They follow closely, shouting out warnings as we stomp through the crowded halls.
“You know the Council of Elders has a whole team of Sentinels who monitor the internet looking for crap like this,” says Ethan. “They’re bound to see it.”
“Maybe it hasn’t posted yet,” says Dana hopefully.
“It has,” I say, dashing her hopes. “I’ve just come from the library and it’s spreading; quickly.”
We round the final corner in the commons and dash down D-wing.
I see Mr. Simpson’s open door and barrel right through it.
At the first sight of me – Dana and Ethan don’t want to be seen as “guilty by association,” so they hang back, just out of sight around the corner – half the class flinches.
Flinches; it’s like half the class does the wave – with their faces.
Sheesh, I didn’t think anyone read that rag the Bugle; let alone the students!
As if she hasn’t just signed her own death warrant, Fiona sits in the middle of the class, basking – for once – in the positive attention of her classmates.
It’s like, overnight, she’s become Piper – of the geeks in homeroom, that is.
(And you can tell she more than kinda likes it.)
Her newfound fan base (most of whom have never even spoken to her before) now pepper her with questions and she volleys back answers like a pro.
Here is the quick snippet I hear before the rest of the class gets wind of my presence and shuts down like an old folks’ home after an early bird dinner:
“Did you really get frostbite just from touching her, Fiona?”
“Practically; see the blister on my finger?”
“Do you really think she could be a… a… zombie, Fiona?”
“You tell me!”
“How’d you know which doctor she went to?”
“I was right there in Mr. Thompson’s office when he ordered her to go. You should have seen her face, man she was sooooo ticked… oh hi, Lucy!”
She stands hesitantly when she sees me, and only then do I realize that the rest of the kids in homeroom have literally pulled their desks around hers in a kind of semi-circle, like she’s some strange new version of the campfire storyteller.
No wonder she’s happy to see me; I’ve made her popular!
“Fiona,” I say, managing to keep a lid on it (for the most part) and ignoring the questioning look from Mr. Simpson as he watches the proceedings with some amusement from his big brown desk at the front of the room, “we need to talk – now!”
“Mr. Simpson?” she asks, although she is already headed out the door with me.
He grumbles his permission and quickly goes back to reading the 900-page World War II book he has open on his desk; the same 900-page World War II book he always has open on his desk.
Fiona is smart enough to close the classroom door behind us, but not smart enough to anticipate that Ethan and Dana would be as ticked off at her as I am right now.
Not to mention standing right around the corner.
* * * * *
Chapter 11
“What – what – w-w-what are YOU guys doing here?” she stammers, taking a step back and reaching for the safety implied by the nearby classroom doorknob.
Without hesitating, without pausing, without even thinking about it, Ethan and Dana grab Fiona’s arms and Ethan says, “Haven’t you heard, Fiona, we’re ‘zombies’ too!”
Even when she shivers from their joint touch and tries to back away, they literally pick her up like one of those department store mannequins (only, this one’s moving – a lot!) and drag her around the corner of D-wing to the empty girls’ room.
Ethan, showing no sign of bashfulness in lingering near the sanitary napkin dispenser (which, even as a girl, I tend to avoid just on general terms), opens each of the four stall doors to make sure they are, in fact, empty.
Satisfied, he whirls on Fiona and says, “How could you do that, Fiona? A ‘zombie’? The ‘Living Dead’? How could you write that stuff? It’s not even true!”
“It’s all true,” she says defiantly, not backing down even when Ethan slowly pulls down his wide, dark hood to reveal the deep black depths of his deep black eyes.
(I’ve seen it before and even I’m backing away as he does it.)
“Really?” asks Dana, wrinkling her copy of the Bugle as she reads aloud, “None other than our very own junior Lucy Frost has come down with an ‘unknown affliction,’ according to her doctor, that results in freezing cold skin and a pale, almost ghostly pallor.”
Dana lowers the paper, all the better to give Fiona a glimpse into her own pair of deep, black eyes before practically bellowing, “WHAT doctor, Fiona? What DOCTOR?”
Fiona blushes – oh, to blush again – and says, “Okay, every part but THAT is true, right Lucy?”
“Fiona,” I begin, struggling to put into words the gravity of her situation, of our situation, “Fiona I just…”
But what do I say?
I look to Ethan, to Dana, for help but they, too, seem to be hesitating, to be stopping just shy of telling poor, trembling, chubby little Fiona why we’re all so upset.
It doesn’t take Barracuda Bay’s own “cub reporter” to figure it out on her own.
(Something I kind of wish Ethan and Dana had thought of before rushing to my aid in the first place.)
“Wait a minute?” asks Fiona defiantly, not afraid to speak her mind even when surrounded by three angry, dark-eyed, pale-faced zombies. “What do YOU two care if I fibbed about Lucy in the stupid school paper for anyway? Why would YOU two care if I fudged facts a little and called her a ‘zombie’ just to spice things up a little in that weekly rag? I didn’t even know you three were friends!”
And, of course, she’s absolutely right.
Why would Ethan and Dana care?
I open my mouth to speak, to spill, to break one of the 8 Unbreakable Zombie Laws and flat out confess to all kinds of crimes of the zombie kind when the bathroom door bolts open and in stride none other than Piper and Bianca and man are.
They.
Ticked.
Off.
So ticked off they roll right past me, right through Dana and, if Ethan hadn’t been posed in a standoff directly in front of Fiona, this story would have ended right here.
As it is he senses them, turns and grabs each one by the neck before literally picking them up and carrying them all the way across the bathroom and into the far wall.
Even I am impressed by the quickness of his actions, by the stark and severe reality of seeing his bone pale arms flying into action.
And trust me, vampires aren’t exactly easy to get the drop on; those suckers are ready for anything – and FAST.
Ready for anything, that is, than my ticked off ZFF (Zombie Friends Forever).
Fiona kind of blanches, as if someone’s just tapped the back of her ample calf with one of those beer spigots and drained out all the blood.
She kind of whimpers and backs away and the severity of Piper and Bianca’s reaction, the way they stormed in here ready to take over, makes me wonder what I might have done if I’d been alone in defending poor, mortal Fiona.
The vamps are screaming now, hissing, their feet like claws scraping at Ethan’s thighs, the big fat slugs of black blood literally boiling beneath their skin as their fangs slide out, hissing as they try to gouge Ethan in the throat.
Dana and I both watch Fiona’s face break into a spasm of horror just as her mouth pops open to let out one of her patented, girlish screams – she lets one fly every pep rally, so we’ve been there, heard that.
Dana is closer and quickly clamps her cold, pale hand down over every inch of Fiona’s mouth while I rush to help Ethan.
Bianca has managed to wriggle loose and is just about to slide one of her thick black nails – yeah, they slide out when they get angry, too – right across Ethan’s face when I grab her arm and yank it back behind her so far – so fast – she
falls to the dirty bathroom floor, where I quickly slide my foot across her neck to hold her still.
Even so she bucks and writhes, making me constantly apply more force and/or adjust my position; it’s kind of like being a rodeo rider, only this bull can bite.
Meanwhile Dana has yanked a black and white scarf from around her waist – she wears them as belts sometimes, trust me, it’s cuter than it sounds, at least on her – and has effectively gagged Fiona so she can help us fend off two very, very angry vampires.
(Or, at least, not alert the whole school to their presence with one of her pep rally lung bursts.)
Feeling Dana at his side, Ethan lets Piper fall gracelessly to the floor, where like a 100-pound scuttling crab she quickly grabs Bianca’s hand and yanks her free of my size 8 black hi-tops.
It happens so quickly, so decisively, it reminds me why we steer clear of the vampires at all costs; they’re just straight up bad to the bone.
They stand shoulder to shoulder, fangs glistening, eyes bulging and glowing, skin gurgling, hissing at us, bent at the waists like the animals – the hungry, soulless animals – they are.
But they are outnumbered in here, at least… for now.
Zombies may not have fangs or any of the other vampires’ super powers, but we’re still no pushovers when it comes to Battles of the Living Dead.
Ethan alone could waste both girls, but not without getting nicked in the process and although it’s a little known fact that zombies can be turned by vampires, just like humans, it’s not pretty and it’s certainly something we don’t want to lose Ethan to.
So he’s wary, Dana’s wary, I’m wary and Fiona is absolutely petrified.
“You can’t protect her forever!” spits Piper, her fangs slowly receding into her mouth as she apparently settles on a cease-fang for the moment.
“Maybe not,” I say, “but we can look out for her today.”
“And then what, Lucy?” Piper asks. “Right now your Council of Elders is probably sending a team of Sentinels to clean this mess up. No doubt the Vampire Congress is sending a team of Marauders to do the same. So let’s say you protect her all day, Lucy, which is highly unlikely. But let’s say, by some heroic zombie feat you three manage to keep her away from us all day long… then what?
“Are the three of you going to fight off an entire army of the living dead? By yourselves? Face it you three, none of us – not the vampires, not even the zombies – can afford to have this girl among the living. Not anymore; not after what she’s done – not after what she’s seen. If we don’t get her, the Marauders will; if the Marauders don’t, your Sentinels will. She’s cooked, one way or the other.”
Suddenly Piper is Piper again; the human Piper, the passing Piper, the pretty Piper.
Her fangs are gone, her blood slugs are thinner and slugging slower now and she… she… smiles.
(Gross.)
And she takes a step forward, and so do I, and in the middle of that tiny girls’ room we stand toe to toe and she says, “So why not save yourself the trouble and hand her over now? We promise to make it nice and quick, Lucy.”
“No, Piper!” I say. “No, not at all. It’s not her fault; she didn’t know what she was doing. She’s just some stupid… Normal… who had no idea what she was getting herself into. I’ll just explain that to the Sentinels and they can explain it to the Council and—”
“Lucy,” comes a gentle voice from behind me, just as a gentle hand settles on my tense shoulder.
I turn to see Dana smiling at me.
“Lucy, she’s right. For once, Piper’s right. I don’t know about you, but I’m not looking forward to explaining to the Sentinels why we couldn’t stop some stupid nerd Normal from blabbing our secret to the whole school and, now, the whole internet. I say let’s just hand her over and let the vampires deal with her.”
“Dana?” I ask, looking at her with a fresh pair of eyes.
This?
This?!?
From my ZFF?
“How could you? I mean, she’s just a… a… girl. A stupid Normal girl. And you’re going to hand her over to… them?”
Fiona is looking from me to Dana, from Dana back to me, her eyes wide, her mouth pleading behind the black and white gag.
Dana looks at her unforgivingly and says, “I know she’s just a girl; and I feel bad about it, really I do. But play this all the way through to the end, Lucy. I mean, what’s our exit strategy here? Even if the vampires don’t get her, even if by some miracle we manage to save her life all day long, what then? The Sentinels won’t let her live. Now that she knows what we are? Now that she knows what Piper and Bianca are? Now way. On what planet? Face it, Lucy, she’s done for, one way or the other. Why get involved?”
I look at Dana in a new light; and not just the dim bathroom lighting that makes us all look twice as dead – and half as human.
I mean, I know she can be tough and menacing and violent, when provoked, but I’ve watched chick flicks with this chick, laughed at those adorable baby ads for Etrade.com, held hands during the scary movies Ethan forces us to watch every weekend.
We have been friends, trusted each other, and yes have been forced to do some violent stuff against both vampires and zombies in that time (hey, it’s our job), but never before on… humans.
Normals.
Before I can answer Ethan kind of takes a step forward – as if he can sense the tension – and says, “Lucy, just… think about it. I’m not saying we have to hand her over to them, but someone’s going to want her. Trust me, I’m all for kicking a little vampire butt; a little vampire butt. You’ve gone up against the Marauders before; you know what they’re like. And the Vampire Congress won’t just send one Marauder; they’ll send a team. Do you really want to end it all, right here, right now, because of… her?”
And now my stomach really drops, because for all Dana’s blustering, Ethan has always just been a very mellow fellow.
I mean, he doesn’t go out of his way to make friends with mortals, but he’s not openly hateful toward them like Dana can be.
Not to mention… gross!
This is the guy?
This is the guy I thought I could one day, maybe, hopefully… spend forever with?
A guy who would toss up a human girl, just like that, just to save his own butt (fine though it may be)?
My head reels, the room wheels, I’m surrounded by monsters and it’s all my fault.
“Hey, you’re the ones who messed this all up,” I blurt. “I told you I would handle it, I told all of you I would handle it, and I would have. All I was going to do was talk to Fiona, tell her some stupid story, that I had some disease and didn’t have long to live, and if she could just keep it to herself, I’d really appreciate it. But oh no, you two had to pull a Zombie John Wayne and ride in on your white horses and save the day, and now look at her; she knows because you wanted her to know.”
“That’s ridiculous, Lucy,” scoffs Ethan, while Dana says nothing, all while avoiding my eyes.
“Is it, Ethan? I touched her by accident; you guys grabbed her by the arms and dragged her in here. On purpose! You guys told her you were zombies, straight up. And you…” here I whirl on Piper and Bianca, still licking their half-fangs in the corner. “You two barged in here, fangs out, ready to tear this girl to pieces! None of you has tried to hide anything, at all. You say you’re trying to help, all you’re doing is making it worse.”
“She started it, Lucy,” says Dana quietly. “Don’t forget that.”
“She was kidding, Dana. Did you even read the article? I mean, all the way through? It’s called sarcasm; irony.”
“Call it what you will, Lucy, she was treading on dangerous ground even mentioning the Z-word.”
Ethan’s eyes are calm but his face is frozen; it’s like his mind is made up and now all he’s doing is trying to win me over to his side, whatever it takes.
“Yeah, Ethan, okay but… she didn’t know that. Not un
til you two showed up and proved it to her!”
The room falls silent; I’m tired and spent.
I don’t believe I’ve ever been this sad, this angry, since, well… since I caught the Z-disease and found myself alive again.
Piper and Bianca say nothing; they’ve made their point.
Dana looks at me and finally says, “That’s all well and good, Lucy, but it’s not going to change the fact that her story’s on the internet, that the Sentinels are probably reading it RIGHT now and will be here by the time school gets out. TODAY. Not tomorrow, when you’ve had a chance to sleep on it. Not next week, so we can all run away and be long gone in time. Today, seven, eight hours, tops. So I’ll ask you again, Lucy, why don’t you just hand her over and let the vampires deal with this?”
Vampires Drool! Zombies Rule! A YA Paranormal Novel Page 7
