“Are you guys kidding me?” Gretchen shrieks.
Veronica’s voice is tight. “Deke, Donna, I think Gretchen’s right. If the car pulls up to the steps, they can make it inside before the infected reach the building.”
The car swerves up the driveway. Immediately, the zombies head in its direction.
The man opens his car window. He’s yelling to someone on our roof. From inside, we can’t hear what he’s saying.
“Who’s on the roof?” Veronica asks, her freckles sharp in her pale face.
Fabio’s voice rings out from above. We can’t make out his words.
“I’m not kidding, Donna, get out of the way,” Gretchen shoves me sideways.
Fabio hustles down the stairs, his flip-flops slapping with each step. “Why aren’t we opening the door?”
“Donna’s scared the monsters will get her,” Tara says in her annoying squeaky voice.
“Go back on the roof,” I tell Fabio. “Ask them to drive around until morning—to come back when it’s light.”
“They can’t. His wife’s hurt,” Fabio says. He chews on a thumbnail.
“Hurt or bitten?” Stanley asks.
Fabio shrugs. “He says hurt.” He starts attacking the thumbnail again.
“Don’t do this,” I plead.
“But she’s injured,” Fabio says softly, his hand half-muffling his words. “She might die before she gets in here.”
“We’ll all die if you open that door.” I’m getting panicky now.
Gretchen laughs. “Someone’s being a tad overdramatic.”
“No, wait!” Stanley screams at the guy in the car.
Too late. The man has opened the car door.
“Ay dios mio,” Fabio murmurs. “I knew I recognized that guy. It’s Mr. Holsclaw. He delivers our mail.”
Mr. Holsclaw, a heavyset guy in a postal uniform, struggles to pull his wife sideways across the front seat. She is obviously unconscious.
“On the count of three,” Veronica says. “I’m taking down the power.”
“Don’t do this.” My voice is a whisper.
Twenty feet separate the car door from the entrance of the Arts Complex. Mr. Holsclaw steps outside his vehicle, cradling his wife in his arms. The monsters are closer now—they’ve reached the edge of the driveway. Mr. Holsclaw begins climbing the stairs to our door. There’s only six or seven steps—not far to go.
Gretchen is jumping up and down in place. “Hurry! You idiots are going to get these people killed. The infected are right behind them.”
“Okay,” Stanley says to Deke, “when the doors open, if we have to bash some heads, I’ll take the ones on the right, you go to the left.”
Deke nods shortly, and positions both hands on his bat. He’s calm and focused, concentrating on the danger outside of the doors.
“One…” Veronica says, “two…”
Out of nowhere, a figure flies past the door, lightning fast.
It knocks Mr. Holsclaw backward, flat on the ground.
“What the—”
Mrs. Holsclaw tumbles out of her husband’s arms, thudding to the steps.
“Holeeeee—”
Beside me, Gretchen gasps. Fabio swears in Spanish.
The blurred figure pauses, just long enough for me to glimpse his red hat and a flash of metal. With one hand, he picks up Mr. Holsclaw, as though he weighs no more than an infant, and tosses him to the zombies—like a dog treat thrown to a group of pitbulls.
Another blur, and the kid in the red hat is gone.
Mr. Holsclaw screams. Loud enough to penetrate the thick glass. The infected—football players, teachers, coaches—all pile on one another, trying to reach Mr. Holsclaw. The mass of bodies writhes and churns.
Beside me, Stanley picks up Ms. Lucent’s son and carries him away from the doors where he can’t see this nightmare.
I’m locked in place, like a statue, unable to tear my gaze away. Mrs. Holsclaw remains motionless on the steps. Alone. But only for a second. And then more zombies rise up the stairs, their shrunken hands grabbing her waiting flesh. Some small part of my brain registers how lucky she is to be unconscious when the zombies bare their teeth and rip the skin from her bones, strip by strip.
They’re close to the doors now. The zombies. Close enough to see the texture of their rotting skin—gray marble tinged with green. Blank eyes leer through the glass. One snaps his jaws at us a few times, and lunges for our door.
Bzzzzzzzzzzt.
We jump away from the entrance, spooked. My pulse spikes.
“RAWWWWWWRRRR!” The zombie howls as he’s knocked back, at least ten feet.
I jerk my head around toward Veronica. She stands open-mouthed, her hand still poised on the switch she’d been about to flip to deactivate the door.
Deke is the first to move. He pries the keys from Gretchen’s clamped fingers, and snaps the padlock shut.
“Was that the guy you talked to? The guy in the red hat?”
“Yes.” She pauses for a second and swallows hard. “Did he just run? Like really, really fast?”
“Yes,” Deke says, eyes fixed on Gretchen.
“And he picked up—?”
“Yes,” Deke answers simply.
Gretchen looks ready to cry. “With one hand?”
Deke nods. “We know the infected develop increased strength—looks like some of them also develop increased speed.”
Gretchen’s knees buckle underneath her and she drops to the ground. Her voice comes out in a whisper. “We are so dead.”
Chapter Ten
Sniff.
Pause.
Sniff.
Pause.
Someone is crying. And trying to hide it. I have a hunch it’s Bo—the one who called Deke “Zombie Slayer.”
Who can blame him for crying? I sorta feel like crying myself.
I check the time on my cell. Three AM. I haven’t slept at all.
Worst. Night. Of. My. Life. After the zombies finished eating every last morsel of Mr. and Mrs. Holsclaw, they circled our building like a pack of wolves, their moans and snarls echoing off the school’s cinderblock walls. The most awful part? They’re howling because they want to bite something—and that something is me. I tried stuffing pieces of toilet paper in my ears to block the noise. Didn’t work so great.
Inside the auditorium, everyone’s sprawled across the dusty stage floor. It’s a high, open area, so if the zombies manage to break in, at least we’ll see them coming. Of course, we’ve got guards stationed throughout the Arts Complex. Liam volunteered for an extra shift. He’s on the roof with Stanley. They’ve redone the sign on the outside of the building—it now reads, “Drive until daylight. Cannot open doors after dark.”
Gretchen’s left a few lights on in the auditorium—I can barely make out Deke, laying on his jacket a few yards away, his bat within easy reach. We’d sat talking for a long time—about my stolen car, about the lack of food, about the stinky bathrooms. Anything to keep our minds off what we’d just seen in the parking lot. Deke’s been quiet for the last twenty minutes or so. I figure he’s finally fallen asleep.
Wish I could do the same. I close my eyes, but all I can see is Mr. Holsclaw, being flipped into the air.
Sniff, sniff.
Pause.
Sniff, sniff.
Pause.
I open my eyes when I hear Deke sit up.
“Hey Bo,” he whispers in the semi-darkness. “Is that you?”
“Y-yeah.”
“Can’t sleep?”
“N-no,” Bo snuffles.
“You want to know a secret?”
The sniffing stops. “What?”
“We’re all gonna get rescued.” Deke flicks on his flashlight.
Bo sits up, too. “Rescued by who?”
“Donna’s dad—Captain Pierce. Isn’t that a good name? Captain Pierce? Sorta sounds like a superhero, doesn’t it?”
Bo nods, his small fists rubbing his eyes.
Deke co
ntinues, “And my grandmother, Muriel, is gonna help, too.”
“Super-Muriel?” I offer in a sunny voice, propping myself on one arm.
Deke waves at me to keep quiet.
“At this very minute,” he says in a dramatic voice, “Captain Pierce and Muriel are driving around in a lifeboat, desperately searching for a big cruise ship. When they find one, we’ll all climb aboard and ride to the middle of the ocean, where none of these bad people can bite us. Would you like that Bo, living on a huge boat?”
“Will there be zombies, like on your boat?”
“Nope. No zombies. Only us. And there’ll be food on the ship. Lots of food. An all-you-can-eat buffet. Ice cream. Pizza. Drinks.”
“Burritos,” I add.
At this point, I notice other kids sitting up, one by one, listening to Deke describe the ship.
“Dude,” Quentin asks from a few yards away, “is this for reals?”
Deke gestures for him to move closer. “Yep. It’s for real.”
Almost everyone’s awake now, gathered around Deke, listening to him expectantly. Gretchen remains on the opposite side of the stage, still sleeping like a baby. Or faking it.
Deke spends a few minutes relating the details of my dad’s plan. Mostly, the other kids want to hear about food.
“Are you sure there’d be enough for everyone?” Fabio asks. Of all the students trapped in the school, he’s been the most vocal about the lack of food. Earlier, when Gretchen distributed our vending machine dinners, I thought Fabio would get violent when she handed him a single roll of Life Savers.
“Sure,” Deke says. “Plenty for everyone. On a typical voyage, there’s around two thousand passengers, plus crewmembers. The cruise lines have to keep a ton of provisions for all those people. And most of it’s in freezers, so it’d still be in good shape.”
“Yeah,” Bo says excitedly, “they’d have to keep all that ice cream in the freezer.”
“I went on a cruise once—with my family.” Fabio places a hand on his stomach. “The food…” His eyes glaze over. “Sushi bar every afternoon, midnight dessert buffet—and this guy by the pool, he’d grill burgers to order…huge cheeseburgers…with fried onions…”
His words cause saliva to pool in my mouth.
“Man, we gotta stop with the food talk,” Quentin says. “Y’all makin’ me crazy.”
“Won’t it take more than twenty of us to run a huge ship like that?” a soft voice asks from a few feet away. I turn to see Veronica—her hair still in two perfect braids—sitting on the other side of Fabio. “Don’t they usually have enormous crews on those ships? You know, with lots of sailors and mechanics?”
Deke’s forehead wrinkles. “Good point.”
“Well, theoretically,” I find myself cutting in, “we wouldn’t have to run the engines. I mean, we could get to a safe distance and drop anchor. Just sit. Only use the essential systems.”
“What if something breaks on the ship?” Veronica asks. “Something major that one of us,” she gestures at Fabio and the other kids in the Robotics Club, “can’t fix.”
I snort. “My dad’s managed the dry docks for, like, practically forever.”
“What’s dry docks?” Bo asks.
“Where they repair ships. My dad knows everything about ships. He can fix anything on them.”
For the next ten minutes, I answer questions. Veronica moves closer so she can ask detailed stuff about how ships work, how much fuel they require, what sort of backup power they use. I’m surprised by how much I know. Guess I’ve been hanging out at the docks too much.
Deke sits beside me, an unfamiliar sort of smile spreading across his face.
It might be pride.
Is Deke proud of me? That’s a first. My cheeks flush with the unfamiliar sensation.
My mind flashes back to the newspaper room—when he told me I was a jerk for only thinking of myself. He’s always challenging me like that—making me get my own Band-Aid or learn new science stuff or act less self-centered. It pisses me off at the time, but in the end, he usually winds up being right.
I scan the eager faces, all turned toward me, and a warm feeling spreads through my bones. The other kids are getting excited now. It was nice of Deke to tell them about the rescue plan. Maybe he recognized how shaky and disheartened we’d become after Mr. and Mrs. Holsclaw got eaten in the parking lot. Maybe Deke knew we needed a thread of hope.
Everyone listens intently to my explanations, but after another hour, even the possibility of escape can’t keep us awake. We’re exhausted, and need energy to deal with the zombies. One by one, we drift back to our places on the floor to sleep.
Deke switches off his flashlight. The darkness is unnerving. I suddenly feel very afraid, very alone. I stick out my hand, patting around in the semi-dark until I poke Deke in the face.
“Ow,” he gripes. “What do you want?”
I move my head closer so only he can hear me. His soft hair tickles my forehead. I’ve always marveled at the fact Deke doesn’t require any gel or hairspray for his punk-rock look. His hair just spikes naturally.
“We skipped the part about lack of transportation to the port,” I whisper in his ear.
“You should go to sleep, Donna.”
I frown in the darkness. I don’t want to go to sleep. I want Deke to stay awake and talk to me—to assuage all my fears.
“You also skipped the part about ships being hard to find,” I add.
“Shhh, I’m tired.”
For some odd reason, I’m hoping Deke will give one of his trademark sighs—the one that sounds like he’s annoyed when he really isn’t—then pull me closer. I wouldn’t complain if he wanted to sleep slap-up beside me tonight.
But he doesn’t do anything except roll over to face away from me.
I give it one last shot. “You also failed to remind them about the creepy, fast dude who’s trying to stop us.”
Deke pretends to snore. Frowning, I return disappointed to my spot on the floor, several feet away. After a while, Deke starts snoring for real.
Long after everyone goes to sleep, I stay awake, listening to zombies groan at the door, and worrying about parts of this plan that might go horribly wrong.
…
Now that it’s morning (finally), this whole situation feels more real. Maybe because there’s no breakfast. No coffee. No place to take a shower. Everyone’s wearing the same clothes as yesterday. Ick. I mean, these are my fave jeans, and I like the hoodie, but I don’t want to wear them for all eternity. I head to the ground floor and spend the next hour rooting through teachers’ desks, hoping to run across a cute outfit in my size, but I only find an extra-dorky Christmas hat with sequined reindeer antlers attached to the brim. No, thank you.
By the time I finish searching the newspaper room, the first floor is quiet. Misty-gray light filters through the mesh-covered windows. It’s cloudy this morning. I run my tongue over my parched lips. Clouds might mean rain.
Yeah, Donna, or clouds might mean overly active zombies.
Lara the Viking cheerleader is the only person in sight. She stands by one of the windows, her hands cupped against the glass as she stares outside.
“Whatcha’ doin’, Lara?”
Her ice-blue eyes flit to me for the briefest instant. “Guard duty.”
“By yourself?”
“Yeah.”
One cheerleader is all that stands between me and the overactive zombies?
“Anything out there?” I move closer. A low peal of thunder rumbles in the distance.
“Yeah. I just saw my manicurist.” She points out the window.
“Your what? Your manicurist?” I peer into the gloom. The Holsclaws’ car is gone. A tight knot of zombies huddles under the large oak on the front lawn. One tall monster wears a salon smock.
“Yeah,” Lara continues with a vacant look, “she works at Heads Up. You know, that salon across the street? See, she painted these last week…” Lara wiggles her fingers at m
e. “She does my pedicures too…in the summer…she always has the newest colors…the prettiest colors…”
“Uh huh.” I nod. Now I like a good mani-pedi as much as the next girl, but it’s not something to moon about during a worldwide pandemic; I have a hunch Lara’s sadness is rooted in something more substantial. “Are you okay?” I ask gently. “You can tell me what’s wrong.” I struggle to find the right words. “I can, uh, try to help you.”
“I’m fine.” She turns back to the window. The vacant expression disappears for a moment, replaced by one of aching loneliness. “I was just hoping to spot Zack out there.”
My heart wrenches for her. Zack is Lara’s boyfriend—has been since middle school.
“Isn’t he on the JV football team?” My voice has dropped to a whisper. If he was at practice when the coach started biting, well…
“Do you know why I became a cheerleader?” Lara asks abruptly.
I want to give one of my usual snarky taunts: because you’re drop-dead gorgeous and super popular? But the words die on my lips.
“No,” I answer simply.
“It sounds like some dumb cliché, but I wanted to spend more time with Zack. It feels like part of me is missing when he’s not around.” She attempts a sad, lopsided smile. “We’ve always been close. Sort of like you and Deke.”
“Er—”
“I know Zack’s been infected,” she says in a numb voice. “They all got bitten. The entire team. I watched it happen… I understand he’s…sick. But I’d still like to find him, you know? Just kind of keep tabs on him.”
“He probably looks different since he…uh…changed. You’d want to see him that way?”
“Of course, silly.” She giggles. “He’s still my boyfriend.”
“Uh yeah, okay,” I say, realizing Lara’s become completely unhinged.
I have no idea how to respond to this situation. I’d offered to help, but I don’t know what to say, what to do. Where’s a guidance counselor when you need one?
“Why are you all by yourself?” I ask, glancing up the empty hall. “Did they leave you down here alone?”
No answer. She gazes out the window again, her eyes blank and hollow.
Where’s Tara? Off somewhere doing Gretchen’s bidding? She needs to get her butt down here and help her best friend. I’d never leave Phoebe alone if she was this sad.
Donna of the Dead Page 9
