- Previous Episode: The Last Curse - Episode 5
Nevertheless, there was just something disconcerting about ravaged bodies piled one on top of the other. The bodies were piled at the foot of the stairs and flies had begun dancing on them. The cream and green colored uniform of my school was barely discernible from the blood soaked bodies of the students. There were blood smears on the terrazzo floors, as if the flesh eaters had dragged the remains of their victims to the pile.
The sight made me reach for the silver chained cross that grandma had given me as a child. A week after my father died, Grandma wore the chain on my neck at the gate of this school when she’d come to drop me off for my first day at secondary school. It was that day that I met Craig for the first time. Somehow, I’ve always associated the silver chained cross with Craig.
I always wore the cross under my school shirt and only touched it in times of great distress. I fingered the cross through my cream cotton shirt, hoping for comfort or if not that, hoping for my glued together sanity to remain intact.
What were even more disconcerting were the flesh eaters that crowded the third floor. Every one of them stood absolutely still. They made no movement. It was as if they were on standby and waiting for something. As they waited, the five of us waited too. Despite the little security our weapons afforded us, we were too afraid to move or even breathe. We did not dare to move further. There was no hope for us. There was no way we were going to make it out of the school alive and human.
One of the bodies in the pile began to jerk violently. The shrieking sound it made drew the attention of all the previously immobile flesh eaters. Their necks snapped immediately to the source of the sound. But then the sound died down and the body got up from the pile. He cocked his head to the side and looked up at us at the head of the stairs. Black tendrils grew in the whites of his eyeballs until his eyes were completely black.
A gasp escaped from Sara’s lips…and that was what made them all stop waiting.
They all launched themselves at us. The body that had arisen from the pile was the nearest. It caught Sara’s leg and pulled her down the staircase. She grabbed hold of my leg as she was dragged down, making me lose my balance and stumble down the staircase along with her and the flesh eater.
Panic shot through my mind as I tumbled into the pile of bodies. I was tangled in a web of arms and legs and the feeling of being buried beneath dead people overwhelmed me until fear drowned me. I froze in place, afraid to move my body and feel the sensation of my skin rubbing against dead skin. But then something moved beneath me and a spike of adrenaline darted through my system, pulling me out of my frozen state and pushing the fear out of me through screams that tore out of my throat. I tried to raise my head upwards and out of the musty smelling bodies but something tugged at my braids. Someone’s intestine had tangled up in my hair and I manically pulled at my braids until it got free of it.
“Get off me!” Sara yelled from beneath me. I stood up from the pile of bodies, gulping in much needed air even though the air had an unpleasant stench to it.
The zombies were all around us now. The body that had pulled Sara down was the first to dive in for my throat. As his fingers wrapped around my throat, it let out an ear-piercing shriek and let go of me. Wisps of smoke rose from its hand and suddenly the body became engulfed in blue flames. The silver-chained necklace I received from grandma had spilled out from the opened top button of my shirt. It glowed a bright blue that shimmered and glittered around me. It grew in size until I was within a sphere of shining blue light. The flesh eaters recoiled away from me, moving as far away from the light as they could.
The burning flesh eater thrashed and flopped about the place like a fish out of water. It fell into the crowd of zombies around us and with each contact that the burning flesh eater made with the others, the others too caught on flame. They shrieked and threw themselves about the place, but then as suddenly as they started burning, the ones engulfed in the blue flames fell to the floor.
“What’s happening?” Sara asked, her voice almost drowned by the pain-filled sounds the flesh eaters were making. They drew themselves as far back from the light as they could.
“I don’t know.” I whispered hoarsely. I narrowed my eyes to stare directly at the cross that glowed a brilliant blue but then I looked away because I was afraid it would destroy my retinas. It was that bright.
Frank, Wole and Craig came down the stairs and helped Sara and I out of the pile of dead bodies. Frank bent over one of the bodies that the blue flames had engulfed.
“The bodies don’t look or smell burnt at all.” He muttered as he straightened up.
Sara turned her nose up and sniffed the air. “You’re right there’s no burnt smell. That’s strange.”
“That’s not the only strange thing. Their eyes are back to normal. The white of their eyeballs are now showing.”
“Do you think the cross did this?” Sara asked as she drew closer to Frank. She held onto his sleeves and looked up at him with wide eyes that brimmed with hope.
“How would I know?” Frank gently tugged her hand away from his sleeve and came to stand in front of me.
“Are zombies supposed to react to crosses? Doesn’t that work against vampires?” Wole asked.
“Oh God, please I hope vampires don’t exist. I can’t deal with that thought right now.” Sara said. Her lips curled in disgust as she pulled out an ear from between her busty cleavage.
Frank place his hands on my shoulder and shook me violently. “Snap out of it Mimi! You’ve been standing here with your mouth wide open when we need to start running. The light from your cross seems to keep the flesh eaters away and right now its light is dying.”
I shook my head and got myself together. The zombies had been the least of my worries in the last few seconds. How could the silver-chained cross Grandma gave me react like this? What was going on? Was it some kind of miracle? Divine intervention maybe?
“Does anyone else have a cross so we can see if other crosses work too?” I asked. Frank and Wole mumble ‘no’. Craig reached under his school shirt and pulled out a rosary that had a wooden cross.
“Why isn’t yours shining like Mimi’s own?” Sara asked as she moved closer to Craig to inspect his rosary.
“I don’t know.” Craig answered.
“Uh, guys? We have to start running. The glow from the cross is dimming.” I announced.
As the glow from the silver cross began to dim gradually and the sphere it formed began to reduce in size, the flesh eaters began to be bolder. They crept towards us a little at a time. We did not need any further prompting. We ran down to the ground floor, passing by gruesomely disfigured flesh eaters that stayed away from us because of the crosses light. The others made sure to stick close to me during the run.
By the time we got to the classroom without a burglary proof, the light was only a little sphere around the cross. The flesh eaters pushed against the classroom door that we had pushed a desk against. It would not hold for long. We climbed out the window one after the other. Sara almost fell flat on her face as she tried to climb out the window, but Craig caught her in time.
There were only a few feet to the school wall at the back of the classroom. Luckily, there were only a few flesh eaters around and they were far from us. We sprinted the short distance to the wall, Frank in the lead. He stopped at a particular point where bushes had overgrown and covered the wall. The paint on the wall was peeling in some places from lack of maintenance and the barbwires that adorned the top of the wall were rusted. Frank pushed aside long stalks of the weeds to reveal a small hole at the foot of the wall. It was so low that we would have to crawl through it.
“Ladies first.” Frank said as he motioned for me to crawl through. I got on my hands and knees and squeezed my way through. I blanked my mind to the squishy feel of wet earth beneath my fingers as I crawled. I easily got through the hole, grateful for my trim athletic figure. Sara didn’t have it so easy. Her well-endowed bosom made it a struggle for her to pass through the hole. I had to help her out. If the situation wasn’t so dire and serious I’d have made a joke about it.
When we had all made it out of the school, I finally cast my attention about the street we now found ourselves on. The school backed a busy street that was filled with shops and plazas and a few residential buildings. Now, the street was turned upside down in chaos. About two buildings were up in flames. A car had rammed into a provision shop. There were a few deserted cars on the street that would make it difficult to drive out of it.
Some shops down the street, about five of those creatures were tearing into what appeared to be a man. Those creatures were everywhere, but from our position at the back of the school wall, which was surrounded by bushes, we could not be seen. There were several bodies piled up in different places, just as the bodies had been piled up at the school. It brought a nagging question to the forefront of my mind. Why weren’t all of them rising from the dead like the others? If it was a virus that caused this situation, shouldn’t it be everyone that would rise from the dead? Was this the apocalypse? Was the world finally coming to an end?
A sick feeling settled in the pit of my stomach.
“God, I can’t still believe this is happening. Things like this don’t happen in real life. T-Tell me I’m dreaming.” Sara said. Her eyes were wide in panic as she clutched Frank’s leathers sleeves.
“Don’t panic Sara. Stay calm and I promise you I’ll try my best to keep us alive.” Frank said softly. Sara nodded and the panic slowly dissipated from her eyes.
“Ok, so what do we do next? Where do we go from here?” She asked.
“Maybe we should find our families.” Wole mumbled.
“And how are we going to do that? If we go our separate ways, we’ll die before we take ten steps.” She snapped.
“Even if we go in search of our families, they could already be dead…” Frank’s voice trailed as he stared each of us in the eye, “or they could have turned into one of those things. My aunt works in a secondary school like ours and see what happened here. It would be a miracle if she survived.”
Frank had never known his father and his mother had abandoned him in a market at the age of seven. Aunty Chioma was not his blood relative, she was the woman who had taken him in and raised him like her son. The thought of Aunty Chioma being dead made me want to cry. Her kindness and softhearted nature had warmed her way through the gruff and rude exterior of the boy Frank had been. She’d dampened that look of despair and loneliness that Frank still sometimes wore. Whenever I went to visit Frank she always teased me, saying that one day I’ll be his wife. It always made me laugh.
“That we survived is a miracle on its own, so don’t conclude anything about anyone. You might be surprised that she’s still alive.” Craig encouraged.
Frank turned eyes as dark as night to Craig’s honey brown eyes. Craig did not look away or flinch under Frank’s steely gaze. It was the stare Frank used to intimidate people he did not like and I’ve seen a lot of tough boys turn tail and run when Frank looked at them that way. A battle of wills seemed to rage silently between the two boys until Sara coughed and asked,
“Does anyone have a phone? I want to call my mum.”
I got out my phone from my pocket and handed it to her. Quickly, Sara tapped in a number and put the phone up to her ear. She chewed on her nail as she waited for the person on the other end to pick up. When her eyes brightened up and she leaped with joy, I knew she’d reached her mum.
“Hello, mummy, it’s Sara.” There was a smile on her lips and a drop of tear spilled from her eyes and trailed down her cheek. “Yes I’m fine. Are you ok? What of Daddy?”
She paused as she listened to her mother. “I’m still at the school. Where are you people? At the church? But how do I get there? There’s no taxi to take me there.” She paused again as she listened. “But I don’t know how to drive, you wouldn’t let me learn. Aside from that, I can’t just use someone’s abandoned car. Isn’t that stealing? Yes there are other students with me” She put the phone against her chest and looked at us.
“Is it possible to wait here for them to pick us up?” Sara asked.
I looked around the street through the long grass stalks. There were many of the flesh eaters on the street but all of them were standing immobile just like they had been in school. Even the small crowd that had been devouring a man now stood on standby with bloodstains on their lips and chins. What we had to do was to remain quiet and not draw their attention.
“It depends on how long it will take them to reach us.” Frank answered.
“She said because of the blocked roads it might take up to an hour.” Sara said.
Frank looked at me and I gave him a nod.
“We have no choice; we’ll have to wait for them.” Frank answered for all of us.
Sara’s face brightened up and she spoke some more to her mother. When she finally ended the call, Craig asked for my permission to use the phone. I gave him permission. It was a good thing I had loaded a lot of credit on the phone. He dialed a number and waited for the person on the other end to pick up but no one did. His eyebrows drew together in a frown. He dialed the number several more times but still no one answered.
“Why is my father not picking up?” Craig swept his hand through his low cut curly hair.
“Maybe he’s not with his phone.” I said quietly. He handed me back my phone and sat on the bare ground with his back against the moss stained wall of the school. He placed his head between his knees and wrapped his arm around his legs.
“Wole do you want to call anyone?” I asked. I did not bother asking Frank if he wanted to call Aunty Chioma because there was no point in doing so. Her phone had been stolen last week.
“My brother doesn’t use a phone.” Wole scratched his ear and laughed nervously. “He always ends up giving them out. Even if he was using one, it still wouldn’t matter because he works in Agbor and he’s probably still there. I wouldn’t be able to meet up with him.”
“What about your parents, don’t you want to call them?” I asked.
Wole looked down at his feet and shifted uncomfortably. “My parents are dead.” He mumbled.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” I mumbled back. I felt bad for bringing up his parents even though I hadn’t known they were dead. Parents were a touchy issue for me. Both my parents were dead and my Uncle and Aunt would probably like it if I were dead. My brother was a ‘no show’ because his number was not going through. The only people I cared about in the world were right here with me.
The others sat on the damp ground or on the rotting log of wood that lay against the wall, but I remained standing. I was too tensed up to sit. We stayed uncomfortably in that small clearing for a while with no one saying anything. At first, the tension level was been so high you could cut it with a knife. The still immobile zombies around us put us on edge. I feared that any minute one of them would lunge into the bushes at us. But as time wore on and our bodies got tired, the tension seeped out our bones, leaving us alone with our aching and tired bodies.
“Mimi, come and sit.” Frank said.
“Sit where? The log of wood you and Sara are sitting on won’t contain me and I don’t want to sit on the ground.” He’d taken off his brown leather jacket and laid it over the rotting log of wood he sat on.
He sighed and reached for my hand. He pulled me down to his lap and I squeaked in surprise. He had me sit across his lap, the way a mother carried a child.
“W-What are you doing?” I felt my cheeks warm up in embarrassment even though my honey brown skin wouldn’t show the rush of blood to my cheeks. I hastily got to my feet, almost falling in the process. Craig was just beside us and I didn’t want him seeing me in another guy’s arm. Even though he still had his head between his knees and wasn’t paying me the slightest attention, I didn’t want him thinking I liked someone else.
“Mimi!” Frank called my name in a scolding manner, much like a mother would reprimand her child for being stubborn. His bare arms came up around my waist, warm and muscled, marbled through with thick veins on smooth skin, pulling me back down against him. He held me securely to prevent my running away from him again. “You need to sit down and rest, so stay still.”
I stopped struggling and relaxed into him. He was right. I needed to rest. I lay my head against his shoulder and it felt just right. This was Frank after all.
The now faint scent of cigarette and strawberry still lingered on him despite the coppery tang of blood and the musty scent of sweat. He played with my fingers, rubbing each knuckle gently and then interlacing his fingers with mine.
“Sleep Mimi,” He whispered against my ear. “Sleep…I’ll watch over you.”
I was about to tell him that I was too scared to sleep, but then the faint tugging of sleep pulled at me and it became too bothersome to explain anything to Frank. The blissful allure of sleep and unconsciousness swallowed me up in darkness, pulling me into a state of nothingness.
...To Be Continued
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