Homeroom Headhunters

by Clay McLeod Chapman

  “Yep—you got it.”

  “What did you do this time?”

  “Can I tell you when I get home?”

  “Can’t wait,” she sighed. “Call when you need me to pick you up.”

  It was seven o’clock now. Mr. Simms and I had been the only people in the building for a while.

  It was a pretty safe bet there’d be no potato-based smears in the library, but Mr. Simms told me to check, so here I was.

  “…Hello? Anybody in here?”

  The hum of the florescent lights filled the room, and I ambled down a corridor of books, running my finger across a row of hardbacks.

  What have we got here?

  Fiddlers of the Civil War.

  Stimulating.

  I pulled it off the shelf, and discovered a pair of eyes blinking back at me from the neighboring aisle.

  “Aaaah!”

  I am not proud to admit that I screamed, lost my balance, and stumbled onto the bookcase behind me. I tried grabbing hold of any book that would keep me from falling but took a whole shelf to the floor instead.

  Somebody was here.

  In the next aisle.

  “Kill the pig.…”

  The voice barely rose above a raspy whisper, like gravel at the back of somebody’s throat.

  “Cut his throat.…”

  I turned the corner, quick—but nobody was there. I spun back, half expecting to find my mysterious library companion creeping up behind me.

  “Who is that? Who’s there?”

  “Spill his bloooood.…”

  I stood. Waiting. Counting the seconds in my head:

  Five, six, seven, eight—

  Something whisked past my face and struck the spine of a copy of European Fur-Trading: 1811. My eyes refocused on a long slender spear jabbed into the book right in front of my nose.

  Wait. This was no ordinary spear.

  This was a ruler. A yardstick, actually.

  Somebody had made a harpoon by strapping a run-of-the-mill, right-out-of-geometry-class drafting compass to the tip.

  “We’re coming for you,” the voice whispered. “And we’re getting closer.…”

  Before I could blink, another spear whizzed past—nicking the lower lobe of my ear before impaling a copy of Muskrats of South America.

  Yeeeeeow—that hurt!

  I cupped my palm over the lobe to make sure it was still attached to my head. It felt wet. Bringing my hand up to my face, I could see I was bleeding.

  This is not how I want to get my ears pierced.

  As soon as I saw blood, dizziness took full effect. The room started to spin.

  I was under attack. I had no idea who was doing it.

  But I wasn’t going to stick around and find out.

  I booked it.

  Ha—get it? Booked it? Even in trying times, it’s good to have a sense of humor.

  I ran so fast, I almost missed the silhouette racing alongside me in the next aisle.

  Turning to my right, I saw another silhouette.

  There were two of them.

  That’s when it dawned on me. These two were going to try to cut me off. I had to get to the exit before they did.

  I pumped my legs harder, and the burning started in my chest.

  Asthma. It felt like I’d been kicked in the lungs by a bucking bronchospasm.

  Hey, airways, now’s really not the time for an attack. Work with me here!

  Forget about breathing. If I didn’t get out of the library, I wasn’t going to inhale oxygen ever again.

  I felt a sharp sting at the back of my neck. I swatted to find a paper clip—a paper clip?—sticking out of my skin.

  There was a sputtering behind me, followed by another sting on my shoulder.

  Darts made from unfolded paper clips?

  Whoever these library predators were, they were turning regular school supplies into artillery.

  “Kill the pig!” one of them yelled. “Cut his throat! Spill his blood!”

  They were close. I could almost feel their breath against my neck.

  Only three steps away from the exit. My throat tightened, cutting off the air to my lungs.

  One step…

  Two steps…

  Three…

  I was about to clear the aisle, one leap between me and freedom, only…

  Something snagged my foot.

  I went down, hard, face-first to the floor.

  Panicked, I flipped over. A jump rope was strung between separate bookshelves.

  A trip wire.

  Just as quickly as I saw it, the rope slackened and disappeared between books. Gone.

  Trapped, I pinched my eyes shut and a hand grabbed my shoulder.

  I screamed.

  Again.

  “What’s wrong?” I opened my eyes to discover Mr. Simms leaning over me.

  “They’re after me! They’re after me!”

  “Who?”

  “Them. They’re right behind me.…”

  Mr. Simms looked as startled as I felt. He peered down the aisle. “I don’t see anybody.”

  I got up, refusing to believe him.

  “Your ear’s bleeding.”

  The library was completely empty. Silent except for the hum of florescent lights.

  “They were here just a second ago.…”

  “Ain’t nobody here, son.”

  nother bit of advice for all you newbies: Always have an exit strategy.

  A few weeks had passed since the library attack. My injuries had finally healed, the last of my detentions served.

  While in my after-school imprisonment, bored out of my brain, I had found a copiously underlined copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer behind my chair.

  I would’ve sworn it hadn’t been there before. It was almost like it had dropped out from the sky.

  Or the ceiling, perhaps?

  I flipped through it for a while, reading an underlined passage: “Best of all, the departed were the talk of the whole town.…”

  But you know what? I found myself drifting away from the pages.

  I’m pro-book, not a bookworm.

  There’s a difference.

  Now, finally as a free man, whenever I entered a room, my first order of business was always to quickly determine the best way to get the heck out.

  Leap out the window? Check.

  Climb through ventilation ducts in the ceiling? Check.

  Dig a hole through the linoleum and tunnel into the sewer system toward safety? If worse comes to absolute worst… Check.

  But wouldn’t you know it?

  Nothing happened.

  No sneak attacks. No shifting fiberglass panels. No peeking eyes. No disappearing feet.

  Nothing.

  Save for the occasional shuffling sounds from the ceiling, we were in the midst of complete radio silence.

  All’s quiet on the educational front.

  To be honest, things had gotten kind of boring. School had become, well, school again.

  Thank the heavens for Halloween.

  • • •

  Sarah Haversand came dressed as a unicorn. She’d taped a paper-towel tube wrapped in tinfoil to her forehead. At first glance, she looked like a horse impaled by a metal pole.

  “You sure you’re not a pony with a toilet-paper holder growing out of your skull?” I asked.

  “I’m a unicorn, butt-mulch.” She rolled her eyes. “Get away from me.”

  Halloween landed on a Thursday, which meant kids could wear costumes to school and parade through the halls in whatever getup they could pull together.

  Lotta vampires. Lotta witches.

  Not nearly enough zombies.

  So I took it upon myself to imagine everybody dressed up as undead whatevers. Instead of Sarah Haversand being a unicorn, she was a zombie unicorn.

  There were zombie princesses. Zombie cheerleaders.

  Zombie ninjas, zombie prom queens, zombie zombies.

  Everybody went from beyond boring to being a shuff
ling horde of flesh-eating preteens.

  Now I know what you’re asking yourself: What awesome costume did you come up with?

  I’ll give you one hint: It starts with a Z and ends with an E.

  • • •

  I’d slaved over the stove the night (of the Living Dead) before, boiling up a batch of linguine. I’d skinned every last tomato Mom had bought for the pasta sauce we would no longer be eating for dinner that evening, on account of the fact that I was using them for my guts.

  “Um…Spencer?” Mom had asked. “What are you doing?”

  “Getting my costume ready for tomorrow.”

  “Do I really want to know what an entire box of spaghetti has to do with your costume?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Fair enough,” she said. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

  I left the pasta in the fridge to cool, woke up at the crack of dawn (of the Dead), and dumped the tomatoes and pasta into a Ziploc bag. Then I took a whole roll of duct tape and strapped the bag underneath my shirt. That way, at school, I could rip open the Ziploc whenever I wanted and yank out my blood-soaked entrails with my bare hands.

  A couple dabs of baby powder to bleach out my skin, a few strokes of Mom’s blush under my eyes—and voila: Instant zombie.

  Go on. You can say it: Best. Zombie. Ever.

  • • •

  When third period rolled around, Assistant Principal Pritchard made the announcement for everybody to make their way to the gymnasium.

  Finally. The moment we’d all been waiting for: costume competition time.

  Every contestant would stand before the school and show off their getup.

  I was a shoo-in for first prize. Total no-brainer.

  Riley Callahan had dressed up as—surprise: a zombie Riley Callahan. The pink scar from his busted bottom lip gave him a permanent pouting expression, no matter what he was doing with his not-so-perfect-anymore face.

  As we passed each other, I could tell Riley was too nervous to get anywhere near me. He had brought along a couple extra henchmen for protection, surrounding himself with so many Cro-Magnon photocopies that you would’ve thought a preppie parade of kids dressed in Riley costumes was marching through the hallway.

  Riley took one look at me and asked, “Did you raid your dad’s closet for that costume?”

  “Don’t talk about my dad.”

  “Why? Is he dead or something? Sure looks like it.…”

  Keep it together, Spence.

  I’d only get one shot at tearing open my stomach and spilling my entrails all over Riley—and you better believe I wanted to do it in front of as many people as possible.

  That meant I had to:

  Wait for the costume contest.

  Find Riley in the front row.

  Then he’s all yours, Spencer.

  Before I realized what he was up to, Riley grabbed hold of My Little Friend. He gave it a good yank, snapping the string around my neck.

  “Let’s see how long you can hold your breath without this.…”

  “Give it back!”

  Riley lobbed My Little Friend over my head to Riley Copy #1. By the time I caught up to R.C. #1, he had already tossed it to R.C. #2, who then flung it to R.C. #3.

  Next thing you know, there’s a game of monkey-in-the-middle going on in the hallway with yours truly fumbling through the flow of students, trying to catch my inhaler.

  “I said—give it back!”

  “Be careful not to panic, Spazzma.” Riley laughed. “Don’t want to give yourself an attack!”

  I stopped floundering and stood before Riley. “Okay—I’m sorry. I apologize for everything I’ve ever done to you. Now, can I please have my inhaler back?”

  “Tell you what”—Riley grinned—“I’ll hold on to it until the end of the day. You can pick it up in the bus loop after school.”

  Riley and his boys pushed their way into the gymnasium, laughing, as I stood there letting everybody pass and trying hard to balance my breathing.

  Werekids in crappy costumes kept filing around me.

  Zombie wizards. Zombie pirates.

  Zombie tribesman.

  Tribesman?

  Somebody bumped my shoulder. I turned to see who it was, figuring one of Riley’s Cro-Magnon copies was back for another rousing round of ragging-on-Spencer.

  But it wasn’t a member of his crew.

  It was a chubby kid I’d never seen before.

  He was wearing the Greenfield gym uniform. Only, the letters had faded and his shirt had been ripped, then put back together with a staggering amount of safety pins. It was as if he’d been wearing it for years and never once taken it off.

  Not the most inventive costume. But I gave him points for the concept.

  There were a half dozen gym whistles wrapped around his neck. And a row of plastic sporks lined the length of his chest like a bandolier.

  He seemed a little…off.

  The glint in his eyes was totally giving me wild-child vibes. He looked older than most students, like he’d been held back a few too many times. There was something written on his fingers—letters tattooed on each knuckle. His left fist said…

  S

  P

  O

  R

  Staring me down, the boy balled both hands, bringing them together.

  SPORKBOY

  “Trick or treat,” he taunted. “Smell my feet, give me something good to eat.…”

  The last of the costumed students trickled by, and I turned, intending to make a break for it, only to run face-first into a wall in the middle of the hallway.

  But it wasn’t a wall.

  It was a person.

  A very tall person.

  I craned my neck up to a tower of a kid looking down at me. A sharpened yardstick hung off of each hip. He made eye contact briefly, then looked away and presented his knuckles to me. I could barely make out the word scrawled across his skin:

  YARDSTICK

  Whoever he was, he’d dreaded his hair. Not “dread” as in “be afraid of it,” but as in he had knotted his hair into these thick tendrils on top of his head. He’d adorned each lock with items from around school: lost earrings, safety pins, even a key that had probably been plucked from Mr. Simms’s retractable keychain.

  By now, all the other students were in the gym, so it was just me—and them.

  A third tribesman stepped up, seemingly out of nowhere. Same ratty, pinned-together gym clothes. His face was a supernova of acne, and in his hands rested a pair of plastic protractors, each semicircular edge sporting a line of X-ACTO blades. His bandolier held a gleaming row of compasses.

  Glaring wildly, he smashed his fists together. His knuckles read:

  COMPASS

  “Who…?” I started, but couldn’t finish.

  Silence.

  “Who…?” I tried again, my chest beginning to burn.

  Bad time for an asthma attack.

  I took a step back and bumped into somebody. I spun around.

  Another one?

  He looked older than the rest. His nasal septum was pierced with a paper clip, the thin bit of metal running directly through the cartilage that divided his nostrils. His alabaster body left him looking like he hadn’t seen sunlight in years. A belt of hollowed-out pens was wrapped around his waist.

  Looking at his hands, I noticed they were letter-free. But a necklace of handwriting ringed his throat:

  PEASHOOTER

  “Who…?” I tried one last time.

  “Who…” he asked, “are we?” A smirk curled his lip. “We’re your friends.”

  That’s when I blacked out.

  here was I? What happened?

  First order of business: Get my head to stop spinning.

  Second: Figure out why long strands of entrails are spilling out from this Grand Canyon–size rift in my stomach. And what are the squiggly bits that smell like the Olive Garden?

  And how come I’m not dead yet?

  Looking
up, I saw a series of pipes and pressure valves hanging over my head. An odd metal contraption next to me hissed, spitting slips of steam into the air.

  The boiler room? It had to be.

  Someone was kneeling next to me.

  A girl.

  She was about my age, maybe a little older, but it was hard to tell. Her hair covered most of her face. She was wearing a mismatch of old clothes held together by an exoskeleton of safety pins.

  And she was staring at my stomach, sniffing.

  Literally.

  She dipped her pinkie into my guts, wriggled it around, and brought it up to her mouth, lightly tapping it to her tongue.

  “You’re…Italian?”

  Cannibals.

  There were cannibals running around our school.

  And I was their next meal.

  My esophagus cinched shut.

  This was not how I had planned to spend third period. Mr. Rorshuck was going to think I was skipping his class—when, in reality, I was asphyxiating directly below his feet in the basement of the building.

  I grabbed at my neck, but My Little Friend wasn’t there.

  Riley.

  “Do you need an inhaler?” Cannibal Girl asked. All I could do was nod—Yes! Yes! Yes!

  She turned and rushed toward a pile of inhalers stacked in a far corner.

  Wait. Why was there a stockpile of asthma medicine stashed in the basement of Greenfield Middle School?

  Cannibal Girl ran back and held out an inhaler. I grabbed it, brought it up to my mouth, and squeezed.

  Empty.

  Cannibal Girl rushed back to the pile of inhalers and grabbed another one. She shook it, then tossed it over her shoulder and reached for another.

  Please, oh please, tell me they’re not all empty.

  “Found one!”

  I couldn’t even grab the inhaler. She had to bring it up to my mouth, prying apart my lips and pushing the button down.

  Air. Sweet medicated air…

  “Are you okay?” Cannibal Girl hovered above me and swept the hair out of her face. Her pale skin was like marble. White marble with the faintest trace of blue veins.

  She suddenly looked familiar to me.

  Where have I seen her before?

  “Why do you have a bag of spaghetti taped to your stomach?” she asked.

  Whoops.

  So those weren’t my guts hanging everywhere. Maybe this girl wasn’t a cannibal after all.

  “I brought these for you.” She nodded to the stockpile of inhalers.