Zombie High (6 page)

An unknown amount of time passes before you
come to, and when you do, you find that you are laying on
the cold floor of the school hallway just outside the
teachers’ lounge. It takes you a second to remember
what just happened, and in that time an overwhelming
pain spikes through your head as the nerves around left
side of your face spark in protest to being crushed by a
bat.

Somewhere beneath the pain of injury, you also
feel your heart sink as you realize that you’ve clearly
blown the one place that might have proven safe and that
there is no way the girl is going to open back up for you
now. Squeezing your eyes shut tight against the
throbbing in your skull, you try to figure out where to go
next, but the fates seem to have decided for you. To your
right, you hear the tell-tale sound of shambling feet
dragging their way across the floor followed by an all too
close groan of unspeakable hunger.

You grit your teeth preparing to swear as you sit
up, only to find the pain renewed tenfold and your head
goes woozy. As agony sets in, you try desperately to roll
over and crawl away from the approaching monster, but
you get no further than a few inches before you feel its
hands grip tightly to your calf.

Realizing that she’s not going to budge on the issue
and that you have nothing on you to bribe the girl with,
you ask, “What do you want? What do I need to get for
you to let me in?”

Looking at something or someone else positioned
up against the wall where you can’t see them, she takes a
moment before nodding and saying, “Weapons, food, a
first aid kit, and any other supplies which might be
helpful.”

Sarcastically, you respond, “Sure, just hold on a
moment, and I’ll run down to the store for you.”
Noticing that your voice has risen above that of a
whisper, the girl shushes you and puts a finger to her lips
to tell you to be quiet, and then says, “Don’t be an idiot.
We just need you to run to the gym and get a few bats.
The nurse’s office should have a first aid kit, and the
cafeteria probably has tons of food.”

Nodding, you say, “Okay, I’ll go get you what I can,
but if those things are in the way, I’m bringing back
whatever I have and you’re going to let me in.”

The girl in the room looks to her partner and then
back to you before she agrees, saying, “Fine, but you
better not come back empty handed,” and then almost as
an afterthought, she adds, “Good luck,” before she closes
and locks the door.

Thinking it over for just a second, you realize that
all three locations the girl mentioned are downstairs. You
do have other options as well, but no matter what, you
have to decide what to go after first.

If you go for a weapon first, turn to page …………………
66
If you go after a first aid kit first, turn to page ………
100
If you go for food first, turn to page
…………….…..
299

Considering what the girl said, you realize that you
really should get yourself a weapon first if you are going
to be roaming around a school potentially filled with the
undead. The first aid kit and the food can be picked up
after you have a means of protecting yourself.

Turning, you begin to head for the stairway passing
a display case full of trophies that students won for the
school in regional and state championships. Two of them,
the baseball trophy and the hockey trophy, give you the
idea that these might be useful weapons, certainly more
than the volleyball and swimming, anyway. Towards the
end of the display case, however, you see a small placard
which reads “Best in Show” and mentions a woodworking
competition. Granted, the idea hadn’t been one of the
girl’s from the teachers’ lounge, but as you consider it,
you realize you could actually make yourself some
weapons with the tools in there. As you descend the
stairs you consider using a nail gun to “add a point” to
your next encounter with a zombie, or perhaps the jagged
teeth of a saw blade might cut down on their attempts to
eat you, but when you reach the first floor you remember
that the gym and the woodshop are in completely
different ends of the school. You are going to have to
make a choice which one you head for.

Deciding to head for the gym as the girl told you,
you are already thinking about the feel of a baseball bat or
a golf club in your hands and what it will feel like to knock
a zombie’s head off. You pass by several more classrooms
along the way and find that just over half of them still
have their door closed. The ones with their doors open,
however, show you far more gruesome scenes than
anything you have seen in TV or movies and so you decide
not to bother trying the closed doors, unsure if your
stomach can handle what might be inside on the floor and
walls.

When you get halfway down the hall, you hear a
loud cry coming from the hall up ahead, as if someone is
doing one of those martial art kiai yells. It happens to be
the only hall that leads to the gym, so you are faced with a
choice yet again. On one hand, the person is probably
being attacked by a zombie right now which means
there’s a risk going that way. Sure they might need your
help, but you have nothing to help them with other than
providing yourself as an alternative meal to the hungry
undead creature. On the other hand, if you do show up,
you might be able to confuse the zombie long enough to
provide them with an opportunity to escape. There is no
telling if there are zombies back the other way towards
the woodshop class, but turning around now at least gives
you a shot at finding a weapon before you go rushing in to
save anyone.

Deciding that you simply can’t leave anyone to face
one of those things alone, you sprint for the corner ready
to do whatever you can to help, all the while hoping that
you aren’t just offering a substitution on the zombie’s
mid-morning meal. When you get there, however, you
see something you hadn’t considered. Standing in the
middle of the hallway is Alexis, a sophomore girl you’ve
seen around school, holding an aluminum softball bat
above her head, breathing hard with eyes transfixed on
the messy pulp of ex-human which lies at her feet. A drop
of thick blackish colored blood drops off the bat before
she notices you standing there, and she takes a moment
before she lowers the weapon and allows you to
approach.

“It…it…it tried to attack me,” stutters Alexis. “I
didn’t have a choice.”
“I know,” you say. “They’re everywhere. We need
to get out of here.”
Looking at you with hope in her eyes, Alexis asks,
“Where? Do you know somewhere safe?”
“Kind of,” you say. “There are some people
upstairs who are holding out, but we need to bring them
stuff if we want to get in.” Looking to the bat in her
hands, you ask, “You know where the rest of those are?”
Glancing down at the bat as if she almost forgot
she was still holding it, Alexis says, “Yeah. There’s a whole
bunch of them downstairs in the athletic office.”

Remembering that the athletic office is the only
room in the school’s basement, and it is positioned in the
back of the gym, you say, “I need to get some of them for
myself and the other people upstairs. Would you mind
coming with me in case I run into any more of those
things?” As an incentive you add, “I’m sure if you help me
bring back supplies for everyone, they’ll let you in too.”
Alexis looks down at the zombie whose head she
smashed open like a rotten pumpkin thrown at a mailbox
after Halloween and then back to you before she agrees
and says, “All right, we can watch each other’s backs.
Let’s go.”
Together you and Alexis head down the rest of the
hall and into the gym. The hardwood floor, which the gym
teacher always makes sure is well cared for and never
allows students to walk on with black soled shoes due to
scuff marks messing up the normally shiny waxed surface,
now has several dead zombies littered along its length,
each one in its own pool of dark drying bodily fluids. As
you pass by one of them, you catch a whiff of the rotting
corpse and find that your eyes are watering from the stink
of it.
Looking up to the walkway you spot the weight
room and consider running up there for a weapon. A
baseball bat is all well and good, but you imagine swinging
a forty-five pound barbell into a zombie skull would do a
lot more damage. On top of that, you could always try
dropping weights on their heads from above. With this
new choice in mind, you have to make a decision quickly.

Turning to Alexis, you say, “Hey, let’s go up there.
If we use the weights, we can hit them harder.”
Shrugging, Alexis says, “Okay, lead the way,” and
the two of you turn and head for the stairs in the corner
which lead to the narrow walkway.
Just as you begin to head up the stairs, you hear a
sound coming from the far end of the gym, and when you
look, you find a small horde of zombies coming in from
where you two entered. For a minute you question to
yourself if they simply followed the scent of the two of
you, or if it was Alexis’s yell earlier which drew their
attention, but then you realize that no matter what the
cause, the fact is they are here now, and you two will have
to deal with them.
Hurrying, you sprint up the stairs and run for the
weight room with Alexis on your heels. Inside, you find
that the weight room is much smaller than you expected
and from the looks of things, the equipment was well
used before it was ever donated to the school. The legs
on the bench press are at a strange angle which make you
question how it can support the weight of anyone who
lies on it, never mind the barbell which they might try to
lift. The metal framed weight machine with all the pulleys
and stuff has several spots of rust which seem to go all the
way through. Along the wall you see a pile of plates
weighing from two and a half pounds up to forty-five
pounds, but at best it looks like less than three hundred
pounds total. There are a few dumbbells scattered
around the room from whichever team was in here last,
but again, there doesn’t seem to be all that much. It’s no
wonder, seeing this stuff, why the sports teams at your
school never seem to do very well.
Looking to Alexis, you say, “Grab what you can and
bring it out to the walkway. We’ll drop it on their heads
before they get a chance to climb up here.”
“Sounds good,” she says, but then when she tries
to lift the first weight, she realizes that she will have to
put the bat down. Reluctantly, she sets it to the side,
leaning it up against the wall within easy reach, and then
she begins to pick up some of the smaller weights and
bring them out to the walkway.
Joining her, you have a thirty-five pound plate and
a twenty-five pound plate in each hand. They bang
against your knees as you try to walk as a result of the
balancing act your shoulders are doing as you carry two
different size weights. When you get to the railing, you
set one weight down and heft the other one overhead.
Alexis does the same with her weights, and you tell her,
“Wait a second, you have to make sure they’re close
enough you can get them.”
“Right,” confirms Alexis, as if she was thinking the
same thing all along.
When the horde finally shuffles their way closer a
minute later, you toss the weights down, sending them
hurtling into the creatures’ heads. Both of your weights
hit their mark, and the zombies go down, but Alexis
misses on her second throw, and the weight gouges a hole
in the gym floor. You want to gawk at her for destroying
school property and somewhere inside, you can already
hear the coach blowing a gasket at her, but with the
zombie apocalypse upon you, you pull your focus back to
the task at hand and run back into the weight room to get
more ammunition to throw at them.
On the second trip, you each toss a ten and a
twenty-five pound plate at the walking dead, and you
each hit one. The only problem is that your second hit
was in the creature’s body, and after taking a step back, it
resumes its advance, still desperately hungry for your
flesh.
By this point the zombies are already at the stairs,
and you decide to grab a barbell off the rack to clobber
them with. When you come out, however, you notice
that they haven’t advanced any further and are all milling
around at the first step. It strikes you that the zombies
can’t climb the stairs. Emboldened by this revelation, you
take a position halfway up the stairs and begin your first
swing.
Unfortunately, you didn’t tell Alexis what you
realized, and she followed you down the first couple of
steps ready to help with her bat. As you swing, the barbell
smacks into Alexis’s head, and she falls unconscious down
the stairs, right into the waiting hands of the remaining
zombies, while her bat tumbles down to the floor next to
them. At the same time as she falls, you find that you
were unprepared for the reverberations in the barbell,
and it slips out of your grasp to slide down the stairs.
In a panic, you reach for the bar, not realizing how
close this puts you to the zombies, and before your fingers
can get hold of your makeshift weapon, the cold grip of a
zombie wraps around your wrist and pulls you down into
the fray.