Step by Step/Issue 7

This is Issue #7 of Step by Step. This is the second issue of Act Two.

Awakened
It is a profound sight to find your superior fallen. A more profound sight to see him unconscious with soldiers in the backgrounds blasting rounds. Amanda crept through the cafeteria and holding back from tears.

Not part of the procedure. Don't let your morals mix in with your work. Amanda sighed, stopping near Hector's motionless body. She hoped he went quickly. Unlike what happened to Marvin.

How could she of let him to be killed by those things. She bit her lip, wiping his sleeve across her face. That little boy chomping down on Marvin. Ripping his flesh from his bone. Amanda gulped.

“Ma’am?” Amanda looked up to see a saddened, aged man sitting down on their messy cot. “Is he okay?”

Amanda shrugged. “No clue.” No clue? What was she thinking? She breathed in, dragging her eyes down to Hector.

“Ain't you 'posed to check for a pulse?” the man said.

“Yeah, yeah.” Amanda crouched down where she was standing. She hadn't thought to check for a pulse. She rested her two fingers and instantaneously felt a surge of feedback. Her eyes lit up and she turned the sheriff over.

Dark blood had accumulated on his face. Broken nose at the most. “He's stable!” Amanda stretched out Hector's eyelids, seeing the telltale signs that he was knocked out cold. “Can you give me a hand?”

“Yes ma'm,” the old man replied, standing up from his bed. He arched his back, hearing it pop in several places. He bent down and lifted Hector over to the cot, laying the bloodied man on it. “He need a nurse?”

“That would make it easier,” Amanda said. She watched the elder call up a passing nurse just as Hector began to groan. “Hey, what's your-?”

The man put a shaky hand up. “Sanders is the name, ma'am.”

“What?” Hector's eyes opened in a slow, sleepy manner. He rose to sit on the bed, but stopped and looked around. “Not this place again...” And then he fell back onto the cot.

“Deep breaths, man.” Lyle lugged the sergeant out from the storage room. He had tried to make him stand, but that resulted in Brock collapsing. “You're gonna be okay.” Lyle heaved the man up and laid him out on his arms. He kicked the door out of his way and peeped out.

On the right, there was a troupe of soldiers ushering refugees through the halls. They were a shouting bunch, hollering over their rampant gunfire. Lyle winced as he watched the bright flashes. Each of them ending up in something dying.

“Hey, hey.” Lyle juggled the sergeant in his arms. Brock had his teeth clenched together, trying to bear the pain. “I need you to cooperate, 'kay?” Lyle leaned out and looked to the left. Was that the way he came? Lyle cursed, trying to regain his thoughts.

He had come from his right, but that path would be troublesome. He looked down to see the injured, mumbling sergeant. They would shoot him if Brock had caught the disease. Just like the soldiers had done with that man who sneezed.

Lyle slipped out of the doorway and went to the left. Silence was in the air. Lyle felt a chill run down his back, carefully walking through the hallway. “You're gonna be okay.” Lyle started picking up his pace, “Man...”

He turned the corner, resting his back on a pair of lockers. He would make it to the clinic. He wouldn't let this bastard die on his watch. Sweat dribbled from his forehead. He took a deep breath and continued the labyrinth that was the school.

Groaning. Not from Brock's mouth. Lyle's ears perked up, hearing a string of moans from the residing classrooms. “Come on!” Lyle watched as a woman lurched out from the closest classroom. Her face was a bubbly mass, barely looking human. The woman let out a raspy breath, flaring her reddened nostrils.

“Hell no.” Lyle froze with the sergeant in his arms. Three male crazies faltered out from other classrooms in the hallway. They all groaned in unison, sending Lyle shuddering. “I can't believe this!”

He edged a kick at the woman, catching her in the center mass. She fell back against the opposite wall. Lyle kept the woman at bay, pinning her down with a foot on her blue shirt. More moans from the other three. They were so close he could smell the putrid odor on them.

Brock murmured a trail of words. “Holster..” He paused, sucking in the pain. “Gun.”

Lyle lifted up the sergeant's own arm, finding a black handgun. “I see it, I see it.” He unbuttoned the handgun from the holster and seized the handgun. He lifted set down the sergeant near the array of lockers before lifting it up. He hesitated, and pulled back the trigger on the woman.

“It's empty!” Lyle shouted. The woman grabbed at his foot, reeling it towards her mouth. He took notice and backed off. “It's effin' empty.”

Brock rolled his head, fishing his hand into his chest. His cold fingers came back with a spare magazine. “Take it.”

Lyle nodded, taking the magazine and inserting it into the pistol. “Had me there for a moment.”

Brock coughed and grinned, “You sure know how to use that.”

“There ain't a brother who ain't used one of these.” Lyle took the tightened his grip on the pistol. The men were about two meters from him. He glanced at the snarling woman who by now was trying to get on her two bite-riddled legs.

“Shit...” He centered the barrel on one of the men. He was a man of blubber and facial hair. The man wore a business suit, probably a teacher. His yellow teeth were bared, hissing at Lyle. They were still out and clacking together when the first bullet shattered his skull.

Lyle 's hand shook in the air with the gun. He maneuvered the barrel off of the dead man and to the other. The next man had milky eyes that nearly made Lyle not pull the trigger. When Lyle blasted a round at him, the bullet pounded him the the lower chest. The man curled his lip in anger.

He lunged at Lyle, faster than his last standing crazie who stayed behind. Lyle fired off another round, and then two more. The milky-eyed man dug his filthy fingers into Lyle's shirt. Groaning. Kept groaning and groaning until Lyle slid his foot underneath the man and threw him to the floor.

Lyle composed himself before placing the barrel where the man's head laid. Those milky white eyes. They were sunken, once brown eyes. Eyes without a soul. Lyle contemplated why he hadn't pulled the trigger. “Sorry, brotha.”

The handgun boomed. It echoed inside the hallway as moans poured out from the classrooms. The things that produced their nose shambled out from them. Lyle rubbed his head, throwing up the hoodie to cover up his head.

Lyle twirled around with the gun and, without another thought, picked up the weary sergeant. “We're getting' outta here.” Lyle counted off the rounds he shot out from the ones he started with. He had three quarters of the magazine left. A seventy-five percent chance of hope.

“Lyle...” Brock whispered, panting with widened eyes. He couldn't bring himself to look up to the gang banger. Brock rolled up his pant leg to see his leg. The wound was an oozing, hot mess.

“How you know me?” Lyle glared at the sergeant.

“Who doesn't?” The sergeant muttered.

Lyle smiled, chuckling. No time to laugh. Lyle shook his head, aiming the pistol at the pack of crazies. He coughed into his sleeve from the smell. That disgusting, wretched smell of decay.

He readied the pistol with the sergeant resting over his shoulder. He placed his index finger on the trigger. He was about to squeeze a shot off when he paused. Lyle watched as a soldier, armed with a fire extinguisher, drove the container into the back of a crazie.

“Yo!” Lyle waved the pistol in the air. “Aye, aye!” Lyle turned to his side to see the diseased woman steadily walking towards him. Lyle cursed, shoving the woman away from him and Brock.

She cackled like a witch. Arms out and ready to take down Lyle. The remains of her auburn hair swayed back and forth on her face. It covered up her blistery cheeks and bloodshot eyes, but not the shrills that escaped from her mouth.

Lyle pulled off a round without warning. He saw the woman's head rebound once her forehead met with the impacting bullet. Her legs turned to bricks and she crumbled to the floor tiles. No more groaning from her.

“Brock?” The soldier with the fire extinguisher shouted at the two. The golden skinned soldier pushed through the pack of crazies, deflecting whatever dead fingers the crazies harpooned at him. “Follow me you two!” He barked as two teenagers, a girl and boy, appeared from the classroom the soldier came from.

Caroline walked, fear stricken by the mass of crazies, with the slingshot in her hands. She didn't want to use it on the people. Were they people? The ones with the disease? She wondered on the idea of her father becoming one of the monsters. “Eugene.”

Her cousin raised a brow, striking a crazie back with the broomstick he held. Eugene edged an elbow to the first crazie, a teenager, who tried to grab him. He swatted the broomstick across the teenager's face. A warm sensation flushed through Eugene once he heard a satisfying crack.

“Eugene!” Caroline screamed, grabbing her cousin's arm. “You killed him!”

Eugene shook his head. “I didn't kill him. This, this plague did.” He took back his arm and pointed it at the crazies, keeping them at bay as Joseph cleared a path through the pack.

Joseph felt his heart pounding as he kicked to the floor one of the crazies. Breathing in and out, he met eyes with Lyle. “That's my sergeant.” Joseph sent another kick to the downed crazie, sending him rolling to the lockers.

“He's hurt badly,” Lyle said. “Who are you?”

“Private Joseph, at your service.”

Lyle cracked a smirk. “You tryin' to impress an O.G.?”

“Worth a shot.” Joseph turned around whacking the closest crazie down to the floor with a strong smack across the face. As soon as the two cousins caught up with Joseph, he turned to face Lyle.

“The clinic is behind you,” Joseph said matter-of-factly.

Lyle turned around to face behind him. “Your boys are there shooting up the place.” Lyle shifted in position to get Brock onto his back. “If they see your sergeant here with a fever, they'll shoot'im.”

Joseph looked to the crazies, who by now were trying to reassemble each other. “We should get going still,” Joseph said. “Before the beds are all taken.”

Suddenly the siren beamed out its last red flash and sounded off. Then, a chorus of familiar undead voices flooded the halls of Summercreek High School.