Dismemberment - Book One: The World We Once Knew

Chapter 2: Welcome to the Rest of Your Life

The evening sunset shined on Ben’s closed eyelids as he awakened from his slumber. As he opened his eyes, Ben gazed upon the horrible sight before him. In the classroom, desks were flipped over and strewn about the room. The glass of the windows that were smashed out littered the floor. Only Ben’s desk was upright. Chairs blocked the door as if they were used to barricade it. On the blackboard in front of the classroom, the words “GOD HELP US ALL” were written in a weird red substance. Ben practically leaped out of his chair as soon as his mind processed the room.

    “What the…” Ben whispered to himself. He turned his head to face the clock, which showed the time to be 5:53 p.m. “What happened to this place? It looks like a bomb went off here.” Ben said to himself. Ben hastily opened his bag, to see that his father’s pistol was where he had left it. Ben sighed in relief, before turning to face the barricaded door. One by one, Ben removed the stacked chairs. 
As he was doing this, he noticed somebody leaned up against the wall from the corner of his eye. He turned to look at the person to see that it was his bully, Brad. Brad’s shirt, along with his lettered jacket, were stained with blood. Brad’s face was a pale, sickly gray color, and his blonde hair looked thin and damaged. Brad was not moving, so Ben assumed that he was badly injured. “Brad? What are you doing?” Ben asked. 
As Ben inched closer and closer, suddenly Brad sprung to life. From his mouth came a low-pitched, growling noise. Brad’s eyes were now open, and were revealed to be bloodshot. Brad slowly stood up and limped at a slow pace towards Ben. Ben backed up at the same pace. “Woah, man. This isn’t funny anymore.” Ben tried to plead with Brad to stop to no avail, until his back finally hit the wall. Brad lunged at him and attempted to take a bite out of Ben’s throat. Ben caught Brad by the shoulders and attempted to fight him off. “Get off of me, you fucking psycho!” Ben finally was able to push Brad backward. Brad tripped over a chair and hit the floor. As Brad tried to get back up, Ben pulled his gun from his bag and took off the safety, before he pointed it at his crazed bully. “Don’t make me kill you!” Ben screamed. Brad snarled in a blind rage, and lunged toward Ben once more. As he did this, Ben pulled the trigger.
The shot rang out and echoed across the entire second floor of the school. Brad fell to the floor, unmoving, and proceeded to bleed through the new hole in his head. Ben dropped the gun and fell to his knees, before vomiting on the floor. He realized then and there that he might not have had the stomach to commit this shooting after all. Ben sobbed on the floor next to the corpse of his former bully, for he was scared and confused by the events that had just took place. Eventually, he collected himself, stood up, grabbed his gun, and ventured into the hallways.
The halls were a similar sight to the classroom. People’s belongings were strewn about, blood and bodies littered the floor, and messages like “GOD HELP US” and “THIS IS THE END” were written on the lockers. The lights were off, all except for the ones that ran on the emergency power. Even the emergency lights were flickering. Almost every classroom was barricaded from the inside.
“What happened here? Where is everyone?” Ben asked himself as he explored the halls of his now decrepit school. As he made a left, he came to a door at the end of the hallway labeled “stairwell”. Ben opened the door to find dozens upon dozens of crazed former students flooding the area. As each pair of eyes turned to look at Ben, the snarling grew louder. “Oh shit!” Ben exclaimed as he scrambled to shut the doors. He ran down the hallway in the opposite direction as he heard banging on the doors to the stairwell.
As Ben ran through the hallway, zombies proceeded to pour out of each classroom. Ben pushed through each one that was in his way, knocking them over. Eventually, he reached the other end of the hallway. At the end of the hallway stood one wooden door with blocked out windows. The sign next to it read “Teacher’s Lounge.” Ben tried to turn the knob, only to find that the door was locked. “God damn it!” Ben exclaimed in a mix of frustration and fear. He turned around to see that the zombies that he ran away from were quickly closing in on him. Being cornered with no options left, Ben fired into the crowd.
As Ben unloaded his handgun into the horde of zombies, they continued to draw closer to him. Ben shot the last of that clip into the zombies, before reaching into his bag for a new one. As he was doing this, he heard the door behind him unlock and open. “Get in here, quickly!” a feminine voice shouted. Ben did not have to be told twice. He hastily ran into the teacher’s lounge, before slamming the door behind him and locking it. Ben sighed in relief as he looked up to see Cait standing before him, baseball bat in hand. “Ben, is that you?” she asked excitedly. “Thank God that there are other survivors.” Ben stood up and holstered his firearm. Cait looked down at the weapon in surprise and fear. “Where the hell did you get that thing?” she fearfully asked. Ben began to internally panic. He knew he had to make up a lie to calm her down. “I-i took it off of a dead security guard.” He stuttered. Cait calmed down. “Oh, good.” she said. “I thought you brought that with you to school this morning.” Ben, wanting to change the subject, scanned the room.
On a coffee-stained couch, he saw two other people sitting and playing cards. One was a short boy with strawberry-blonde hair in a bowl cut. He had a white dress shirt with ripped blue jeans and black sneakers. In one of his pants pockets, he had a screwdriver sticking out of it. 
The person sitting next to him was a tall, dark-skinned girl in blue shorts and a school basketball jersey. She had a folding chair propped up next to the couch stained with blood, which made it evident to Ben that she used it as a weapon. She looked up at Ben and gave him a blank stare, before returning to the card game.
“Ben, I’d like you to meet Samuel and Monique.” Cait said while leaning her bat against the wall. “They saved me when everything got out of hand.” Ben walked over to them and reached his hand out. “It’s nice to meet you guys,” he casually told them. Both of them declined shaking his hand. “I see that I'm in a room with the friendliest folks on the planet,” Ben thought to himself. Ben lowered his hand and directed his attention to the television in the corner, which was displaying static. 
“What's with the TV?” Ben inquired. “We have it on the news channel. If they have any special reports or anything to tell us, we don't want to miss it,” Monique said in a monotone voice. Cait walked over to the couch and pulled a piece of paper out of her back pocket, before unfolding it and placing it on the coffee table in front of her. “This is a map of the school. It will help us with rescuing other survivors,” she stated while pulling out a marker. “We've already secured this teacher's lounge, and there were no survivors in any of the classrooms, so the auditorium, library, and cafeteria are all that is left. Ben and Sam, you two will go down to the library to look for others. I will take the auditorium, while Monique hangs back and keeps an eye on the TV.”
Samuel nodded and put his cards down. He stood up and made his way to the door. He put his ear to it to determine if there were still zombies on the other side, before unlocking it and taking a look outside. Once he saw that the coast was clear, he gestured Ben to come with him. “Are you coming or not?” Samuel asked in an impatient tone. Ben walked over to the door to join in on the mission. “Hey, you guys,” Cait said. “Please be careful.” Both Sam and Ben nodded, before closing the door behind them and making their way to the library.
The two boys walked in silence, not breaking their swift pace. This changed when Sam stopped walking and spoke up. “You can stop lying to us at any time now,” Samuel bluntly stated, clenching a fist. Ben turned to look at him. “What do you-” Before he could finish asking the question, Samuel interjected. “Don't play dumb with me! I know you didn't get that gun off of a dead security guard! They carry Glocks!” He yelled at Ben. Ben's eyes widened with surprise. “How did he figure me out that easily?” Ben thought to himself. Samuel continued walking. “It doesn't matter now, anyway. That gun will be useful. However, if you plan on hurting any of us, I'll fucking kill you where you stand. Got it?” He sharply asked while glaring at Ben hostilly. Ben silently nodded. “Good,” Samuel muttered, before continuing to walk down the hallway. Ben followed him from behind.
Eventually, the two arrived at a set of double doors that were labeled “Library.” Ben motioned to the doorknob while looking at Samuel. “After you,” he said. Samuel grunts at him. “Coward,” Sam muttered, before opening a door. As they both entered, they saw that the center of the library was infested with zombies. Samuel proceeded to reach into his bag. “I have a plan,” he said while pulling out an air horn and some tape. “Sound draws the zombies. We make a distraction at one end of the room, and we can explore the other end without much risk,” Sam explained to him. “We just have to climb the bookshelves to get a better view of what we are doing.” Ben nodded in agreement. “Sounds like a good plan,” Ben said while reaching out to climb the bookcase. 
The two boys climbed up to the top of the bookcase and surveyed the area around them. They saw that the zombies were crowding around the librarian’s desk and were eating something. “Something tells me that the librarian didn't make it,” Sam whispered. He looked to the left of the desk to see a door. Next to the door was a window with curtains drawn. He looked closely to see that the curtains were moving. “Hey, Ben. Look at that,” Sam said, pointing to the curtains. “Looks like we've got some stowaways,” Ben replied quietly. 
Sam unrolled the tape he had and prepared to put it on the air horn. “Get ready,” Sam instructed. He then proceeded to wrap the top of the horn with duct tape. The loud blaring noise pierced the silence that once filled the room. Sam quickly chucked the noisemaker as hard as he could to the opposite end of the room. The undead crowding the middle of the room began to clear the area in search of the noise that assaulted their eardrums. “Let's get moving! That air horn isn't going to make that sound forever,” Sam told Ben. They both climbed down the bookcase and made their way over to that room as quickly and as quietly as they could.
When they got to that end of the room, Ben softly knocked on the door. There was no response. Sam went to reach for the doorknob. He found that the door was unlocked the entire time, so he opened it to be met with two spears being held at his throat.
The people inside the room stepped out of it, spears still in stabbing position. One was a petite, blond-haired girl with a ripped-up tank top covered in blood. Her skirt was ruffled and covered in blood as well. The other person in that room was a very tall man, with black hair and sideburns. He wore a lettered jacket, signifying that he was in a sport. He also wore blue jeans with white sneakers, and was very heavily built. “Who are you?” The man asked with a Russian accent. Ben raised his gun to the man. “We are the ones who will blow your brains out if you keep threatening us with spears,” he said menacingly.
The two got the message, and lowered their weapons. “We're sorry,” the girl said in a thick Brooklyn accent. “We were trapped in here all day because of those things. No such thing as being too careful.” The girl proceeded to walk back into the room she was hiding in. “My name is Jaqueline, and that's my boyfriend, Nikolai,” Jaqueline said while pointing at Nikolai. The brawny man walked over to his girlfriend and put his arm around her. Sam decided to speak up at this point. “We have other people in the teacher's lounge. Come with us if you want to be safe,” he told them. Nikolai picked his spear up. “Sounds like a plan, my friends,” Nikolai said, heading for the exit. As Jaqueline followed, she fell to the floor, gripping her leg in pain. 
Sam and Ben turned to look at her. “What's wrong?” Ben asked Nikolai. “She was bitten by one of those freaks,” he replied, picking his girlfriend up off of the ground. Samuel’s eyes widened at the news. “Oh, shit. This is bad,” he said, getting his screwdriver out. “She's going to turn into one of them.”