Outbreak Chapter 42

As the groups headed down the halls clearing bedrooms one by one Brendon went into the room that Wiggins had cleared and looked around for something to barricade the first floor doorway with. The closets and cabinets in the room were built into the wall so those couldn't be moved. With a bit of effort he was able to pull the closet doors off of their tracks and threw those out into the hallway. He heard gunfire coming from somewhere else on the floor but didn't go to check since he trusted Griffin and Wiggins could handle things. The only other large things in the room that could be moved were the two loft beds. Brendon tipped them over and pulled them apart. He left the mattresses in the room but the legs and frames of the beds were made of thick sturdy wood. He carried the frames into the stairwell and was happy to see that they were almost the same width as the wall that the door was on. With the help of the others he stood the bed frame up against the wall so that it was pressed against the door and ran lengthwise between the two walls. He figured that if they could get enough bed frames down here they could get them all wedged in there to form a solid block. He brought Megan and Heather back onto the second floor with him and had them start carrying bed frames, closet doors, and other sturdy items he could find back into the stairwell while he searched each cleared room and threw anything that could be used into the hallway.
A few minutes later while throwing a bed frame into the hallway Brendon saw movement out of the corner of his eye and looked down the hall to see a girl that looked to be around nineteen or twenty running down the hall towards him. She looked scared to death and she was shaking almost uncontrollably but didn't show any signs of torn clothing or bloodstains that would indicate a bite. "They told me to come this way," she said in a frantic voice.
"This area here is safe," he said to her, "You'll be ok so long as you stay around here. There are two other girls carrying things into the stairway to keep more of those things from getting into the building, help them out." He brought the girl to Megan and Heather and let them know she wasn't one of the infected then went back to searching rooms. After another fifteen minutes they had a barricade set up in the stairwell that Brendon thought was pretty sturdy, and would also block anything that wanted to get up from the basement.
With the stairwell secure enough to prevent any zeds from coming up from the first floor and basement Brendon decided to send the man in the leather coat up to help Brian and Leslie watch the stairs above them and pulled everyone else into the room the others had dropped their bags in. By this point everyone was exhausted, they had ran a good distance to get to the dorms and some of them, Brendon included, hadn't taken the time to drop their bags in the back of the truck. The military had taught Brendon that running around shooting took more out of a person than one would think. Brendon instructed Rebecca to make sure they had people in the hall to make sure no zombies got close to the room they were in or the stairwell and to cycle out the people guarding the hall and stairs so everyone could get a little bit of rest.
He hadn't heard any gunshots from the other groups for a few minutes so he took off down the hall in the direction they had gone. Shell casings and bodies with bullet holes in the heads were the only signs of the others until he arrived at the second stairwell. The door to the stairs was in a corner and the older man was kneeling in the corner so he could see down both hallways as he clutched Wiggins' hunting rifle in his hands.
"The others are finding stuff to block off the stairs," the man said as Brendon stopped next to him and looked around. "How are things going with the others?"
"We've got the other stairwell blocked off from below," Brendon replied. "The others are catching their breath in the room we dropped our bags in, the woman and boy you were with are both fine, did you know them before all of this."
"Heather is my daughter and Matt is my grandson, the other man with us was my son-in-law, damn good man..." the man said choking on his last few words. "I went over to their house as soon as I heard what was going on to try to protect them. Some of those things broke into their house from the living room window so we jumped in my car and just started driving. We didn't know what to do or where to go until we saw you guys drive by. You had the look of people with a plan the way you were organized so we decided to follow and I'm glad we did. It my be my old age but a couple of you look you may be military."
"Two of us are army and the third has enough training he's gotten from various places that he might as well be. How about you? You have the look of a man that's been in the service." Brendon said.
"I was drafted into the army back in Vietnam and decided to just stay in for about ten more years after everything was said and done over there," the man said. "Glad to meet another soldier on a day like this," he said offering Brendon his hand. "The name is James."
"Well I'm Brendon," he said taking James' hand. As they shook hands Brendon saw the bite on James' arm and was reminded of what had happened on the way to the building.
James must have noticed Brendon eyeing the bite because he pulled back his arm and tugged his sleeve down over the bite. "I know what this bite means, it's a small one though so maybe I'll have a few hours before I turn. On the news it looked like it was only the people that got bit over and over that turned right away. I just want to do what I can to help make sure my daughter and grandson are safe before I do what I have to do."
"As far as I can tell the virus has to actually kill a person before they turn into one of them so I'm willing to chance it for a little bit while we get part of the building cleared out, but we're going to have to deal with this before long," Brendon said. It didn't matter that the bite on the man's arm was small, he was still infected, it was only a matter of time before he succumbed to the virus and turned. At least they would have a few moments warning when his body died and in the meantime they needed the help. The man looked a little pale and sweat was beading up on his forehead but Brendon didn't know if it was from the run to the building or the effects of the virus.
While they had been talking Brendon had seen some of the others walking past carrying large items into the stairwell. He peaked in and saw that James was covering the stairs above them while every one else worked on building up the barricade. This stairwell only led as far down as the first floor so there were no stairs down to the basement and tunnels that they needed to worry about. All they had to do was stack enough sturdy objects in the stairwell to prevent the door from opening and the door to the first floor would be secure. It took about half an hour but they finally had enough things thrown in front of the door that it completely filled the stairwell all the way up to the door to the second story.
Everyone was confident that the barricade would hold so they left James in the stairwell to make sure nothing came down from above while the rest of them moved out to clear the rest of the second floor. Brendon figured everyone that had been left with Rebecca had been given ample time to rest and he wanted to try to get the building clear before the sun set. With the help of the others he got them organized into three room clearing pairs, a pair of people that would keep watch in the stairwells moving up a floor each time they got one cleared and a handful of others to keep watch in the halls while the others cleared the rooms. A number of the rooms on the floor were locked but a handful of full metal jacket rounds from a rifle was enough to break the locks. It took about fifteen minutes to completely clear the rest of the floor but when it was all over Brendon was confident that there hadn't been any areas they could have missed.
Everyone seemed to have the hang of things after clearing the second floor so everything started to go a little more smoothly as they moved up to the third. As they cleared rooms the experienced members kept an eye out for anyone that seemed likely to crack or freak out going into the rooms and pulled them back to watch things out in the halls while the people with cooler heads did the harder work. Clearing the floors of zombies was a lot simpler than room to room combat with human opponents so even the members that had never gone through any type of urban combat training were able to do well. Whenever they entered a new floor they were sure to make a lot of noise which would bring the zombies into the halls allowing them to take shots from farther away than they would be going into the rooms. Once the zombies stopped coming they would move out and start checking each room. The rooms with open doors were usually clear since any zombies inside would have been drawn out by the noise the survivors were making and usually if a door was closed they would be able to tell if there was a zombie inside if they heard someone pounding on the door trying to get out.
Before long the third and fourth floors had been cleared of any undead as well and they agreed there was enough time to give everyone a ten minute break before moving on up. They had only been encountering around twenty or so zombies on each floor so their guess that most of the students would be gone for spring break had been somewhat accurate. They had only found two more survivors, a boy named Seth and a girl named Brittany had both been found hiding in a locked room on the fourth floor. Nobody had responded when Aidan and Griffin had yelled out asking if anyone was inside but Brittany's screams when Aidan fired three rounds through the lock had tipped them off that there were people inside. Her screams had been so loud that apparently Aidan was convinced that he had just killed a girl but when they went inside they say that the rounds had missed the people inside.
All things considered after spending all day fighting for their lives things were starting to look up. With their success on the last three floors Brendon was starting to feel more positive about their chances. So long as they could get the top six floors of the building cleared without incident and the barricades in the stairwells held they would finally have a sanctuary where they were safe from the zombies.