Zombie High (28 page)

With that in mind, you turn around, intent on
running or at least hobbling away, only to realize that you
are now surrounded. Zombified geriatrics have come in at
you from not only the church across the street, but from
the parking lot as well. If you were in better shape and
hadn’t hurt your leg, you could probably just blast right
through them, or at least run in between their scattered
line, but with the turtle’s pace you have going for yourself,
your options are severely limited. Not wanting to be a
defeatist, however, you muster up whatever courage and
moxie you have left and pick the route that looks like it
will be the most successful.

Aiming for the old guy with the walker and avoiding
the gray haired woman with the track suit on, you figure
you’ll have a better chance of breaking through. From
there, you hope you can stay ahead of them long enough
to get to the house next door where someone will let you
in. Using your leg more than you know you should, you
push off and put as much speed into your escape as you
can. Unfortunately, it turns out to be a paltry five miles
per hour, and the old people close in quick. The first one
that gets her hands on you tries to bite at your arm, the
one you’ve been swinging back and forth to try to
maintain your balance. You almost laugh, however, as
you find that all she is able to do is dampen it with her spit
because she has no teeth, and it’s just gums which she’s
attacking you with. Her dentures either fell out, or she
forgot to put them in this morning. Either way, you avoid
becoming infected for a little bit longer. The real problem
she does pose is that now that she has your arm, she
won’t let go, and you need it to stay upright.

You try to struggle with her to pull your arm free,
but by the time you do, you find the gentleman with the
walker standing in your way. In your haste to get out of
there, you knock over the man and then manage to
somehow get your own foot caught up in his overturned
walker. The drag it puts on you sends you sprawling into
the grass, and you soon find the elderly are nothing to
mess with when they’re hungry.

Four individuals who probably couldn’t climb a
flight of stairs without an oxygen tank, now seem
superhuman in both strength and stamina. They begin
clawing at you and pulling on your clothes, desperate to
get to your flesh even as you try to push them away. At
one point, you manage to get a foot up underneath
someone whom children probably called grandma and
kick her sideways into the grass. A sight that might have
been funnier if it hadn’t been for the fact that while
desperate to get at you, she managed to take your shoe
with her when she flew back.

The fighting continues for at least five minutes as
you attempt to crawl away only to have to stop and throw
some geezer off you before you get more than a few feet.
Eventually, you feel yourself tiring, and the pain from your
leg take its toll. That’s when things start really going
downhill. It’s while you are on your knees pushing against
the tracksuit wearing woman that you feel another one of
the elderly folks crawl over and take a huge bite out of
your right calf muscle. The pain sends a scream out of
your mouth loud enough to tear at your own throat as it
escapes, and then sends you to the ground reeling. With
that, the tides turn, and the zombies begin their feast.

Realizing that not only is this girl sick looking, but
that she doesn’t look like she should be up walking
around, you say, “Just stay here, and I’ll get some help.”

The girl continues to take a few staggering steps
towards you, but you quickly turn and run down to the
office to ask for help. When you get there, you find the
secretary behind her desk with the phone completely lit
up with calls on hold even though she is speaking into the
phone and taking notes already. Unsure if you should
turn and head for the nurse’s office or not, the secretary
holds up one finger and says, “Yes, Miss Gardner, I will
have her ready for you when you arrive. Okay, then,
goodbye,” before she finishes scribbling something down
on a notepad. When she sets down her pen, she turns to
you and asks, “And what can I do for you?’

Gesturing in the direction you came from, you say,
“Um, there’s a girl in the bathroom, well, in the hall now,
but it looks like she threw up in the bathroom, and she
looks really sick.”

Nodding, the school secretary says, “Okay, thanks
for telling me. I’ll send someone down to help her, but in
the meantime, can you run an errand for me?”

Happy to be out of class for a bit longer, you agree
saying, “Sure.”
“Okay, I need you to take this up to Mrs. Brown’s
room and tell her that Jane needs to report to the office
ready to go home. Her mother is coming to pick her up.
Something about a family emergency or something.”
“No problem,” you say to the school secretary, as
you take the slip of paper.
Seeing that you agreed a little too easily, she adds,
“And then make sure you head directly back to class
afterwards.”
“You got it,” you say as you head out of the office.
Turning right, you head back for the stairs and up
to Mrs. Brown’s door which has yellow paper covering the
window. When she answers, you give her the piece of
paper and repeat what the school secretary told you
about Jane getting packed up to go home. Looking back
into the class, Mrs. Brown says, “Jane, you need to take
your stuff with you and head down to the office,” before
she turns back to you and thanks you for delivering the
message.
The thought crosses your mind to walk around the
school a bit more, figuring you could always explain your
absence with the girl getting sick and the office asking you
to run the message, but one look at the hall clock tells you
that there is only about five minutes left before the bell
rings for you to go to second period. Reluctantly, you
decide to return to class so you can at least get your stuff
before you have to go to history class.
When you enter the classroom, Miss Dikeo gives
you a look which clearly conveys not only that you have
been gone too long, but that she wishes she could burn
holes in you with her eyes from thirty feet away. You
could easily go to her and explain what happened, but you
decide to just go to your seat instead. If she really wants
to know, she just as easily can come to you and ask.
Crossing the room, you slide back into your desk and pick
up your book as if you’re about to resume working when
the bell rings. Looks like you timed that pretty well,
you’re thinking as you grab your stuff and head out.
Standing at your locker you remember that you still
haven’t seen Steve yet today, but at the same time you
know you need to get to history on time because Miss
Millstone is also a real pain about being tardy. Looks like
you have another choice to make.

Wishing you had time to talk to your friend, you
know you really can’t afford anymore tardies from Miss
Millstone. On the last one, she threatened to call home to
your parents, and honestly, you just don’t want the extra
aggravation that would cause at home. You know there is
a chance you might see him, but since his first and second
hour classes are close together, the chances are pretty
slim. He usually just takes the books he needs for both
classes to first hour so that he doesn’t have to travel
through the crowded hallways.

As you shuffle your way through the hall, unable to
take a full stride because two smaller kids, clearly
freshman, are walking so slow while they talk to each
other in front of you, you overhear a few people’s
conversations. At one locker, a girl is telling her friends
that Suzy broke up with her longtime boyfriend, Kyle, last
night after he bit her. Suzy didn’t come in to school today
because her parents said they would be taking her to the
hospital last night to get the bite looked at. A little further
up, you hear two guys talking about a party they plan to
attend this weekend and how they think that they can get
a few of the girls from another school to go with them.
It’s clear from their gesturing that that they believe the
girls from the other school will be a little more
cooperative with their desires. Shaking your head, you
keep walking and make your way to the stairs where it’s
all shoulders, hips, and books bumping against each other
while some students walk up and others run down headed
to class.

At the top of the stairs you turn right and head
towards Miss Millstone’s. Along the way, you hear some
kind of commotion behind you and a few more students
than usual seem to be heading in the opposite direction,
but you continue on your way, intent on making it to class
to give a good impression. The odd thing is that when you
get to class, you find that only two other students are in
their seats. Everyone else is absent. Looking at the clock
on the wall, you see that you are a little early. The bell
has another minute before it rings, but still, usually there
are more people here by now.

Dismissing the urge to turn around and leave so
that you can come back when there are more students in
the room, you go over to your desk to take a seat and
wait. Most of the students come in before the bell talking
excitedly in one large group, and you overhear snippets of
conversation about Mr. Tibbs and a fight as they try to talk
over one another to tell Miss Millstone about what they
saw or heard happen downstairs. Before they can all sit
down, however, the secretary’s voice comes over the PA
system, and Miss Millstone has to quiet the whole class
with her loud shrill voice. That’s when you hear the
secretary repeat herself saying, “… not a drill. The school
is in lockdown. Teachers, please make sure that your
students remain in class, and we will let you know when
the lockdown is over.”

Heading to the door, Miss Millstone checks the
doorknob from the outside to make sure it’s locked, and
then after a quick look up and down the hall to see if
there are any straggling students, she swings the door
closed. Using hand gestures only, Miss Millstone directs
the class to remain quiet and to leave their seats to go sit
up against the back wall. All of the students quickly and
quietly abandon their belongings and begin to head to the
back wall where she’s pointing. The ones who always sit
in the back of her room are already taking a seat on the
floor.

The nurse is down, most of the people in here are
sick and probably have whatever Nathan has, minus the
fistful of Nurse Jackie’s intestines. You figure, best
intentions aside, there really is no way to save these
people. The one thing you can do, however, is save
yourself.

Turning back towards the door, you run over and
escape out into the hallway. From there, you feel frantic.
You know that you need to tell someone, but there isn’t
anyone close by. Realizing that the principal should be
the one you tell, you run down the hall, trying to scrub the
image of the dead nurse from your mind as you go. When
you get to where the office is, you turn to head to Mr.
Jameson’s office, but instead run into the back of Mr.
Beard. Apologizing profusely, you try to explain in short
rapid fire sentences why you were running and what you
just saw. That’s when Mr. Beard, who staggered when
you hit him, turns around.

To say that he didn’t look right would be an
understatement of the highest degree. His normally wellkept look now reminds you of the homeless man you’ve
seen hanging out under the bridge. The man under the
bridge always appears to be sitting in a lawn chair which
has more broken pieces than whole ones and a pile of
empty beer cans haphazardly stacked up next to him.
Despite his sign asking for money for food, you imagine
that he sits there drinking whatever he could afford and
only gets up to go back to the liquor store when he runs
out. Although he is only in his late forties, it’s clear that a
couple decades of booze combined with ten years of
being out of work from either some old back injury or
because he’s crazy, he appears to be looking a lot older. A
scraggily beard tries to cover the old man’s sagging jowls,
and his light brown eyes seemed perpetually glazed. On
top of that, it doesn’t seem to matter what day of the
week it is, or even what month of the year, he always has
on the same pair of jeans wedged over his bony hips and
slight potbelly, no shirt, just pale flabby chest and spindly
arms. That’s what Mr. Beard most looks like now that
he’s infected.

While you were assessing his appearance,
however, Mr. Beard was apparently assessing yours as
well, and the results must have registered somewhere in
his brain that you looked tasty because the next thing you
know Mr. Beard has grabbed hold of your shoulders and is
pushing you backwards as he leans in to bite you. The
two of you topple over into the attendance office, and you
find that the lights in here are off for some reason. As you
attempt to get up and try to run, you find that your air
supply is being choked off, not by hands, but by teeth.
Mr. Beard is leaning down and tearing into your throat.