by catt dahman
“We have to get rid of him,” Scooter said, “so you destroy the brain or cut off the head and burn it.”
“You wanna cut off a kid’s head? Damn, that’s cold,” Nick said.
“He’ll come back and try to bite us,” Scooter said. “You saw what happened with the van.”
“He isn’t dead yet.”
“So you wanna wait and hope you get the timing just right?”
All of the arguing was giving a headache. I slumped into a chair.
Popping bubbles with her gum, Loveta was watching me. “Here, sit still.” She stood and began to brush my hair. Having someone brush my hair releases a ton of endorphins which are feel-good chemicals and pain killers, so almost at once my head stopped aching, and I had this tingling in my scalp, and I felt a lot better, despite everything.
But if a girl imagines she is in a zombie apocalypse or not but is just this plain, average girl whom no one ever notices and is mostly invisible, and then the most beautiful, most popular girl in the whole school suddenly asks her to sit down because she wants to brush her hair, that is as surreal as it gets. I was stoked. For an unpopular nobody, this was amazing.
Loveta pulled some pins from her handbag, which was big enough to carry a small child in, along with accessories, and she brushed, teased, pulled, and flipped at my hair.
“Why do you wear it flat?” she asked, not expecting an answer, but just fighting with my waves of plain brown hair. “Hold still. Don’t be tender-headed,” she ordered. I smelled peppermint gum and relaxed as she brushed.
Around us, everyone was still arguing about the infection and the child, so I tried to make sense of one plan that had to do with putting the kid in a locker and seeing if he turned.
“Now look,” Loveta ordered.
I looked into her mirror that she handed me and was amazed.
How had I never imagined fixing my hair this way? The top was teased and tucked into a pile while the sides were pulled back just a little, with strands hanging here and there. My hair had shine and bounce, and I really liked the way it was styled. I tried to find some cool words to thank Loveta for fixing my hair while everyone else was debating killing a zombie child. I was mid-way through a planned speech when we spun around because there was a huge thud.
Brandon had Miss Crater’s big wooden lectern and smashed it down on the child’s head. That was the big thump. He did it twice more while we watched, and that part was over. The bottom of the lectern was covered with brains and blood, bits of hair, but Brandon sat it back in the corner as if it might be used again for teaching lessons.
He looked kind of proud he had done the job.
It was the most horrible thing I had ever seen. I wanted to lean over and vomit or scream.
“Thanks, Loveta. It’s cool,” I said.
Just chilly, baby.
Chapter 6
Us and Them
I won’t relate the argument and cursing that went on after Brandon smashed the kid’s head in. There was the point the child was dangerous and could bite us, and then there was the point that because it was a child, and Brandon had done a very violent thing. I didn’t say anything, but I thought the bigger issue was that Brandon could do what he did and not have any obvious reaction.
“We have to handle the rest of them,” Brandon pointed at Mr.
Tryon and the children. Someone claimed that was murder, and the arguments began anew.
Some of the group wanted to sit and wait to see what opportunities developed, thinking that someone would swoop in and rescue us or erase everything that had happened so that everyone was mysteriously okay again. They were very scared and weren’t ready to take action as they were still taking it all in. That was almost a third of us.
Lance, Brandon, Curt, Billy, and a few others wanted to get weapons, secure the area, and be ready for a fight. If they had a few more people, I think they would have voted to go down to the parking lot, kill all the shamblers, and have a full-blown war. If they had had guns, I know they would have done exactly that.
My group wanted to gather supplies and hunker down to wait before moving. Going to the court house, if we could have gotten through the parking lot and all the way there, might not be as good as what we had. We thought we should grab food and water and anything else we might need from the nurse’s office.
Somehow we decided that the second group needed what we planned to get, and we realized that having some people with bats and weapons would help us with our task, so we reluctantly teamed up.
Our biggest division was that we thought there had to be a better way than what Brandon did, or how he did it, and we didn’t trust him. I don’t think his own group trusted him; in fact, Nick, his brother, was in our group.
Brandon was angry and was acting out, and without the moral and laws of society, he was like a mad dog set loose.
We agreed that Mr. Tryon and the injured kids should be put in a classroom. He could lock the door from the inside with a key and then slide it out under the door to us. The theory (okayed by Scooter) was that if he turned, he and the kids couldn’t get out of the room without using a key for the lock, and we would only slide it to him if we were sure he was not infected.
No one mentioned how flimsy the door was and how easily it would be to kick it in.
Ready to go, Curt and Billy bounced in place and were excited about their mission. They really wanted to fight zombies; they had talked about this for years. Going first, the two went down the back stair case, sliding against the walls as they went down each stair and snapping their heads right and left as if they were on a SWAT team. They had table legs for weapons.
Once on the ground floor, they ran to the gym, calling out that it was clear of ghouls. Crossing the open area, the boys rushed everyone along, watching for any surprises.
“Jackpot,” Curt said as he handed out the weapons that the ninth graders hadn’t taken in their attempt to get outside. He handed out more than a dozen baseball bats, glad to have something more substantial than a table leg, and it fit their personal ideals much more closely.
When he handed us tennis rackets, we thought he was crazy, but he explained that we would break away more than half of the round part and the strings and then sharpen what was left into short spears.
“Poke ‘em right in the eyeball,” he said, “and you can hold the handle and go at it.”
Billy brought out poles that some students had used in an attempt to learn pole vaulting, but that wasn’t a real sport at our school.
Luckily some of the old poles had been stored. “Now, these are great. We can poke them at a distance.”
There were some field hockey sticks and javelins, so we had enough for each person to have three or four weapons. We found mesh and cotton bags that would carry a lot of supplies.
The boys handed off most of the weapons to those on the stairs, and we began our trek down the left hallway (known as the left wing) toward the cafeteria. Brandon, Lance, and Curt carried baseball bats, and Billy had a pole. Nick and Marshall took bats, as well.
There are no words to describe the terrible sense of dread that gripped me. It was as if a vise were smashing around my middle, my chest, and my throat. It was kind of like playing hide-and-seek, but if we were found, we would be eaten. I felt watched and stalked; it was a constant nervousness that I felt, and I was about to jump out of my skin.
The library was on the right, windowless and dark. We couldn’t see anything in the room except bookshelves against glass; I felt watched. I thought people inside were looking at us: maybe dead ones or maybe live ones hiding. We passed it fast because it just felt creepy.
To the left were two second-grade classrooms; we quietly closed the doors because the rooms were empty.
“I have to pee,” Ashley whispered as we came within view of the restroom.
“No, you don’t,” I whispered back.
Someone told her to hold it because no one wanted to go into the cramped room where there could be lu
rkers in the stalls. Right before us on the left were two more classrooms and then more restrooms.
To the right was a hallway that cut to the other side of the school and contained a double staircase, the middle stairs, as we said, and the doors to the boys’ and girls’ restrooms. After that, on the right was a straight shot with no doorways, alongside the auditorium.
“Looks clear,” Brandon said, as he looked down into the hallway.
Lance stood ready with his bat. The two stayed in place, motioning Curt and Billy to take the lead down the hall. This was when we felt nervous, wondering what might come from the right wing and attack us.
Curt and Billy weren’t nervous but seemed as happy as if they were playing a game on the computer. Both were in their element and in their role-playing world, and they had been preparing for a
long time.
After Curt and Billy moved over against the wall of the auditorium, we followed one by one, staring into the hallway where the jocks were ready to fight.
It was if we half expected someone or something to suddenly leap at us. I glanced at the rest, seeing how scared they looked and then back at Nick and Marshall who had the rear of our group. Then, I let my eyes travel back over the people, like me, who were in the middle.
A shadow formed around Ashlee, but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. She was really spooked about the hallway that cut across to the other side, so she was walking with her back to the left side.
Nick had closed the first kindergarten classroom door when he got to it, but the second door was open, and Ashlee was in there, standing in the doorway, her back exposed.
“Ash….” was as far as I got.
Her head of long, thick, flame-red hair snapped back hard as if she were being scalped, and she spun to the side, trying to free herself. When she turned, her neck was exposed; a woman, teeth red-stained and dirty, bit down into Ashlee’s flesh, snapping through and ripping a chunk loose. Ashlee shrieked.
We backed up to the other wall, frozen in place.
Nick ran forward and slammed his bat down, yelling, “Get off her.”
Marshall came to help, and they both hit and hit until the bats were gore-covered and dripping.
I pushed between them, worried for the girl who never spoke to me or included me in anything and who was like a bright flash of red and gold sunlight; unfortunately, she was on the ground with her head split.
The boys had bashed in both the woman’s and Ashlee’s head.
Marshall saw what they had done and vomited. Nick stumbled backwards, dropping his bat and covering his face as he moaned.
Brandon gave Nick a disgusted look, pushed Marshall out into the hall, and walked into the room as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
“Oh, hey,” he yelped.
There were many wet thuds, and then Brandon came back out, closing the door securely. “There was a kid. You can’t ever be sure.”
He picked up Nick’s bat and pushed into his brother’s hand until Nick finally took it. “Don’t drop your weapon. Ever.”
“What about Ashlee?” Robin asked. She knew. We knew, but she asked anyway. Ashlee had always treated Robin as if she were afraid my friend had dirt on her or was unclean or diseased. Robin’s low self-esteem wasn’t contagious.
I doubt Robin really cared about the dead girl, but she asked.
“Dead. Totally dead. Shambler is dead. Kid is dead. Room is secure.”
He said that as if it didn’t matter at all.
Billy nodded. “Let’s go, and all of you need to watch yourselves.
Be careful. Never leave your back uncovered, and watch for each other. Always keep them in front of you. We have to watch and be careful.”
I was shaking. “Are you okay?” I asked Nick.
He nodded and shrugged, “I guess. Maybe.”
“Are you okay?” I asked Marshall.
“Yeah.” He was still greenish and smelled a little like vomit.
The next part was even more unnerving. To the left were restrooms and a hall that only went to the right.
If we followed the hall, we would be in the front vestibule with the auditorium doors, the front staircase, the opening to the right hallway through the school, the door to the teachers’ lounge, the office doors, the cafeteria doors, and then the front doors.
We could be attacked from several angles.
And we were.
Chapter 7
Gathering
When we turned the corner, a group of the creatures met us head on, coming from all directions. The back of the group had to deal with ghouls from the little hallway to the restrooms. Again, I was in the middle.
All around me was moaning, and all smelled terrible, like feces and old blood, something that was rotting, the infection itself. We learned quickly that the infection had an unmistakable and terrible scent all of its own.
Curt, Brandon, Lance, and Billy were like machines, poking them through the eye sockets when possible, bashing at skulls, dodging claws, and hammering at the undead. Billy’s pole broke, so he used the sharper end and had a good four feet left.
Once one was on the ground (Knocking his feet out from under him was a smart move), the boys hit him about five times each to make sure he didn’t get up.
Only one on the ground moved again, snagging Robin’s jeans. She screamed and snatched her leg away from the man, reached down to grab the broken pole that Billy had dropped, and angrily stomped the head of the creature until it was moving less. She aimed and shot the end of the pole right into the thing’s eye socket, wiggled the pole, and shoved it until there was no more movement. “Don’t ever touch me,” she yelled as she stabbed, “I hate when people touch me.”
I felt a wave of compassion for her.
Lance handed me his bat, and Brandon handed his bat to Thomas who had not said a word during the whole ordeal. “Use it if you need to. Knock their legs out from under them, and then go for the head if you need to. That’s easier than scoring a head shot if you think they have a height advantage.”
“Okay, ” I said.
Mr. Griffin, regulated to being bossed by his students, took the bat from Curt and Billy, and set his pole down so the four could drag the bodies past the doors to the teachers’ lounge and into the right wing.
There were lots of bodies to stack up like cords of firewood, but I
didn’t see them as people, now; I saw them as monsters that had attacked us, but we had made a big dent in their population.
Huffing and groaning, Mr. Griffin worked alongside the rest, saying over and over that this might not be the best plan and that he was worried about his family.
“Stop talking about family, please; we’re worried. It makes it harder on us,” Lance suggested to Mr. Griffin after a few minutes. It was quieter then.
I almost brained two girls when the door slammed open as they came running out of the lounge, saying they were glad to see us.
“Are you bitten?” I demanded. They said they weren’t, but I made them show me their arms and hands.
They were ninth graders who had sneaked away and refused to go with their teacher. One was Ruby, a very pretty Hispanic girl whom I barely knew, and the other was a popular, athletic African American girl named Shanna.
“They all died,” Marshall told them, “you made the right decision.”
“Every one of them? All?” Ruby cried. She had a tire iron that she
had found; one of the parents must have tried to fight with it, lost it when he was bitten, and then turned into one of the creatures. “How could all of them have died? There were so many of them. A la Chingada.”
“Yup,” Marshall agreed.
“I knew we shouldn’t go,” Shanna said. She was tall and slender and had short hair; she held a table leg that she had unscrewed and fashioned into a melee weapon; to me, she looked like an Amazon warrior. I figured she could fight better than most of the boys with us.
She had a fierce look on her face and was very
determined.
Shanna said she had a bad feeling when they were about to go outside, so she and Ruby at the back of the group had stayed behind and slipped away, both saying they didn’t think it was a good idea to run out into the middle of the violence.
“Sorry, I had to ask you to show me you were safe, but….”
“You were being careful,” Shanna said. “I get it. I can’t believe…are you sure they’re…I mean…maybe?”
“We watched. We could see them right below the window, and the groups were trying…some ran, and some sneaked and hid, and some were really in shock, I guess. Those just stood around and were crying. I think your group, I mean your friends, were the ones who tried to run by them and get away, but they were attacked.”
“Oh,” Shanna said, her eyes full of tears.
I told her about the students who tried to get into the van with their teacher and get away and how that had ended. “Sorry.”
Curt asked us to help them.
Everyone dragged tables, chairs, and even a copier, and we stripped the lounge of everything we could find to form a blockade so the right wing was cut off and so that we wouldn’t have surprises from that direction.
We checked the front doors, they were locked, but we could hear creatures out there beating on them, trying to get inside since we had made noise and attracted them to us.
“They hear us even if they can’t see us. They use ears and eyes, I think,” Curt said.
“We knew that,” Billy added.
In the cafeteria, Brandon, Lance, and Shanna had to put three cafeteria ladies down. A fourth one lay on the ground, scratching and clawing to get up, but her legs were falling apart, so she couldn’t stand. I motioned that I would do it, so I borrowed a bat for the job. I mimicked Shanna, bending a little and bearing down with my weight, slamming the bat into the woman’s head as hard as possible, and staying with the top of the head until it splintered and the shards cut into the brain as I smashed it to pulp.
Watching me, Shanna caught my eye and gave me a wink; she understood I had watched her and learned what to do. I suppose I did a good job because she seemed satisfied. I learned more than how to bash in the head of a zombie. I learned that even if it were an evil, bad thing, it still felt like killing a person, and it made me feel nauseated and shaky to do it. I didn’t like killing.
