Zombie High (19 page)

Shaking your head, you say, “I’m sorry, Mr. Ray, but
I told them I’d be back. I think they’re counting on me.
I’m going to have to go.”

“I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” begins Mr.
Ray. “By this point, my conservative estimates suggest
that over eighty-seven percent of the school has been
converted, and in case you haven’t looked outside
recently, there seem to be more of them arriving every
few minutes.”

Looking out the window for the first time since this
morning, you notice that he’s right. It appears as if
someone hung a sign on St. Mary’s High School that says
‘FREE BUFFET’ in zombie language because there have to
be at least a hundred or more out there just milling
around. Convincing yourself as well as the others, you
say, “It’ll be all right. I’m not going outside, and the ones
here in the school seem to be mostly locked up inside the
classrooms. I’ve been out there all morning, and I haven’t
been bitten.”

“That could just be your stupid good luck,” begins
Bagdonas. “Who’s to say that if you step out there right
now there won’t be another dozen or so waiting?”

“It’s a chance I’m willing to take. I told them I’d
come back,” you say, and then add, “You don’t have to
come if you don’t want to. You can stay here with Mr.
Ray.”

“Oh trust me, I was planning on it. Mr. Ray has
supplies here, and Mr. Castle is on his way. I’ll be a lot
safer with the two of them then out there with you.”

Slightly hurt by this considering you just helped
save her life a little while ago, you say, “That’s all right,”
and then turn to Chris and Ryan to ask, “How about you?
You don’t have to, but…,” and leave the rest of your
sentence unspoken.

Ryan and Chris both look at each other and then to
you before Chris says, “We’re real grateful you helped us
back there, but I think we have to stay here. Strength in
numbers and all.” Then almost as an afterthought, he
adds, “I’m sure when Mr. Castle comes, and we all leave,
we can swing by and get those other people.”

You take a minute to consider the fact that you will
be going out on your own and try to weigh it against the
idea of waiting and having others with you. It’s a hard
choice, but you decide…

Determined, you say, “I’m sorry, I gave my word, I
have to go,” and when Mr. Ray makes one more attempt
to dissuade you, you say, “I know you don’t agree, but this
very well could be the end of the world. If we’re not going
to be honest with each other and hold to our promises,
then we’ve lost more than just the people around us,
we’ve lost ourselves too.”

Sure it came out way deeper than you intended,
but it does the trick as Mr. Ray concedes and says, “Well,
if I can’t convince you otherwise, then at least take the
first aid kit.” Then stepping around his desk, he pulls out a
clear plastic backpack with a red tag hanging off it that
says the room number. Handing it to you, he says, “This is
the emergency pack teachers were issued at the
beginning of the year. You’ve probably seen us with them
during the fire drills and stuff. Well, aside from our
attendance list, it has a bunch of first aid items, a
flashlight, and a radio. Take it with you, and be careful.
You can come back at any time, so long as you don’t get
bitten.”

With an awkward smile, you say, “Thank you,” and
head for the door as you slip your arms through the
straps. When you reach the door, you take up your twoby-four again and give Mr. Ray a nod saying, “Ok, I’m
ready.”

Reluctantly, Mr. Ray opens the door and points his
sodium rail gun into the hall. When nothing immediately
attacks, you step past him and begin to head up the hall.
You’re not more than a few steps away before you hear
the soft click of the latch as the door closes behind you,
and without looking back, you know they’ve secured
themselves in the lab once more.

Considering your situation, you now have the twoby-four in your hands, and the hammer on your belt to
use as weapons, and on your back is a backpack with
plenty of first aid stuff. The only thing you’re missing is
the food they requested. You could skip it, go up there
and give them what you have along with the information
you’ve gathered, or you could go for the food. What do
you think?

Deciding that you promised you would bring them
what they asked for, and you don’t want to be denied
entry at the door again, you skip the stairs and continue
walking to go get food. Considering the school’s layout,
there are really only about two places to get food. The
first and most logical on a typical day of school is the
cafeteria. The other is the snack machine in the back
hallway.

The food in the cafeteria is never all that good, but
it’s free. The only problem is some of it is bound to be
frozen, not all of it, mind you, but at least the usual stuff
like pizza, tacos, and whatnot. The pudding and ravioli
should be in cans though, and if there is a can opener,
you’re pretty sure the teachers’ lounge has a microwave.
While you’ve never been in the teachers’ lounge before,
you highly doubt that they have a full kitchen in there, so
you are leaning towards going straight to the vending
machines. The only issue there is that the food in the
vending machines requires money. At best, you have the
five quarters your mom set out for you on the table in
your pocket at the moment, and that’s not going to be
enough to buy much. Guess you have to make another
decision then because this is the intersection coming up
which will either head to the back hallway with the
vending machines or the cafeteria.

Deciding that the cafeteria is the best option since
it’s bound to have the most food and will be at least
better for you that a bunch of stale chips and cookies out
of the vending machine, you head straight at the next
intersection. You are busy trying to think of what might
be easy to grab in the kitchen that won’t require much
preparation or the use of a stove/oven when you hear the
first disturbing sounds. Slowing down, you try to make
your footsteps as quiet as possible as you approach,
knowing that there is no point to turning back if you don’t
know what’s around the corner.

It takes you several more minutes to close the
distance on the next intersection, something you’ve done
innumerable times in the past in just a few seconds
without a care in the world other than whose homework
you were going to copy before class. As you get closer,
the sound, of course, gets louder, and you find yourself no
longer questioning so much what is around the corner as
you are how many of them are there.

Being as careful as you can, you crouch down
against the wall and try to peek into the next hall to see
what’s going on. It takes you several seconds as you
slowly lean your head out a little further and then a bit
more before you have a line of sight on the commotion.
What you find is something that will haunt you for the rest
of your life. From your vantage point it appears as if fifty
or more of the zombies have congregated within the
cafeteria and have managed to destroy and/or tear up
everything in the place, or, more likely, knocked down a
wall of tables and chairs that was being used as a
makeshift blockade. From the look of things, the zombies
inside seem to be moving towards the back kitchen area,
probably the last place the people inside had to fall back
to when their wall went down, and there doesn’t seem to
be any way for you to help them. Sure, you could go in
there swinging your two-by-four around, and you would
probably get in a few good shots, maybe take some of
them down, but the numbers clearly aren’t in your favor.
You know that they would swarm over you in a matter of
minutes taking your life and adding you to their numbers
with bite after bite.

Unwilling to commit yourself to a kamikaze mission
without knowing if anyone inside is even alive in there,
you decide to go for your other option and get food from
the vending machine. Sure, you don’t have much money,
but you do have a two-by-four, and so long as none of the
undead are back there, you should be able to use it to
remove the display window and do a little five finger
discounting. It’s wrong, you admit, but at this point it’s
about survival, and you’re pretty sure that God wouldn’t
want you to die out here if there was a way for you to get
to safety and help others in the process. On top of that,
you go ahead and promise yourself that if you do make it
out of here alive, you’ll get the money from your parents
or empty your piggy bank out and put it all into the
machine.

Pulling your head back mentally from internal
debate on the morality of stealing during the apocalypse
and physically from the horrific scene in the cafeteria, you
turn and begin to stand up, careful to lean forward so that
your new plastic backpack doesn’t scrape against the wall
and give away your position. Unfortunately, as you face
back the way you came, intent on going to the vending
machine, you find three of the undead closing in on your
position. You have no idea where they came from, and
can only assume that the ceaseless moaning and wails
from the ones in the cafeteria covered up the sound of
the approach. Pulling your two-by-four up to your
shoulder, you ready yourself as the closest one steps
within range.

Letting a small grunt slip between your lips, you
bash the zombie in the side of the head and hear a
distinctive and satisfying crack as you do so, but as you lift
the wood back to your shoulder you notice two things.
First, the zombie only stumbled to the side and is now
reorienting himself on you, and second, the two-by-four in
your hands feels quite a bit lighter. Looking at the wood,
you find that it is now only half the length that it was a
moment ago, and the other end is now lying on the floor.
Perturbed by this, you angrily lift the remaining portion of
lumber over your head and step forward, bringing it down
on the same zombie’s head. This time, the thing falls
backwards and lands on its backside, but you see it
already trying to get up. Apparently, you’re not
generating enough force to crack their skulls now that the
board is half its original size. Throwing the broken piece
at the next zombie, you reach down and grab for the
hammer at your belt.

The next few minutes become a blur of swings and
messy black fluids mixed with bits of skulls and gray
matter, but after killing two of them with solid blows, and
the knocking the third into a display board hard enough to
knock it down from where it was hanging on the wall, you
are able to step over to it and deliver the coup de gras.
Breathing hard from the exertion, you take a second to
assess your condition and satisfy your belief that you
haven’t been bitten, scratched, or otherwise infected.
That’s when you notice the shadow in the piece of glass
from the display board leaning against the wall.

Spinning around, you lift the hammer instinctively
and feel the claw end of it sink into the side of a zombie’s
head. The parasite’s connection to the rest of its host’s
body now permanently extinguished, you feel the sudden
dead weight of the creature pull on the hammer as it
drops to the floor. Normally, this wouldn’t be an issue as
you could, given a bit of time and effort, manage to wiggle
the hammer back out of the corpse, but as it drops you
see that he wasn’t the only one to have come out of the
cafeteria following the sounds of your grunts and fighting
with the first three. Rather, you stand there in the hall
now with nearly ten zombies quickly closing in on your
position, and you have nothing left in which you can use
as a weapon.

Turning, you try to run, hoping you can out pace
them and make it back to Mr. Ray’s, but you find that you
are pulled off balance and land squarely on your butt
when the closest zombie yanks on your backpack. Not
willing to give up yet, you try to get on your feet, but the
zombies have had more than enough time to close in on
you, and you fall beneath their mass screaming as each of
them helps themselves to a bite or two of your yummy,
yummy flesh.

You reason that the food in the cafeteria will
mostly be either frozen or in those large economy sized
cans, and neither of which will do you much good. Frozen
obviously won’t work, because then it will need to be
heated up, and the cans will suck because you’ll need a
can opener. Then even if you do manage to find a can
opener, you figure that if you lose it, the food will be
sealed in there forever while you starve. Add to that, you
remember that time your mom brought you to one of
those warehouse type stores where everything they sold
was in giant packs like thirty tubes of toothpaste and
eighty rolls of toilet paper in one container, and she told
you she forgot something while in the checkout lane. The
one can she had you get was only from two aisles away,
but it felt like it weighed a hundred pounds by the time
you brought it back to her and the cart. Sure, that was a
few years ago, and you were a little weaker then, but
seriously, walking around the school with a can or two like
that would not only be really heavy, but would seriously
impede your ability to defend yourself. Dismissing the
idea of the cafeteria all together, you turn and set off for
the back hallway where the vending machines are located.