The Virus Within: The Unranked (Book 4)

Ch. 34: 101 Ways To Block A Door

The haphazard pile of doors and tables formed a surprisingly solid wall at the top of the stairs that most zombies wouldn't have been able to push against effectively. I sniffed the air to confirm there were no recent scents.

A string of LED lights hanging out of a drilled hole proved they had known about a Nightstalker's sensitivity to light and had planned accordingly. I suddenly recalled the broken windows I'd seen earlier and knew how the nighttime predator had bypassed their defenses.

With a faint sigh, I began ripping pieces free, picking the ones with the fewest nails sticking through. When I pulled a long board off, several doors fell over and slid down the stairs with a rapid staccato clattering. I squeezed through the gap into a hallway covered in bloodstains and scattered bones.

There was a chance these people had been the ones to grab all the valuables, so I began checking the rooms. No one—apart from the Nightstalker—had been up here since the humans were slain, and the toppled furniture and broken glass were age-old echoes of the horror story that had occurred here.

The eerie glimpse back in time didn't stop me from stepping over gnawed bones and searching for what the original group might have stockpiled. The classrooms mostly consisted of desks and a projector. There were no cupboards or cabinets to search. Only a couple boasted a bookshelf.

I located several stashes of food and water, but no science equipment. Half a dozen books and a few packages of beef jerky and dried fruit came with me as I finished my search of the second floor.

The third floor was similarly barricaded, although I didn't see any bloodstains or bones as I checked the rooms. Finding nothing of interest on this level, I went to the final floor and wrestled more tables and doors out of my way.

The hallway looked empty, but as soon as I glanced into the first room, I knew most of the survivors had taken shelter on this floor. There were so many bones scattered across the floor that I didn't even enter the room.

The next doorway showed a similar scene, as did the one after it. Room after room, not a single one lacked bloodstains. There were a number of empty food wrappers, proof that this group had lasted longer than the ones below, but there was still no equipment to be found.

With no reason to linger in the skeleton graveyard, I quickly returned to where I had left the janitorial carts and took one over to the piles of books I'd left. I quickly stacked them onto the cart and pushed them outside, finally realizing just how poorly most doors were designed, even in front of wheelchair ramps.

I left the clattering cart in the middle of the road and headed for the next building.

~

"Trinity, where are you?" Daniel's voice called out.

I entered a room and leaned out a broken window. "Over here."

His eyesight was such that he easily spotted me. "Any luck?"

"Just some books and evidence of looters."

"That's about all I found as well, and I looked high and low. Which buildings are left to search?"

"Just the one behind this one. They actually bricked the entrances up and welded stuff over the windows. I'm just about done searching through this one if you want some help checking it."

He hesitated, then said, "If they were bricking things up, they probably hid things as well, so I might need your nose and skills to locate every hidey hole."

I nodded and backed out of the window, jogging out of the building that was unfortunately similar to the last two I'd been in. When I got outside, Daniel was already using a metal signpost to pry the brick wall out of the doorway. The metal bent and twisted but held up until the brick wall fell forward and crashed onto the ground.