The darkness. Sometimes its comforts know no bounds. I find it’s the last bastion of clear thought. Lately, it’s hard to concentrate in the darkness. That’s when they are the most terrifying. I know in my mind that this building is safe, for now, but my heart continues to stray to that one thought; ‘for now’. I can surely rely on the slow, clumsy and ridged actions of the undead to lack the means of entering this fortress, but I have never trusted the intelligence, or lack thereof of the living.

The night is clear, the moon is full and my senses are alert. I’m the best shot our small group, maybe three dozen or so, has. The only one trained to be patient and choose my shots; from up here there is no rush, no need to panic and waste a round on the snap of twigs or a dog skirting the shadows. Zombies move too slowly to get the shakes over, sure they are a bit quicker when fresh, but as long as I keep my head screwed down tightly to my shoulders, I can unscrew theirs no problem.

It is mid April, all the snow is gone from this southern Canadian town. Weird winter this year, didn’t snow until mid December, froze to minus 30 C for seven weeks, then one day it rained and all the snow melted. February on has been mild but wet. Summer is coming and the others are worried sick.

I came here before the snow fell with Finny; she and have always been together. She keeps me going. She and I tried to tell them that we can tend a large garden in the open square in the centre of this old school. Hell if we are ambitious enough we could fence off the soccer field and try to raise livestock. Shouldn’t be that hard, this is a rural town, small population, the school we have fortified and now live in is on the outskirts of it and we’ve stock piled enough canned and dried food to last another several months.

I shook my head, and sucked back the last of the sugar in the straw. The sour powder hits my tongue and I am jolted back to reality. Always had a vice for pixie sticks, found that they are invaluable when dozing off. I scanned the parking lot in front of me and sighed. A single zombie was slowly lurching its way towards the school. I went prone and lined it up in the reticle of the scope on my C7-A1. In the 4X moonlit zoom, the dead beast turned out to be a female, too decayed for me to recognize, she was naked and walking with an awkward gait due to the lower half of her right femur protruding up out of her thigh and causing the leg to have the stability of Jello. Her breasts were deflated and sagged, her ribs were betraying her decomposition and a few of them on the right side were snapped and had torn through the skin.

I focussed my sight on her head and noticed she was missing the right half of her jaw. I raised an eyebrow and figured she had maybe been hit hard by something on that side. My mind started to wander, what was her story, who had she been before all this shit? Maybe a teacher, maybe a teller at the bank, maybe she was just a tourist or from the- aw fuck it. “Click-Thunk- BANG!”

I love hearing the mechanism engage and the hammer hit the firing pin, milli-seconds before the round explodes out of the chamber and down the barrel. The muzzle flash was a brilliant mix of white, yellow and red. A moment later, ‘shick!’ and the top of her head was ripped apart. I could almost feel the steel round tumbling through the insides of her rotten mind, ripping her useless grey matter to pieces as it turned to shrapnel and left her skull through the back side.

Her body crumpled to the pavement and the moment was lost. Killing is so easy when the victim hasn’t left anything behind. Does anybody still care about them? No. Tomorrow I won’t have to go to her husband and explain, “hey Bob, sorry I blew the shit out of the back of Marys skull last night, just doin’ my job see.”

The ladder from the courtyard to the roof rattled and I heard footsteps in the gravel. “Got another one did ya? Good riddance to the scum I say.” Exhibit A. No one cares. They aren’t even people anymore. Mindless automatons, might as well be robotic dummies used for target practice.

“Anything to keep the hours entertaining Stace.” Stacey was older than me, he was divorced with two kids here at the school with him. She was probably one of them – hell I could have just ended her a moment ago. He was nice enough, balding and didn’t panic much. I think it’s because his kids are still young and still need him to be strong. I can admire that. Times like these, when the shit goes down you can only look out for number one, and who ever is closest. If the shit ever went sour here, I would die trying to get Finny to safety.

“Well, you woke the kids, though I guess by now they understand what just happened.”

“I reckon so,” I glanced east, the sky was getting lighter there, “they need to get up soon anyway.” It was true, the younger ones sleep in too much, I am only twenty but know the value of getting up early, or sometimes not sleeping at all. My mind works best when I don’t sleep, I think the temporary insanity insomnia gives me allows my thoughts some licence.

Of course where there is one, there are more. Two more zombies staggered out of the alley across the street. Two males, one was obviously older, and the other must have been around my age. “Dibs grampa.” I told him, I was already prone and had my rifle trained on the old husk of a senior. Stacey grunted and lay down next to me, his hunting rifle steadying on the younger figure.

I think the old man must have worn dentures in life, or pre-death. He didn’t have the tell-tale chewed off lips most of the zombies have, and upon closer inspection, he didn’t have any teeth at all. Half of his face way hanging off in a ghastly flap from his left cheek up. The eye socket was empty and hollow. I tightened my finger on the trigger, just before I fired, the old man moaned, long and rattling. I have always wondered where that sound comes from, with their vocal cords probably being too rotten to make any noise at all.

“Fuck my life.” I fired and took the octogenarians head off. Stacy followed my lead and took out the younger one. The moan would lure others though. The three we had killed already were two hundred metres away, a good distance away for slow shots.

I could see them begin to wander down the street from the left and the right, a group children came out of the elementary school a few blocks away. As I began to sight in the first small dead and deformed monster, I heard the worst sound of my life. The front steel doors to the school right below us opened and a woman was calling out; “Maria! Maria, my baby come here! Hurry sweety, Mummies here!”

“What the fuck is she doing?” Stacey bellowed. He stood quickly and ran to the ladder.

“Fuck my life.” I peered over the edge, the mother was Mrs. Jenson. She is a frail single mom who lost her entire family during the outbreak. She’d apparently lost her mind to. “Hey! Close the fuckin door!” I yelled. She ignored me.

I looked back to the massing horde, seventy-five metres out. “Close the door and get inside! NOW!” One came out of the forest to our right. It was followed by a dozen more, “Shit.” I shot the first one, and then the second. A group was coming around from the far left side of the building now as well. I could hear Stacey trying to get the woman back in, I could also hear Finny’s voice telling her to be reasonable. I dropped three more. The horde from the streets was now only thirty metres away. Mrs. Jenson broke away from Stacey and Finny. She bolted into the parking lot and picked up the child I was about to shoot, who immediately bit into the woman’s throat and ripped it out. Her scream was cut short and ended in a bloody gurgle. I aimed and placed a round in Mrs. Jenson immediately, then into Maria.

Below me, Stacy was struggling with the door. Half a dozen were swarmed around it, trying to pull it open, I set my fire selection lever to ‘A’, and opened up with the barrel pointed down. “RAT-TAT-TAT.” It wasn’t enough however. I killed most of them, but the door was open anyhow, and the larger group of zombies had now joined the struggle at the door. I left the roof and slid down the ladder. I hate ladders, but didn’t care about this one. I could see the front hallway filling up with undead as soon as I hit the ground. I sprinted as fast as I could through the courtyard to the rear of the school. Finny was there, holding the door open for me.

“C’mon! Hurry!” she said to me.

“Fuck that noise.” I grabbed her hand and pulled her back to the ladder. Stacey and his kids were right behind us. “Get to the roof, I’ll keep them back. Stacey, watch my ass when you get up there!” Finny helped the children up and went up herself. Another survivor tried to make it into the courtyard to us, but was grabbed and pulled screaming back into the building. I levelled my rifle to my eye and thumbed the fire selection back to ‘R’. And began placing single shot kills within the oncoming horde. Stacey called for me to climb, so I did.

Once on the roof again, Stacey and I hauled the ladder up and watched as the undead spilled into the courtyard. The screams of the other survivors could be heard over the random gunfire and unceasing moans of death. The sun was peeking down the valley now. I peered over the edge. There were five milling around in the parking lot. The rest had forced their way into the school.

“Cover me.” I moved the ladder to the side and lowered it in front of the door. I stepped over the edge, but a tender hand held me back. Finny’s beautiful green eyes and flowing blonde hair almost stopped my heart in the morning light.

“Don’t go.” her voice was gold.

“I have to, I’ll be alright. Stacey.” I turned to him, “Take care of them.” I pointed to the stragglers in the parking lot.

Once on the ground I wasted no time. I slammed the heavy door shut and wedged my crowbar between the handles. Stacey’s rifle rattled off seven rounds; he must be nervous. I would be out a handy tool, but I also didn’t have to deal with the zombies. We had permanently sealed off the other doors as a precaution, we had always planned to escape through the court yard, onto the roof and lock the undead in the building.

The others followed me down the ladder and I lead them into the forest. We had supply stashes placed in a number of locations in the underbrush so we would be fine for a while. As we wandered through the forest, I didn’t know where we were going to go, or how we were going to survive. I knew all along that the fortress we made out of a school couldn’t last forever. But it figures, someone had to go mad enough to open the doors during an attack. She had been pushed so far over the edge and lost so much, that when she saw her daughter again, even dead and rotten as she was, she needed to go to her, and in turn, cost a great many their lives. Stupid people.