by Shawn Kass
Weapons First
Considering what the girl said, you realize that you really should get yourself a weapon first if you are going to be roaming around a school potentially filled with the undead. The first aid kit and the food can be picked up after you have a means of protecting yourself.
Turning, you begin to head for the stairway passing a display case full of trophies that students won for the school in regional and state championships. Two of them, the baseball trophy and the hockey trophy, give you the idea that these might be useful weapons, certainly more than the volleyball and swimming, anyway. Towards the end of the display case, however, you see a small placard which reads “Best in Show” and mentions a woodworking competition. Granted, the idea hadn’t been one of the girl’s from the teachers’ lounge, but as you consider it, you realize you could actually make yourself some weapons with the tools in there. As you descend the stairs you consider using a nail gun to “add a point” to your next encounter with a zombie, or perhaps the jagged teeth of a saw blade might cut down on their attempts to eat you, but when you reach the first floor you remember that the gym and the woodshop are in completely different ends of the school. You are going to have to make a choice which one you head for.
If you go to the gym, turn to page …………………..…….. 67 If you go to the woodshop, turn to page ……………….. 91
Gym
Deciding to head for the gym as the girl told you, you are already thinking about the feel of a baseball bat or a golf club in your hands and what it will feel like to knock a zombie’s head off. You pass by several more classrooms along the way and find that just over half of them still have their door closed. The ones with their doors open, however, show you far more gruesome scenes than anything you have seen in TV or movies and so you decide not to bother trying the closed doors, unsure if your stomach can handle what might be inside on the floor and walls.
When you get halfway down the hall, you hear a loud cry coming from the hall up ahead, as if someone is doing one of those martial art kiai yells. It happens to be the only hall that leads to the gym, so you are faced with a choice yet again. On one hand, the person is probably being attacked by a zombie right now which means there’s a risk going that way. Sure they might need your help, but you have nothing to help them with other than providing yourself as an alternative meal to the hungry undead creature. On the other hand, if you do show up, you might be able to confuse the zombie long enough to provide them with an opportunity to escape. There is no telling if there are zombies back the other way towards the woodshop class, but turning around now at least gives you a shot at finding a weapon before you go rushing in to save anyone.
If you try to help the person, turn to page ……… 69 If you turn & run for the woodshop, turn to page …… 344
Help the Person
Deciding that you simply can’t leave anyone to face one of those things alone, you sprint for the corner ready to do whatever you can to help, all the while hoping that you aren’t just offering a substitution on the zombie’s mid-morning meal. When you get there, however, you see something you hadn’t considered. Standing in the middle of the hallway is Alexis, a sophomore girl you’ve seen around school, holding an aluminum softball bat above her head, breathing hard with eyes transfixed on the messy pulp of ex-human which lies at her feet. A drop of thick blackish colored blood drops off the bat before she notices you standing there, and she takes a moment before she lowers the weapon and allows you to approach.
“Hey, are you all right?” you ask. “It…it…it tried to attack me,” stutters Alexis. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“I know,” you say. “They’re everywhere. We need to get out of here.”
Looking at you with hope in her eyes, Alexis asks, “Where? Do you know somewhere safe?”
“Kind of,” you say. “There are some people upstairs who are holding out, but we need to bring them stuff if we want to get in.” Looking to the bat in her hands, you ask, “You know where the rest of those are?”
Glancing down at the bat as if she almost forgot she was still holding it, Alexis says, “Yeah. There’s a whole bunch of them downstairs in the athletic office.”
Remembering that the athletic office is the only room in the school’s basement, and it is positioned in the back of the gym, you say, “I need to get some of them for myself and the other people upstairs. Would you mind coming with me in case I run into any more of those things?” As an incentive you add, “I’m sure if you help me bring back supplies for everyone, they’ll let you in too.”
Alexis looks down at the zombie whose head she smashed open like a rotten pumpkin thrown at a mailbox after Halloween and then back to you before she agrees and says, “All right, we can watch each other’s backs. Let’s go.”
Together you and Alexis head down the rest of the hall and into the gym. The hardwood floor, which the gym teacher always makes sure is well cared for and never allows students to walk on with black soled shoes due to scuff marks messing up the normally shiny waxed surface, now has several dead zombies littered along its length, each one in its own pool of dark drying bodily fluids. As you pass by one of them, you catch a whiff of the rotting corpse and find that your eyes are watering from the stink of it.
Looking up to the walkway you spot the weight room and consider running up there for a weapon. A baseball bat is all well and good, but you imagine swinging a forty-five pound barbell into a zombie skull would do a lot more damage. On top of that, you could always try dropping weights on their heads from above. With this new choice in mind, you have to make a decision quickly.
If you go to the weight room, turn to page ….……….. 73 If you continue to the athletic office, turn to page …… 83
Weight Room
Turning to Alexis, you say, “Hey, let’s go up there. If we use the weights, we can hit them harder.”
Shrugging, Alexis says, “Okay, lead the way,” and the two of you turn and head for the stairs in the corner which lead to the narrow walkway.
Just as you begin to head up the stairs, you hear a sound coming from the far end of the gym, and when you look, you find a small horde of zombies coming in from where you two entered. For a minute you question to yourself if they simply followed the scent of the two of you, or if it was Alexis’s yell earlier which drew their attention, but then you realize that no matter what the cause, the fact is they are here now, and you two will have to deal with them.
Hurrying, you sprint up the stairs and run for the weight room with Alexis on your heels. Inside, you find that the weight room is much smaller than you expected and from the looks of things, the equipment was well used before it was ever donated to the school. The legs on the bench press are at a strange angle which make you question how it can support the weight of anyone who lies on it, never mind the barbell which they might try to lift. The metal framed weight machine with all the pulleys and stuff has several spots of rust which seem to go all the way through. Along the wall you see a pile of plates weighing from two and a half pounds up to forty-five pounds, but at best it looks like less than three hundred pounds total. There are a few dumbbells scattered around the room from whichever team was in here last, but again, there doesn’t seem to be all that much. It’s no wonder, seeing this stuff, why the sports teams at your school never seem to do very well.
Looking to Alexis, you say, “Grab what you can and bring it out to the walkway. We’ll drop it on their heads before they get a chance to climb up here.”
“Sounds good,” she says, but then when she tries to lift the first weight, she realizes that she will have to put the bat down. Reluctantly, she sets it to the side, leaning it up against the wall within easy reach, and then she begins to pick up some of the smaller weights and bring them out to the walkway.
Joining her, you have a thirty-five pound plate and a twenty-five pound plate in each hand. They bang against your knees as you try to walk as a result of the balancing act your shoulders are
doing as you carry two different size weights. When you get to the railing, you set one weight down and heft the other one overhead. Alexis does the same with her weights, and you tell her, “Wait a second, you have to make sure they’re close enough you can get them.”
“Right,” confirms Alexis, as if she was thinking the same thing all along.
When the horde finally shuffles their way closer a minute later, you toss the weights down, sending them hurtling into the creatures’ heads. Both of your weights hit their mark, and the zombies go down, but Alexis misses on her second throw, and the weight gouges a hole in the gym floor. You want to gawk at her for destroying school property and somewhere inside, you can already hear the coach blowing a gasket at her, but with the zombie apocalypse upon you, you pull your focus back to the task at hand and run back into the weight room to get more ammunition to throw at them.
On the second trip, you each toss a ten and a twenty-five pound plate at the walking dead, and you each hit one. The only problem is that your second hit was in the creature’s body, and after taking a step back, it resumes its advance, still desperately hungry for your flesh.
By this point the zombies are already at the stairs, and you decide to grab a barbell off the rack to clobber them with. When you come out, however, you notice that they haven’t advanced any further and are all milling around at the first step. It strikes you that the zombies can’t climb the stairs. Emboldened by this revelation, you take a position halfway up the stairs and begin your first swing.
Unfortunately, you didn’t tell Alexis what you realized, and she followed you down the first couple of steps ready to help with her bat. As you swing, the barbell smacks into Alexis’s head, and she falls unconscious down the stairs, right into the waiting hands of the remaining zombies, while her bat tumbles down to the floor next to them. At the same time as she falls, you find that you were unprepared for the reverberations in the barbell, and it slips out of your grasp to slide down the stairs.
In a panic, you reach for the bar, not realizing how close this puts you to the zombies, and before your fingers can get hold of your makeshift weapon, the cold grip of a zombie wraps around your wrist and pulls you down into the fray.
The End
Help Nathan
Deciding to check on Nathan and help him to the nurse’s office, you give up on making it to class on time where you know Miss Dikeo will just have you continue reading A Tale of Two Cities and walk over to him. Stopping just a few feet away so that you don’t have to see what his regurgitated breakfast looks like, you wait patiently for him to stop dry heaving.
When he looks back towards you, it doesn’t seem like his eyes focus on you at all, and they appear to be glassy looking. You also notice that his face looks paler than usual, too. It’s not paper white, but the guy is definitely sick. He makes a noise, something unintelligible which you question if it is even in English, before you say, “Nate, you look pretty bad. How about I take you to the nurse so they can call your mom?”
The grunt he gives in reply seems like all you’re going to get in terms of agreement, and so you pick up his backpack off the ground and tell him to follow you. At first, Nathan reaches out towards you, like he wants to grab at his bag or something, but you know from the way he’s stumbling over his own feet that there’s no way he’ll make it with the extra weight of his bag on his back, and so you say, “Don’t worry about the bag, I’ve got it. You just follow me.”
Reaching the door, you find the Dean of School Discipline, Miss Ski, locking the doors just as the bell rings for first hour to begin. Ever since schools came under attack, the doors of most schools started getting locked to protect students from unwanted intruders. Now, Miss Ski gives you her disciplinarian look, clearly questioning why you are late.
Quickly explaining yourself in hopes that you can avoid any more trouble, you say, “Miss Ski, I found Nathan getting sick in the bushes, and I decided to help him in. I figured I would take him to the nurse’s office and then head to first hour.”
Looking past you, Miss Ski takes in Nathan’s appearance including his chalk-white complexion and the throw up stain on his school uniform, and a momentary look of disgust comes over her face. Then looking back to you, she asks, “Is that his stuff?” nodding with her chin towards the extra backpack you’re carrying.
“Yes, ma’am. Like I said, I was just trying to help.” “Fine, help him to the nurse and have her write you a pass. I want you in class within the next five minutes.”
“Yes, ma’am,” you agree, just as she steps back and allows you to take on the job of holding the door open for Nathan while she continues her rounds ensuring the rest of the school is locked up.
After she goes, you look back to Nathan and are startled to find that he is standing only inches away from you, his face tilted down like he was thinking of resting his head on your shoulder and his mouth pungent with the smell of vomit and decay. Stepping back to give yourself some breathing room, you say, “Nate, when you call home from the nurse’s office, you might want your mom to bring you some toothpaste or something when she comes cause your breath is nasty.” Then turning into the school, you say, “Come on, Nurse Jackie is this way.”
Nathan staggers more than once as he follows you, and you count both yourself and him lucky that no one else is in the halls to see it because you would both surely be talked about if anyone did. Finally, however, you make it to the nurse’s office and are surprised to find that others are already there. The place, for that matter, is already full. Pushing the door open, you say, “Nurse Jackie,” and when she looks up from her desk where she is filling out some paperwork, you add, “Nathan was outside throwing up in the bushes. I thought he should come see you.”
“Another one, oh dear. Okay, let’s have him come back here, and I’ll take a look at him.”
Following her, you set Nathan’s bag down on the floor next to the chair she indicates. Turning around to see Nathan, you notice all of the people in the room look almost as bad as Nathan does, and you get a little squeamish about the idea of getting whatever it is that they all have. Conveniently remembering the dean’s words just then, you say, “Ma’am, Miss Ski said she wanted me to hurry up and get to class. Now that he’s in here, can you write me a pass so I can don’t get a tardy?”
Reaching for a pad of sticky notes, she says, “She’s right, you do need to get to class. All right, here, just let me…,” and scribbles something down as her sentence trails off.
When she hands you the note, you thank her and head out as quickly as you can without letting it look like a run. In the hall, you let out a breath you hadn’t realized you were holding and begin to make your way to your locker.
In years past, the students’ lockers were all grouped together by their grade level, and it formed zones where seniors, juniors, sophomores, and freshman each congregated. This year, however, the school tried something different. They assigned the student’s lockers by the students’ first hour class. They claimed that it would bring the school together and help to avoid cliques which might ostracize certain students. It also had the added bonus of reducing first hour truancy as well.
Stepping up to your locker, you spin the dial, 50 right – 22 left – 34 right, and lift the handle only to find that the door doesn’t open. You try jiggling the latch a few times, but when it still doesn’t open, you go back to spinning the dial. Just as you turn to the last number again, the classroom door next to you opens, and you find your first hour teacher, Miss Dikeo, staring you down.
“Late again, I see,” says Miss Dikeo.
Fumbling in your pocket, you say, “It’s not my fault, Ma’am. Nathan got real sick outside, and I helped him to get to the nurse.”
A bit of the teacher’s glacial stare seems to melt at your words, but not enough to avoid a titanic amount of trouble she’s clearly worked herself up into, as she asks, “I assume you have a pass, or some sort of proof that this is where you were?”
Pulling ou
t the note from your pocket, you present it to her and say, “Yes, Nurse Jackie wrote it just a minute ago, see?”
You can visibly see her letting go of her anger, but before it completely ebbs away, she says, “I’m sorry that he is not well, but in the future I’m sure he will be able to make it to the nurse without your help.”
It’s true that you could have let this be the last word on the subject and let her think she had said her peace and taught you something, but because she was who she was, and you were who you were, you can’t help but add in one more comment to defend yourself. “Actually, Miss Ski was the one who told me to make sure he got to the nurse, Ma’am. I was on my way here when she saw me. You can check.”
Not having anything to say, Miss Dikeo turns and walks back into the room, leaving the door open behind her for you to follow. Instead, however, you lift the latch on your locker door and take your time retrieving your book, paper, and pen, before you enter the class and take your assigned seat on the far side of the room next to the windows and wall mounted water pipes that make up the school’s boiler heating system.
Since class had already begun, Miss Dikeo had to go to her computer to edit the attendance she had already taken and remove the absent tag she put with your name. As she did this, you notice that three seats in the room are empty, and you look over to your friend John and ask in a low voice, “Hey, where’s Stacey and the others?”
Staring back at you through one blood shot eye, John grunts and gives you a non-committal shrug. Thinking to yourself that this has felt like the longest week of your life already, you understand John’s nonchalance and turn back to face the teacher, wishing you could be out of school like the others, too. Clearly something was going on, and it would have been so much better if you could have just stayed in bed this morning.
