Zombie High

This is not a normal book. This is a book of choices,
a book of consequences. You should not attempt to read
this book from front to back like you might a normal book,
but rather by making decisions based on intuition and
fact. The pages within contain many different segments
to this adventure with many different outcomes. It will be
your collection of your choices, as both a reader and the
main character of the story, which will determine if you
can find your way through successfully or if you ultimately
end up without a heartbeat.

The story will take many twists and turns as a result
of your choices. You will be responsible for the outcome.
Think carefully before you turn the page: one mistake,
one bad decision, and you may find yourself at the end far
sooner than you would like.

When you reach the end of a particular sequence,
be sure to go back and try again, this time making
different decisions as you go, and see where the story
takes you. The events and places within the story change
as the day goes by, and you may find that visiting a place
early on in a story yields different results then when you
visit it at another time.

“Hey, get down here before you’re late!” yells your
mother from the bottom of the stairs. Your alarm had
gone off fifteen minutes ago, but you yanked the Mickey
Mouse clock with the one broken ear from your bedside
table hard enough to unplug it from the wall and pulled
the blanket back over your head in attempt to get just a
little more sleep before you faced another day of boring
classes and know-it-all teachers.

In an attempt to dissuade your mother from
actually climbing back up the stairs to get you, which you
know will only result in yet another lecture about cleaning
your room, you yell back, “Coming,” but it comes out in a
half-hearted croaky voice which you know will never
appease her. Realizing this, you decide to just get it over
with and roll out of bed. Refusing to actually make your
bed, you draw the green blanket over the top, ignoring
the mound of tangled sheets beneath it, and stumble your
way to the bathroom.

After cleaning up and putting on your school
uniform, you stomp your way down the stairs with extra
emphasis to show that you would rather not be doing any
of this and plop yourself down in one of the chairs at the
kitchen table. Set out on the table is a brown bag lunch, a
disgusting generic cherry pop tart, and a dollar twenty-five
in quarters for you to get a drink from the school drink
machine.

“There you are, Sleepy Head, I thought you’d never
be ready,” says your mom who is standing across the
kitchen from you tapping away at her phone. It’s not until
you reach for the pop tart that she does finally look up,
and it’s only to say, “Oh no you don’t. You wasted your
breakfast time sleeping in. Now we need to get a move
on, come on. Grab and go. I’ll meet you in the car.”

Looking at the clock, you see that’s she’s right and
realize that on top of everything else, you now have to
hurry if you want to avoid another tardy. Conscientiously,
you watch as your mood drops at least two more levels
from its normal ‘I don’t want to be awake this morning,’
past ‘my life sucks,’ and now reaching ‘I may just punch
the first person who speaks to me in the face.’ Grabbing
your book bag off the floor, you realize how heavy it is
and remember that there was a math assignment you
were supposed to do but never got around to last night.
With your luck, your math teacher, Mr. Castle, the exmilitary hard nose, will now surely pick today of all days to
check the assignment and give a pop quiz. Cussing under
your breath, you swipe everything off the table into the
open zipper.

You only have to wait in the car for thirty seconds
as your mom sets the alarm and locks the door leading
into the garage, before she hits the garage door opener
and sunlight floods in through the windshield causing you
to shrink back into your seat as if you’re a vampire.
Hopping into the SUV, your mom reminds you to buckle
up as she plugs in her phone to the vehicle’s speaker
system. You groan internally realizing that not only is her
morning cheerfulness proof that you must have been
switched at birth with another baby, but that you will, yet
again, have to endure twenty minutes of her golden oldie
music from the 80s and 90s. Pulling your hoodie even
further down, you pointedly stare out the passenger side
window hoping to catch a few more minutes of sleep, or
at the very least, avoid any conversations your mother
might decide to start.

Unfortunately, your attempts only work halfway as
you are about ten minutes into the ride when your
mother asks, “So, have you decided what electives you’re
going to take next year?”

Responding with the least possible effort in hopes
she’ll get the point, you answer, “No.”
“Well, you need to decide soon. They put students
in classes on a first-come, first-served basis. If I were you I
would choose something fun. You know these are the
best years of your life, you should make sure you enjoy
them.”
Allowing too much of your morning grumpiness
into your voice, you ask, “What is this - an after school
special? From the way you make it sound, everything is
downhill after high school.” Realizing you were far
harsher to her than you meant to be, you shutup and turn
back to face out the window.
Your mother purses her lips together and mentally
counts to ten as she stops at the red light, trying to hold
onto her morning cheerfulness and not get into an
argument with you for the third morning in a row before
she says, “I’m just trying to be supportive. Maybe you can
check with your friends and see what they’re signing up
for so that at least you’ll be in one of their classes.”
Noncommittally, you say, “Yeah, I’ll do that,” but
you’re not really paying attention as your eyes fall on a
strange looking man who is coming up the sidewalk. At
first glance he looks like a disheveled looking businessman
who may have stayed out all night getting drunk at some
bar, but that doesn’t make much sense since you know
this is a residential neighborhood and there aren’t any
bars for miles. As he steps off the curb towards you, you
realize his eyes don’t just look hung over, but they appear
grey and chalky looking like one of your teacher’s
blackboard erasers. Just then, however, the light turns
green, and your mother switches from the brake to the
accelerator causing you to lose sight of the man as the
SUV pulls away.
Your mother’s playlist, set to random, starts up
with one of her favorite songs, and you are treated to a
badly sung five minute rendition of Alanis Morissette’s
“Ironic”, forcing you to honestly contemplate the idea of
jumping from the moving vehicle halfway through. When
the Cranberries come on afterwards with their song
“Zombie”, you find it slightly more tolerable because your
mother clearly doesn’t know the words and has stopped
singing, but also because you like the name of the song.
Ever since the
Walking Dead
has come on TV, zombies
have been the big thing, but you have always had a
morbid fascination with them and consider yourself to be
a bit of an expert on the fictional matter.
Pulling up to the front of St. Mary’s Catholic High
School, your mother says, “Have a good day, and try to
get those choices for your electives turned in before you
get stuck in something that you don’t want.”
“I will,” you answer, as you automatically reach for
the door handle and slide out of the vehicle. When your
feet hit the sidewalk, you reach back in to grab your book
bag from the floor in front of your seat before closing the
door. Looking back to the school, you see the fifty year
old two-story brick building looming in front of you with
its mural of St. Mary covering the front wall and the
flagpole with both the American flag and the state flag
flapping a little off to the right. Checking your watch, you
see that you have six minutes before you need to be in
class, and debate about looking for your friend, Steve,
near the busses, or going in now.

Choosing to look for your friend Steve, you head in
the direction of the school busses which currently sit
idling on the left of the building. As you walk over, your
eyes catch the giant thirty foot steeple atop the church,
and it humors you as you get closer and you find that it
lines up just so making it appear as if the bus has a cross
coming out of the top of it. Diverting your eyes, you look
to the third bus in the row and see that the seats are all
empty. Clearly, Steve either didn’t come to school today
or has already gone inside. Turning, you begin to make
your way back towards the front doors of the school, and
find that Nathan is leaning over the bushes just off the
main sidewalk, and it looks like he’s sick.

Checking your watch, you see that you have less
than four minutes to get to class on time, but you also
don’t want to just leave Nathan out here puking in the
foliage. You reason, however, that if you do help Nathan
get to the nurse’s station, she will write you a pass, and
you can make your way to first hour at more leisurely
pace.

Heading into the school, you are greeted by one of
the retired folks who volunteer their time in the morning
and respond curtly as you hurry to your locker. In years
past, student lockers were grouped together by their
respective grade level, but this year the lockers were
assigned based on each student’s first hour class.
Spinning the dial with only seconds to spare, you pop the
door open, throw your book bag in, and pull a spiral
notebook off the top shelf along with the novel you’ve
been reading in first hour English class, A Tale of Two
Cities. Taking the last dozen steps in a hurry, you reach
the threshold of the classroom just as the bell rings, and
take your seat on the far side of the room next to the
windows and the wall mounted water pipes that make up
the school’s boiler system.

As class begins and Miss Dikeo takes attendance,
you notice that three seats in the room are empty.
Looking over to your friend John, you ask in a low voice,
“Hey, where’s Stacey and the others?”

Staring back at you through one bloodshot eye,
John grunts and gives you a noncommittal shrug. Thinking
to yourself that this has felt like the longest week of your
life already, you understand John’s nonchalance, and turn
back to face the teacher wishing you could be out of
school like the others, too.

Finished with the attendance, Miss Dikeo says,
“Okay class, please open to page one-twenty in A Tale of
Two Cities and begin answering the questions on the
handout I am disseminating now. You should find all of
the answers within the next three chapters of reading, but
I warn you, they are not all in order.”

Raising her hand, Sarah asks, “Miss Dikeo, can we
work with a partner?”
“No,” answers Miss Dikeo. “I want you each to
work on this by yourself, and when students work with
partners, they usually just end up talking or dividing the
work, which won’t help them on the quiz I have planned
for Monday.”
After receiving the handout and passing the rest
behind you, you pull out the book and begin reading. It
only takes you a few minutes to realize that it is way too
early for this, and the words on the page are making no
impact on your brain. Looking out the window you see
some of the retired people from the neighborhood
walking up to the church across the street for their daily
Mass and serving of the Eucharist. One of them appears
to trip on the way and smacks right into the ground
without even trying to break her fall. You watch for a
moment to see if she is all right, but just as the woman
begins to move, you sense the approach of Miss Dikeo
and turn back to bury your nose in your novel.
Another ten minutes go by before you find yourself
mentally contemplating nearly everything else in the
world other than this book. You have a choice to make: