Zombie High Chronicles (Book 1) (5 page)

“What the hell do you think that is all about?” I hear Lathan ask but no one answers. A few people remain oblivious, chatting away in the seats ahead of me but a few, Ember, Vaughn and Flynn have turned in their seats to look at me.

I don’t know why they look to me. It’s not like I’m going to march out there and demand answers. If they want to questions how things are run around here they need to do it themselves.

But if I were to guess, I would say that our school has just been deemed the emergency fallback facility. It is centrally located on a small rise that allows good line of sight in any direction, is double gated and can house a lot of supplies. If the perimeter gates were to fall and a flood of human raiders or Dead Heads did decide to storm the base, I imagine this would be where the soldiers would make their final stand. At least that’s what I would do.

Each of the doors appears to have had been retrofitted with sliding metal bars that lock into place and help to fortify the first floor. All it would take is a blast door to be added to the basement and there would be enough space to hold around three hundred people for a time, depending on how extensive their supplies run. There are far more people than that living in the Zone but if it came to a time of needing that basement there would already be a lot of casualties.

One last thought strikes me as the bus pulls around the small semicircle and the brakes hiss and door opens. If the military truly did intend for this building to become a fallback, I would imagine it would also become a detonation site. With the base overrun, the government would not allow vital information, technology or supplies to fall into the wrong hands. Raider activity is at an all-time high in local cities. At night, we can see the fires burning in the distance and hear the gunfire that ricochetes around the city center. If it comes to it, someone will light the proverbial fuse and watch this place blow sky high.

Which pretty much puts me taking a chemistry exam while sitting right above ground zero. If I’m right, and I have a sinking feeling that I am, it’s not exactly a comforting thought.

Despite the chatter that usually fills the bus each morning as we ride up to the red three-story brick building, a hush has fallen over us as students rise from their seats and descend onto the sidewalk. Four soldiers stand at the ready to unlock the front doors and allow us access to the school. That isn’t normal and even the most unintelligent among us can feel the shift.

I know that the military doesn’t actually care that we continue our education. Truth be told, I think they just want us out of the way, contained and under guard to make sure none of us rebellious teens do anything stupid. That and it makes the parents more willing to help out when they know their kids are under lock and key should anything happen.

The trouble is, I think our danger level has just been shoved into the stratosphere and we’ve been told squat.

As I step down the steps and pause on the sidewalk to look up at the building, I can’t really say why I feel almost comfortable here. Bars and fences usually make me squirm but today, staring up at the building I feel different. I guess it’s just hoping that I won’t ever see it again after today. That all of this mess will be left firmly behind me and we can start over.

No soldiers. No patrols. No blood tests. And most importantly no rules.

Or maybe this sudden feeling of acceptance is simply for the fact that each of us has tried to make this place our own, starting with the name.

“Welcome to hell, boys and girls.” I grab my backpack and tug it down over my shoulder.  Turning my face up toward the building, I grin at my handiwork.

Splashed across the face of the building are the red spray painted words ZOMBIE HIGH.

3

We are so officially screwed!

Staring blankly at the jumbled mess of scribbled quotes on the chalkboard ahead of me, I know that not even on my best day would I give a rats ass about Shakespeare. While the girls around me seem to be thoroughly enjoying their time with the master of love, I am debating between ripping out my own fingernails or shoving my pen into my eyeball. At that point, it is a total tossup.

“Alright kids, it’s time for lunch,” the middle-aged tracksuit loving English teacher announces as she closes her book. I am pretty sure that Mrs. Simpson is not the most qualified for teaching English, judging by the fact that she insists on spelling my name Rone instead of Roan on a daily basis, but whatever. What else can you expect from a former preschool teacher with inch thick reading glasses?

Chairs screech as they are pushed back from long rows of tables and the murmur of voices fills the air. There isn't any bell or building wide announcement signaling the change in class. Neither of those is allowed as it might attract too much attention. Sure, because the Dead Heads are just dying to give their two cents on Shakespeare’s sonnet.

And what about those damn crack of dawn bugle calls? Shouldn't those be banned as well? Seems only fair to me.

“What do you think we’ll have today? Vegetarian pasta in a bag or one of those nasty BBQ beef sandwiches that taste like cardboard?” Flynn asks as he falls into step with me when I enter the hall.

“As long as it’s not that chili macaroni I can down it.”

“Don’t be hating on the chili mac, man,” Vaughn laughs as he catches up to us, throwing his arms over both of our shoulders. I shove his arm off and pick up speed as I head for the stairs. I don’t really mind the guy. He is good for a laugh now and then, usually at his own expense but I have a strict a no touching policy to uphold.

“Whatever.”  I turn my head to look in a side classroom and stop so abruptly that Vaughn nearly runs right over me.

“Dude, what’s your deal?”

“Shh,” I wave at him to be quiet then duck into the empty room. Being on the third floor affords us a prison bar free view. Dropping my bag to the ground, I hurry over to the wall and press back against it to peer out undetected.

“What are you looking at?”  Vaughn leans against the window beside me and blows a fog bubble to draw in with his finger.

“Get down.”  I yank him backward and practically tackle him to the floor.

Vaughn shoves me off and scrambles to his feet, brushing himself off. “Flynn, you’re guy here has some serious issues.”

Flynn shoots me a curious glance and leans up onto his toes to look out but stays far enough back that I don't have to tackle him too.  

“What am I missing, Roan?”

“Seriously? You don't see it?”

Flynn shakes his head while Vaughn grumbles beside him, rubbing at his elbow where he landed hard when I took him down.

“I'm starting to think you people are in some of thinking for yourselves. Just go stand over and there and tell me what you see.”

Vaughn doesn't move but Flynn follows the direction where I'm pointing. He presses against the wall just as I had done and looks out. For a moment I see his gaze flitting around, unfocused on any one thing, but then several shades of color drain from his face.

“Oh shit,” he whispers.

“You see it too?”

Without taking his eyes off of the window, he slowly nods. His adams apple bobs as he motions for Vaughn to join him. “Dude, you really need to see this.”

Vaughn shoots me a nasty glare. “If this is your way of getting me to spy on Sargent Tompkins taking a piss again you just need to know that payback is a bitch.”

“Just shut up and get over here.”  

Shifting just enough for Vaughn to take his position, Flynn points out the direction that Vaughn should look. The once cocky smile shifts into a frozen look of confusion, mixed with no small amount of bed wetting fear.  When he turns to look at me I know that I wasn’t seeing things after all.

“She’s just standing there,” he whispers.

I close my eyes, instantly bringing up the image of the woman in the floral nightgown that I saw only a few hours before. She should have been miles from here by now. Apart from the general appearance of decay, she looks to be in far better shape than many of the other Dead Heads which means she is fully mobile.

“We passed her on the way in this morning,” I say as I lean in to look over their shoulders. “She heard the fate close.”

“What do you mean she heard it?” Flynn glances back at me.

“I mean she stopped, turned and then changed directions.”

“You're sure?”

I nod. “That gate is a quarter of a mile from here. She walked all the way back here.”

“Hey, Flynn?” Vaughn’s voice shakes when he speaks, “Why is that Stiff looking at the gate like that?”

“Because she’s thinking,” I reply for them. Two sets of eyes turn to look at me as if I have just earned a one-way ticket to the nut house.

“They don’t do that.”  Flynn shoves his hands deep in his pockets but not before I notice the way his fingers have begun to tremble.

“They didn’t, but they do now. Look at the way she's gripping the fence.”

I duck instinctively when the woman’s gaze lifts to our building. I don’t know why I flinch. It isn't like she can hurt me or even seen me from this height, but I feel an irrational need to hide.

“Look! That whole panel of fencing is shaking. Shit, Roan, do you think she's doing that?” Flynn’s eyes are wide when he turns to look back at me.

Of course, she is. They can see the truth just as well as I can. I just don’t think they want to fully admit it.

“Why is she here?”  Flynn cranes his neck to see the ground below. “Do you think she was drawn to the noise of them unloading the trucks?”

“Could be.” I have my suspicions that it may be more than that as I stare down at the woman. Her head bobs awkwardly side to side, almost like a snake sniffing the air. I almost get the feeling that she is
seeing
the workers. Not just hearing them.

“Oh man. Are you seeing that? We are so officially screwed!” Vaughn says as he walks backward from the window and slides down toward the ground.

I push into the space he just occupied and press my face against the glass. Two soldiers, most likely alerted by the swaying in the fence, race down from their crowsnest post. Their boots pound against the metal stairs, rocking the entire set up slightly before they hit the ground at a near sprint with their guns raised.   

“What are they...are they going to shoot her?” Flynn looks dumbfounded as one soldier drops to his knee and targets the woman while the tilts his head to the side to speak into the radio attached at his shoulder.

A door slamming against the wall in the hallway behind makes all three of us jump in unison, but only Vaughn cries out. With my heart hammering in my chest, I am the first to recover in time to grab the other two and huddle in like we are innocently chatting. When Kinsley passes by she shoots us with a poison-laced scathing glance before heading for the stairwell. Bex, a tall amazonian goth girl with matching nose, ear and eye rings and a great rack doesn’t even both to look in the room.

Out of the ten people that walk by only one pauses long enough to question us.

“If I’d known the club was meeting I would have skipped out of Trig sooner,” Ember states as she starts into the room. The three of us form a line to conceal the view, which only makes her more suspicious.  Folding her arms over her chest, which I’m delighted to see tugs her v-neck shirt down just low enough to make my thoughts shift entirely away from the Dead Head below, she stops in front of us. “Alright, what are you three up to?”

“Nothing,” Vaughn says at the exact same time as Flynn.

I shake my head and wipe a hand over my mouth in disgust. “Wow. Next time check your ninja spy cards at the door when you enter because you two really suck.”

“Hey, I get nervous when I’m under pressure,” Vaughn protests but Flynn kicks him in the shin to shut him up.

“And you?” Ember asks, stepping so close that I can smell vanilla in the air and know that it’s not coming from the dorks beside me. “Do you cave under pressure?”

“Hell no,” I grin but I didn’t step aside to let her see either. She might be hot but I’m not that weak.

Just as she is about to try to push herself on Vaughn, no doubt easily sensing he is the weak link in the group, gunfire rings out and all four of us turn toward the window in time to see the Dead Head hit the ground. The ground is painted crimson behind her and chunks of her brain are scattered in the grass.

“Oh, that is nasty!”

“Can it, Vaughn,” I growl and shove him aside when he leans against me to hurl.

There is very little blood flow at the impact point on her forehead. It’s a missed shot, nearly four inches off where I assume their target was in the center of her forehead. I could have made that shot from here. “Amateurs.”  

I feel a hand on my arm and am about to pull away when I realize Ember has grabbed onto me. “Will someone please tell me why they just shot a Dead Head?”

“It’s complicated.”  I turn and tug my bag up from the floor and head for the door.

“Roan.”

I sigh and look back to see all three of them staring at me. Ember looks ticked that I just bailed on her but Flynn and Vaughn seem to be waiting for an answer just like her.

“It was probably just target practice. You know how they get.”

Vaughn and Flynn exchange a glance but luckily Ember is too busy scowling at me to notice when I turn on my heel and leave. If anyone ever asks me I will never admit that taking the steps down to the main floor two at a time implies that I am running from a girl. If asked, I will say that I smelled newly reheated blueberry turnover on the air instead and pray that I sound convincing.

I dread to think about what information Ember has remained behind to extract from Vaughn and Flynn with her womanly wiles. A girl like that can be dangerous, even for me. It is best to stay away, far away.

By the time I reached the mess hall, aka cafeteria, lunch is already fully under way. There are no signs here that anyone heard the gunfire. Judging by the eardrum vibrating level of conversation in the room, that pretty much makes sense.

Taking a sniff to make sure  that I don’t detect essence of Chili Mac on the air, I join the lunch line and am handed my MRE’s. Today is a beef roast, or at least something that kinda resembles beef and the turnover. At least that is halfway edible.

Finding an unoccupied table, I toss my bag into a chair and open my food. It doesn’t smell terrible but I learned at an early age that anything that has a five-year shelf life can’t taste
that
good.

“Yo,” Flynn says and startles me when he slams down into the seat across from me, followed quickly by Vaughn, Ember, and Tyrel, a black guy who I’ve never spoken with before. All that I know about him is from idle observation. He seems decent enough. He is always clean shaven, ambitious and notices everything that goes on around this place. It doesn’t surprise me that he join in with the crew that has just flocked around to harpoon me with a question. What does surprise me is that he has actually separated himself from Isa, his longtime sweetheart whose puppy love eyes make me want to vomit.

“Is there anyone else here that you’d like to blab to?” I grumble and snatch my bag out of the seat before Vaughn sits down on it.

“You can’t unsee something like that, man,” Vaughn says, opening his MRE and dipping his finger inside. He howls and flaps his hand as the gravy burns his finger. Plopping the tip of his finger in his mouth I know that at least for a few moments he will remain blissfully quiet.

“What do you think that was back there?” Tyrel leans forward to ask, leaving the meal before him untouched and forgotten.

He stares at me as if I alone hold all of the answers. Maybe I do know more than some of these sheep but then again I’m just a kid with an open mind and a willingness to use it. These people need to wake up if they stand any chance of surviving.

Those soldiers may have acted on orders when they downed the Dead Head but they were scared. I could see it in the way they held themselves leading up to pulling the trigger and how one of them failed to keep his lunch down. That’s not the reaction of a seasoned killer. Hell, I probably have more field time than they do.

That’s not a very reassuring thought when these are the men who are supposed to be protecting us.

“That was soldiers following orders. End of story.” I stab my fork into my food pouch and look away as I put the meat in my mouth. I’ve found that it’s easier to slide down when you don’t actually look at it.

“I mean with the Stiff. That was pretty messed up, right?”

I look at each of the faces surrounding me. Each of them is leaning in close, eager to hear my opinion. Yeah, I’m not walking away from this table without at last giving them something to chew on.

“It’s evolution.”  I swallow my mouthful of food and follow it by a long swig of my water bottle. On any other day, I would pass on lunch and go straight for the turnover. They at least make cardboard taste decent, but today I have a feeling I might need the extra protein.