Zombie Elementary

by Howard Whitehouse

  After a while, Miss Scoffle needed someone to take a message to the office. Usually she picked Missy Wrangel, but she wasn’t there. Miss Scoffle looked around. She had to pick someone else. There were people she never picked ’cause they couldn’t be trusted with messages, and people she never picked ’cause she could never remember their names. I smiled at her.

  “Gary Mulliss! Will you take a message to the library for me? And one for the cafeteria?”

  The cafeteria? Maybe to say how many kids for lunch today? Not many …

  Still, it got me out of a spelling test. Cool.

  All the same, I wished I could take the Slugger with me.

  38

  The hallways were real quiet. I pretty much tiptoed along, in case a zombie reached out at me from the janitor’s closet. It didn’t. Good.

  The library was upstairs. As I went up the steps, I thought about how it’s good to have a safe upstairs place to defend against zombies. I’ve seen it in the movies. You could put, like, obstacles on stairs to slow ’em down, and then thwack each one as it gets to the top. It’s also a good idea to have a safe room with a strong door and no windows. Zombies get in through windows, no problem. Doesn’t matter if you close ’em or anything. So, when I got to the library, I looked around to check if it was a good place to hold off the undead horde. Yeah, not bad. It had windows, but they were small and high up, and this was the second floor. The doors looked about the same as others at school, but there were all kinds of heavy bookcases you could shove against them to stop zombies getting in. This was pretty good. The only place I could think of that might be even better was the janitor’s closet, which had no windows at all. But it’s tiny and stinks of chemicals.

  While I was looking around, Ms. Ostertag saw me. “Well hi there, Larry! What brings you up here? I have a great new baseball book you might want to check out.”

  She’s real nice and knows all the kids, even the ones like me who aren’t big reading types. I handed her the message.

  Now I knew where to come if the whole zombie thing got way out of hand here at school. Plus, Ms. Ostertag keeps a whole drawer full of candy, so we’d have supplies to hold out for days. Well, hours, maybe.

  I headed downstairs and down the long hallway to the cafeteria. When my school was built, way back in 1997, the cafeteria was a separate building. They put a covered walkway to it, so kids wouldn’t get rained on at lunchtime.

  KYLE: You think people really care about how the hallways at our school are laid out?

  LARRY: Nah, only it helps to know that the library’s upstairs and the cafeteria was almost like a different building. You know, to understand the next bit of the story. If they don’t go to our school already, I mean.

  KYLE: Okay, I get that. Good thinking. Maybe we could have a map. Proper history books have maps!

  I don’t know the name of the head lunch lady. She has big flappy arms and a red face. I guessed she was the one I had to give the note to. It wasn’t lunchtime yet, so there was nobody at the, uh, the place where they serve you. I heard voices in back, so I followed them.

  One lunch lady was talking. “Honest, I don’t think them kids will eat these cheeseburgers. They didn’t want the stuff when it was meatballs last Friday, or meatloaf the day before.”

  “You don’t think it’s gotten better over the weekend?” said another voice. It was Jeremy, the lunch dude. “At least this stuff doesn’t go bad. It’s radioactive. It lasts forever!” He laughed, but like it wasn’t really funny.

  “I don’t like to think about it,” said the first voice. “I mean, I don’t eat the stuff. I wouldn’t feed it to my dog. But we give it to the kids every day until it’s gone.”

  “This order that came in last week was worse than usual, Elsie,” answered Jeremy. “The kids usually eat some on the first day. Not last Thursday. The only kid who ate it was that boy, you know, the one who came back for seconds. Thirds as well! Heck of an appetite, that youngster.”

  “Right. But I didn’t see him on Friday. I hope he didn’t get sick!” replied Elsie.

  “Boys never seem to get sick from this stuff. Stomachs like iron, some of them. Alex, that’s his name.”

  The head lunch lady came around the corner, the one with the flappy arms and the red face. Elsie, I guessed. I handed her the note. She mumbled something I didn’t understand. I went back to class.

  39

  I spent the morning thinking about what Jeremy and Elsie had been talking about, which was how come I got a thirty-nine percent on my math test. Otherwise I’d have gotten a solid forty-five.

  When the bell rang, I told Jermaine all about it.

  “That’s it!” he whooped. “It’s the meatloaf! Chainsaw Chucky was right! We need to call him—and Mr. O’Hara as well!”

  We found Francine in the hallway and told her. Unlike Jermaine and me, she had a cell phone. We aren’t allowed to have them with us in class, so she kept it in her desk, turned off like the rules said. We were supposed to go outside for recess, but we didn’t. We headed for Francine’s classroom instead. Her teacher had gone to the faculty lounge, I suppose. Jermaine and I kept a lookout while she made the call. Jermaine didn’t say it would be quieter to text this time. I guess it’s weird to say “the meatloaf causes zombies” in a text. She stuck her head under the desktop, you know, to keep down the noise.

  Francine dialed Mr. O’Hara’s Dictionary Emporium. She frowned.

  “What?” I said. She waved at me to shut up, just like my mom does at home.

  “Hey, Mr. O’Hara,” she said. “It’s Francine Brabansky—I’m Larry and Jermaine’s friend. They said you gotta come to the school, soon as you get this message.”

  I guess BURP had gone to lunch. He looked like a guy who ate lunch whenever he could. Francine hit the buttons again.

  “Hello … Chucky?”

  I couldn’t hear what Chucky said.

  “You were right! It was the meatloaf! What?”

  She gave us a weird look.

  “What about your granny? She’s trying to kill you? You’re hiding from her in the attic?”

  Jermaine and I stared at one another.

  “Darn!” muttered Francine. “Really bad line. It sounded like he said his granny had trapped him in the attic.”

  Jermaine looked at me. I looked at him. Granny must have turned into a zombie. That scratch was a bite all along. She didn’t want to tell anyone. This was bad.

  Then I had a thought. “Hey! Kids will be eating those cheeseburgers!” See, we get recess and lunch in one period at my school. Our class had free time from 11:20 to 11:50, then a half-hour lunch. But the younger kids got lunch first, then free time. They’d be in the cafeteria right now. My sister might be eating a zombie-causing cheeseburger.

  “The cafeteria, NOW!” I yelled.

  I rushed through the hallways to get to Honor and tear the ghoulburger out of her mouth. Francine was just behind me, and Jermaine too. Mr. Ferich, who teaches sixth grade, yelled, “No running in the corridor!” but I took no notice. I barged through the big double doors and out onto the walkway. I hauled open the door to the cafeteria. All the little kids from grades one to three were there. Some were sitting down already. Most were still in line getting served. I saw a kid picking the lettuce off his cheeseburger, so I grabbed his plate and flung it away. He looked at me like you’d expect him to look at someone who just threw away his lunch. “Heeeyyyy!!! No fair!!!”

  Then I spotted Honor. She was at a table with her friends way at the other side of the room. What did she pick for lunch? Today they had a choice of boiled liver and mashed cabbage, creamed spinach casserole with canned peas, or the cheeseburger. Even if you knew the cheeseburger was leftover meatloaf, you’d pick it over the other two.

  She waved at me. I ran forward.

  I couldn’t see her tray from here.

  Now I could. Cheeseburger and fries. She had a fry in her hand.

  I slid like I was going into fourth. The floor was pretty
slick and I glided (is that a word?) on the side of my shoe and the side of my butt. Honor’s eyes were real big. I reached out and grabbed her whole plate, and then I crashed into the back wall of the cafeteria. Big crash. The teacher on lunch duty yelled. The kids were all shrieking, ’cause they’re little kids, you know. That’s what they do.

  I saved my sister from Zombiedom. But there were a hundred cheeseburgers just waiting to turn students into the undead. How many kids had already bitten into their lunch patty? I didn’t know—

  Jermaine jumped onto a table and took a deep breath. “Hey, everyone! This is an announcement!”

  “From the principal,” added Francine. It wasn’t true, of course.

  “From the principal!” shouted Jermaine. “Don’t eat your cheeseburger! It will cause you to become a zombie!”

  There was an uproar. One kid near me stopped chewing and spit up onto his plate.

  “It’s the same as the meatballs, which were the same as the meatloaf last week!”

  Kids who didn’t spit out their food when they heard it would turn them into zombies started spitting now, and chugging chocolate milk like it was an antidote or something.

  ZOMBIE TIP

  There is no antidote to the zombie infection found in any cafeteria. Chocolate milk is delicious, but it will not save you from a future as a brain-sucking ghoul.

  One boy pushed his cheeseburger to one side and just ate his French fries.

  “What about the liver?” yelled another student. We ignored him because two teachers and Elsie the head lunch lady were coming toward us. They looked pretty mad. We bolted for the door.

  Our work here was done. “Liver’s fine!” yelled Jermaine, ’cause he’s always a smart—you know what I mean.

  40

  We ran back to Francine’s classroom. She’d left the phone in there. Her teacher was still away, which was good for us.

  “My teacher smokes about a carton of cigarettes every lunchtime,” said Francine. “She won’t be back ’til right before the bell rings.”

  Then we argued about what to do next. Jermaine said we should make sure none of the other grades tried to eat the cheeseburgers. We had to spread the word fast. Francine said we should call Chainsaw Chucky back and make sure he was okay. Since she was the one with the phone, that’s what she did.

  “Chucky???? Chucky!!! Are you still in the attic? It’s a bad line, Chucky. What? Climbed out a window and you’re watching from the roof? And there are thousands of zombies headed for the school? Now, wait a minute—”

  That didn’t make any sense. Why were the zombies coming to our school?

  Just then a teacher poked her head into the classroom. It was Miss Sharpelbow, who teaches gym. She was pretty big and pretty mean. She was always telling everyone that all the women in her family had been gym teachers for a hundred years.

  “Francine Brabansky! Are you using a phone? That’s against school rules!”

  Francine glowered and didn’t say anything. The phone was hidden back inside the desk. Jermaine didn’t mind telling fibs—I think you know that by now—so he said, “No, Miss Sharpelbow. You probably saw Francine using … a stapler! It sorta looks like a phone!”

  Which would have been a good fib if there had actually been a stapler in Francine’s desk he could point to. But there wasn’t. And nobody holds a stapler up to their ear. C’mon.

  Also, the phone rang.

  Francine answered it. Miss Sharpelbow stepped forward to grab it from her (she always did stuff like that) but Jermaine stuck his foot out and tripped her. “Sorry, Miss!” Francine turned to listen to the phone. “Right, Chucky. What? You’re in the truck and headed our way? Get the kids to safety? How do we do that?”

  I figured we were all in a whole lot of trouble with Miss Sharpelbow now. She was about the last teacher to believe our story, true or not. But suddenly there was a real loud noise down the hallway—like the door breaking down and windows smashing—and moaning. A lot of moaning.

  “I’ll deal with you in a moment,” snapped Miss Sharpelbow. “Don’t go away.” She turned and marched toward the noise, yelling, “Quiet!!!”

  You could get in a lot of trouble at our school if a teacher tells you to do something and you don’t, but the three of us needed to take off real fast.

  “Bat, man!” whispered Jermaine.

  For a moment I thought a caped crusader might be coming to save us, but then I realized what he meant. I had to get the Louisville Slugger. My classroom was all the way across the school. Francine fetched her lacrosse stick from the coat closet. She’d hidden it inside an instrument case belonging to her sister who was in college now.

  The whole time, this is what we heard out in the hallway:

  “BRAIINNNSSS!!!!”

  “Quiet!!” shouted Miss Sharpelbow.

  “NNGAARRRGGGGHHH!!!!”

  “Be quiet, all of you!!”

  “BRAIINNNSSS!!!!”

  “Silence! Aaaagghhhhh!!!!”

  “NNGAARRRGGGGHHH!!!!”

  ZOMBIE TIP

  You’ve probably realized by now that simply ordering zombies to, for example, “Be quiet!” or “Stop biting the pizza delivery boy!” will not work. Even really bossy gym teachers cannot make this work.

  We ran like crazy. At the end of the hall I turned around. The zombies were coming. Some of them were gathered around the spot we last saw Miss Sharpelbow—I didn’t much wanna think about that—but the rest were shambling forward. There was a big set of fire doors at the end of the hallway. It took all our strength, but we got them shut.

  That should’ve held them for, like, ten seconds.

  41

  Okay, so things just went from bad to, uh, badder still.

  There was a fire alarm on the wall. Francine went to set it off.

  “Wait!” yelled Jermaine. “Bad idea!”

  Everyone knows the fire drill. The kids all go outside, no running, no yelling, and gather in the parking lot. You report to your teacher, who counts everyone. Which would be fine, I guess, if the building was on fire. If the school is attacked by zombies, it’s sorta like laying out a picnic for them. A zombie buffet.

  Bad idea. Anyway, half the kids were already outside for recess.

  Francine’s phone rang. “Hello? Oh, Mr. O’Hara!” She mouthed the words Mr. O’Hara to us like we were idiots. “What? You’re in your van? Well, yeah, we did know the school was full of zombies. And there are more coming, we heard that too. Right. See you soon.”

  She dropped the phone in her pocket. “He’s on his way.”

  One guy from BURP was on his way in a dictionary delivery van. He’d be on his own too. His kid, Garrett, wouldn’t be out of school yet. We were in all sorts of trouble. Then I remembered the library. I told Francine and Jermaine about how it might be a good hideout.

  “Could work,” said Francine.

  “Let’s use the intercom,” said Jermaine.

  Now, you probably know that kids aren’t allowed to use the school intercom any time we like. It’s in the office, and the office ladies guard it. Someone told me that once upon a time some kid at some school somewhere got hold of the mic and sang the rude version of “Jingle Bells” almost all the way through before someone stopped him. So, ever since, office ladies everywhere have been real careful about keeping students from using it.

  “We could say we’re going to recite the Pledge of Allegiance,” I said. But that was stupid, ’cause we always do that before class starts in the morning and it was 11:44.

  “Better idea,” said Jermaine. “I’ll tell them I’m president of the student council.”

  See, the president of the student council can always make an announcement about, I dunno, a meeting or something. Problem was that Jermaine was not the president. He wasn’t on the student council at all. He lost by two votes after Katherine Witte told everyone he was trying to bribe voters with years-old Halloween candy that he’d found in a closet at his grandmother’s house. Which was true, actuall
y. He should have bought some new candy. So nobody was gonna believe Jermaine was president of anything.

  But it turned out okay, because just then we heard the intercom.

  “BUZZ … so Sandi said to me … BUZZ … could you believe that? … BUZZ.”

  Someone forgot to turn it off after the last announcement. I could hear the office ladies chatting in the background.

  “Cause a distraction when we get to the office!” yelled Jermaine. (Boy, he’s pushy sometimes.)

  So once we were in the hall outside the office, Francine started yelling and beating the wall with her lacrosse stick. I acted like she was hitting me and screamed like a kindergartner who’d spilled his orange juice.

  Ms. Hoag came out of the office. “Larry Mullet! Francine Brabansky! Stop making all that noise in the hallway!”

  I expected Jermaine to run into the office, but he was smarter than that. He made a signal that I figured meant “make more noise,” so I shrieked even more. Francine yelled, “Let me at that little jerk!”—I guess she meant me—and waved her stick around some more.

  Another lady ran out of the office. I guess that’s who Ms. Hoag had been talking to on the intercom. That meant the office was empty.

  Jermaine sneaked in while Francine chased me with her lacrosse stick and we yelled and screamed. It was kinda fun, by the way. The office ladies didn’t know what to do. They kept telling us to “be reasonable” and use “inside voices.” Then the announcement came.

  “Hey, everyone—kids and teachers! You have to go to the library right now. I mean, RIGHT NOW! Lock yourselves inside and stack up furniture behind the doors. The zombies are coming. Thousands of zombies! Thank you for your attention!”

  Francine and I stopped horsing around. The office ladies stared like they didn’t know what to think.

  “Go to the library!” said Francine. “Right now, like the announcement said. Okay, go get your purses if you have to.” (Didn’t I tell you she was bossy?)