Chapter 11

The emergency stairs swayed in the wind, creating an uncomfortable sway, followed by the clatter of the metal frame slamming against the building’s wall. Each beat was punctuated by a squeal from Melissa, who was trembling right in front of me. Helena, beside me, looked at her with disapproval, rolling her eyes and landing them on me, trying to identify my opinion on that. I silently agreed with her, chuckling to try to express my disapproval.

“Melissa, can’t you shut up?” Ana asked, ahead of her, focused on the steps and squeezing hard on the safety rail.

Melissa stay quiet, trying to hold back the next little squeak as the structure we were in shook. As she turned to the next flight of stairs, I could look at her face and saw that two paths of tears stood out on her tanned cheeks. I immediately regretted my mocking laugh, feeling sorry for the terrified girl.

“We’re almost to the ground, Melissa,” said Guilherme, beside Carlos, at the head of the entire group.

The two boys were the first down the stairs, signaling for us to wait, holding their makeshift weapons in combat stance as they looked around us. The constant wind shook the trees and made their leaves rustle. Normally, you could hear birds singing, but they didn’t seem to be present that fateful afternoon.

“I don’t think anyone came here.” Muttered Carlos softly. “But try to keep your voice low so you don’t attract anyone’s attention.”

“Come on, you can go down.” Guilherme signed.

As soon as we all got to the ground, Victoria tried to calm Melissa down, earning a disapproving look from Helena. Guilherme called my attention with a sign, asking me to approach him.

We walked side by side towards the walls that surrounded the woods. He was still holding his broomstick. I felt a little uncomfortable because my hands were empty. In silence, we approached the wall, looking carefully down the street.

It was possible to see some. About four or five, but that was it. The street looked as deserted and untouched as it ever had been, were it not for a car crisscrossing the pavement. I could hear noises coming from the streets ahead, but I couldn’t tell exactly where it was coming from.

“Do you think we made it over the bridge today?” He directed his green eyes to me. He had a nervous expression, but he didn’t seem to be particularly tense.

Never before did I think I would find it so intriguing how people reacted in such different ways to tragedy. Melissa and Laura, for example, were in shambles, while Carlos and Guilherme, even though they were much more tense than usual, seemed to focus on staying calm and rational. I myself, that very morning, was ready to starve to death locked in the library bathroom and now I was practically dictating the path we would take. But it was evident from the tears that kept building up that if I stopped to think about my family, or indeed the destruction raging across the city, I too would end up in tears. For now, I would fight with all my strength to push those thoughts away.

“I don’t know, I think so. Depending on how the streets are going to be. We’re going to need to be quick.” I looked at him seriously. “Of course I wouldn’t object, but the more people come with us, the more risk. You know, not everyone is so prepared for this.”

“I know.” He sighed. “But it’s not like we can just tell them not to come with us. They’re our colleagues… But it’s going to be awesome… You were brave up there on the stairs, I know you’re worth your own weight.” He looked me up and down, as if analyzing me. Although there was no bad intention, I felt my cheeks heat up a little. “Now the other girls… Melissa… I don’t know if we can protect them…”

I noticed that his hands gradually began to shake and, wanting to keep one more person from collapsing, I immediately placed mine on his shoulders, drawing his attention to me with a slight shake. He looked at me again and, for the first time, I noticed that his eyes were quite pretty. He almost wanted to laugh, letting myself be carried away by such mundane thoughts at the time.

“We can do it, okay? We got here and we did well.” I ignored the low we had just a few minutes ago. “If you keep focusing on how scared you are, it will only get in your way.”

He sighed a few times and I realized I was doing a breathing exercise. I took my hands off his shoulders as a sign of respect, and in a few seconds, he seemed to return to his usual clarity. Guilherme smiled at me.

“Thanks. I’ve had anxiety issues since I was younger… I wouldn’t say this situation is quite the most neutral place for me.” He gave a nervous smile. “Rebeca?”

“Hmm?” I looked back at the street, noticing that he looked better.

“ Who is Mei?”

My attention again went to the green eyes of the boy in front of me. He looked a little nervous, as if this was a difficult question to ask.

“You’ve already mentioned her twice… I wondered if she was your sister.” He put his hands in his pockets defensively. “I was just curious, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

“ Mei is my little dog.” I replied with a small smile. If he knew me a little better, he would know that his insecurity was totally unnecessary: I loved talking about Mei.

He frowned for a short while and then broke into a nervous smile, which evolved into a laugh.

“I thought you were talking about a little sister. Mei is a dog!” he verified, continuing with the low laugh, which I ended up following. When we stopped, his face was a little confused. “Oh my God I can’t believe I can laugh after seeing these zombies eating half of my classmates.”

That word caught my attention. My God, I’ve tried to avoid using it until now. I just couldn’t believe how he used it so lightly, ignoring how completely comical it was. It felt like we were in some kind of stupid movie.

 “Zombies?” I asked, a little more serious.

Guilherme shrugged.

“Ah…that Hector.” He gestured with a thumbs up over his shoulder, where our other colleagues were. I knew he meant the chubby kid with the glasses. “They keeps calling it that. At first I thought it was stupid, but for the love of it, look at the situation we’re in. I can’t think of a better name for those things…”

“ No problem, when we get home, we do a vote to think of a better name.” He frowned again, looking strangely at me. “It was just a joke.” I shrugged.

He started another laugh, this time driven by the nervousness of someone who didn’t understand a joke. I knew that Guilherme had always had some success with girls, it was strange for me to see him so nervous and insecure.

Again, I was reminded that we were not under normal circumstances. It seemed comical how easy it was to forget that, right next to us, cannibals were trying to eat our flesh.

“Are you ready?” Hector’s voice caught our attention. He approached us a little awkwardly, annoyed to interrupt us. He held two wooden handles in his hand, from the same brooms as before. He extended one to me and another to Guilherme. “Carlos and the girls are impatient already.”

We then headed towards where everyone was, gathered in front of the exit gate. It was tall, maybe ten feet, but the transverse railings made it possible to jump over it, with proper care.

“You all think you can jump, don’t you?” asked Carlos, his voice serious. He still held his metal bar in his hand and looked seriously at everyone. “It’s not difficult and you can do it calmly. When you reach the top, descend slowly. DO NOT jump!” He put emphasis. “There are five, maybe six zombies on this street, but these are the ones we can see: there could be more. And more can come.” He leaned the bar against his side, crossing his arms.

“When we all get through, we’re going to have to be quick.” I said then, attracting everyone’s attention. I heard a bored sigh coming from Ana but ignored it. “We have no idea how the streets are going to be, but as far as we know they can be full of those things and when nightfall it will get even worse. That’s why I want to get to the other side of the bridge as quickly as possible.”

“Turn off your cell phones. – Helena warned, with a serious face. “Or at least leave them on silent mode. I know how everyone wants to get in touch with their families, but it would be disastrous if they started playing and drew attention to us.”

“ And which way are we going? Victoria asked softly.

Since we’re going to have to stop by Melissa’s house, which is on Avenida das Torres, I think we can follow this street and go down to the main one. From there we’ll go to your house and then we’ll see what’s better, okay?” Guilherme looked at Carlos and me, who agreed, without really having a better idea.

“Rebeca can guide the way and Guilherme and I stay behind, to protect you from anything that comes.” Carlos continued. “Let’s run, so keep up the pace. Keep your voice low and, most importantly, absolutely under no circumstances yell or do anything that gets their attention. We’ve managed to push a few away and open up some distance, but if too many come at us…” He let the stage die in midair, creating a wave of tension that rippled through everyone.

“Everything will be fine.” I tried to regain the thread of the conversation, again trying to avoid any meltdown that could spoil our plans. “All ready, then?”

We don’t need to vocalize the answer. Nobody was ready.

Helena was the last to jump the gate, doing it with the agility of a cat and landing on the ground with grace. With no major problems, apart from Ana’s half torn shirt, everyone managed to throw their backpacks to the other side and climb the gate. While the last crossing was made, I, along with Carlos and Guilherme, remained a little apart, trying to precede the movement of any of the corpses that came our way.

Two were moving slowly, coming from the direction we were supposed to go on that street. Two others were lying on the floor, apparently immobile, but we had noticed minor movements that allowed us to detect that there was still life in them.

“Come on, quick now.” Guilherme looked at us, his voice little more than a whisper. “You don’t have to hit them until they stop, just make sure you hit them hard enough to knock them away or knock them down, okay?”

No one responded vocally, communicating only by nodding. Soon we started to move: Helena and I were in the front, both armed with broom handles, while Guilherme and Carlos were a little behind us, covering a greater distance. Among the four of us, Melissa, Ana, Victoria and Hector followed our pace, although very nervous.

At that moment, I found myself thinking about how I had gotten there. Not the whole undead situation, but carrying a weapon and taking the lead in the group, in charge of protecting those in the middle. What circumstances made me strong enough for this? There was no point in lying anymore: I had never been a particularly strong or brave person—I was just a teenager, by God! That whole day, the only thing that guided me was the desire to get home and be reunited with my grandmother and my dog. Why exactly had I, as terrified as I was earlier in the day, in that bathroom stall, been chosen to guide and protect?

I felt my hands getting damp against the wood of the handle, coming to the conclusion that it was best to put those thoughts away for now. Any idea that would take me out of a state of mind minimally adapted to the task that had been assigned to me deserved to be put away for the time being.

We barely moved, less than half a block, when my heart started to beat faster. One of those things started staggering towards me. It was a woman with torn and bloodstained clothes. A broken eyeglass dangled, dangling from one of his ears by a string. Her hair was short, curly, and white with age.

I thought she could leave it to the boys, but there was no way: as soon as she fixed her cold eyes on me, she quickened her pace without batting an eye, just over five meters from me.

“Rebeca!” Carlos whispered in a firm voice, as if he wanted to snap me out of a trance.

He brought the broomstick as far back as possible, seeking strength and momentum to make sure one blow would be enough—and before he could get too close to me. As soon as she took a step too close, I used all the strength in my arms to yank the broomstick back, landing a blow to the middle of her chest, taking advantage of the lack of balance in her stride to launch her backwards. I barely let go of the broom in the process, emitting a grunt of effort.

My God. How difficult.

I managed to push it away, but the effort of throwing away a weight of sixty, maybe seventy kilos proved to be gigantic. I was sure that just with that blow my arms would already hurt tomorrow, imagine if I needed to throw more!

Beside me, Helena pushed a new man away in the same way, in a state similar to my wife. With a more accurate blow and well applied force, she managed to throw him away, also under a groan of effort.

“Have you done this before?” I asked quietly, ignoring the fact that seeking a conversation in the midst of this chaos could be completely irresponsible.

“I fight bojutsu. It is a Japanese stick martial art.” She explained, a little breathless from the pace we were keeping. “This is all quite different, but I have a little stick practice. Or something like that.”

I didn’t doubt that explanation for a second, the second she pulled away from the formation to beat the head of one of those things, which was crawling towards us on all fours. Necessary.

Carlos and Guilherme gave us cover from behind and in any zombie that passed by, moving more, but being careful not to break the group’s formation.

We maintained this formation for the next two streets, at a pace close to a trot, until the required punches began to increase. When two came at me, it took a lot of luck to push one away with the tip of the broom while I landed a kick in the other’s belly, passing close to not losing my balance and falling.

I didn’t look back, I just kept going.

I knew how frustrating it would be to see that with so much effort, we had probably moved less than three streets away from the school.

“Guys, more is starting to come!” I groaned, quickening my pace without realizing it. “Melissa, how far is your apartment?”

“We…” she tried to speak, panting. “Turn around the next corner.”

“Turn the next corner, it’s two blocks away.” Shouted Ana, showing that she still had plenty of breath. “ It’s almost—” A shrill scream ripped from her throat as Guilherme approached her to forcefully fling an undead away.

I prepared to protest, stating that I would not stop there. I dreaded seeing that the sun was still in the sky, but starting to go down. It would probably be five pm and I couldn’t convince myself that I would get home before dark.

Before I could voice my displeasure, a sound came out of my mouth. Nothing like what I expected and very similar to the others equally terrified that echoed around me, coming from the mouths of my colleagues.

“It can’t be…” I heard a weak moan coming out of Melissa’s mouth, the same one that preceded her crying other times.

Completely frozen, I stared at the street in front of me. It was a wide and long avenue, possible to see its entire length until reaching the seaside. Being the noble place that it was, you could usually see it stretching out immaculately, with clean sidewalks, beautiful people walking and gardens in front of the beautiful apartments. What we saw in front of us, however, looked more like a tawdry caricature of what that avenue had once been.

It was chaos, but that was no longer capable of surprising us. Unlike the semi empty streets, with just over five or six dead that we passed in earlier, this one seemed to be completely crowded, with at least two dead every five meters. Two more expressive accidents stood out: a car completely destroyed face to face with a van in ruins; and a huge truck stuck in a fallen tree, which destroyed the wall of an apartment, where the undead now entered.

Despite this, the terror wasn’t in accidents or the undead. What had brought sighs of sheer despair from all of us were the people alive—or, even worse, almost. Some were eaten alive by groups of up to four zombies, still in tears or already unconscious from injuries or blood loss. This blood that almost completely stained the asphalt, but mainly close to the two accidents, which were already completely covered from our view by huge groups of those cannibalistic beings.

I could be forever in complete shock, admiring and dreading that damned spectacle, rethinking my decisions until eventually being attacked and eaten, finally being able to rest in peace. A noise, however, gently invited me out of such reveries.

Sniffles. That characteristic pre cry noise, which no human can avoid. There was a small sound building behind me, which I could only imagine would lead to hysterical, loud crying.

If any of them fell or gave up, we would surely be dead by now. Our training wasn’t perfect, we didn’t have weapons and we were just teenagers, but in that beginning of horror, it was all we could cling to. Keeping it running was my only goal.

“Run!” I turned back, feeling my hair flying at the abrupt movement. I no longer bothered to draw attention, noticing how some decrepit heads turned towards me. “Let’s run now, before they come after us.”

I made exaggerated gestures with my arms to invite them to come after me as I started to run, praying I could convince them.

“Run people, run!” Carlos’ thick voice echoed my command and I immediately heard the sound of sneakers hitting the floor over and over as, I imagined, they started following me.

I tried to look back, but I just managed to make sure everyone was following my pace behind the black curtain that was my hair. When I looked back, it was time to get ready to hit a zombie again, this time hitting him squarely in the face and managing to send him flying away. I let a tiny wave of satisfaction run through my body, noticing how much easier it had become.

“Which one, Melissa?” I took advantage of that short pause to turn around, seeing the blonde haired girl running panting towards me.

“The… That one!” she pointed. “The one with the green glass.”

I saw which building she was pointing at, big and imposing and made of white concrete, surrounded by tough glass that reflected aquamarine green. I, with my lapse in the notion of distance, would say maybe seventy meters.

There were more people on that avenue, some fully alive, running around aimlessly. No one seemed particularly interested in the youth group. Everyone is giving priority to their own lives. Others screamed and asked for help, but the terror that dominated my body prevented me from thinking about any decision.

“Oh, what the fuck!” I heard almost a growl coming from Carlos’ mouth as he stopped and abruptly turned back. I followed his gaze, searching for a plausible reason for that.

It wasn’t hard to find what held her attention, as a desperate looking Victoria put her hands on the floor for support, already on her knees. I could see that she was breathing heavily and hurriedly, but I couldn’t tell what was wrong with her, lying almost 10 meters from us. At this point, we all stopped.

“VICTORIA!” Melissa yelled, her typical high pitched voice drawing all the dead around us.

My vision was caught by one of them, a young man, so close to her that if she stretched out her arms she could grab hold of her hair. I tried to scream to get her attention, but I was interrupted by an agile William who jumped in front of her, hitting the monster’s head with a clean blow, causing blood to flow from its destroyed head and dirtying everything around.

“Oh, what the fuck!” Grumbled Carlos, immediately starting a run in the opposite direction we came, heading for Victoria. “Fuck, are you okay?” I heard her voice, now a little far from me.

A dull thud erupted beside my ear and I felt something hot fall on my face. My heart raced, nearly knocking me off balance to the point of falling to the floor. A strong current of wind moved my hair and I finally understood that what passed inches from my face was Helena’s staff, who was looking at me seriously, having just destroyed a monster that seemed to be almost beside me. The blood flew all over my face.

“Pay attention!” She warned me.

When I looked into her black eyes, I could see behind her that Hector was trying to keep two of them at bay, pushing at them with a metal plate he’d gotten God knows where.

I tried to come to myself as I noticed Carlos taking his backpack off his back and helping Victoria climb onto his back and hold himself around her neck. He wasn’t too careful, but he was quick enough to start running again, backpack slung heavily over his arm. As soon as he stopped focusing his attention on the fallen girl, he stared at us with blazing eyes.

“You sick people, why are you standing still?!” He yelled. “Run!”

A fresh rush of adrenaline surged through my body as I picked up the momentum to resume running, feeling a wave of heat grip my exhausted thighs. There was no time to complain as we were close. That sharp pain in the side of my body, typical of tiredness, was already present.

When we finally reached the ten foot tall reinforced glass wall, we slowed down and Melissa flung herself between us, leaning against the glass door. She was completely covered in blood, just like the grass inside her. Still, I was sure she’d rather be inside, protected by thick glass walls. Carlos arrived a little after us, extremely breathless and sweaty, carrying Victoria on his back. She appeared to be sick, her eyes unfocused and her head lolling to the sides. Unfortunately this was not the time to stop to help her.

“Crap!” Helena shouted. “Quick, Melissa, they’re assembling!” She spoke the last sentence in a muffled groan as she shoved a zombie off her feet, causing it to stumble and fall to the ground.

“The doorman doesn’t answer!” The blonde yelled back, her eyes wide with despair. “I don’t know if I remember…” She then turned to the button panel, starting to type in combinations of numbers.

It could have lasted two seconds or two years, I couldn’t say. I think Melissa missed the combination only once, but it felt like a decade when analyzing the speed with which we found ourselves surrounded by the hungry undead.

As soon as the blessed sound of the door latch being released echoed in front of us, Melissa and Ana threw themselves inside, followed by Carlos and Victoria. As they entered, I had to accompany Helena to fend off a trio that was too close.

“Come on, come on, come in!” Guilherme yelled and I felt his hot touch closing around my arm. I turned back, aiming to follow them, but a terrible scream I never expected to hear broke through the silence of hope, extinguishing it.

I turned in time to see wild white teeth digging into the dark skin of Helena’s neck, leaking scarily red blood from the newly formed holes. Her mouth was gaping open in a torturous scream and I could hear, behind it, the sound of the wood of the broom falling to the floor.

“NO!” I felt the words being expelled from my throat before I even thought about them. I tried to hold Helena’s hand, which was reaching towards me. She staggered, trying to search for me.

“As soon as I felt the heat of her fingers against mine, an outsized force nearly pulled me to my death, as another dead man grabbed my friend’s shoulders, forcing me to fall back. I was only able to stand up by the strength of Guilherme, who pulled me back, making a kind of deadly tug of war.

“ Shit!” Ana yelled, her eyes wide with shock as she saw, behind the glass, the sophomore who had accompanied us so far, proving infinitely more prepared than any of the other three girls who had accompanied me, being immediately devoured by a growing group. Of dead.

“Rebecca, you have to come in!” the voice that called me was that of the boy Hector, but what pulled me out of my trance in the middle of the street was a final tug from Guilherme.

Still in shock, I was dragged inside the glass walls, tripping over something below me and causing William to lose his balance as well, sending both of us to the floor in a desperate mess. I landed on my stomach, feeling something painfully pressing into my stomach, forcing me to expel all the air from my lungs.

A loud thud behind me indicated that the glass door had been closed shortly after our fall, separating us forever from Helena.