by Amanda Ashby
“Jeez, you know that those things are full of hidden cholesterol, don’t you?” Candice blinked, and Mia tried not to notice that her skin was now tinged with gray. If her eyeball fell out or her skin ripped away from the bone, Mia could promise there would be some serious screaming.
“They are? Gross. Well, maybe I should just have some fingers instead and . . . Did I just say I wanted to eat some fingers? ” Samantha turned to them in alarm and Candice shot her a sympathetic smile.
“Yes, you did. You see, we’re turning into zombies and soon we’re going to want to eat Mia and Chase,” Candice explained matter-of-factly as salvia dribbled down her face. “But not yet. Apparently we have to wait until we hit stage four.”
“Well, that’s not fair.” Samantha pouted. “First I can’t eat any more cobb salads, and now I can’t eat Mia Everett?”
“Of course you can’t eat Mia Everett,” Candice retorted in a disgusted voice. “You don’t even like Mia. You tried to steal her prom date. Besides, I’m her best friend, so if anyone gets to eat her, it will be me.”
“Um, Chase.” Mia coughed. “I’m not sure I like the direction of this conversation.”
“Okay, so how about this?” Samantha was telling Candice. “Do you remember that cute blue top I was wearing the other day? Well, if you let me have one of Mia’s kidneys, I’ll totally let you borrow it for a week.”
“Make it a month and we’ve got a deal.” Candice licked her lips and Mia gulped as Chase got to his feet and reached for her hand. Mia felt his fingers lace into hers, and she followed his gaze to where at least fifty seniors, all clad in their prom clothes, were laboriously walking toward them. And was that Mr. Haves in there, as well?
“I think we might have a problem,” he stated unnecessarily.
“Is this the zombie-queen thing and they are going to start copying me again? Or maybe sniffing me?” Mia unconsciously inched closer to Chase. “Because this doesn’t really look like last time.”
“It’s not like last time. Like I said, they are almost at stage four, which means we’re running out of time.”
Mia felt her knees start to buckle. Chase put a protective arm in front of her, and she found herself clutching at it for dear life.
“Oh, crap.” Candice awkwardly got to her feet and shot Mia an apologetic look. “Chase is right; stage four isn’t too far away, because I’ve sort of got this overwhelming desire to eat you.”
“How strong is this feeling?” Chase demanded.
“Oh, you know.” Candice gulped. “It’s pretty strong. Actually, Mia, I think you’d better run.”
fifteen
Before Mia could even answer, Chase grabbed her hand and dragged her along with him as he pushed through the students who were all closing in on them. “Let’s go.”
“But what about Candice?” She gasped as felt his fingers entwine in hers.
“I’m sorry, but we need to get you somewhere safe . . . quickly.” Chase suddenly pivoted and started running in the other direction as a group of cheerleaders all wearing different-colored strapless dresses blocked their way.
Mia panted as she tried not to think about how terrified she was. The cheerleaders had now decided to run after them, along with everyone else, though thankfully they were moving at little more than a shuffle as Chase led her out through the side door that connected to the boys’ locker room. Mia followed him and heard a crunching noise on the other side as the door swung shut.
The faint smell of chlorine and damp towels caught in her nose as Chase continued to drag her along the tiled floor, past the rows of lockers. Behind them, the almost-zombies seemed to be having a bit of trouble trying to fit through the narrow door as they all tried to shuffle through at once. Mia dared to let out a sigh of relief that they really were a bit brain-dead. They hurried out through the other door with Chase stopping only long enough to kick a trash can to help slow the others down.
“Come on,” Chase urged as they once again began to run. “We need to find somewhere to keep you safe.”
“What about the school basement?” Mia panted, trying her best to keep up with his fast pace. Running in high heels certainly wasn’t making it any easier.
“There is no basement,” Chase said just as a group of tuxedo-clad chess-club geeks appeared at the top of the hallway. And were they waving at her like this was a game?
“What?” Mia yelped as they spun and headed left toward the library. “But there’s always a basement. In Buffy, Sunnydale High has a basement bigger than a mall.”
“I’ve studied the floor plans of this place enough to know that there is definitely no basement. Especially not a mall sized one.”
“Well, that’s a flaw,” she said, just as there was a shouting noise from behind them. Mia spun around to see Rob clumsily making his way toward them, closely followed by the others.
“Mia!” Rob yelled as he held out the limp and battered pink corsage. “Babe, stop with the running so I can hold you.”
“In here.” Chase pushed open the door of a janitor’s closet and slammed it shut just as Rob’s fist went crashing into the wood. Chase quickly locked the door and nodded for Mia to stand at the far end of the closet. She tried her best to look away from the small frosted-glass windowpane in the door that showed the shadowy dark silhouettes on the other side.
“Mia, come on. Let me in,” Rob howled, and Mia felt a sense of doom go racing through her. This was it. She was going to get eaten. By her prom date.
Chase seemed to be searching around for something before he grabbed two brooms. He handed one to her before heading back to the door and pressing his full weight against it, as if to hold off what seemed like an impossible force on the other side.
“If anything comes near you I want you to belt them as hard as you can in the eyes, mouth, or groin.”
Mia was just about to protest that she wasn’t really the belting sort of girl, when all of a sudden she saw Chase’s body shudder as someone kicked the door.
“So how long do we have before—”
“I’d say about an hour at the most.” He face was grim as the door shook again. Oh, to be back in the steel-reinforced biology closet.
“An hour?” Mia clutched at the broom. “But that’s not enough. How can we get it translated in time? Especially now that Candice isn’t exactly on our side. Can we do just redo the old reversal spell? I mean, you’ve got it all there and it worked last time. Well, it did for a day. Maybe it would buy us some more time?”
“It’s too risky. We got lucky then; this time it could backfire on us and make it worse.”
“Worse than being eaten by two hundred zombies?”
“It could make them stronger. Even more aggressive. The thing is, without the translation, there is only one other alternative.”
“Gas?” Mia’s voice was faint as she noticed that Chase couldn’t quite meet her gaze. Up until this moment the whole situation had all seemed a bit surreal, as if she had managed to wander onto the set of one of her favorite television shows, but now it struck her with blinding clarity just how serious it was. She really had turned everyone into zombies. Chase really was going to kill them all if he needed to, and if they both failed . . . well, then they really were going to be eaten.
“I’m sorry, Mia. But everything is already in place, since yesterday.”
“What do you mean?” she said, the horror mounting.
“There is a hydrogen-cyanide device in the ceiling. All I need to do is remotely activate it with my cell phone, and it will release the chemicals that will kill everyone and stop them from turning into the living dead.”
“What? Please, Chase. No. What about your department? Can’t they translate it?” Mia was almost pleading now.
“How can we even get it to them in time, let alone explain—”
“Grace.” She suddenly blinked as she reached into her tiny purse and dragged out her cell phone. “She knows the section Candice was talking about. I’ll see if she can g
o online and try and Google a translation?”
“It’s a long shot.”
“A long shot is better than being turned into zombie kebabs,” Mia retorted just as the sound of splintering glass shattered their ears. Chase immediately swung around and used the broom to hit away the hands that were trying to claw their way through.
Mia screamed as she saw Rob’s face appear in the space where the window had been. Rob’s hand went straight for Chase’s neck and without thinking Mia ran over and used her broom to hit him on the knuckles. Rob didn’t even flinch as he instead reached to try and grab her by the arm, but he was stopped by Chase’s fist crashing into his picture-perfect face. Then, without wasting another moment, Chase dragged a free-standing locker over to cover up the exposed space where the glass pane in the door had once been.
“Okay.” He leaned against the locker and panted. “I think you’d better make the call.”
Mia didn’t need to be told twice, and Grace answered on the third ring.
“Okay, so I’ve got a problem,” she said without preamble and when her sister didn’t interrupt she quickly continued. “You know that passage that you read to Candice? Well, we still need to get it translated. Like, right now.”
“I thought Candice was doing that?”
“Um, yeah, there’s been a change of plans.” Mia shuddered as the banging noise increased.
“Oh man, don’t tell me it’s the zombies,” her sister said, and Mia blinked.
“What? I thought you didn’t believe me. You made me admit that Rob dumped me.”
“I know, but that was before Samantha called me.”
“She did?” Mia clutched at the cell phone. “What did she say? Are you okay?”
“Of course I’m not okay,” Grace retorted. “Samantha was my role model and now she wants to eat my kidneys. But I can assure you that I have no intention of being zombie fodder. I’ve got the summer to look forward to and then it’s my junior year, because—”
“Grace,” Mia cut her off. “We don’t have time for this.”
“Oh, sorry. The only thing is, I’m not sure what I can do to help—”
But whatever Grace was going to say was lost as the locker started to shudder and shake with the force that was being thrown against it. Chase was using all his strength to push back, but it seemed as useless as trying to fight the tide.
“Mia.” Chase used the chair to hit away a second hand. “I think you’d better wind it up.”
“Grace, please just try. Go online and see if you can find a translation site. Anything,” Mia pleaded. “And call me. We don’t have much time left.”
“Okay,” her sister said simply, and hung up just as Chase grabbed Mia’s hand and pulled her to him so that she could help him lean against the locker. At that moment she felt fingers reaching through from around the locker and trying to grab at her shoulder. She jumped away and swung at them, and from the other side someone made a howling noise.
“God.” She moaned in despair as she rejoined Chase, leaning against the locker. “I’ve turned into a one-episode-only girl.”
“What?” Chase panted as the door started to tremble, and he once again threw his weight behind it.
“Unlike some people around here, I don’t spend my leisure time trying to kill things. I watch TV and everyone knows that the regular hero, aka you, never gets killed or, in this case, eaten. No, that sort of stuff happens to the one-episode-only girl. I’m dispensable. I’m the snack. While the likes of you move on to greater network success.”
“Except of course this isn’t TV,” Chase pointed out as once again the door started to press open.
“No, and that’s what makes it even worse.” Mia waved her broom again as another hand tried to reach through. “I mean, if it were, then yes, technically I might only ever be known as the girl who was zombie bait in season five, but at least in real life I would still be alive, well paid, and—who knows—I might even end up as a cult figure who could go and do fan conventions. But there is no happy ending to this tale. I’m the loser of all the one-episode-only girls who ever existed.”
The locker started to buckle and Chase seemed to use all of his strength to force it shut. “For a start, you definitely watch too much television, and more importantly, you’re not going to die. Okay?”
“Chase, I want to believe you, but seriously I don’t think the odds are stacked in our favor here, and—”
“Mia, stop it. I want you to take a deep breath and look into my eyes.” Chase’s voice was commanding, and Mia turned to him. His green eyes were still strained with the effort of keeping the almost-zombies out, but she nonetheless felt herself getting lost in them. Again. This was becoming habit-forming.
“Are you feeling calmer now?” he said in a soft voice, which made her oblivious to the door pounding that was resonating through her body.
“I . . . um . . . yes,” she struggled to answer as she continued to stare deep into his gorgeous eyes. Would it be wrong to touch his face? She loved the way his jaw was tight with concentration. And how his full bottom lip was slightly protruding. How could anyone look that good? And—
Her phone started to ring and Mia reluctantly dragged her gaze away and saw it was Grace.
“Ingest it,” her sister yelled into the phone as if she were speaking to an eighty-year-old who was hard of hearing. “They need to ingest it. That’s why it didn’t work properly last time. Oh, and by the way, I was talking to this totally hot guy on some zombie chatroom, and he said if you’re stuck in a building with hordes of undead trying to chew your arms, the best thing to do is hit the fire alarm so the sprinklers come on. Apparently they hate water.”
For a moment Mia just blinked before she finally managed to speak. “Thank you,” she said inadequately. “You might have just saved us. But Grace, if you don’t hear from me in half an hour, then things might’ve gone wrong and I want you and Mom to get in the car and drive straight to Grandma’s house.”
“Don’t be ridiculous—you’ll be seeing me in the morning, and I swear, if you get bitten by a zombie and have visible scarring, I will disown you,” Grace said in a gruff voice, and Mia found herself sniffing.
“Okay, no visible scarring. I don’t want your reputation to suffer,” Mia promised. “But Grace, I mean it about going to Grandma’s. Do you promise?”
“Yes, now go and do your zombie thing,” her sister said in a softer voice. “And good luck.” Mia finished the call and took a moment to compose herself before turning to Chase.
“Okay, so apparently under the blonde hair and short skirts my sister is a genius. The spell didn’t work properly because the potion needs to be ingested. Oh, and she also suggested we turn on the sprinklers so we can get back to the gym.”
Chase widened his eyes as he immediately reached for a mop that was propped up against the wall. “How did I not think of that?”
“It’s probably because we were actually being chased by real-life almost-zombies. It’s very distracting,” Mia comforted him before shooting him a hopeful look. “So what do you think? Can we redo the reversal spell and figure out a way to get everyone to ingest the potion?”
“Let’s just take one thing at a time. First we need to get out of here, and then we can worry about the next part,” he said as he pulled a small lighter out of his pocket and held it up to the mop head. “Now, when I say run, I want you to head straight for the gym. If something happens to me, you need to lock the door and do the ritual. Do you understand?”
Mia nodded as they waited for the mop to catch fire. Once it was blazing, Chase used his shoulder to inch the locker away from the broken windowpane. The instant he did so, hands and faces appeared from nowhere and Mia threw a bucketful of dirty mop water at them to buy him some time. That was all he needed, and he thrust his hand through the small gap and up to the ceiling, where he assured her there was a fire sprinkler.
Mia held her breath as they waited for something to happen. For a moment there was n
othing, and then suddenly she heard a screaming noise. And another.
“Right.” Chase now used his shoulder to shove the locker out of the way, and the pair of them glanced out the door to an almost empty hallway.
“What happened to them? Where did they go? Is this some sort of trick?”
“No trick. They’ve probably gone somewhere dry,” he said as he cautiously opened the door and Mia followed him out, holding her shoes in her hand since there was no way she could keep running in them. “Not all parts of the sprinkler system will have come on, just the ones that were triggered from the heat. But at least the coast is clear. For now.”
“Let’s do it then.” Mia grabbed his hand and they ran back toward the gym through the misty water that was still falling down from the ceiling. The quickest way was to turn left, but the moment they did so, they caught sight of a group of students who had obviously been recovering from their impromptu shower. But the minute they saw Mia and Chase, they started lumbering toward them.
“This way.” Chase nodded, and they slipped in through a classroom and ran through the adjoining door.
“Boy, you really did study those school plans well.”
“In this business it always helps to know your escape routes. So how are you holding up?”
“Well, it’s certainly not how I imagined prom night, but I’m okay. We just need to do this thing. And Chase, I’m sorry about your date. I guess this has pretty much ruined it for you.”
“My date?”
“With Candice,” Mia said as they made their way down the hallway.
“Candice and I aren’t going on a date,” he said in surprise. “Didn’t she tell you?” He creased his brow together.
“Tell me what?”
He turned to her for a moment. “Because a reversal spell has never been done before in stage two, when I reported it to the department, they were skeptical, because they had never approved the translation we used. Turns out they had good reason to worry. Anyway, they wanted me to continue to monitor it and since nearly all of them are going to be at the prom tonight, I had no choice but to go.”
