Zombie High (10 page)

You have no idea if the zombies have some way of
communicating with each other, but you don’t want to
give it a chance to find out either. Raising your foot high
into the air, you stomp down as hard as you can on the
back of the zombie’s neck and hear an audible crack for
your efforts. Beneath your foot, the zombie’s face sags to
the tile floor, and its arms go limp on either side of you.

That is the good news.
The bad news is that as you look up from the thing
that you just killed, you notice that all eyes, including that
of the zombie with only one good one remaining after
someone or something chewed off half its face, are on
you. You blew what little cover you had, and as you turn
around to run for the door you see that three of them are
in your way and advancing towards you.
As the teeth of all the zombies begin to bite into
you, one thought crosses your mind:
With this many of
them attacking, at least there won’t be enough of me left
to reanimate as one of them.

Turning to leave, you find that several other
zombies, upright ones who can do more than just crawl
after you, are already beginning to sniff the air. The jig, as
they say, is up. You know there is no way to sneak your
way out of here.

Cold hands wrap themselves around your leg, and
you look down to see the half-zombie clinging to you,
pulling itself closer as its entrails continue to drag out
along behind it. Somehow, it makes a sound like a
starving creature despite having no stomach left, and its
mouth opens wide as it prepares to bite you. The teeth
that are coming for your skin appear to be stained red,
and you become frantic as you try to get free of its grip.
Lifting your leg, you try to shake him off, but it seems like
he has a vise-like death grip on your leg. The zombie
cranes its neck and moves closer, and you look around
quickly trying to find a weapon. To your right, you spot a
fire extinguisher and lunge for it, taking your leg
momentarily out of range of the zombie’s teeth but still
not able to get out of its grasp. As the zombie’s teeth
snap down on nothing but air, your fingers close around
the handle of the fire extinguisher.

In all your years at St. Mary’s, you have yet to see a
fight in the high school. Something about the fact that it
is a religious school, or perhaps because people honestly
care more here, no one seems to carry that anger around
with them. That is, until now. Lifting the fire extinguisher
high overhead, you let loose a primal scream and bring
the smooth metal canister down on the zombie.
Unfortunately, you miss its head and the heavy metal
smashes down into one of its forearms. The bone snaps
audibly under the blow, but the creature doesn’t seem to
notice. Swinging again, the fire extinguisher glances off
the zombie’s head, cracking it open, allowing dark black
blood to ooze from the wound. The sight sickens you, but
then you hear its whine. It’s not a whine of pain,
however, it’s more like a whine of frustration as it
continues to try to bite your leg.

Lashing out, you kick him in the face, and are
shocked at how easily it seems to cave in on itself.
Whatever this virus, or whatever, is that is turning people
into zombies, must be accelerating the decay process
exponentially. When you pull back and look, you see that
the zombie’s jaw has been ripped off and hangs by a few
threads of tissue on one side. Lifting the fire extinguisher
one last time, you smash it into the cracked skull and feel
it sink into the squishy mass that was once the person’s
brains. The zombie immediately goes limp, all signs of
animation gone.

Chest heaving as you try to draw in enough oxygen,
you consider yourself lucky for a moment. You just took
down a zombie. Then you look around and realize if it
took that much work for one of them, destroying the rest
is going to be near impossible.

Unwilling to give up, you pull the pin on the fire
extinguisher and squeeze the handle while pointing the
hose at the closest zombie. As you do, a cloud of cold
white fog comes pouring out of the nozzle, and you
desperately hope it will in some way buy you enough time
to get away. At the very least, if the canister is a bit
lighter, you hope you will be able to swing it into their
heads easier. Unfortunately, you never get the chance.
Zombies don’t care about the gasses pouring out of the
fire extinguisher. They have no use for oxygen anyway.
They just want your flesh.

Within moments, you find yourself at the bottom
of a pile of ravenously hungry zombies, and you are the
main course. With any luck, they’ll kill you quickly, and
not make you suffer as they strip the flesh from your
body.

Seeing the zombies milling around in the nurse’s
office, you realize that there is no safe way of getting
through to the first aid kit. Somehow, you’re going to
have to find a way to distract them or get them out of
there.

Re-entering the main office, you look around for
something you might be able to use to distract the
zombies. In one corner you spot a megaphone which Miss
Ski uses out near the busses to direct traffic over the loud
noise of the diesel engines but using it requires you to be
on the other end, and the zombies would just be after you
then. Next to the computer sits a small TV set used for
the school’s closed circuit camera system. Stepping over
the secretary without looking at her, you turn on the TV
and begin flipping through the channels to see different
parts of the school.

Like most schools, none of the cameras are in any
of the classrooms, but they do give you a good view of the
hallways and the area immediately surrounding the
school. From what you can tell, most of the halls are
pretty clear with only the occasional zombie stumbling
around. At first, this confuses you, as you know that there
are over five hundred fifty students and at least three
dozen teachers and staff members, but then you realize
that with the lockdown in place, almost everyone would
be in a classroom. Hopefully they’re safe in there and
didn’t just lock themselves in with one of the infected.

Flipping the channel a few more times, you cycle
through some of the outside cameras, seeing zombies
gathered around the front and side of the building. On
one channel, you come across a view of the back of the
school and spot Mr. Kevin Mann, the maintenance guy,
working on clearing up the mess from an old tree that fell
in last week’s storm. Mr. Mann, with his ear protection
and goggles in place, is just starting up the big old wood
chipper when the first of the zombies comes around the
side of the school. You know that there is no way for you
to get to him in time, and there are no speakers which will
reach him out there, so you pray that he’ll be able to
make it as you watch.

Mr. Mann picks up the first large branch and begins
to feed it into the chipper when the zombie gets close
enough to make its first attack. Instinctively, Mr. Mann
raises his gloved hand and the zombie’s mouth snaps
down on it. You can’t tell from the camera’s view point if
it was hard enough to break through to Mr. Mann’s skin,
but you watch in astonishment as he reacts, punching the
zombie in the side of the head in order to free his hand
from its teeth. The zombie stumbles to the side and then
makes another attempt to get at Mr. Mann.

The look of horror on his face is similar to those
you’ve seen in countless movies, but he doesn’t hesitate
when he realizes his life is in danger. Picking up a log that
has to weigh at least forty or fifty pounds, Mr. Mann
throws it directly at the zombie’s chest, forcing it off
balance and into the waiting hole of the wood chipper’s
mouth.

As you continue watching, Mr. Mann peels off his
glove, only to find that no blood seems to be apparent.
You almost cheer out loud, catching yourself only at the
last moment, not wanting to draw any undue attention
your way.

As Mr. Mann hops into his electric cart and speeds
off camera, you wonder if there is any way you can meet
up with him or if he can supply you with some weapons
like an axe or something. Unfortunately, without a phone
you really have no way of contacting him.

You flip through a few more channels on the TV
looking for other survivors, but finding no one in view, you
return to looking around the office for something to get
the zombies out of the nurse’s area. There are plenty of
three ring binders beneath the counter and a photocopier
and printer, but none of those look like they’ll help. After
a couple of minutes of searching, however, your eyes land
on the microphone for the public address system, and an
idea sparks in your mind. Looking over the control board,
you see that you have a couple of options. You can do a
school-wide announcement, or you can select a specific
location to speak to. Looks like you have another choice
to make.

Hoping to be able to draw all of the zombies in the
school to a central location, you decide to just select one
location. Considering where the nurse’s office is, you
want to also make sure that it will be far enough away
from there as possible. Ultimately, you choose the senior
lounge, figuring that if anyone was in there, teachers
would have pulled them out when the school went into
lockdown, and the room should be clear.

Next, you have to figure out what you want to say
into the microphone to draw them there. Somehow, you
doubt regular talking is going to be enough, and you don’t
want to have to stand here the whole time either when
you have to make your way to the nurse’s office while
they’re gone. That’s when the idea hits you.

Starting just a few months ago, the school started
playing music over the PA system as students transitioned
from one class to the next. The music was obviously
preselected, and only a few select CDs were played so that
foul language and inappropriate content could be
avoided. Looking into the CD player now, you spot a disk
ready to go and smile when you read the name. Pulling
the microphone closer to the radio, you flip its switch to
‘on’, and press ‘play’ allowing Pharrell William’s song,
“Happy”, to flow through the school speakers in the
senior lounge.

As the song goes into its first chorus, you hear the
hungry moans of the zombies coming down the hall, and
you duck so that they don’t see you and decide you may
be a more convenient meal than that which waits in the
senior lounge. It takes them almost the entire length of
the song before they are all past, and you hit the ‘repeat’
button before you venture out into the hall.

Cautiously opening the door, you peer out through
the crack in the door finding the area deserted. Figuring
now is your chance, you open the door a bit wider and slip
out quietly heading for the nurse’s office once again, this
time keeping your head low and your footsteps extra soft.

When you reach the door, you peek your head up
quickly, getting a glimpse of the inside of the nurse’s
office through the window in the door before ducking
back down just as fast. As far as you can tell, the room
looks empty, and so you gently pull the door open and
step in, throwing a look back to the hall just to make sure
nothing disgusting is coming up behind you intent on
making you its next meal.

Too bad you didn’t take a better look inside.
Just as the door opens wide enough, a zombie’s
hand reaches out and snags your foot. Surprised, you fail
to react in time, and the crawler manages to pull you off
balance, and you land hard on your butt. Looking down,
you realize that the zombie never had a chance of making
it out of the room because it had no legs. Somewhere
around its navel, the body just stops, and its guts trail off
behind it.
Whether it’s because the zombie only has half a
body to pull around, or despite that fact, the little guy is
fast, and you find his teeth sinking into your leg before
you have the opportunity to kick him off. Knowing that
you’re a goner now and will soon be just another zombie,
your brain takes a bizarre twist, and you wonder if you’ll
be invited down to the senior lounge by all the other
zombies where you’ll find that you’re the life of the party,
and the “Happy” song plays over and over on repeat for
the rest of your undead life.

Picking up the microphone, you flip all of the
switches to ‘on’, and say, “GOOOOOOD morning St.
Mary’s Catholic High,” drawing out the words like the
shock jock disc jockeys do on the radio. Finding your
groove, you continue in the same overly loud voice, “I just
wanted to give a warm and lively greeting to all of our
undead visitors and to the freshly converted. For those of
you out there still alive and listening who haven’t figured
this all out, zombies have attacked the school, and are,
just like in every horror movie ever made, intent on eating
your flesh. So, before I become one of the ungrateful
dead myself, I figured I would let any other living souls out
there know that there is at least one other person here
with you in this nightmare, and to the stupid zombies who
are too brain dead to understand me, you missed one,
you walking hunks of decaying flesh.”

As you move to flip the microphone off, you notice
a blinking white light on the console next to label reading,
Room 104, Mr. Castle’s room. You recall that Mr. Castle
used to be in the military and did a lot of work overseas.
You’ve heard rumors that he was a sniper back then and
was either in some kind of elite group like the Seals or
Special Forces, or that he at least worked with them. How
he became a math teacher at your school, however, is a
complete mystery. No matter what, you figure if anyone
is going to survive the zombie apocalypse around here, it’s
probably going to be that guy. Hoping he’ll tell you to
come join him, and he has a plan to get everyone out, you
toggle the switches on the board so that you’re just
speaking to his room.