by catt dahman
“If you touch me, I’ll bite you,” Tom said, “and I mean it. You stay away from me. Is this what you want to do to sick people?”
“You ran like a coward, Tom,” Curt said. “I say we drag his ass out.
You said he turned tail like a rabbit and ran and didn’t even try to help.
Did he help you?”
“He ran,” Bev said. I nodded and agreed.
“We don’t kill people for being afraid and running,” Natalie said.
“Coward,” Nick said.
“I said I’ll bite if you….” He slammed head first to the floor. Behind him, Billy held his bat.
Without a word, Billy took off his belt and held his hand out for more belts. Carefully, he threaded the belts around Tom until he had a leash and began to pull him out down the hallway. No one wanted to touch the infected boy.
“He needs first aid,” Natalie said quietly.
“Shut up; give that a rest,” Brandon snapped.
“You want to get your hands all over his infected leg? You gonna do it? Wanna get that in your mouth and eyes? You wanna get infected, too?” Curt yelled.
Natalie backed away in tears.
Brandon and Curt followed to help. Brandon made a motion, “My team is back on guard duty. We can decide on slackers later.”
“What does he mean by that?” Natalie asked.
“He’s in your group, so you should know,” Robin said.
“What’s that mean? My group?”
Robin glared, “The it crowd. Your group.”
Jerico laughed, “Naw, it is gonna be the doing something crowd and the slacker crowd. Groups done changed, now.”
“What does that mean?” Natalie asked.
“It means things have changed. You either help, or you’re expendable,” Robin said.
I looked at my friend, wondering what she was saying. This wasn’t like the Robin I had known for years. I agreed everyone should help, but then again, I didn’t want someone such as Mona or Tom watching my back. I must have muttered that aloud because all eyes turned to me.
“Exactly.” Jerico raised a hand to give me a high-five. In some confusion, I returned the hand clap to him. “Either get with it, or get out. Right ‘Rissy?”
It took me a second to realize he had given me a nickname and asked my opinion. “Well, it takes everyone working to keep things going, and those of us expending calories need them back.”
“Yup,” Jerico said, “so fat girl doesn’t need food like we do. Rissy said it best.”
Had I said that? Mrs. Smith and Miss Crater were looking at me as if I had said something terrible.
“Is that what you think, ‘Rissy?” Mona demanded.
It was as if she saw right into my head and what I was thinking.
She had caught the nickname and probably my look of happiness at being included in something.
“I think we’re tired and don’t have to make decisions right now anyway. I think I’m tired of hearing the bullshit.” I never cursed aloud, just in my head at times.
Jerico nodded, “Says she is tired of hearing your bullshit, Mona.
So shut up.”
Mona gave me a hateful look, but I had yet to say anything mean to her; Jerico was twisting it all.
“Where are we sleeping?” Loveta asked. “I am done for the night.”
“Right. You did so much today,” Jerico snapped.
“Shut up, Jerry.” She slapped his shoulder as she walked by, taking him less seriously. “Did you get me something for a bed?”
“Very funny.” He chuckled at her. He hadn’t turned on her yet.
Jerico and Nick’s group, of which I was a part, carefully opened the door to the auditorium. We could hear some moaning down below, which meant it was dangerous, but we saw none of the creatures near the top.
As fast as we could, we ripped out cushions from the seats and grabbed a roll of carpet from the side that was supposed to be installed but never was.
I think I could tell a lot about things when we made our beds.
Mrs. Smith and Miss Crater got cushions because above all, we had been brought up properly. Loveta slept between Lance and Mike, so she was comfortable. Bevvon settled her sisters onto cushions and slept next to them. I was on her other side, then Robin and Shanna and Sian. The boys who had fought also had cushions.
Natalie, Mona, Deana, and a few others had nothing but leftovers for pillows.
It was horrible to be in the out-group. It hurt being invisible and being treated like less than a person, and I was so glad to have food and a soft bed. I was torn. People asked my opinion and gave me high-fives, and they had a nickname for me. I was important, and they saw me.
The rest weren’t invisible really; people could see them and were so glad they weren’t with them. I was so much happier at the top of the heap than at the bottom. I felt a little bad for them, but I also wanted to eat and sleep and survive. Had high school been survival? I didn’t know, but I was sure I wanted to live.
We did our guard duty, and I found out that Patricia was playing camp whore for some of the boys; I looked at her with a slightly disgusted glance; I thought sex was about love and commitment, but she thought it was a way to garner a better social position.
We both may have been wrong, but I knew her way sure didn’t work in the long run. She was valued now because she followed orders and fought.
Patricia made a show of tucking in her shirt when she passed me; her thick eye make-up was smudged below her eyes and looked funny.
She applied more lip gloss and kissed at the air as she finished. Her long, reddish hair was in tangles, and she walked with an exaggerated swagger.
I had seen Patricia once: during a school dance when she was crying in the restroom with one of her friends. She had been saying that she just wanted to be liked and noticed by the boys, but her friend explained that the boys only noticed her for a few minutes for one thing and didn’t respect or like her afterward.
Patricia said she wanted to be liked and wasn’t going to be used anymore. Later, when I sneaked into the parking lot where Bev pretended to smoke a cigarette and where we cooled off away from the overly hot gym, we saw Patricia giggling and getting into a car with two, younger boys.
Slow learning curve.
After guard duty, I fell back to the cushions gratefully; I was still tired and sore from everything we had done. My muscles ached, and I longed for a hot shower and my own bed, but those made me think of my family again, and I teared up. I slept poorly. When I dragged myself up, about a third of us were still sleeping, and Bevvon was yelling for us to get up or we’d miss breakfast.
“Thanks,” I said as I took a peanut butter sandwich, a carton of warm milk, and an orange. I was starving. If I could have had a hot shower, it would have helped, but that wasn’t going to happen. I made myself stop wishing for things I didn’t have and couldn’t get. “What did I miss?”
“Drama,” Marshall told me, “Tom got worse, and Brandon and Curt and Billy didn’t wait. They finished him off. He was sick and moaning with some stomach pain and acting weirder than usual.”
“He wasn’t turned?”
“Nope. He was begging and crying at the end. To be honest, it made me sick.”
I shivered. Using baseball bats was hardly humane, but what better plan did I have? None at all.
Bevvon jumped in. “But it got worse. Scooter didn’t like it, said so, and took up for Tom. He said Brandon and Curt and Billy were bullies and becoming murderers. He said stuff such as they would rot in prison and that he was glad they’d pay when this was over.
And the next thing I knew, Scooter and Brandon were in a fistfight. I’ll give it to Scooter: for a nerd, he fought hard, and the fight would have been a draw.”
“I can’t imagine Scooter fighting.”
“He did a good job, too.”
“But?” I asked.
“ Billy hit him with a bat, but I think he meant to hit him in the arm or something,
except it smashed him in the ear, and well he’s over there in the corner.
Natalie is watching him, but they said it’s a really bad head injury, and he’s not okay. I don’t think he’s gonna be okay at all,” Bevvon said.
“Billy hit him?” I was shocked.
“Yup.”
“Wow,” I said, my head spinning, “we can’t go around hitting each other. That’s murder if he dies because he wasn’t infected or anything. What is happening to us?”
“We’re reacting to all the stress. How do you expect people to react when they see friends and family being infected and dying?”
“Still….”
“Then we have seen them attack and eat other people. My God,”
Bevvon said. “I don’t know about everyone else, but I am scared out of my mind.”
“Me, too,” I admitted, “but no matter how we react, we can’t just hit people with bats and kill them. We have to make some rules and live by them.”
“’Rissy is right,” Curt announced. He had come up behind us and had heard part of the conversation. “We do need rules. I slept like shit, and I wanna know why those that didn’t do shit got cushions?”
“I didn’t say that,” I was being misquoted. Again.
“It’s okay. You’re right anyway. We do need rules. I’m glad you had guts enough to say it,” Curt told me.
“I…I didn’t know what to say. I had this urge to run back to bed, restart the day, and then hope I could erase everything I had said so far.
“Who else is missing?”
“We had a fight with one of the rotters, and Patricia went down the stairs. Looks as if her arm were broken; her ankle and wrist were sprained, at least,” Brandon said. “She wasn’t gonna be much good.
Maybe the obvious and maybe not.”
Several of the boys snickered. Despite myself, I realized I was smirking, too.
“Deana bought it,” Curt told me.
“She what?”
“While she was by herself in the end of the left wing, she slit her wrists.”
Suicide was to be expected, I suppose, for some, but I hated to know anyone had gotten to that point. I tried to stay busy and not think about my family, but she had lost someone here at the school.
Deana had sat there alone and cut her wrists open and bled to death. At some point, how many of us might wish we had done the same?
Chapter 9
Day 2
Before we could begin the day’s activities, we were drawn to the window again. Below, creatures still roamed, the bus was in the ditch, and the destruction looked even worse after a night when predators had come from the skies and woods to pick at the bodies. A murder of crows pecked at some of the corpses, and I couldn’t be sure because the view was blocked, but I thought that there was a fox dragging something away.
Toward town where the road meandered were big, black and brown rolling clouds rising from the ground to the sky. Someone asked what it was, and Mr. Griffin studied the scene and sighed, and with a hitch to his voice, he told us that he thought it was the entire town burning. “It’s a huge fire, not in just a few places.”
“The courthouse?” Robin asked, “but that’s where the police are.”
“And our families,” Bevvon whispered.
“We are the only ones left,” Billy said.
I didn’t know if he said it with regret or happiness or acceptance, but we felt he was right. I wasn’t the only one with tears rolling down my cheeks. I think we knew then that we might never see our families again.
“We have no reason to think anything happened to everyone just because there is a fire,” Mrs. Smith said.
“Then why isn’t my daddy here to get us?” Bev asked. “He would have walked through fire to get to us.”
“Mine, too,” I said.
“Okay,” Curt conceded a little, “but for some reason: maybe the road or the fire or maybe the National Guard’s not letting them through, but they can’t get here, so for now, we are totally on our own.”
Marshall nodded, “I guess that’s true. For now anyway.”
Jerico said he was going to take his group and raid for more cushions to use for bedding. “We’ll keep them in our pile, and I will say if anyone can touch them. If anyone bothers my stuff, I will kick his ass.
We will share them if we want. We’ll also fill the stairways with more shit.”
“If you’ll get us cushions, we’ll share with you. We’re going back to the gym to get towels, wrestling mats, and gymnastics mats,” Nick announced.
“Brilliant,” I said.
He smiled at me. He and Jerico shook on the deal.
“You get cushions and towels and mats, and we’ll do the stairways. We’ll also take out some rotters,” Brandon countered.
They all shook hands.
Then he looked at the rest, “Miss Crater and Mrs. Smith on food detail?”
“Of course,” Mrs. Smith said.
I watched her face. She was a little scared. I could see the worry lines on her face. If a person didn’t stay important, then that person would get far less in supplies. Loveta asked us to find her some sneakers, but for now, she would continue to help organize things until she got sneakers; then, she could help out with other things.
Mona and Natalie got up and got busy, too.
Brandon’s team went first and cleared the left hallway again so we could get from the middle stairs to the gym.
I wondered how the zombies were getting in if we had closed the classroom doors and if the front doors were locked. They had to be getting in through the right wing downstairs.
The group continued to slam ghouls to the floor, and in time, the hall was clear again.
We found stacks of towels, grabbed them, and used a big laundry bin to move them, and we gathered all the mats, too. In a while, we had a mountain of cushions, mats, towels, and other items to make beds. But Brandon’s group had had to step in again and beat some creatures to death.
I saw familiar faces drawn into hungry, violent lines, and I knew that some of the ones I recognized had been outside, so there had to be a door open somewhere or a broken window. I didn’t bother to tell them what we knew.
Lunch was cold tomato soup, crackers, cheese sandwiches, and raw vegetables.
“Do I look like a rabbit?” Jerico demanded.
“We’re doing the best we can,” Miss Crater said. “We have to make the food last since we don’t know how long we will be waiting for help.”
“Waiting,” Curt laughed.
“Maybe Superman is on the way!” Billy laughed with his friend.
“You didn’t do shit today. Give me your other half,” Jerico motioned to Mona. “I did work. I need fuel.”
Mona shoved the last of her sandwich into her mouth.
Brett laughed, “Ohhh, guess you don’t want it now, Jerico. You should have grabbed it before she shoved it down her fat hatch.”
“You stood around with your thumb up your ass, so why are you saying anything?” Billy said to Brett. “I saw you just standing there half of the time.”
“I was watching for the things,” Brett popped off. He still didn’t get that he wasn’t now nor had never been part of the popular crowd.
He thought they were having fun with him, but I saw the anger and knew he was on dangerous ground. “What can she do now besides screw?” he pointed to Patricia.
“That’s more than you,” she yelled back.
Loveta had fixed Patricia’s hair, and it was hanging in luxurious strands and curls down her back. I had thought I was special to have had my hair fixed by the popular girl, but now, I saw it was how Loveta killed time, and I felt stupid for having thought it was a big deal.
“He might like it. I saw him looking at Jerry kind of sexy,” Lance
chuckled.
“You look at me like that, boy?” Jerico demanded.
“I didn’t look at you no way,” Brett exploded.
“Kids….”
; “We aren’t kids, Mr. Griffin. We’re keeping you alive,” Curt said.
“You need us now, and we’re at the top of the food chain, not you.”
I bit back a comment about the food chain and who was where since zombies were walking around.
“Don’t start being a wise ass, Curtis.” Mr. Griffin stood, but Curt had a couple of inches on our teacher.
“Then, you had better stop trying to order people around. The old times are gone, Bubba, and you aren’t so young, so don’t be a douche bag.”
“You wanna watch that language, Curtis.”
“Keep ordering me around and see what happens,” Curt threatened.
They squared up, both eying the other. Before, Curt had been a cowardly boy; now, he was role-playing for real and was a tough guy.
Lance was just playing around and bumped Mr. Griffin forward, saying to go at it. But on the other side, Billy gave his friend a real shove. Curt and Mr. Griffin were pushed towards one another; Curt swung. Before we knew it, the two were fighting, and Mr. Griffin fell back against a window, shattering it.
We were crowded around.
Someone pushed Curt again, so he held his hands out stiff in front of him as he was launched into Mr. Griffin. The big man was against the old wood of the windows, which had not been repaired in years and had weakened. Yet, in some other rooms, the glass had actually fallen out of the panes and had been repaired weeks before.
Mr. Griffin looked as if he were leaning back, but it was the wood giving away behind him. The wood, the glass, and the teacher all fell to the ground outside.
Some of us screamed as he fell.
“I didn’t do it.”
“It was an accident,” Billy said, “the wood is rotten.”
“He’s alive,” someone said, “he’s hurt, but his arm is moving, and he rolled a little. He’s alive.”
“Run downstairs into the classroom, and see if you can help him crawl back inside,” Mrs. Smith ordered. You boys can get out of the window and pull him in and then get him back up here. Hurry.”
“No way. Those things are all over the place,” Curt said as he
looked out.
Several of us lined up against the windows to watch, but some of us ran out of the room. Down below, the creatures moaned.
