tank strapped to his back and Caleb did the same to his rig. Once the zombies were in range, John and Caleb let them have it. They flipped open the valves and sprayed the nitrogen all over the mass. Zombies froze in mid step some shattered as they were pushed and fell to the ground. Danny pulled out his slingshot and took aim at the popsicles left standing. His marbles struck with deadly accuracy shattering them into a thousand pieces. Near the end of the wave John’s primary tank went dry. He backed off and let Caleb have at the rest with the chainsaw, which for the sake of looks, they also lined with sanitizer and lit on fire. John disengaged the tank and pulled it from the pack. Danny grabbed the tank and was about to go refill it with nitrogen, but Stephanie stopped him.

            “Wait.” She said. She took an empty gas can and placed a tube through the gas valve on a car and began to siphon the fuel into the can. “Start siphoning other cars and fill the empty tank with the fuel when you can.” They all got the idea. Danny started siphoning more fuel and John adjusted the pressure valve on the rig. This way, instead of a strait stream of nitrogen, it would spray it at a much higher pressure so it comes out in a gas rather than the liquid stream.

            Danny gathered up the now filled gas cans and hooked them up to the pressure fill system. In a little over a minute, they had their nitrogen tank completely filled with gasoline. They took a barbeque lighter from their emergency packs and strapped it to the end of the hose on the rig. They set the flame to low to conserve lighter fluid and jammed the trigger back so that a steady continuous flame hovered nicely just in front of the hose on their newly improvised flame thrower.