The band is still playing. I can’t tell if they’re being romantic, crazy, sentimental or just plain stupid. It’s like those guys who kept playing on the deck of the Titanic as it was sinking.
I mean, what the hell were they thinking?
The TV monitors were already on when the outbreak started. They’d brought them into the gym special, just so we could watch the ball drop from the top of the local bank. Now all they keep showing are the zombies everywhere.
Every.
Where.
All.
Over.
The.
Place.
They tore through the marketplace where everybody was waiting to watch the ball drop. They tore through the shops and stores, still open late selling champagne and flowers and confetti and horn blowers to all the last minute shoppers. They tore along the banks of the river, where folks were settling in for the big fireworks show at midnight. They tore through the streets and the houses and the garages and the sheds, pulling drivers out of cars and breaking down doors and climbing through shattered windows and doing what… they… do.
Now they can’t wait to tear through the rest of us. The last of us.
The last of the living…
The helicopters hover overhead as they film our school gym, which is pretty much live on every station at this point. And not just local, anymore, either. GNN has picked it up. And MSGBC. The other networks, too, all over the country, probably the world by now, as the zombies crowd outside the doors.
Outside our doors. Just across the gym floor.
They’ve swarmed through everyplace else in town, so we’re the only live meat left in all of little Nightshade, North Carolina. Outside of town, the army has crawled in, blocking off roads and mowing the zombies down with their special new zombie guns.
But here, in the middle of town, we’re pretty much the only walking brains left around. And they all know it. Every last zombie must be out there, trying to get in.
To get US.
I can see them now, up on the TV monitors, staring over Phil’s shoulder as the music plays; there aren’t just hundreds of them anymore, there are thousands. They’re backed up for blocks, all bottlenecked at the gym doors, like they know we’re inside.
It’s like those lines that form just before Value Mart opens up at 4 AM for Black Friday shoppers. It stretches, and stretches, thick and moving, as one, as they shuffle and mumble, arms outstretched.
There’s no getting past them anymore, that much is clear. There’s nowhere to go, now that we’re locked in. And nowhere to hide once they get inside. And they will get inside, no doubt. It’s just a matter of time.
Which means we’re cooked, every last one of us still inside the gym.
And we’re probably the only people left alive in Nightshade, which is sad, because… that’s just temporary. As soon as those chains break, as soon as the first zombie gets inside, or maybe the second or the third, that’s it, we’re done.
Every last one of us.
Life as we know it will be over. And the Afterlife will begin.
There are only a few dozen of us left in the gym by now. When the principal stopped the band from playing “Auld Lang Syne” to announce the latest outbreak, most everyone split.
Including Chad Chalmers, my date for the night.
Phil Brody could have split with them, but he waited for me to come out of the bathroom. Why, I have no idea. I mean, we hardly know each other. He’s a senior on the debate team and I’m a junior trombonist for the marching band.
But there he was, standing just outside the girls room, a bottle of champagne in his hand.
“I’ve got good news and bad news,” he’d said, voice a little shaky as he tried to be brave. “Which do you want to hear first?”
“Bad news?” I frowned, still looking around for Chad.
“Okay, well… the bad news is, the gym is completely surrounded by zombies and both our dates deserted us.”
I hadn’t believed him then, about either piece of bad news, but then he showed me the TVs. And when I scanned the gym, sure enough, Chad was gone.
So was Phil’s date for the evening, Sasha Leone.
“And the good news?” Suddenly I was the one trying to sound brave.
He handed me a bottle of champagne. “More bubbly for us!”
By then everyone who was going to get out already had, and the rest had decided to stay behind, chaining the doors shut and locking them tight. The band, who was all older, broke out a case of champagne they’d been storing backstage for their own personal use come midnight. And we’d been downing them ever since.
That was over an hour ago, and the band is still playing.
“Auld lang syne.”
Over and over and over again.
Only, since this is probably the last night they’ll ever get the chance to play it, they keep switching it up on us. Fast. Slow. Jazzy. Reggae style. Bossa nova, whatever.
Right now they’re doing a long, slow country version and, for my money, it’s the best so far.
Phil has a bottle of champagne in one hand, and we keep passing it back and forth. We’re not so much dancing as kind of just rocking from side to side, really close to each other, face to face, keeping one eye on the TV monitors all over the gym, and the other on the gym doors.
They keep bulging in, and you can hear them out there, the zombies I mean, growling, hungry, ugly, mean and fierce. You can smell them, too, rotting and bloody, like a Dempsey dumpster full of wet copper.
“I always thought I’d be freaking out if I wound up in one of these situations,” Phil says, a little glassy eyed from the bubbly. His red hair is cut short for the occasion, and he looks nice – if a little ironic – in his baggy blue tuxedo.
“What, dancing with a total stranger during a zombie outbreak?”
He smiles, less glassy eyed now, more intense as he dances a little closer. “You’re not a total stranger,” he says, putting the champagne bottle down on the table next to us. “I mean, we had detention together that one time.”
I chuckle. He’s just a smidge shorter than me, so I can put my arms over his shoulders and get real close, which I’ve always wanted to do.
I mean, not in real life, and not necessarily with Phil, just in general. I’ve seen girls do it in movies and it always looked cool. In real life, it’s even cooler.
“And we were in the science fair that one time,” I remind him.
His face crumples a little, eyes narrowing suspiciously. “You… you were in the Science Fair?”
I snort. “Hell no, but they made us walk through it during science class, so… technically we were in the same place together during the Science Fair, which totally counts…”
My voice trails off and, behind us, the gym doors rattle, the zombie noises getting louder, the door bulging, bulging, until I look away.
Phil looks over my shoulder at them and a little more color drains from his face. Then he turns back to me. “Whatever happens,” he says, “I’m glad… I’m glad we’re spending our last night on earth together.”
I shake my head. “Why? I mean… why did you wait for me like that? Why not run off with your date and MY date and the rest of them?”
He looks at the door, the chains clanging, the zombies groaning. “For one, I was scared of going out there…” We chuckle, because… no duh. Then he looks back to me and says, “For another, I figured this would be the last chance I ever got to tell you how I feel about you.”
I blink a couple of times, because… what else can I do? “I didn’t… I didn’t even know you knew me, Phil.”
“I know you,” he said. “I just, if you’re dating a guy like Chad Chalmers, I didn’t think you’d want to know a dude like me.”
“Me?” I chuckle, taking one arm off his shoulder to reach for some more champagne. “How about you and Sasha What’s Her Face?”
“She just wanted to get out of the house and knew the only way her parents
would let her be ungrounded for New Year’s was to go to the Winter Wonderland Dance with a dork like me.”
“She got grounded over Christmas break?”
“You know when those kids got drunk and tore down the Christmas tree in Market Square?”
“That was her?” I ask, handing him the champagne bottle. He takes a quick sip, like he’s distracted, and hands it back.
“Yeah, but she totally wanted to come to the dance tonight so she’s been text-stalking me for, like, a week and I figured it was better than sitting around the living room with my mom all night, watching the ball drop and then drinking apple champagne and kissing her on the cheek before going to bed…”
I snort. “Sounds like what me and my Dad do every year.”
“Yeah?”
“Except we prefer the grape juice fake champagne.”
“Me too,” he admits, “but Mom always buys the apple anyway.”
“Moms are like that,” I mutter.
The band switches gears again. This time it’s a slow, kind of waltz-y “Auld Lang Syne.”
I peel my eyes away from Phil for a moment and glance at the bandstand. It’s covered in white Christmas trees, hundreds of little lights blinking in time with the band’s music.
There are trees all over the gym, all white, all blinking, to match the “Winter Wonderland Dance” theme.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Most of us have been cooped up all Christmas break, ever since that big outbreak in Tennessee over Thanksgiving scared us all into realizing zombies were real, and real close; just a state or two away.
Then with those two outbreaks in South Carolina over Christmas, and the nightly curfew and the National Guard at Nightshade’s borders, well, folks thought it would be good if we had something to look forward to before school started up again in January.
Enter… the “Winter Wonderland Dance” idea. A gym full of cooped up kids, blinking Christmas trees, plenty of chaperones and a couple of armed guards standing outside the door. What could go wrong?
And now the zombies are here, right outside our door. The guards are gone, probably zombies themselves, or maybe hiding up in a tree somewhere, who knows. The chaperones have all split, but the Christmas trees are still blinking and the band’s still playing, so there’s that.
And at least I’ll look good as a zombie, in my snug maroon cocktail dress with the matching beaded purse and creamy maroon lipstick and the black heels that make me just tall enough to put my arms over Phil’s shoulders.
That is, if they don’t tear me to pieces before I’m reanimated.
I wag the champagne bottle at him before taking a sip. Then I ask him, “You still didn’t tell me how you know me.”
“That day,” he says, taking the bottle from me. “That day in Detention. I kind of… kind of fell in love with you.”
I’m glad he’s drinking the champagne, and not me, because if I was I’d be spitting it out right now. “What? Phil, you barely looked at me.”
“I was trying to be cool.”
I snort. “Well, it must have worked because I left there thinking you were the world’s biggest jerk.”
“Because I didn’t talk to you?” He looks shocked. Absolutely, positively shocked.
“We were the only two kids in there. Even when Dean Schaeffer left early to pick up his daughter from daycare, you still didn’t talk to me.”
He laughs. “He told us not to.”
“He was GONE!”
I slap him playfully on the shoulder and he inches just a little closer, explaining, “I thought maybe he had closed circuit cameras on or something and was watching us on his smart phone.”
“I think that would be illegal,” I tell him as he hands me back the champagne. It’s warm and flat but it’s possibly the last thing I’ll ever drink. What possibly? It IS the last thing I’ll ever drink, so… I drink it.
He shrugs. “I was too nervous, anyway.”
“I made you nervous? In Detention? You must scare easy because I’m about the least intimidating person on the planet.”
“You must have intimidated somebody to get into Detention,” he points out.
“I was framed,” I say, and before he can push for more information I point out, “YOU must have intimidated somebody to get in Detention, too.”
“More like the other way around,” he says, blushing a little. Phil blushes easily, I’ve noticed – and often. “I let Boner Simpson cheat off of me in History and when Mr. Prescott caught us, I took the fall so Boner wouldn’t tear me limb from limb after school.”
I nod. “That was noble of you.”
He smiles. “Well, whatever, I got to spend a whole hour with you and, after that, I just…”
His voice trails off, he looks away and he’s blushing again. I inch closer as the band kicks into a calypso version of “Auld Lang Syne” and whisper, “You should have told me sooner, Phil. Maybe then we could have come to this dance together instead of…”
He meets my eyes. “But we are together. Now.”
“Yeah, but… maybe if we’d come together officially speaking, we could have left together. Sooner. Gotten out of here before… this… all happened.” I take one arm off his shoulder to wave around the gym, at the TV monitors and the world’s saddest Winter Wonderland Dance theme band.
“And what then?” he asks, shaking his head. “We’d already be out there, reanimated, one of them by now.”
I nod, handing him back the champagne. He looks at it, shakes his head and puts it on the table next to the other empties. “You think… that’s what happened to Chad?” I ask. “And Sasha?”
He nods. “I do, Cara. I do.”
I nod and my arms just kind of slip off his shoulders. Before they can flap helplessly at my sides he grabs them, deftly, and holds onto them tightly, looking into my eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says.
“And my Dad?” I ask, glancing over his head at the TV monitors, still showing the zombie horde outside the gym doors. I need to stop looking over there. Every time I do, there are more zombies, the crowd outside the door getting thicker, the line to get inside the Nightshade High gym stretching out longer.
“And my Mom, and everyone in Nightshade,” he continues. “How could they survive… that?” He follows my eyes and, watching the growling, shuffling zombies, we both grow a little paler.
I slump a little, eager to fall into the chair at the table we’ve been dancing next to. “You can’t give up,” he says, yanking me back up and into his arms. “You sit down now, that’s it. You’ll never get back up.”
I look back at him, yanking my hands out of his. “But you just said… that’s it. We’re doomed, screwed. Why bother standing up?”
He pulls me closer, so that I can smell the champagne on his breath and see the little spot of red stubble on his chin he missed shaving before leaving the house tonight.
“Don’t you at least want to die on your feet?” he asks.
I shake my head, throat tight with the sudden realization of where we are, of what we’re doing, and what’s… out there… trying to get in. “I don’t want to die at all,” I say, crumbling into his arms.
He holds me, both of us trembling, the moment intense and sad and embarrassing and intimate, all at the same time. When I’m done crying, I try to push away but he doesn’t let me, griping me closely and I realize it’s because he’s not finished crying yet.
When he is, he loosens his grip and I inch from his grasp, reaching for two flimsy blue napkins on the cocktail table beside us. They’re full of glitter and confetti, which sticks to our faces long after we use them to dry our eyes.
I’m busy picking a miniature piece of champagne glass shaped confetti off his cheeks when the band finally stops playing long enough to announce, “It’s here, folks. Twelve o’ clock, midnight. Raise a glass, and kiss your partner, because it’s officially… New Year’s Eve!”
Nobody moves. Not a single soul. We look at each other, wondering
if it’s a joke, when suddenly the band leader says, as if he’s been listening to my brain think, “This isn’t a joke. It’s New Year’s Eve!!! Happy New Year’s Eve, everybody!”
Then he turns to his closest band mate and kisses him, dead on the lips, and the crowd suddenly cheers and they all start kissing each other. Guys, girls, girls, girls, guys, guys, doesn’t matter, it’s like someone just released kissing gas into the air.
You can hear them, smacking and macking all over the gym, and the band guys are still kissing, laughing and hugging each other like they’re probably good friends as well as good musicians.
Phil looks at me and I look at Phil. “Happy New Year,” I say, voice raw from crying, and I lean in and kiss him. His lips are warm and soft, just like they look, and I forget for a minute that we’re in this gym, and that Chad left me in the girls’ room to face the zombies all alone.
I even forget about the zombies… for a second or two.
Then we come up for air and look at each other, and blink, and… something has changed. Not just with us, but in the room.
There are little squeaks, and shrieks, and suddenly drumsticks fall to the floor and there is a harsh, metallic whine of the microphone as it falls off the stand and onto the stage.
The zombies!
I turn, looking, to see the door open wider than ever. One of the chains has broken, falling to the floor, lying at some zombie’s feet. They push, surging, skin gray and green as arms reach through the space between the straining gym doors, teeth yellow and bloody, eyes black as the midnight sky above them as they stare at us hungrily.
“Phil,” I gasp and he lets go of my hand. “Phil?”
“Here,” he says, replacing his hand with the neck of a champagne bottle.
“What’s this for?”
He smashes the fat end against the coffee table in reply, but the bottle’s so heavy and the table’s so flimsy, the table just falls apart, knocking plastic glasses and blue napkins and glittery confetti everywhere.
I chuckle and say, “I see what you’re getting at.”
I kneel down, hold the neck of the bottle in my hand and smash the fat part against the varnished gym floor. It bounces up, harmlessly, but I smash it down again, harder. Harder, until it breaks.
He does the same until we’re standing there, side by side, clutching our shattered champagne bottles. “I always wanted to do that,” I tell him.
“Me too,” he says, turning to me, and he’s breathing heavier, eyes wide.
He waits a beat and says, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” I chuckle. “Not inventing a cure for the common zombie bite before New Year’s Eve?”
He nods. “That, and… that I waited so long to tell you I cared about you.”
“Better late than never,” I say, voice trembling, hands trembling. He sees and reaches for mine with his free hand.
We square off like that, hand in hand, champagne shards up, as the last chains break and the gym doors swing open.
They swarm through, single mindedly, rushing at us like a slow moving wave across a flat, wide beach. Vaguely I hear the other kids screaming, and the squelch of a guitar as someone picks it up.
I look, just for a second, and see a single band member, standing alone on the stage, strumming his guitar until the gentle strains of “Auld Lang Syne” fill the air.
I smile and, by the time I turn back, the horde is upon us. I raise my arm to stab out at them, but it’s no use. There are so many of them, where do you start? I drop the bottle and it clatters to the floor. They sweep Phil away from me, his hand tearing from mine as the first zombie tears into my flesh with jagged, ragged teeth.
I scream out, but I’m so scared, heart pounding so hard, I barely feel the tearing of flesh and splashing of blood as I’m attacked.
And then another bites into me, and one more, then another, until all I hear is their chewing, and my blood spilling on the gym floor in great, clotted clumps.
And then they move on, shuffling along as I lay there, staring at the confetti on the floor, and Phil’s face, blood splattered like mine, a few feet away. His eyes are closed, his red hair mattered where they’ve torn off his ear.
I want him to open his eyes, to smile at me one last time, to wish me “Happy New Year,” but his days of smiling are over.
Mine, too, I suppose.
The zombies surge around us and I listen above their clomping and shuffling and growling as the single band member strums his guitar. “Should old acquaintance…” I sing along as he strums, quietly, slowly, as if just for me, “… be forgot, and never brought to mind…”
And then I hear them, footsteps on the stage, and the sound of his guitar squelching as he hoists it, smashing it into one of them until it stops.
And the guitar goes silent, and the munching begins, and I close my eyes, blood boiling, skin twitching, body growing cold as I struggle to remember the rest of the words: “In the days of auld lang syne…”
* * * * *
About the Author:
Rusty Fischer
Rusty Fischer specializes in seasonal short stories for the YA paranormal audience. Read more of Rusty’s FREE stories at www.rushingtheseason.com. Happy Holidays!!!
Zombies Don’t Read: 25 YA Short Stories Page 55
