Chapter 08: Clearing the Path

The duo had climbed down the service stairs to arrive in a very small courtyard. Behind a locked fence was a dirty-blond young man as tall as Rick but looking older than Claire. From his estimate, Leon was in his early twenties.

Claire made the introduction between the two, Rick giving Leon a polite nod of acknowledgement. Quickly she filled her friend in on what was awaiting inside the precinct: zombies and the beasts. She called them ‘Lickers’ out of the blue because of their extending tongue. Why not ‘ass-brain’, ‘Clawers’, or anything else? Rick didn’t know but didn’t argue. He wasn’t in the mood for that.

The conversation was cut short when the undead behind Leon began to rise from the ground. Rick immediately drew his gun and aimed. Claire took the maps of the first and second floor, tucked inside her tactical vest, and handed them to Leon through the holes in the fence.

“Get to the West Office and the Safety Deposit Room,” she told him in a hurry. “There is some gear for you there. A shotgun.”

Rick pulled the walkie-talkie from his hip and tossed it over the fence. “Catch!”

Leon looked up and caught the device while Claire lined up a shot on a closing zombie and hit its head.

“Don’t use it unless you’re in a safe location or it’s necessary. Noise attracts them,” Rick warned, shooting another living corpse in the knees and making it fall down.

“Thanks!”

Leon started running to the other side of the courtyard, giving a wide berth to the flesh-eaters while Claire and Rick covered for him. Once he was out of sight, they stopped shooting. They both had the same reflex: refill their weapon to the maximum. Claire didn’t bother with the speedloader since they were relatively safe and not in a hurry so she did it by hand. Rick did the same with his magazine instead of putting a new one in his semi-auto.

“I hope we drew enough heat away from him,” Claire commented with worry.

Rick put his gun in his holster and looked around. “He survived outside all this time. He’s going to be fine.”

Giving one last look at the courtyard, Claire turned back. “Yeah, you’re right.”

From the corner of her eye she saw a door with chains on it. Luckily for them, there was a pair of bolt cutters big enough to cut them right beside it.

“Found a full box of 9mm and some wood planks.”

Rick’s voice reached her ears from behind as she picked the cutters up and showed them to him. “Found these. We’ll be able to get to that room from earlier.”

“Neat.” He let her cut the chains and put the cutter in his bag. “Any idea what’s awaiting behind the door?”

Claire checked her gear carefully. “Lots of zombies. At least… five in the corridor. Maybe more in the office. It’s also very dark in the East corridor.”

“Got it.”

His flashlight being thin enough, he put it in his mouth. That freed his left hand for his cleaver while his right held his gun. Claire looked at him as if he was nuts but made no comment. Instead she counted to three and opened the door.

It was a mess.

Right from the start Claire was attacked from the right, her attention taken by the zombie a few feet away from her. Rick aimed his gun lightning-fast and put a bullet into the walking corpse about to ambush his partner. It fell to the ground, dead for good this time. Claire put two rounds in her opponent’s head and closed the distance toward a broken window to stab an undead getting inside through the cervical spine. She aimed at the windows, waiting for more threats to come through while Rick watched her six, eyes looking deep into the corridor lit by his flashlight.

“Thanks,” he heard from behind him and felt her looking inside his bag. From the weight loss he was sure she picked the bolt cutters. He was proven right a few seconds later by a grunt of effort and chains falling to the ground.

Claire tapped him on the shoulder to say everything was a go, and entered the office. Immediately, she rushed to the left and smacked its head with the cutters a few times. A good call; it moaned.

Rick, to cover the room, went right. His eyes zeroed in on a zombie trying to get up. Running forward he kicked the corpse in the head—so hard it broke the spine thoroughly and the head hung limply on its back.

“Wow.”

He ignored Claire’s comment of awe about what he had just done. He was as surprised as she was. Thoughts raced through his mind, wondering how what he had just done was possible, but he didn’t go very far with them. The sound of glass breaking brought him back to reality.

“Shit!”

Turning around, Rick saw Claire swing the bolt cutters again right on the neck of a zombie that made it in. Where a single time would have been enough, she hit it three more times for good measure. Breathing heavily, she took a few steps back to lean on the desk behind her.

“You alright?” Rick asked, switching his attention from Claire and the windows to the door to his right. He could hear zombies pushing violently against it, and the only thing that stopped them from bursting in was a chair and some books blocking the door.

Claire’s voice was clear. “Yeah, I was just… surprised. That jerk had it coming.” She looked at Rick, who was ready to deal with the next wave. Leaving the desk, she went behind him. “How do we deal with them?”

“I don’t know. I was thinking of turning a desk on its side and putting it in front.”

She liked the idea. “They’d fall like with the windows. They’d become easy prey.”

“Yeah.”

The bolt cutters were discarded on a desk, and she swiped the one next to it clean by turning it over. Soon enough everything was in place. Claire picked one of her backup knives from her pouch and stood ready to strike next to Rick.

“I’m good.” He nodded and threw his cleaver against one of the two feet of the chair, breaking it and making the whole blockade fall down.

As expected, the door opened and three zombies came through. One stumbled over the chair, but the two others didn’t. They kept walking, arms raised in a grabbing gesture, only to trip over the desk. As one, the duo moved forward, severing a spine each, leaving only the stumbler to deal with. Rick kicked the table so hard it knocked the undead over. An opportunity that Claire didn’t waste.

“Those three plus the two in the corridor makes your five,” he remarked, still on alert for a surprise attack.

Claire grimaced. “There may be more. I encountered other corpses when I came by earlier, but they weren’t… active when I ran away.”

After a moment to ponder their next action, Rick nodded. “Let’s secure this room first; we’ll take care of them later.”

He picked up his meat cleaver and realized that he would need to switch it for the spare one in his bag. The last hit had damaged it further, and it could take a few more hits at most before it would break irreparably.

“What about the cutters? Why did you whack that zombie with it?” he asked as Claire handed them to him.

Her face looked a bit sheepish. “I broke my knife on the first zombie that went through the window. Then I reacted instantly when I stepped in. I saw one getting up and I just went at it before it could be on its feet. Same for the other one. It was faster to bash its head than drop them then pull a spare knife. Better range, too.”

Rick shrugged. “Fair enough.”

Rummaging through the room revealed a green herb, a fuse, and a grenade. Unlike the one they found in the Safety Deposit Room, it wasn’t round and green. This one was blue, for a start, and in the form of a tube.

“That’s a flashbang,” Claire told him.

“You mean… those grenades that blind you with a bright flash and deafen you with a loud noise?” He was looking at the item in his hand.

“Yeah. My brother told me about them over the phone once. He seemed excited that his unit got some.”

“I suppose it could be used as a distraction if we throw it somewhere.” He hooked it on his utility belt. “We open the shutter or we go to Irons’s office. If I remember correctly, there is a way to the stairs.”

Claire shook her head. “It’s blocked. Cluttered up to the ceiling.”

“Shutter it is, then.” Rick took the lead, stepping out of the room. When he heard Claire groan, he turned around. “What is it?”

A sigh escaped her lips before she spoke up. “We have to go back to that long corridor where we found your walkie-talkie.”

Rick blinked. “No?”

“No?” Claire was suddenly interested and surprised at his tone. “What do you mean ‘no’? The way is blocked through the West Office.”

“I can push you up to go through the broken window again. You cut the chains and open the door on my side.”

Her eyes batted a few times, thinking about the possibility of the plan. “Huh. That works.”

“Come on. We have some cleanup to do. I forgot that if we open the shutter, that leaves any zombies from this side free to get into the Reception Hall.” A movement of his head to the right indicated the next direction.

“Marvin would be in danger too.” She remarked. “We’ll have to lock this room and block the corridor near the restrooms.”

Psyching herself, Claire followed Rick closely.