Zom-B (12 page)
We consider Trev’s plan.
“If police and soldiers raid the school,” Linzer says, “we’d be safer here than out there. They shot anyone who moved in Ireland. They won’t know who’s a zombie and who isn’t, and they won’t want to take chances.”
“It’ll be a free-for-all,” Copper agrees.
“But if the zombies find us first…” Stagger Lee mutters. “I say we make a break for it. Head for the stairs, get to the floor above, find the exit, let ourselves out, don’t look back.”
“What if that door’s shut too?” one of the Muslim boys asks.
“It won’t be,” Stagger Lee says.
“The one by the gym was,” the Muslim reminds him.
“That was bad luck,” Stagger Lee says. “There’s no chance that two of the exits will be jammed at the same time.”
“Who says it was luck?” the Muslim asks. “Am I the only one who thinks this is too much of a coincidence? The janitors check those doors regularly—they have to be sure they’re working, in case of a fire. And on the very day we need them, one just happens to be stuck? I don’t buy it.”
“What are you talking about?” Trev snaps.
“Someone sealed it shut,” the Muslim says. “We’ve been locked in.”
A scary silence settles over us. I find myself looking at Cass, and he looks back at me. His eyes are wider with fear than they were a minute ago.
“What’s your name?” I ask the Muslim.
“Seez,” he says.
“Seez, do us all a favor and shut up,” I tell him.
“Why?” he scowls.
“If you’re right, we’re screwed,” I say evenly. “So let’s not think about it, and keep our fingers crossed that you’re wrong.”
“But–”
“If we’re locked in here with a pack of rotten zombies, what good will worrying about it do us?” I challenge him.
“We can come up with a plan,” he says.
I laugh bitterly. “If someone’s blocked all the exits, there’s no plan, we’re done for. We have to believe that the door back there was a one-off. If it wasn’t, we’ll find out soon enough, and we won’t have to worry about it for long.”
Seez stares at me, then nods reluctantly.
“So what do we do?” I ask. “Hole up or try for the exits? Let’s vote. Who wants to stay?”
Everyone looks around, hesitant to be the first to vote. Then Linzer sticks up her hand. A few more start to rise. But before a decision can be made, Pox groans, turns aside and vomits.
“Gross,” Dunglop chuckles—he’s closest to Pox.
There’s a strange creaking sound, like a plank being bent to snapping point. As I’m trying to place it, Pox shudders, then falls still. The noise comes again. Cass takes a cautious step towards the motionless Pox, rolling his knife lightly between his fingers.
“Everyone stay back,” Cass says. “I’m gonna make sure–”
Pox lurches to his feet, leaps at Dunglop and bites a chunk of flesh out of his cheek.
Dunglop screams and staggers into Cass, knocking him aside. Pox is already moving. He scrabbles after Rick, the kid from a lower year, and grabs his foot. Rick kicks out but Pox bites into his ankle. As Rick screams, Pox turns on Suze and goes for her throat.
Cass gets in the way and jabs at Pox with his knife. Pox lowers his head and charges. I tackle him before he connects with Cass. Drive him sideways. He crashes into a desk and goes sprawling.
“Clear the bloody door!” I roar. As the others hurry to the piled-up desks and chairs, I face Pox, who’s back on his feet, snarling. There’s a strange green fungus growing over the places where he was bitten by the zombie. Only thin wisps, but I note their presence like some supersleuth with a keen eye for detail. And his fingernails are longer than they were.
No… hold on… those aren’t nails. Bits of bone are sticking out of each finger, scraps of flesh and nails shedding from them. I recall the creaking noise and put two and two together. The bones must have lengthened and snapped through his flesh as he was changing. I glance down and spot bones sticking through the tips of his shoes too.
Pox closes in on me but is distracted when Cass whistles.
“Here, boy,” Cass growls, beckoning Pox on. “Come and get it.”
Pox scowls and goes after Cass, moving speedily. Cass stabs at him. The blade sinks deep into Pox’s chest. It pierces his heart, but that doesn’t matter to Pox. He pushes on and Cass goes down. Pox opens his jaws and snaps at Cass’s face. His teeth are longer and thicker than I remember.
One of the Muslims grabs Pox before he can bite. Pulls him off of Cass and pushes him away. Pox falls, but one of his bony nails scratches the Muslim’s chin and draws blood.
“We’re out of here!” Trev shouts, and I see that the door is open. Everyone’s spilling into the corridor. Meths is dragging Rick, and Dunglop is stumbling after the others.
“Let me help you,” I pant, taking Dunglop’s arm.
“Thanks,” he moans, holding a hand to his bitten cheek.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, then whirl swiftly and send Dunglop flying across the room. He smashes into Pox, who goes down again and starts biting instinctively.
“What the hell!” Trev shouts.
“Meths!” I bark. “Leave him.”
Meths looks at me uncertainly.
“They were bitten,” I growl. “The same thing that happened to Pox will happen to them.”
“No!” Rick screams. “Don’t leave me! I won’t change! You can’t just–”
“B’s right,” Copper says.
“Look,” La Lips groans, pointing.
Pox is tucking into Dunglop’s brain. He’s broken through the skull with the bones sticking out of his fingers and is gorging himself on the juicy stuff inside, like a pig chowing down. Dunglop’s still alive, shivering, eyelids flickering with terror and shock. But he doesn’t scream. Just spasms.
Meths drops Rick and backs away from him. When Rick tries to crawl after him, Meths kicks him in the head and the boy collapses with a whine.
Seez is staring at the scratched Muslim, who wipes drops of blood from his chin, studies them and sighs. “A scratch might not be the same as a bite,” he says.
“But we can’t take that chance,” Seez says quietly.
The Muslim sighs again. “I’ll head for the front door. If I make it, and if I don’t turn, I’ll try to get help for the rest of you.”
He darts through the doorway and is gone before Seez can say anything.
I glance at Pox and Dunglop one last time, my stomach turning, tears dripping down my cheeks. Then I curse hatefully and rush out after the others, leaving my dead and undead friends behind.
We pad along the corridor. Screams behind us, echoing, bouncing off the walls like they’re never going to die away. I’m so glad I’m not in the gym. It sounds insane, way worse than when we snuck out.
At the end of the corridor we turn right. There are bodies sprawled across the floor. Students like us, scratched, torn, bitten, bloody. Dead. As we edge past, eyeing them nervously in case they spring to life, I note that their heads have been cracked open, their brains scooped out. Except one, a small girl whose skull is intact. The same can’t be said for her guts—they’re all over the place.
“Wait,” I whisper, stopping by the girl. I look for Cass. “Give me your knife.”
“No one touches the knife but me,” he says coldly.
“Fine,” I snap. “Then get over here and be ready to stab her in the head if she stirs.”
“What the hell are we waiting for?” Linzer snarls.
“I need to find out something.”
“Who do you think you are?” she screeches. “Some sort of bloody–”
There’s a creaking sound. Bones thrust through the tips of the dead girl’s fingers, each at least half an inch long. Her lips shake and pull back over her teeth, which are growing and getting thicker. Her arms writhe, then she sits up and hisses at us, hunger in her eyes. I shriek and fall back. She dives after me. Hooks my shirt with her fingers. Tries to dig in.
As I scream again, Cass appears by my side and drives his knife into the side of the girl’s head, all the way to the hilt. She shivers, eyes rolling. He works the blade around, digs it in and out several times. The girl falls away from me and goes still.
I force myself to my feet and tug up my shirt, wildly examining my flesh for scratches, heart beating hard. The others are staring at me suspiciously. Cass’s eyes are narrow, his fingers tight on the handle of the knife.
“Nothing,” I moan happily, exposing my stomach to them. “She didn’t cut me. See?”
“You’re lucky,” Cass snorts.
“Now let’s get the hell out of here, or do you want to study them some more?” Linzer sneers.
“I’ve confirmed what I wanted to.” I point at the other corpses. “
Brains.
Like in the movies. If they eat your brain, or if it’s destroyed, you’re properly dead and there’s no coming back. That’s how we kill them.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Cass says. “Now let’s–”
La Lips screeches. A couple of bloodstained kids have stumbled into the corridor. Their eyes light up when they spot us and they stagger forward.
“Run!” I bark, and in a second we’re racing past classrooms and corpses.
The zombies follow silently. I shouldn’t look back but I can’t help myself. I glance over my shoulder and spot them closing in. They’re not smiling or leering. They don’t pant either. They run expressionlessly, like robots. Only their eyes are alive.
One of the zombies grabs La Lips, who was struggling to keep up with the rest of us. She goes down with a yelp and it tears into her.
“Don’t!” I shout at Copper as he stops to try to rescue her.
“I have to!” he yells and kicks at the zombie’s head. The other one leaps on him. He bellows and lets fly with a flurry of punches. But the zombie pulls up Copper’s shirt and bites into the soft flesh of his stomach. As Copper screams with pain and terror, the zombie
rises, lips and teeth red, and comes after the rest of us again, leaving Copper to suffer, die and turn into one of the walking dead.
I want to help Copper and La Lips but I can’t. They’re finished. No time to feel sorry for them. If the zombie grabs hold, I’m done for too. So I leg it, trying not to think about the friends I’m leaving behind. The poor, doomed friends that I’ve lost.
As we come to where the corridor branches, we turn left, but I steal a glance right and then wish that I hadn’t. There’s another group of kids. Maybe they had the same idea as us and were making for the exit. But they’ve been set upon by a pack of zombies. They’re trapped against a wall, dozens of transformed students holding them there, chewing through their skulls. The captured kids are screaming, sobbing, throwing up. All helpless. All damned.
A couple of zombies at the rear of the pack spot us and break away, joining the one who was already hot on our tail. They chase us down another corridor. The black kid whose name I don’t know slips on a sliver of intestines. One of them is on him a moment later. He fights back manfully but the zombie bites, scratches and pushes him down. We press on and leave him.
More corpses. The floor is sticky with blood. We dash past a room. The door’s open. I spot a teacher inside, pinned to the whiteboard by four zombies. They’re eating her, two on her arms, two on her legs, working their way up to her torso. She’s alive and sobbing softly, her fingers, lips and eyelids spasming.
We come to a set of stairs. A few bodies lie spread-eagle across the steps. We clamber over them and up. But we can’t all fit at once. It’s a tight squeeze. Elbows and curses fly as each of us struggles to be first to the top.
I’m next to Cass, the pair of us pushing forward, when he gives a cry of shock. I turn. The zombies have him. One’s got his right leg, one the left. Both have bitten into his calves.
Cass screams and kicks at the zombies, but they hold firm. His eyes meet mine. He silently pleads with me to help him, do something, stop this. I shake my head numbly, then reach for his knife. He jerks it away from me.
“Please,” I whisper. “It’s no good to you now.”
Cass snarls at me and starts stabbing at the zombies. I watch him for a couple of seconds, then back away slowly. Neither Cass nor the zombies pay any attention to me. They’re locked in battle, but it’s a fight that has only one of two possible outcomes. They tuck into his brain and he dies. Or they leave his skull alone and he becomes one of them. Either way, Cass is lost to us, so I wipe him from my thoughts as best I can and hobble up the stairs after the others.
We pause at the top of the stairs to get our bearings. The two zombies below are still tucking into the screaming Cass, and there are no others in sight.
“The exit’s back that way,” Stagger Lee pants.
I’m familiar with it. I used it once in a fire drill. If we can get through the door, it leads, via a set of steps, to the same alley as the other emergency exit.
“Maybe we should make for the front of the building,” Trev says. “We could jump from the windows.”
“This exit’s closer,” Stagger Lee says.
“But if it’s blocked…” Seez mutters.
“We’ve got to try,” Stagger Lee insists. “It’s our best hope.”
“Wait,” Tyler says. It’s the first time
he’s spoken since we broke out of the gym. “The cafeteria’s over there.”
“You can’t be hungry!” I gasp.
