Zombie High Chronicles (Book 1) (17 page)
“Why not?”
He hangs his head. “It’s Darby.”
“What? How is that even possible? She was standing guard with Austin.”
I glance over to find Austin sitting against the back wall with his knees to his chest and his head hung low as he sobs. “He doesn’t know how she got out. She went to the bathroom before we left and he never saw her again after that. He says he went looking for her but when he checked the bathroom she was gone. He had only barely got back to his post at the door when we arrived and rushed in.”
“But that’s impossible. We checked the gym and found nothing. There couldn’t be another one of those things in the school.”
“Obviously, there was,” Flynn whispers and drops his head.
Mac steps up and clears his throat. “I’m sure sorry for your loss but we’ve got bigger issues to deal with.”
“Like what?” Austin asks, lifting his head high enough for everyone to see his tears.
“Like how she managed to get out when that room was locked down. You’ve got a hole somewhere and if she was smart enough to get out, she’s smart enough to lead something back in.”
I fall back against the wall and close my eyes. I’ve lost one of my own to carelessness. Austin was right. I should never have sent anyone with him. My fear for his safety put someone else in danger. From now on I can’t risk trusting the word of other people. If I want to know that a space is cleared I am going to have to do it myself.
“Fine. Let’s deal with the facts. Darby went to the bathroom and never came back. Austin obviously didn’t see any foul play or he would have alerted us so she was attacked somewhere else. I need a team assembled and armed. We have a hole to fill and possibly a Dead Head to take down. Any volunteers?”
“No need for that, Roan.” Mac steps forward. With a snap of his fingers, four men appear. “We’ll handle that. You take care of your man over there. Guilt over the loss of an innocent can wreak havoc on a man’s mind.”
“Thank you, Mac.”
As his men moved off, I turn to Flynn. “She can’t have been bitten more than an hour ago, probably less. That means she turned, or whatever it's called, fast. We need to get a better understand of how this is happening.”
“It’s the bite mark, obviously.” I look up to see Roderick sitting on the stairwell.
“You’re supposed to be keeping an eye on everyone upstairs.
“And I have but Sammy is playing the dutiful nurse so I felt that my keen intellect might come in handy. Apparently, I was correct in my assumption. The bite marks are new, correct? That makes it easy to theorize this is the site of transference.”
“Ok,” I turn to face him. “Why would they be afraid of the light?”
Roderick thinks for a moment, tapping his finger to his lip. “Perhaps it is not fear at all but a natural reaction. A nocturnal animal forced into daylight would be blinded by the brilliance of the sun. Perhaps it is nothing more than an evolutionary advancement that has caused them to rely on the night.”
“Well, ain’t that just great,” Clockman says, resting his gun against his hip. “Killer things with a hankering for human meat who have built in night vision. Nothing to worry about there, huh?”
Flynn starts to bite back but I stop him. “No, maybe Clockman and Roderick are right? What if these things rely on the night to see?”
“So what?” Austin says, using the wall to help him to his feet.
Several of the people around me slowly begin to draw closer as I think aloud. “What are those lights out there powered by, Mac?”
“Most solar power but they can be rigged to run off electricity if needs be.”
“And do you have someone in your crew capable of that?”
“Sure,” he nods and points to a man. “Smalls is about the best handyman I know. He’s pretty good with just about anything you throw at him. Why?”
“I think we need to use this downtime to prepare. Find every reflective surface you can find and pile it up here.” I turn and look at the people around me, finally feeling as if I have a plan. “We’re going to light proof this place.”
“What about Darby?” I look up to see that Ember has come down from her post above.
“Are we sure that she has turned?” I look to Flynn.
“Darby was eating that dude’s stomach, Roan. She’s gone.”
With a heavy sigh, I look up to Ember and nod. “Take her out.”
I feel empty inside when Ember turns to follow the command to kill Darby for the second time. It’s my fault. I was in charge. I should have been more thorough. One look at Austin reveals that he has shouldered the guilt but I know where it truly rests.
“Let’s get moving people. We only have so many hours of daylight until they return.”
People scramble to get to work as I walk through the commotion, numb to it all. Never before have I felt the overwhelming weight of leadership. I was a fool to think that I could keep these people safe. I knew there would be casualties but not because of carelessness. My focus should have been sharper and my emotions kept in better check.
If we are going to make it through the night I am going to have to step up and make the hard decisions.
“Roan?”
I turn to see Mac standing at the front door with his binoculars raised. “You need to come and see this.”
“Ember will take care of Darby and securing the gym takes priority.”
“No.” He pulls back to look at me. “I think this does.”
I know by the tone of his voice that whatever this is, it’s enough to make this badass of a man worry.
Hurrying to his side, I lean over his shoulder to where he points out a man standing on top of a school bus, between the fences. I have no idea how he got up there and no one else seems to have noticed his presence but I recognize him as the one who was walking along the fence, trailing his fingers over the metal. “It’s only one of them, Mac. Ember can take him out from upstairs—”
That’s when the Dead Head turns and looks toward the building. His eyes are not like the others, lacking in the red streaks that we have seen before. His eyes are pure white, wide and unblinking. His skin is pallid and flaking in places. There is a wide chunk of flesh missing from his cheek and stretching across his nose. His left foot is turned inward and bent at an awkward angle as he shifts closer to the fence.
He lifts his nose to the air and sniffs then his head jerks around to look straight at me.
I cry out and stumble back from the window. Mac catches me just before my knees give out and Flynn is instantly at my side as the Dead Heads steps forward. Filthy, blood-soaked fingers curl around the fence as he locks his gaze on me.
“Roan? You ok, man?” Flynn slaps my cheek.
A wave of nausea wells up within me and I fight to stuff it back down. “I know him.”
“Yeah, I figure we will all see someone we know eventually. I guess that’s part of it,” Mac says but I cut him off.
“No.” I look up at both of them without really seeing them. “You don’t understand. That thing out that is my dad. I think he tracked me here.”
Looking up into the faces of the people around me, I know that when night comes my dad will return and with him an army of our friends, families and the soldiers who were sworn to protect us. I don’t know how we will make it through the night, but I’m not going down without a fight!
Thank you so much for joining me for the first journey into the Zombie High Chronicles. Find out what happens next in book 2.
My name is Poppy Harris.
I am fifteen years old.
I am not infected.
I didn’t mind going to school in the Safe Zone. It kept my mind distracted and my hands busy but I should have known nothing lasted forever. The world beyond the perimeter fence still existed but it was different now. At least the men with guns guarding the fence smiled from time to time, but on that final day…no one was smiling.
The Stiffs ate someone. No one would tell me who but I saw all of the blood. It had to be a mistake. The Stiffs weren’t supposed to be dangerous. My twin sister Willow said that they were just misunderstood and they attacked us in an attempt to get our attention but I’m not so sure. They seemed really angry. I overhead Roan and some of the soldiers talking about making a stand before we were forced to go back underground. I couldn’t go back in that concrete hole without the sun on my face or grass between my toes. I would rather die.
Maybe Willow was right about the Stiffs. I didn’t want to believe that they actually meant to kill anyone. Accidents happened all the time, right? Maybe we could find a way to live in peace before things escalated too quickly and someone else got eaten
Life at Zombie High was about to get a lot bloodier.
Author Amy Miles has always been a bit of a dreamer. Growing up as an only child, and a military brat to boot, she spent countless hours escaping into the pages of a book, only to spend the following days creating a new idea of how to twist up the story to make it unique.
Since becoming a mother, Amy has slowly nourished her love of the written word while snatching writing time in the midst of soiled diapers, tumbling over Legos and peering around mounds of laundry and dishes that never seem to go away. Once her only son started school, Amy was free to let her fingers dive into dark mythology, tales of betrayal and love, and explore human nature in its rawest form. Her love of seeing the world from a different angle bloomed.
Amy is the author of several novels, including her popular young adult immortal books, The Arotas Series, which are an Amazon and iBooks bestselling series. Unwilling to be defined by any one genre, she proceeded to flip over to a science fiction/fantasy based idea with her Rising Trilogy. She then dove into contemporary romance with her novel, Captivate and explored the depths of her own faith with In Your Embrace.
She is currently working on completing her Immortal Rose trilogy, a prequel to her Arotas novels and her Zombie High Chronicles.
Want to know what Amy will be working on next?
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