Read Zombified (Episode 2): Yankee Heights for Free Online Page A

a large room at the corner of the hall. 
    Stopping at a heavy metal door with an inset window, the guard sifted through his keys; he unlocked the door and pushed it open. 
    Seated before a bank of monitors, a hefty man with graying hair and rosy cheeks spun in the chair.  "Well hello there.  I see you brought company, Shane."  He didn't stand up, but he did extend a hand.  "I'm Carl."
    "Matty," he shook Carl's hand.  Two female teachers, both in their forties or early fifties, sat in folding metal chairs at the back of the room.  Matty gave them a curt nod and turned his attention to the monitors. 
    "Was that you blasting through the front door?"  Carl spun back around in his chair and punched in a command on the blue keypad set beneath the monitors.  A full-screen view of the shattered glass doors filled one of the screens.  Zombies were staggering and shambling through the broken frame.
    "I tried knocking, but nobody answered," Matty said.  He glanced at the other monitors: zombies were filing into the parking lots from every direction, drawn by the gunshots or the exterior lights of the university… or maybe , Matty thought, by some compulsion of memory .  
    Carl nodded.  "I can't blame ya, young man, but we're going to be trapped down here if all of those things get inside."  He used a joystick to pan the parking lots, zooming in on the undead: some of them sprinted to the school, others shambled or lurched like drunkards.  "How did it spread so fast?"
    "Dunno," Matty said, "but I'm going to see if our resident biologist has any answers."  He watched the screens for a few minutes, trying to get an idea of how many were surrounding the campus.  "Can you shut off the lights from here, Carl?"
    "The breakers are down the hall," he answered.  "If we throw—"
    Right then all the lights did go off; the monitors and computer clicked off, too.  After a few seconds of pitch black, tubes of soft blue-white light bubbled to life in the hallway and then in the security office.  The monitors came back up, going through an auto-configuration routine: the cameras zoomed in and out, calibrating automatically.
    "Generators are running," Carl noted.  "Figure we got at least six hours, eight tops, before the fuel is empty."
    "I'm going to the lab," said Matty; "I suggest you guys kill all the lights except for the basement.  If we only keep the power up down here, that should extend the generators, right?"
    Carl nodded and turned to Shane.  "Get on it, Shane."
    "Can I have the spare keys?"  Matty grabbed a flashlight from the top of a metal filing cabinet.  Carl tossed him a key ring with six keys dangling from it. 
    "That's the master keys for utility, janitorial, classrooms, and labs.  The number on the key's head corresponds to the building floor."
    Matty nodded: "Got it."  He followed Shane out the door and turned right, heading for the entrance to the biology lab.
    THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD
    A staccato of pounding echoed in the corridor; Matty listened, trying to pinpoint the source.  He followed the banging to the opposite side of the basement: it was coming from one of the other stairwells. 
    Someone's alive!   Matty raced to the door, flipping through the keys in search of one labeled 'B' or 'G' or whatever the basement might be called.  "Shane!  We got a live one on the north stairwell!  Get your scrawny ass over here!"
    "I'm coming!"  Shane's squirrelly voice resounded.
    Matty hung a right at the end of a corridor; the door was in view and this one had a small rectangular window set just above the lock.  He slid on the smooth tile and overshot the door; snagging the handle, Matty raised the key to the lock.
    "Matty, please open the door!"  Kayla begged, pressing her frantic face into the wire-meshed glass.  "Oh God, please!  They're right behind me!"  She pounded on the door and screamed; tears were streaming down her face. 
    On the landing above her, not more than ten feet away, a gang