Chris and Lisa stared at each other’s wounds in disbelief as the zombies turned away from them, all their attention on Steph.
“We can’t let them get her,” Lisa gasped, pressing her hand against the stinging bite on her shoulder. It was already starting to burn. Chris nodded. He knew what he had to do. Pushing through the crowd of snapping jaws, no danger to him now, he canceled the power save on his phone. There was ten percent left in the battery. Enough time for Steph to escape.
The second the screen flickered back into life, every zombie in the room snapped to attention, drawing closer and closer to the television and the happy sounds of love and friendship.
Steph watched on the other side of the crowd of zombies as Chris and Lisa examined each other’s bites. There were tears in their eyes but they weren’t crying for themselves, she realized, they were crying for each other. On the TV, Steph saw herself, lying in the ball pit at Thunderballs, right before they discovered Mrs. Hinzmann.
“Show us some human interest,” Chris called behind the camera, laughter in his voice.
On the screen, someone she remembered from what felt like a thousand years ago grinned awkwardly as he snickered.
“Are you making a video?” TV Steph shouted back as Chris dissolved into a puddle of giggles. “You asshole.”
Clinging to her chisel, she desperately tried to think of a way out of this. Maybe they could come with her, maybe there was a cure, and if she just kept them safe or tied up or locked in a closet or something.
But Chris knew it was too late. He felt the same burning in his arm as Lisa. He felt his blood heating up. He wanted to scream but he couldn’t. All he could do was stay still and stay quiet and wait for Steph to get away. He pulled Lisa close for a hug and she rested her damp face on his chest, and then, with his best smile, he raised his hand and softly waved good-bye to his newest friend.
Tears ran down Steph’s cheeks. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. She raised her own hand to wave back, forcing herself not to run over there and murder everyone in the room. He deserved so much more than a wave, but if she didn’t leave now, before … The alternative didn’t bear thinking about. Adjusting the strap of her satchel, she turned, her heart breaking into a thousand different pieces with every step she took, until she was out in the silent hallway, the door closed shut behind her. All she could do now was find Anna and Nick and hope against hope that she wasn’t the last woman alive.
* * *
In the staff room, Chris’s videos played on. He stroked Lisa’s hair, even as his arm grew heavy and stiff.
“What’d you think?” he asked, nodding toward his film playing on the TV screen.
“I love it,” she said, her voice full of trembling emotion.
“Imagine if we’d never met,” Chris whispered, his voice cracking with the effort of making words. They weren’t coming so easily now.
“But we did,” Lisa replied. “And it was amazing.”
He looked down at her beautiful face, devastated that he couldn’t save her, but so happy to not be alone in all of this. There was relief and at last, no more fear. A tear spilled out of his eye and landed on Lisa’s face as they turned back to face the TV and waited.
26
ANNA HAD NEVER been a massive fan of Christmas songs. They were always cheesy, overproduced, and usually super derivative. There was no originality left in Christmas. Well, except for maybe this one. She stalked slowly through the deserted hallways, following the jingle bells of a jaunty, festive tune all the way to the school auditorium. The music grew louder as she pushed open the door, impaling a zombie with the business end of her candy cane and tossing him down to the floor without so much as a second thought.
It had been a rough couple of days.
The hall was still set up for the Christmas show. She brushed her wild hair away from her face, looking down at her blood-spattered shirt, her bruised knuckles. She looked as though she had been part of a show. This couldn’t possibly be real life. Between herself and the stage were a sea of zombies, all staring straight ahead, jaws slack and making happy, satisfied little groaning noises. In the middle of the stage, fully lit with a turkey leg in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other, was Savage. Behind him, tied tightly to a chair and wrapped in strings of lights, was her dad.
Anna stayed hidden in the shadows, her heart pounding with something she had almost forgotten. She was so afraid he was already gone, that Savage had done something terrible to her poor dad, but there he was, battered and bloody but definitely alive and definitely still human. She glanced around the room, taking stock of the situation. The fire exits had been boarded up, and there were stacks of boxes and chairs blocking the stage exits. This was the only way in and out of the auditorium. One way or another, she had to get through the swarm of zombies, free her dad, and get back out again without either of them getting bitten.
“Ah, Mr. Price.” Savage took a huge bite out of his turkey leg and grinned as a student Anna recognized from the year below crawled across the stage in a torn magician’s costume. “Bet you wish you hadn’t keyed my car now, don’t you?”
“I’ve told you,” he gasped, reaching the edge of the stage and finding a barricade of piled-up desks, chairs, and tables between himself and the horde. “It wasn’t me!”
“Do you have any proof that it wasn’t you? Any alibi?” Savage asked, dropping his turkey leg into Tony’s lap and grabbing the boy by his collar. “Because I’m almost certain that it was.”
“I didn’t,” the boy sobbed. “I swear it.”
Savage shrugged, braced himself, and hurled the screaming teen into the audience. Anna shrank back as the zombies surged onto the offering, muffling his screams with slobbering groans. Waiting until they were all distracted, Anna crept down the aisle, keeping low, candy cane close at hand.
“Why are you doing this, Arthur?” Tony screamed. There were no students left. Savage had been playing judge, jury, and executioner ever since he opened the doors and let these evil things in, and now there was only the two of them left.
“Did you not hear me?” Savage replied, picking up his turkey leg and resuming his meal. “He keyed my car. Actually, I don’t think he did but he really pissed me off with that shoddy magic act in the Christmas show and honestly, I just didn’t like the look of him.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Tony muttered, watching as Price’s top hat sailed across the crowd before settling on the head of a zombie lunch lady.
“Doesn’t it?” Savage spun around and grabbed his nemesis by the chin. “Then how about this? I’m doing it because I can.”
He slapped Tony hard around the face and went back to his wine and turkey. If he’d been asked to list his wildest fantasies, sending the entire population of the school to their untimely death by way of a zombie invasion wouldn’t have even made the top ten, but it was like people said, he sighed, looking out at the blank, bloody faces in front of him. You never really knew yourself until you were faced with a crisis.
Deep in the middle of the audience, Anna stopped, crouching low as she saw the empty, dead eyes of the magician staring back at her through the zombie’s legs. Transferring her candy cane to the other hand, she kept on going. Up on the stage, Tony saw something move while Savage carried on with his lunch. He stiffened against his ropes—it wasn’t possible, was it? Trying not to attract attention, he shook his head, staring Anna down with stern but watery eyes. But he knew his daughter; she was too determined to walk away, even if the price was her life.
Leaping to his feet, Savage spun the spotlight on the edge of the stage, illuminating Anna right where she stood. He knew she was there. He’d spotted her the second she walked into the hall, but this was his school now, she was playing his game by his rules. And now she was stranded in the middle of a sea of zombies, in the perfect position for her precious dad to watch her be ripped to shreds.
“How are you not dead yet?” he crooned, leaning his elbows on the spotlight.
“Run, love!” Tony yelled as his daughter plunged the sharp end of her candy cane right into the zombie’s face. Anna rose to her feet, standing tall as her victim collapsed to the floor. She fixed Savage with a smile and cracked her neck.
“Is that all you’ve got?” she asked, Nick’s cocky words ringing in her ears.
Savage sighed, examining his nails.
“Still a show-off, I see,” he said with a yawn. “Well, go on then, give us a show.”
He bolted across the stage, spinning every single light until they were all on Anna, and then, to really make sure the zombies were paying attention, he cranked the music as loud as it would go.
Anna took a deep breath, calmly set her candy cane down, and using both hands, she carefully wrapped her hair into a ponytail as if she was preparing for an entirely new war. She picked the candy cane up again and braced herself. She wasn’t afraid to fight, not anymore. One after another, the zombies attacked, leaping, lunging, clawing, and swiping, every one of them meeting their end as Anna fought back with newfound strength. She ducked out of the way as one zombie parent flew at her, tipping him over with the hook of her candy cane and watching as he landed on his head, his neck snapped at a sickening angle.
“Oh, Miss Shepherd.” Savage leaned against the spotlight, moving it around the room as he followed Anna in her explosion of violence. “You don’t understand. A purge on this species is long overdue. We’re done, we’re broken. We brought this entirely on ourselves. Fighting is futile! The way I look at it, we’re already dead, so why not have a cheeky bit of fun?”
“A cheeky bit of fun?” Anna asked, yanking her weapon out of the chest cavity of a particularly foul-smelling former fireman. “You murdered John’s mom!”
“Did I?” he screamed back, suddenly completely unhinged. Just as quickly as he’d lost it, he regained his composure and smiled. “No wait, you’re right, I did. Guess what? You’re up next.”
“Then I’ll give you one hell of a show,” Anna yelled back. “You won’t want to miss this, Savage.”
Behind him, Tony wrestled with his bonds, his skin burning as he struggled against the ropes that were bound so tightly around his wrists.
On the floor, Anna grabbed a fire extinguisher and sprayed the school crossing lady and her husband in the face before finishing them off with one hard crack from her bloodstained candy cane. Bringing it back around for another swipe, she felt the cane hook against something. It was her dad’s friend Jerry, caught in the crook and gnashing his teeth in her direction. With all her might, Anna spun herself and the cane around in a circle, sending Jerry flying into a gaggle of zombified parents.
“You’re a silly wee girl,” Savage crowed as he leaned over the edge of the stage to bait her with his psychotic and insulting banter.
“And you’re a madman!” Anna shouted back, leaping onto a chair to get a clear view of his manic, ginger face.
He acknowledged her accusation with a cold, one-shouldered shrug.
“The truth can be hard to hear sometimes,” he said, tipping his head to one side. “You say madman, I say evil genius. One looks so much better on a résumé than the other.”
“How. Can. You. Take. Pleasure. In. This?” Anna asked, punctuating every word by bludgeoning another zombie in the head.
“I’ve been taking a course in mindfulness,” Savage replied. “I live in the now. I’d recommend it if you weren’t about to die.”
“Anna!”
Her dad shrieked her name as one of the zombies reached up and grabbed her ankle. Anna fell hard, cracking her head on the edge of a wooden bench.
Everything went dark.
“Ooh, this is the good bit,” Savage said, clapping and jumping up and down on the spot. “Are you watching, Shepherd? I’d hate for you to miss your daughter’s denouement.”
Anna moaned as the light from Savage’s spotlight blurred her vision, a heavy thumping sound filling her ears as a shadow reared up over her head. She was down, but not out. Feeling around for her candy cane, she found a handful of pencils instead and before she could even think about the grossness that followed, she jammed them up into the eyes of the zombie that lurched over her.
“Get up, Anna!” Tony yelled, still fighting against his ropes. He pushed and pulled while Anna grabbed for her weapon, toppling his chair over with his escape efforts.
From his vantage point on the stage, Savage did not like what he saw. She was supposed to be dead by now, but here she was, leading the bloody zombies in what looked just like an undead ceilidh dance.
“It’s a sad day when you can’t even trust zombies to get the job done,” he snarled. “If you want something done right and all that…”
“Get! Down!” Anna screamed, beating a row of zombies down onto the floor, pausing only to kick one square in the crown jewels. She hadn’t really expected it to work, but he collapsed, just like John had that one time she accidentally-on-purpose kicked him in the nuts after he made fun of her Girl Guide uniform when she was thirteen. The fallen zombies created a path, leading all the way up to the stage.
“Oh, hang on a minute.” Savage’s eyes opened excitedly as he realized what Anna was planning to do. Truly he was going to get his Christmas wish after all. “Come on, Miss Shepherd!” he shouted. “I’m waiting!”
Taking a deep breath, she shook her head at her own idea and then pelted full speed through a narrow opening in the horde, springing off the back of a bent-over zombie she had spotted eating something on the floor near the stage, leaping over the barricades, and landing on the stage in a heap beside her dad.
Arthur staggered backward, unable to believe it had worked. He watched as Anna sliced her candy cane through the bindings that held her dad, fighting with the ropes and the Christmas lights, while the undead roused themselves on the auditorium floor beneath them.
Anna squeezed her dad so tightly, a burning pain shooting through her knee where she’d landed on it. Tony worried that she might crack one of his ribs she was squeezing so hard, and he’d never been so grateful. The look on his face, the pride in his eyes. She couldn’t think of a moment when she’d ever been happier. Until her dad stood up, turned around, and slugged Savage right in the gut.
“Leave him,” Anna said as they towered over the fallen man. “He doesn’t matter. Not to anyone.”
“You get back here!” Savage croaked from his prone position on the floor. He would not be abandoned, he would not be ignored. They would stay and they would watch and they would do as they were told. But Anna and Tony were already onto the next task, pulling apart the barricaded exits at the side of the stage.
“NO!” Savage screamed, any and all thoughts of zombies forgotten. He grabbed the neck of his wine bottle and smashed it against the leg of a chair. He’d make them pay attention, he’d make them listen to him one way or another.
He sprinted right at Anna, and she turned with her candy cane, ready to swat him out of the way like the insignificant idiot he was, but instead, her dad barged right in front of her, intercepted Savage, and threw him to the ground. The two men rolled around the stage, crashing into lights, fighting over the broken bottle. Below, the zombies were awake, and they were angry. With missing arms and legs, they began to mount the barricades, no longer distracted by Savage’s lights and music, only one thing in mind.
Anna stood watching as Savage and her father rose to their feet, Tony right on the edge of the stage, only inches away from the snapping jaws of the horde.
“Oh, Tony,” Savage laughed. “Looks like I’ll have to finish you off and then your daughter. Sorry to disappoint.”
But Anna had other plans. The giant star that hung suspended in midair, above the middle of the stage, swayed ever so slightly with all the action below. She dove across the stage and grabbed the end of the rope that held it fast, untying it as
quickly as her chapped and bloody hands would allow.
“DAD!” she yelled, pointing up at the stage ceiling as she let go of the rope. The north star swung down from its resting place and Tony dropped to his knees, ducking out of the way. But Arthur Savage did not see it coming. He turned at the last moment, a look of complete surprise on his face as the star slammed him right in the chest and sent him sailing through the air, right into the open arms of his audience of zombies.
“They love me!” he cried as they crowd-surfed him along on their hands. Tony crawled back to Anna, a look of horror on his face. “They really love me!”
And then he disappeared. Consumed by the crowd, eaten up by the very zombies he’d let into the school. His screams split through the Christmas music and the rabid moans and groans as Anna and her dad held on to each other on the stage.
“We’ve got to go,” she said, grabbing her dad’s hand, ready to help him to his feet. “They’ll be done with him in a second, we don’t have any time.”
Tony didn’t move. Instead, he rolled up his trouser leg to reveal an angry bite mark, already throbbing and turning purple. He looked up at a grief-stricken Anna with tears in his eyes.
“I’m sorry, love,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
27
“NO!” ANNA SCREAMED. “No, no, no!”
She turned away from her father and took her candy cane to the set of the Christmas show, battering Santa’s house, crushing the North Pole, kicking prop presents across the stage.
“Come here,” Tony said, wrapping his daughter up in a calming hug. Their last hug. “You need to leave.”
“They’ve got to be working on a cure,” Anna whispered. She dropped her candy cane to the floor, all the fight ebbing out of her.
“It happens too quickly,” Tony said. Thanks to Savage, he’d seen the change happen more times than he could count. “I can’t come with you.”
Anna and the Apocalypse Page 16
