Darlings of Paranormal Romance (Anthology) (130 page)

Brett looked at him as if to say
'”what the hell will you do with that?” but shrugged and led the
way to the entrance.

The school was eerily quiet as we
walked out of the janitor closet, one by one. I was going to have
to hurry so we could get back to safety quickly. I had an uneasy
feeling that the gray people were waiting right around the
corner.

“
Hurry, girl.” Brett
smiled at me and we all three walked down the hall towards the
bathroom. Ted and his bucket broke free from us at that point and
went to the front of the school.

I rushed into the bathroom and
immediately went into the first stall and sighed with relief as I
finally got to go. I thought I heard something moving in the next
stall, but when I bent down to look under the stall, I saw nothing.
I finished up and went over to the sink to wash up a bit. I heard
someone moan and snapped my head up, looking around me. There was
no one in the bathroom with me; I was clearly going
crazy.

Then I heard her. “Hello, is anyone
there? Please help me, you have to help me.”

It sounded a lot like Ms. Hamrick and
this made me a little wary, as I thought back to her disappearance
from the classroom. I felt silly, as I inched along the stalls,
slowly moving towards the sound of her voice.

You know those moments that you think
back on, and go “I wish I could take that back”? I was about to
have that moment.

“
Ms. Hamrick?” I
cautiously started walking through the bathroom, pushing the stalls
open.

“
Cassie, oh, thank God.
Cassie, I need help.”

I finally got to the stall that the
voice was coming from and pushed it open. I wasn’t prepared for
what I saw when I opened the door. She was propped up on the toilet
with her arm around the back of it. Her hair looked even more
unkempt now than her crazy eyebrows. The part that I wasn’t
prepared for was that one of her legs had been chewed off at the
knee. It was obvious, by the jagged bite marks left on her
remaining skin, they had been bitten off of her. I was horrified at
what I was seeing, and I froze, not knowing what to do.

That is when Ms. Hamrick lunged off
of the toilet and grabbed my arm. She got my finger in her mouth,
which disgusted and terrified me. There was only a small sharp pain
as I thought a tooth penetrated my skin. She fell against me; her
one good leg fighting to stay up. I kicked her leg out from under
her and ran away from her.

She was pulling herself, by her arms,
across the bathroom floor, toward me, and I did the only thing I
could think of. As I looked down, I could see the skin around what
was left of her leg was turning black. I picked up the trashcan and
ripped the lid off. I put the trashcan over her head so that she
could not see which way we went and ran out into the hall to warn
Brett and Ted. That probably wouldn’t stop her for very long, but,
I had to think, not having a leg would slow her down a
bit.

Chapter 5

That’s Not Good

I ran out into the hall and prepared
to scream for Brett, but as I opened my mouth, a hand clamped over
it. I was being pulled back to the lockers on my right and I was
struggling as hard as I could. Whoever had me was strong. If it was
one of those things, I was going to get bitten. No matter how hard
I struggled, I could not break free of the grasp that held
me.

I was relieved when Brett turned me
around and put a finger to his lips. He grabbed my hand and we
walked together, over to the other side of the hall, where we could
look around the corner.

There were two of them and they were
headed our way. One of them was a young boy in pajamas, and I
paused for a minute to think of how sad that was. His hair was
messed up like he had just rolled out of bed. He was clutching a
teddy bear that looked like it had taken a mud bath. Here was some
little kid who was now a mindless gray drone. My heart ached for
him.

He let out a vicious growl as the
other one, an old woman, bumped into him. The old woman was using a
walker, which she used to knock the boy down with as she heard him
growl. They stood face-to-face, growling at each other, and then,
like they had forgotten what all the fuss was about, went back to
slowly moving down the hall.

After I got over the shock of the
gaping hole in the old lady’s arm, I couldn’t help staring at the
back of the little boy’s head as he walked down the hall. It was
only half there, with what I could only assume were brains poking
through.

Suddenly, I didn’t think it was sad,
but more terrifying.

“
We have to get Ted and
get back to the closet.” Brett was slowly pulling me back toward
the direction of the closet. I caught site of Ted creeping in our
direction. He was holding the bucket out in front of him like some
kind of shield. We all had to be quiet, and hurry at the same
time.

They might move slowly, but we could
not chance them seeing where we were hiding. If they did, they
would stop at nothing to get in. I don’t know why I knew this, but,
after seeing Ms. Hamrick in the bathroom, I was beginning to think
these people were not just crazy.

When we were all safely back in the
room, we all started talking at once, and everyone was whispering
so no one knew what anyone was saying.

Brett held up his hand, “Ted, then
Cassie, then me.”

We both turned our attention to Ted,
who sat right down on the floor and looked up at us. “We are in
trouble, guys; there are at least a hundred, if not more of them,
outside the school. They just seem to be walking into each other,
but we probably would not stand a chance with that many if we tried
to make it out of here.”

I resisted the urge to make a crack
about him taking all of them out with his bucket. This was not a
time to joke. The boys looked at me and I realized it was my
turn.

“
Ms. Hamrick was in the
bathroom stall; I didn’t see her at first because one of her legs
was eaten off. She had the other propped up out of sight. She is
one of them, guys; she tried to attack me. I placed a trashcan over
her head and ran out of the bathroom.” They were both staring at me
like I had grown an extra nose.

Brett looked thoughtful for a minute,
“It’s spreading, and they gave her what was wrong with them when
they chewed off her leg. That must have been really gross.” The
grin on his face told me he was thinking about it in a way that
said; how awesome is that?

Men, I rolled my eyes at the
thought.

I looked at my watch. It wasn’t even
six o’clock yet, but I felt like it had been hours since I spied
that first man through the window.

We all looked at each other trying to
figure out what to talk about. What does one talk about when the
world is going to hell?

“
So, those things out
there are what, exactly?”

Ted ran his hand through his hair and
looked at us for an answer. In that moment, he looked like a scared
little boy and not the smart ass goof ball he had been.

“
Zombies, they have to be.
You saw how they act, and that little boy was missing part of his
head. There is no reason he should be up and walking around.” Brett
said the words like it was no big deal. He almost acted like he had
been expecting something like this to happen.

“
Zombies,” saying the word
out loud made it seem more real, and I was happy to keep pretending
I was in some horrible nightmare, not living out a real life horror
movie.

Ted and Brett moved about the room as
I watched. I wasn’t sure what they were looking for. I assumed it
was weapons as I watched Ted hold a broom like a sword and swat it
through the air. I would have laughed if it wasn’t sad that it
might come down to fighting for our lives with the things we could
find in here.

I started to look around for things
myself. Brett decided that we should come up with a game plan in
case the walking dead infiltrated our little room. I toed a tarp in
the back corner, hoping it didn’t have something icky under
it.

“
We know that they can’t
live without their heads, right? If you separate the head, they
should die.” Brett seemed to be asking me, more than
telling.

“
As far as I know, I mean
that is based on the movies I have seen.” I always wondered why
people can’t run away from a zombie hoard because they move so
slowly. I understood now that it didn’t matter if they moved
slowly. If there were a few of them, they could easily corner
you.

“
They also like to eat
each other, right?” Ted was absent mindedly wielding his broom
sword around and looked a little lost.

“
Not sure about that one,
Ted,” Brett walked over and put his hands on his friend’s
shoulders, “Chill with the broom, dude.

We spent the next few hours talking
about all the Zombie movies we had watched. Having made a pile of
‘weapons’ consisting of two by fours, a nail gun, the brooms, and
some other odds and ends, we felt a little safer. We laughed at the
Twinkie obsessed lead in Zombieland, and remarked at how fast those
Zombies were. Trying to distract ourselves from what was going on
outside was only going to work for a little while. When it was
closer to eleven, I yawned and looked over at Brett, who had a
pocket knife, whittling a piece of wood into a stake.

“
They aren’t vampires,
Brett.” I was amused that he had managed to keep a pocket knife and
a cell phone on his person without getting caught.

“
I know, but sticking this
through their eyes will certainly hit the brain, Cassie.” He
demonstrated by jabbing the stake in the air.

“
What are we going to do?”
Ted was yawning now, and he was wondering what was going to happen
to us when we finally had to leave our safe haven. We all
were.

“
We are just going to have
to get some rest tonight, and figure out what to do tomorrow. It is
probably going to get dark soon. I locked the closet, but we should
probably sleep in shifts to make sure that someone is looking out
for us at all times.” Brett was really taking command of this
situation.

“
When did you get so
smart?” I teased, but I thought I saw his cheeks redden a
bit.

“
I watch a lot of
television, Cassie.”

He walked over to the side of the
room as if he was trying to determine where the best place to lay
down would be. I stood beside Ted and watched him as he lay down on
the floor and then flipped around a few times. Standing back up, he
was still looking all around the room, but he shook his
head.

“
That will have to do; I
think anywhere we sleep on this floor will be uncomfortable.” The
look he gave me was almost apologetic. He walked over and pulled a
tarp down off the only shelf in the room. He folded it a few times
and put it on the ground where he had been lying.

“
Cassie, you sleep here.”
He threw down a box, from the corner of the room, and flattened it
with his feet. “Ted, you sleep here. I’ll take the first
shift.”

“
Gee, thanks.” Ted was
being sarcastic but he went over and stretched out with his head on
the piece of cardboard.

I decided there was no use arguing;
besides, I was tired. I put my head on the tarp and tried to get
comfortable. I thought it was really sweet of Brett to make me a
pillow.

I watched Brett go set up his post in
front of the entrance. He laid the two-by- four across his lap and
sat straight up. I turned my back to him and stretched my legs out
on the hard concrete floor. I silently hoped there were no more
spiders around like my friend from earlier.

He was such a nice guy. I un-balled
the fist I had been making since I ran from the bathroom. I
examined my index finger and saw the small line of blood. Ms.
Hamrick had definitely nicked me with her teeth. That’s not good, I
thought, as I examined the cut; it wasn’t clotting, and even though
it was tiny, it hurt something awful.

I kept my finger wound to myself.
Surely, you would need a full- fledged bite from one of those
people to turn into them. I thought that I had it all figured out.
I finally let my eyes flutter closed, careful to tuck my finger
underneath the tarp. I would have to lie if they asked how it
happened. Aside from a little nausea and an overwhelming fear of
what might happen, I felt fine.

I drifted off into an uneasy
sleep.

Chapter 6

Trapped

I looked at my watch when I woke up,
noticing my body was stiff. It was a little after three in the
morning. After I woke up, it had taken me a couple of minutes to
realize where I was. The panic I felt was starting to subside as
the events of the day came rushing back to me.

I looked over to see Brett still
sitting by the entrance to our hideaway. His head was nodding a
bit, indicating to me that he was ready to switch guards. I looked
over at Ted, who was curled up asleep on his cardboard box. The
snoring coming from him gave the appearance that he was in a pretty
deep sleep.

I sat up and stretched my aching
muscles. Clearing my throat to get his attention, I stood
up.