Honesty
The broken glass crunches beneath my boots as I make my way through the abandoned school. Most of the windows are gone, and years of rain have left dark stains running down the walls. Children’s drawings still hang along the corridor, their corners curling away from the plaster. Faded suns, crooked houses, families holding hands beneath skies painted impossibly blue. Some have names written underneath in clumsy letters.
I stop beside one of them. A little house with a red roof, a dog almost as large as the people standing beside it. The paper is brittle, and half the child’s name has disappeared beneath a streak of water damage.
I wonder how long it took before anyone stopped looking for them.
My hands are shaking again.
I reach into my coat, find the plastic bottle and shake two pills into my palm. They’re dirty yellow, crumbling at the edges. I swallow them dry and put the bottle away. Whatever they were originally prescribed for hardly matters anymore. They keep my hands steady enough to hold a gun, and sometimes they make the memories easier to live with.
Sometimes.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the shattered glass of a trophy case. For an instant, the face looking back is not mine.
She’s standing on a windowsill, perhaps ten years old, her fingers gripping the frame. I remember shouting for her to stay where she was. The stairwell was already filling with them, and I had stopped halfway up when I realized there were too many. She kept looking at me, waiting for me to come.
Then her foot slipped.
I remember the way she reached out as she fell. I remember the crowd below, the pale hands rising toward her, and the sound she made when she understood what was waiting.
I had a clear path to the exit. I took it.
The reflection shifts as I move past the broken glass, and another memory comes with it.
Rain falling on an empty road. A young woman kneeling in the mud, her clothes soaked through, her eyes beginning to yellow. She was infected. There was no mistaking it, though she kept insisting she could still think, still feel, still remember who she was.
She begged me to wait.
I had seen what happened to people like her. At least, that was what I told myself. I pressed the pistol against her temple while she cried and promised her it would be quick.
For years, whenever I remembered her, I called it mercy.
I keep walking.
The school smells of damp plaster and old wood. Somewhere above me, a loose sheet of metal knocks against the building whenever the wind catches it. The sound travels through the empty corridors, irregular enough that I find myself listening for it between my own footsteps.
I wasn’t a good man before any of this happened. I cheated people who trusted me, took advantage of those who couldn’t defend themselves, and walked away whenever staying meant paying a price. There was always an explanation. Everyone looked after themselves. Nobody gave anything away for free. If I hadn’t done it, someone else would have.
When the world fell apart, I thought men like me would have an advantage.
In some ways, I was right. I learned quickly where to find food, when to hide, when to fight, and when to leave someone behind. I stayed alive while people better than me died trying to help one another.
I used to think that proved something.
My boot catches a rusted can hidden beneath a drift of plaster. It skitters across the floor and strikes a locker at the far end of the corridor.
The sound rings through the building.
I stop.
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For several seconds, the only noise is the metal knocking somewhere overhead. Then something heavy strikes a door behind me.
Another impact follows, farther down the hall. Wood cracks. A locker shudders against the wall, its bent door rattling violently. From the classrooms comes a rising chorus of scraping feet and voices that no longer belong to anything human.
I turn and run.
A door tears loose from its hinges as I pass. Something lunges through the opening, fingers catching the back of my coat before the fabric rips free. I fire twice without looking back. The shots are deafening in the enclosed hallway, and whatever is following me answers with a shriek that sets the others screaming.
More doors give way. I hear bodies striking lockers, claws scraping tile, the uneven thunder of feet converging behind me.
My lungs begin to burn almost immediately. I haven’t eaten properly in days, and the pills haven’t yet settled the trembling in my arms. I fire another shot over my shoulder, more to keep them back than because I expect to hit anything.
The stairwell is ahead.
I throw myself through the doorway and take the steps two at a time, catching the railing to pull myself around the first landing. The metal gives beneath my weight. Rusted bolts tear free from the wall, and I stumble hard against the steps before managing to recover.
A laugh escapes me. Short, breathless, almost involuntary.
Of course.
I keep climbing.
Below, the creatures spill into the stairwell. I can hear them scrambling over one another, their cries echoing upward through the concrete shaft. I fire down the stairs until the pistol clicks empty. Then I throw it away and keep moving, one hand dragging along the wall to steady myself.
By the time I reach the fifth floor, my chest feels as though something is tearing inside it.
The corridor ends at a row of shattered windows. Beyond them, the city stretches beneath a pale, indifferent sky. I cross the room and climb onto the broad concrete ledge, gripping the frame while I look down.
Five floors.
The street is quiet. Grass grows through the asphalt, and a tree has forced its way through the roof of an abandoned bus. Its branches spread over the broken windows, green leaves stirring gently in the wind. I can still make out part of the route number beneath the dirt.
For a while, I watch the leaves move.
Behind me, the stairwell door slams against the wall. The first of them stumbles into the corridor, followed by others pressing forward through the opening. There are too many. Even if I still had the pistol, it wouldn’t matter.
I look down again.
I think of the girl on the windowsill, waiting for someone who never came. I think of the woman kneeling in the rain, asking for a few more minutes.
All those years, I had found a reason for everything.
The creatures are getting closer. Their footsteps scrape across the floor, and one of them lets out a thin, hungry cry.
There is no way down that I can survive. No doorway left to run through, no stranger to abandon, no explanation that will change what happens next.
I have stayed alive longer than I ever expected.
I stayed too long.
I release the window frame.
And jump.
