Zombie High (17 page)

Gripping one of the two-by-fours in your best
approximation of a samurai’s two handed grip, you slowly
stand up and prepare yourself for the onslaught. As the
first zombie, your ex-German teacher stumbles closer, you
raise the board overhead and begin to bring it over to
crush his head. As you do so, however, the board catches
on the ceiling tiles above you and slows your brutal swing
to something a child would most likely laugh at. Realizing
your mistake, you curse in frustration and take a step back
before swinging again, this time coming in like Babe Ruth
aiming for the outfield. The sound of the wood cracking
against his skull is both sick and satisfying, but you don’t
have time to think much about it as the rest of the
zombies have now taken notice of you and decided that
you should be their honored guest for dinner, I mean
as
dinner
.

As they approach, you continue to take measured
steps backwards, keeping yourself out of biting range
while also keeping them within hitting range. You end up
taking out two more staff members and two other kids,
each of them requiring at least one and usually two solid
hits with the board. Heaving from the strain a bit, you
take a minute to catch your breath while keeping an eye
on your surroundings. That’s when it happens. If this
were a video game, this guy would have been the boss
fight. The principal, Mr. Jameson, comes stumbling into
the hall, his heavy footsteps sounding even more ominous
than the desperate moan of hunger which pours from his
mouth. His buttoned up white shirt with the thin blue
stripes now appeared to have several patches of dried
blood splashed across it which matched the horrific
chunks of human flesh which clung to his normally white
beard.

Readying yourself, despite not having had time to
get in as much oxygen as you wanted, you lift your twoby-four back onto your shoulder and prepare to swing
even as the adrenaline is dumped into your bloodstream.
When the ex-human who used to be known as Mr.
Jameson steps in, you twist your hip and swing with
everything you’ve got, aiming for the zombie’s neck and
hoping for a quick clean break.

You are not that lucky.
Whether it is due to the fact that Mr. Jameson has
a bit of bulk to his frame or the fact that in a really
powerful swing, like the one you just did, a person’s aim
gets sacrificed, you end up missing the creature’s neck
and hit him instead in the shoulder. To make matters
worse, as the two-by-four you’ve been using makes
contact, it breaks in the middle, and the striking end
comes flying back at you. The one saving grace you get in
all of this is that you have just enough time to raise your
forearm and block the wood before it hits you in the face.
Jumping back, you ignore what will surely become
a bruise on your forearm and pull out another two-byfour. Lining up your shot a bit better this time, you swing
again and are rewarded with the zombie’s head tilting to
the side and his body crashing into one of the school’s
glass display cases. Almost ready to congratulate yourself,
you watch as the creature begins to sit back up and uses
the wall to get back on its feet. When it is fully standing
once more, you notice that its head is positioned at an
unnatural angle and a huge flap of skin is hanging off from
the point where you made contact, revealing a cracked
skull. Not wanting to give him any more time to recover,
you pull the new two-by-four once more to your shoulder
and aiming for the crack in its exposed skull, strike with a
devastating blow.
The thing stops its advance in mid-step and falls to
the floor, leaving you to balance yourself against the twoby-four and attempt to fill your lungs with some much
needed air. You know that there are still some zombies in
the nurse’s office, and you’re going to have to take care of
them in a minute, but for now, you just want a second to
relax. Unfortunately, as you begin to replenish your
oxygen, your brain receives a signal that your arm is
itching. Reaching down, almost unaware, you go to
scratch at the spot when your fingers touch something
thick and wet.
Lifting your forearm up, you see the problem. You
have a nasty pair of scratches in the meat of your forearm.
Somehow, you have cut yourself. Replaying everything
through your mind, you simultaneously realize that this is
the same spot the board hit you as you spot the other
reason for the itching. In the middle of the wound you
notice two large splinters stuck in your skin. Using your
fingernails like tweezers, you attempt to pull them out,
first one and then the other, each just over an inch long.
The process takes you a minute, but once they’re both
out, you see that your little one-on-one with the exprincipal will be the thing that haunts you for the rest of
your short life.
At the end of both splinters appears to be a dark
black substance like tar. Hoping that it might just be some
leftover resin or something from the tree which they
made the boards from, you use your shirt to wipe away
the blood around the wound. That’s when you finally see
the black necrotic veins in your arm which are swiftly
carrying the zombie virus into your body.
Shocked by the turn of events, from champion to
victim in just moments, you fail to notice that two of the
zombies from the nurse’s office are now out in the hall
with you, and they are eyeing you up as their next tasty
meal.

Figuring that you had better luck acquiring
weapons on your own by going to the shop class, you put
your mind to the next task, getting hold of a first aid kit.
The nurse’s office would be sure to have one. The girl
upstairs was right about that, but from here that seems
like quite a distance away. On top of that, you keep
thinking about the multitude of zombie movies you’ve
watched and books you’ve read and most of them point
to the hospitals and medical care centers as ground zero
for an outbreak. The reason for this is twofold. First,
when people initially get sick, they often seek out a doctor
or nurse to give them something to cure them or at least
help with the symptoms. The second reason is that there
are already ill people there, many of whom are hooked up
to machines, and are therefore easy prey. Considering
this, you try to come up with an alternative place away
from the nurse’s office that will have what you need.
That’s when it hits you, the shared science lab has a first
aid kit.

The science lab, located just two halls away, is
actually a shared space sitting between Mr. Tibbs’
classroom and Mr. Ray’s. The science lab is used for
experiments ranging from physics to chemistry and is also
the place where the dissections occur, be it a set of pig’s
lungs, a sheep’s brain, or even a whole animal like a frog
or a cat. Every year people repeat the same jokes when
it’s dissection time, especially for the cats which actually
stay in use for about two weeks. The first things students
learn in each of those classes, however, is what to do in
case of an emergency. It’s part of the whole safety first
speech which includes always wearing your goggles and
apron, and if there is a chemical spill or a splash, where
the shower is as well as the location of the first aid kit.

With that in mind, you grip your two-by-four a bit
tighter and head out, making your way down the hall. The
coast seems clear as you approach the intersection, and
you know that the science labs are to the left, but
something stops you. It might be that things seem too
quiet, or that your ears picked up on something your
conscious mind didn’t notice, but you pause at the
intersection and wait for a few seconds.

Just as you’re about to dismiss the ominous feeling
and move on, you hear a door bang open from the gym
and the sound of footsteps running heavily in your
direction. Figuring that you haven’t seen any zombies
running yet, you make the assumption that this must be
another student or a staff member coming. Unsure,
however, you tuck yourself in as close as you can to the
wall and wait to see what happens.

It only takes a couple of seconds, and you spot a
girl in one of the lower grades, either ninth or tenth - you
can’t quite remember, running full tilt past you up the hall
to your right. As she does so, she doesn’t seem to notice
you, but you read the back of her sweatshirt and identify
her by her last name, Bagdonas. In a time like this, what
with the zombies everywhere, you can only think of one
reason she would be running like that, and hiding around
a corner probably isn’t going to be enough to keep you
from being bitten.

Peeking around the corner just to see what you’re
dealing with you find a horde of the undead shambling
your way. Your choices are simple, either run to the right
and help Bagdonas, or turn around and find someplace to
hide between here and the shop class.

Standing up, you begin to run after the Bagdonas
girl, unable to recall what her first name is, but also
putting that a bit lower on your priority list for the time
being, considering what’s coming. You don’t know if she’s
hurt or if she even knows where she’s going, but what you
do know is that if you don’t run, the horde will just as
easily settle for you as they would have her. Zombies are
notorious for being the least choosy eaters when it comes
to their next meal. Essentially, if it has a pulse and they
can catch it, it’s on the menu.

Up ahead, you see the Bagdonas girl run past a
door, and as she does so, she yells something you can’t
quite make out. Clearly, her intent was to call out to
someone, but you have a feeling she wasn’t talking to you
because it didn’t sound like words of encouragement.
What is sounded like was a warning or a signal of some
sort. For half a second, as your feet continue slapping the
tile beneath you and the horde of the undead continue
their relentless pursuit, you worry about the potential
that she set you up somehow. One of the most popular
things that happens in zombie books, TV shows, and
movies, is that people usually turn on each other as if
allowing their own morals to go out the window just
because their perception of the world went to hell. That’s
when you see the door she signaled to begin to open.

In the next three seconds, everything around you
seems to happen in slow motion, and you don’t have any
other explanation for it other than pure adrenaline and
perhaps a bit of divine intervention. As the door opens,
you see that its placard reads ‘Band Room’ and three
students step out. The first one, Chris V. is holding a
guitar, the next Ryan is gripping a pair of drumsticks, and
the last student, a guy named Matt Smith, no relation to
the actor from the popular BBC TV show Dr. Who, is
carrying a broomstick. The girl, Bagdonas, just beyond the
room has stopped her running and is now leaning down to
pick up a pair of cymbals. Apparently, they must have
raided the music room for their weapons. Either that, or
they were putting together a band, and figured no matter
how bad they played at least now they couldn’t be told
they were so bad they would wake the dead, as many
older folks used to claim when they heard the next
generation’s music.

It occurs to you that they might beat you with their
instruments, but then you realize that the plan was clearly
intended for the girl to lure the zombies to them where
they would be able to dispatch them together. This is
made more evident by the fact that Chris, the one with
the guitar, is signaling you to hurry up. Pushing with even
more effort, you manage to cross their defensive line just
as the Bagdonas girl steps up next to Ryan.

It takes you a second to slow to a stop, and a
second or two longer before you have a chance to turn
around and join them with one of your two-by-fours in
hand, but by then the zombies are only a few feet away,
and you leave the pleasantries and thank yous for later
while you focus on the fight at hand. From your best
estimate there seems to be just under a dozen of the
creatures in all, and while you suspect this is a larger
number than the group around you was initially planning
for, what with their choice of weapons being instruments
and not something a bit deadlier, you give the four of
them credit for holding the line and sticking to it.

Since you have the makeshift weapon with the
longest reach and the zombie in the lead is closer to you
than any of the others, you end up making first contact.
From there, the battle gets violent and bloody as zombies
are literally beaten down, impaled, and beheaded. You
honestly didn’t get a chance to see what each of them do
because you are too preoccupied with your own defense,
but you know Chris used his guitar to great effect as he
did his best impersonation of Kurt Cobain from Nirvana or
Nikki Sixx, the bassist of Mötley Crüe, both of whom were
famous for smashing guitars at the end of concerts. Ryan,
as you would find out later, had far more than just the
two drumsticks you saw him with and used them to
impale downed zombies through the eyes who were
either stunned or simply knocked down. Likewise, the
Bagdonas girl used the cymbals she picked up to behead
zombies by repeatedly striking them in the neck with the
edge of the metal cymbals. The only other one with a
musical instrument, other than yourself, was Matt Smith
who decidedly beat the heads of several zombies as if
they were piñatas and he was a ten year old Mexican boy
desperate to fulfil a sweet tooth craving. Unfortunately,
like the ten year old described, his strikes were weak and
never enough to break up the goody jars, in this case the
zombie’s heads, on the first, second, or even third strikes.
He was consequently brought down by a group of four of
them when he was cornered and found that he lacked the
maneuverability needed to swing the broomstick. His
unintentional self-sacrifice, however, did serve as the
tipping point in the battle which secured the side of the
living with the decided win, because as the four on him
were preoccupied with Matt’s tasty flesh, you and the
remaining people left standing were able to come up
behind them and destroy them all one by one.