Perishables (The Withrow Chronicles Book 1) by Michael G. Williams

Author:Michael G. Williams [Williams, Michael G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-08-20T14:00:00+00:00

We were twenty minutes farther into our patrol when we heard gunshots and froze in our steps. Tim backed up a couple of paces but Everett and I looked at one another and then took off jogging towards the shots. We came around the corner of the English Department building and found four students in camouflage. They were milling around the outer perimeter of a small clump of bodies, maybe half a dozen.

I recognized a couple of them as faculty from the English Department itself.

As we approached, one swung his rifle around at us and the three of us dove into some bushes a second before he fired.

“Stop shooting!” My voice was hoarse and ragged from sudden screaming. “We’re patrollers! We’re okay!”

There was some muffled barking of orders or argument or something and then another shot over our heads. Then we heard boots running away, into the woods behind the English Department, and they were gone.

I started counting very quietly up from one and when I got to thirty I stood up just enough to peek over the bushes. No one was around. I stood all the way up and waited for a gunshot but didn’t hear one. I turned, slowly, to look back the way we’d come; still no gunshot. I stepped out onto the path.

Still no gunshot.

Everett and Tim and I walked to within thirty feet or so. “Do you think they shot them by mistake?” Tim’s voice was shaky. It struck me suddenly - thunderously - that he was the only person I knew who’d already seen one of these things out there in the night, on his way here. And he was out here with us. I couldn’t believe how brave that was.

“No,” I said in reply. I pointed at one, then another. “Shot in the back. These were opportunistic killings.”

“That would explain the pot shot they took when we called out.”

“It might be,” Tim managed, “That they shot a patrol by accident and then another patrol came running and they shot them to keep from being caught.”

“That’s a big leap,” I said.

“It seems like a good enough possibility,” Tim murmured, a little wounded, and I reached out and squeezed his upper arm.

“No, not that. You may be right. If you are right, those kids made the jump from manslaughter to murder one in, what, a minute? Thirty seconds? That’s a big leap.”

“They’ve been told to protect themselves.” Everett’s voice was quiet. “They weren’t told from what or that there were any limits to that.”

I shuddered and pulled my arms around myself, the mop handle banging clumsily against my shins as I did so, and then turned to walk back to the quad. “Come on,” I said. “We have to stop just walking around. We have to see if anybody has a plan.”

They followed me for lack of anything better to do.

By the time we’d made it back up to the main quad, away from the little side-quad where a bunch of the humanities buildings were, the zombies had arrived.

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