Zombie High Read online

  Zombie High

  by Shawn Kass

  and Illustrated by Jake Posh

  Copyright © 2014 by Shawn Kass

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead, or undead, any events or organizations, are entirely coincidental or used honorifically.

  Copyright © 2014 Shawn Kass All rights reserved. ISBN-10: 149752105X ISBN-13: 978-1497521056

  Dedication

  To all my students over the years If the zombies ever do come, run!

  To my wife as always You’re the one who saved me.

  Special thanks to my beta-reader, Jane Brown, for making sure the zombies in this book have enough brains to satisfy themselves, and that they don’t escape from the pages to consume us all - except in

  our nightmares.

  Other titles by Shawn Kass include the many adventures of the crew of the Allons-y Second Chance: An Allons-y Adventure Another Chance: An Allons-y Adventure Too Many Chances: An Allons-y Adventure And

  I, Chance: A Prequel Allons-y Adventure Due out Christmas 2014

  WARNING!!!

  This is not a normal book. This is a book of choices, a book of consequences. You should not attempt to read this book from front to back like you might a normal book, but rather by making decisions based on intuition and fact. The pages within contain many different segments to this adventure with many different outcomes. It will be your collection of your choices, as both a reader and the main character of the story, which will determine if you can find your way through successfully or if you ultimately end up without a heartbeat.

  The story will take many twists and turns as a result of your choices. You will be responsible for the outcome. Think carefully before you turn the page: one mistake, one bad decision, and you may find yourself at the end far sooner than you would like.

  When you reach the end of a particular sequence, be sure to go back and try again, this time making different decisions as you go, and see where the story takes you. The events and places within the story change as the day goes by, and you may find that visiting a place early on in a story yields different results then when you visit it at another time.

  Today

  “Hey, get down here before you’re late!” yells your mother from the bottom of the stairs. Your alarm had gone off fifteen minutes ago, but you yanked the Mickey Mouse clock with the one broken ear from your bedside table hard enough to unplug it from the wall and pulled the blanket back over your head in attempt to get just a little more sleep before you faced another day of boring classes and know-it-all teachers.

  In an attempt to dissuade your mother from actually climbing back up the stairs to get you, which you know will only result in yet another lecture about cleaning your room, you yell back, “Coming,” but it comes out in a half-hearted croaky voice which you know will never appease her. Realizing this, you decide to just get it over with and roll out of bed. Refusing to actually make your bed, you draw the green blanket over the top, ignoring the mound of tangled sheets beneath it, and stumble your way to the bathroom.

  After cleaning up and putting on your school uniform, you stomp your way down the stairs with extra emphasis to show that you would rather not be doing any of this and plop yourself down in one of the chairs at the kitchen table. Set out on the table is a brown bag lunch, a disgusting generic cherry pop tart, and a dollar twenty-five in quarters for you to get a drink from the school drink machine.

  “There you are, Sleepy Head, I thought you’d never be ready,” says your mom who is standing across the kitchen from you tapping away at her phone. It’s not until you reach for the pop tart that she does finally look up, and it’s only to say, “Oh no you don’t. You wasted your breakfast time sleeping in. Now we need to get a move on, come on. Grab and go. I’ll meet you in the car.”

  Looking at the clock, you see that’s she’s right and realize that on top of everything else, you now have to hurry if you want to avoid another tardy. Conscientiously, you watch as your mood drops at least two more levels from its normal ‘I don’t want to be awake this morning,’ past ‘my life sucks,’ and now reaching ‘I may just punch the first person who speaks to me in the face.’ Grabbing your book bag off the floor, you realize how heavy it is and remember that there was a math assignment you were supposed to do but never got around to last night. With your luck, your math teacher, Mr. Castle, the exmilitary hard nose, will now surely pick today of all days to check the assignment and give a pop quiz. Cussing under your breath, you swipe everything off the table into the open zipper.

  You only have to wait in the car for thirty seconds as your mom sets the alarm and locks the door leading into the garage, before she hits the garage door opener and sunlight floods in through the windshield causing you to shrink back into your seat as if you’re a vampire. Hopping into the SUV, your mom reminds you to buckle up as she plugs in her phone to the vehicle’s speaker system. You groan internally realizing that not only is her morning cheerfulness proof that you must have been switched at birth with another baby, but that you will, yet again, have to endure twenty minutes of her golden oldie music from the 80s and 90s. Pulling your hoodie even further down, you pointedly stare out the passenger side window hoping to catch a few more minutes of sleep, or at the very least, avoid any conversations your mother might decide to start.

  Unfortunately, your attempts only work halfway as you are about ten minutes into the ride when your mother asks, “So, have you decided what electives you’re going to take next year?”

  Responding with the least possible effort in hopes she’ll get the point, you answer, “No.”

  “Well, you need to decide soon. They put students in classes on a first-come, first-served basis. If I were you I would choose something fun. You know these are the best years of your life, you should make sure you enjoy them.”

  Allowing too much of your morning grumpiness into your voice, you ask, “What is this - an after school special? From the way you make it sound, everything is downhill after high school.” Realizing you were far harsher to her than you meant to be, you shutup and turn back to face out the window.

  Your mother purses her lips together and mentally counts to ten as she stops at the red light, trying to hold onto her morning cheerfulness and not get into an argument with you for the third morning in a row before she says, “I’m just trying to be supportive. Maybe you can check with your friends and see what they’re signing up for so that at least you’ll be in one of their classes.”

  Noncommittally, you say, “Yeah, I’ll do that,” but you’re not really paying attention as your eyes fall on a strange looking man who is coming up the sidewalk. At first glance he looks like a disheveled looking businessman who may have stayed out all night getting drunk at some bar, but that doesn’t make much sense since you know this is a residential neighborhood and there aren’t any bars for miles. As he steps off the curb towards you, you realize his eyes don’t just look hung over, but they appear grey and chalky looking like one of your teacher’s blackboard erasers. Just then, however, the light turns green, and your mother switches from the brake to the accelerator causing you to lose sight of the man as the SUV pulls away.

  Your mother’s playlist, set to random, starts up with one of her favorite songs, and you are treated to a badly sung five minute rendition of Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic”, forcing you to honestly contemplate the idea of jumping from the
moving vehicle halfway through. When the Cranberries come on afterwards with their song “Zombie”, you find it slightly more tolerable because your mother clearly doesn’t know the words and has stopped singing, but also because you like the name of the song. Ever since the Walking Dead has come on TV, zombies have been the big thing, but you have always had a morbid fascination with them and consider yourself to be a bit of an expert on the fictional matter.

  Pulling up to the front of St. Mary’s Catholic High School, your mother says, “Have a good day, and try to get those choices for your electives turned in before you get stuck in something that you don’t want.”

  “I will,” you answer, as you automatically reach for the door handle and slide out of the vehicle. When your feet hit the sidewalk, you reach back in to grab your book bag from the floor in front of your seat before closing the door. Looking back to the school, you see the fifty year old two-story brick building looming in front of you with its mural of St. Mary covering the front wall and the flagpole with both the American flag and the state flag flapping a little off to the right. Checking your watch, you see that you have six minutes before you need to be in class, and debate about looking for your friend, Steve, near the busses, or going in now.

  If you want to look for Steve, turn to page ….………….. 11 If you want to go inside, turn to page ……………………… 12

  Looking For Your Friend

  Choosing to look for your friend Steve, you head in the direction of the school busses which currently sit idling on the left of the building. As you walk over, your eyes catch the giant thirty foot steeple atop the church, and it humors you as you get closer and you find that it lines up just so making it appear as if the bus has a cross coming out of the top of it. Diverting your eyes, you look to the third bus in the row and see that the seats are all empty. Clearly, Steve either didn’t come to school today or has already gone inside. Turning, you begin to make your way back towards the front doors of the school, and find that Nathan is leaning over the bushes just off the main sidewalk, and it looks like he’s sick.

  Checking your watch, you see that you have less than four minutes to get to class on time, but you also don’t want to just leave Nathan out here puking in the foliage. You reason, however, that if you do help Nathan get to the nurse’s station, she will write you a pass, and you can make your way to first hour at more leisurely pace.

  If you go directly to 1st hour, turn to page ……………….. 12 If you help Nathan, turn to page ………………………….…… 77

  Go Inside

  Heading into the school, you are greeted by one of the retired folks who volunteer their time in the morning and respond curtly as you hurry to your locker. In years past, student lockers were grouped together by their respective grade level, but this year the lockers were assigned based on each student’s first hour class. Spinning the dial with only seconds to spare, you pop the door open, throw your book bag in, and pull a spiral notebook off the top shelf along with the novel you’ve been reading in first hour English class, A Tale of Two Cities. Taking the last dozen steps in a hurry, you reach the threshold of the classroom just as the bell rings, and take your seat on the far side of the room next to the windows and the wall mounted water pipes that make up the school’s boiler system.

  As class begins and Miss Dikeo takes attendance, you notice that three seats in the room are empty. Looking over to your friend John, you ask in a low voice, “Hey, where’s Stacey and the others?”

  Staring back at you through one bloodshot eye, John grunts and gives you a noncommittal 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.

  Finished with the attendance, Miss Dikeo says, “Okay class, please open to page one-twenty in A Tale of Two Cities and begin answering the questions on the handout I am disseminating now. You should find all of the answers within the next three chapters of reading, but I warn you, they are not all in order.”

  Raising her hand, Sarah asks, “Miss Dikeo, can we work with a partner?”

  “No,” answers Miss Dikeo. “I want you each to work on this by yourself, and when students work with partners, they usually just end up talking or dividing the work, which won’t help them on the quiz I have planned for Monday.”

  After receiving the handout and passing the rest behind you, you pull out the book and begin reading. It only takes you a few minutes to realize that it is way too early for this, and the words on the page are making no impact on your brain. Looking out the window you see some of the retired people from the neighborhood walking up to the church across the street for their daily Mass and serving of the Eucharist. One of them appears to trip on the way and smacks right into the ground without even trying to break her fall. You watch for a moment to see if she is all right, but just as the woman begins to move, you sense the approach of Miss Dikeo and turn back to bury your nose in your novel.

  Another ten minutes go by before you find yourself mentally contemplating nearly everything else in the world other than this book. You have a choice to make:

  If you ask to use the bathroom, turn to page …………… 14 If you continue working, turn to page ……………….……… 21

  Ask to Use the Bathroom

  Deciding that a brief walk around the school might do you some good and help you to refocus, you raise your hand and ask, “Miss Dikeo, can I use the restroom, please?” Then remembering how this question always bothers her, you reword it and say, “I mean, may I go to the restroom, please?’

  “Why didn’t you take care of that before school?” asks Miss Dikeo from her desk in the front of the room, unwilling to commit to an answer just yet.

  Distorting the truth a bit for your own means, you say, “My mother dropped me off late, and I just barely made it into class on time.”

  With a sigh, Miss Dikeo waves you forward saying, “Okay, take the pass and be quick. I would like you to get as much done on that handout as you can before you leave today.”

  Nodding, you head for the door, lifting the lanyard with the hall pass off the pencil sharpener on the wall as you go. Closing the door behind you, you sigh and begin a slow walk down the hall, taking your time as you pass by other classrooms whose doors are open to casually look inside and see if any of your friends are visible. Not finding anyone, you eventually make it to the bathrooms. Initially, you honestly had no intention of going in. It was just an excuse to get out of class after all, but saying you needed to go to your locker like you would have in math class would have only bought you a minute at best considering how close it is to first hour. This way at least you had five minutes for your walk. Just as you’re ready to walk past the lavatories, however, you get smacked across the face by the horrid smell of someone’s vomit. Peering in from where you stand in the hall, you can see that it’s splattered across the middle of the floor. Disgusted, you almost leave immediately to head to the office and report it, knowing that could get you an extra few minutes out of class as well, but then you hear the distinctive sounds of someone retching coming from the one of the back stalls. Holding your nose, you time your question in between their spasms of puking, lean in, and ask, “Hey, are you all right in there?” still standing in the hall, unwilling to get closer if you can help it.

  At first there’s no response, but then you hear a low guttural groan followed by the scraping of shoe on tile floor. Leaning to the side, you try to see who it is coming out with a mixture of revulsion and morbid fascination. Sure, there is some concern in there too, but people get sick, so you’re more interested in telling everyone else who threw up all over the bathroom floor when you get back to class. You hear the sounds of fingers fumbling with the lock on the stall door for an indeterminable time, but eventually the person comes out.

  At first, you can’t tell who or what it is, and despite it walking with its head down and
clearly able to see the floor, it stumbles as it approaches.

  If you stay and help, turn to page ……………………….… 16 If you get help from the office, turn to page …………. 332

  Staying to Help

  You decide to help who or whatever it is, but with the vomit covering the floor, you wait for it to come out of the bathroom. When it reaches you, you realize it is a person, and see that it’s Jennifer, one of the girls in the sophomore class. Her long black hair is matted looking, and you can see bits and pieces of her regurgitated breakfast clinging to the ends of it. As she lifts her head to meet you, you try to put on a mask of neutrality or even concern, but you know that disgust registers there as well, and there’s nothing you can do to hide it. Opening her mouth, she says, “Help me,” but you almost miss her words as her breath leaves you gasping for clean air.

  Looking her up and down, you see that the majority of her mess is on her face, hands, and shoes, so you ask her, “How about you follow me to the nurse’s office? I’m sure they can call your mom or something to come pick you up.”

  Jennifer reaches for you, attempting to grab your arm, and you withdraw instinctively as you’ve already seen that there is stuff on her hands that you don’t want on you. When you look up to her face, you see that she has a focused look in her eyes, but the focus seems creepy as she stares at your hand. Moving a little down the hall, you say, “Come on, Nurse Jackie will take care of you.”

  Jennifer takes one shambling step towards you and then another, as you walk backwards keeping an eye on her, hoping she doesn’t take a fall and land flat on her face. The trip to the office from the bathrooms takes the two of you three times longer than it should have because Jennifer can barely keep her feet under her as she moves. Along the way, you notice that while her face seems to be its usual tan coloring, her neck and hands have turned whitish, almost gray looking. You figure that she must be wearing one of those fake tanning lotions or makeup. The coloring of her exposed skin, however, is concerning, and you try to hurry her along. By the time you reach the nurse’s office, Jennifer looks like death warmed over, and you are actually looking forward to getting back to class so that you don’t catch whatever she has.