Zombie High Read online

  Pushing the door open, you find that the nurse already has her hands full with several other students, including Nathan, who you saw outside getting sick in the bushes. It takes a minute for Jennifer to follow you in the crowded room, and you tell her, “Just have a seat there, and I’ll get the nurse,” pointing to the only available chair in the room.

  When the nurse looks up, you can see that she is overwhelmed, and she confirms it when she says, “Another one?” rather than her usual greeting of, “Good morning.”

  With nothing else to say, you respond, “Yes, Ma’am. Jennifer got sick in the bathroom, and I helped her to get here.”

  “Okay, tell her I’ll be with her in a second. I don’t have any beds left, so she might want to think about who she’s going to call to come get her.”

  Looking around the room, you see several students with the same symptoms as Jennifer, most of whom are sitting in the chairs with their heads in their hands. One of them, a boy in a school jersey, is lying on the floor, apparently too sick to stay in the seat. When he moves the arm which he’s had covering his face, you notice that it’s John, one of the school’s lead football players, but while Jennifer looks bad, he looks even worse. His skin, which has changed like Jennifer’s to look sick and clammy, also has dark blue lines beneath it as if his veins are pushing some kind of oil or black tar through them instead of blood. This is the point when you start questioning what you’re seeing, questioning the reality you’re in versus the hours upon hours of time you have spent watching horror movies. In a morbid fascination, you’ve always hoped this day would come, and now that it has, you turn to tell the nurse your thoughts.

  “Nurse Jackie, I think these people are…,” but the words stop instantly in your mouth as you find her lying on the ground now with Nathan hunched over her body chewing on the exposed tissues in her neck. You almost scream at the sight, more visceral and bloody than anything on television for the simple fact that it is here in front of you, but you manage to hold it back just before it escapes your lips. Looking around quickly, you find that Nathan is the only one who has fully turned.

  You know that there is no way you can save Nurse Jackie, there is far too much blood pooled up beneath her, and it doesn’t look like Nathan is anywhere close to finished. You have a choice to make.

  Help the others escape Nathan, turn to page ………... 19 Make a run for it, turn to page ………………………………. 309

  Helping the Others Escape Nathan

  You decide that just because Nathan has gone off the deep end into full-fledged zombie, there is no reason that the rest of the people in the nurse’s office have to go that way, too. Maybe, you think, if you can get them out of here and get help, then someone might be able to stop this. You also reason, that despite your vast knowledge of the undead and exhumans which you have studied from television, movies, and books, that all of that stuff was from popculture resources and there is a chance, however small, that Nathan isn’t a zombie, and he is just gone completely psychotic or something. Either way, you have to do what you can before this becomes any worse.

  Stepping over to the door, you swing it wide and say, “Come on guys, let’s get out of here,” to the other people in the room. None of them, however, react to your direction.

  Reaching down, you try to help John off the floor saying, “Come on, John. Get up!” Not only does John not get up, but you notice that his wrist feels cold, not like it’s been in a refrigerator or anything, just colder than it should as you lift his arm. Looking down, you see that his eyes are closed, and it doesn’t look like he’s breathing.

  Remembering your CPR training, you get on your knees to do a ‘look, listen, and feel’ to see if he is all right. Leaning down, you place your ear next to his mouth and look down the length of his body to see if you can hear his breathing or see if his chest is moving. Hearing and seeing nothing, you lean back and reach to touch his neck hoping to feel a pulse. It takes a few seconds, but you realize that there isn’t one. You contemplate performing CPR, but before you can decide whether you should be doing compressions first or giving two measured breaths, you feel the slender fingers of Jennifer’s left hand run through your hair. Before you can look back, she grabs a fistful of your hair and yanks your head back, exposing your throat as she bends over you. Her saliva drips onto your cheek in the second before her teeth sink into your flesh, and pain chased by darkness overwhelms you.

  The End

  Stay in Class and Keep Working

  Realizing that you’ve already used most of your backup excuses to get out of class, two of which have been to ask to use the bathroom already this week, you doubt Miss Dikeo will be willing to let you go this time. Resigning yourself to just stick it out for the rest of class, you prop A Tale of Two Cities open on your desk and put your head down on your desk behind it. It isn’t the most convincing pose for you to claim that you’re reading, but this early in the morning it’s about the best she’s going to get out of you.

  Over the next twenty minutes, you somehow find a way to flip through a half dozen pages and answer about a third of the questions on the handout in between a few little catnaps, but when the bell rings you know this will end up as homework for later tonight unless you can convince Edgar in your science class to slip you his sheet so you can copy from it. Folding the handout, you tuck it into the book and head out to your locker where you grab your history book, the black spiral you use for that class, and a pen for notes.

  The quickest route to your history class is to simply run up the nearby stairs, but you still haven’t caught up with your friend, Steve, yet either.

  If you go look for Steve, turn to page ………………………… 22 If you head up stairs to history, turn to page …………… 335

  Looking for Steve in the Halls

  Deciding to make one more attempt to find Steve, you close your locker door and head down the hall towards the other end of the school where his locker is. Along the way you find yourself following two

  cheerleaders who you’ve always found rather annoying not just because of their names, but because of their persona as well. Today things are no different as they both talk in loud valley girl voices.

  “Oh my God, like my father was so disgusting this morning,” says the tall brunette Maddy.

  “Really, like how? Cuz my mom was like super gross, too,” says the slightly shorter blonde Maddie.

  “He came home last night, like super late, and got sick in the bathroom waking me up. I found it looking like a total disaster area in there this morning, and had to use the downstairs bathroom to get ready. Then when I knocked on my parents’ door, I swear the two of them were going at it. All I heard was their moaning. I just grabbed my bag and left.”

  “Eww, gross. Parents should never do it,” says blonde Maddie. Then in her typical conceited fashion, she goes on with her story saying, “Well, my mom got sick too. She was sitting at the table today looking like she was completely hung over when I came downstairs, and when I asked for lunch money she totally threw up in her purse. I didn’t even bother after that. I just left the house and called A.K. for a ride.”

  “In her purse?” asks brunette Maddy.

  “Yeah, it was Louis Vuitton and now it’s like completely ruined.”

  Thankfully, the two cheerleaders turn at the intersection and head up towards the math wing at this point, and you’re no longer subjected to the fake valley girl accents they adopted after watching too many hours of The OC and Gossip Girls. Looking ahead, you can see almost all the way up the hall, and Steve is nowhere near his locker. You have no choice now but to abandon your search, figuring he must not have come in today. Turning, you head for the closest set of stairs, the ones near the school’s entrance.

  Being one of only three stairwells in the school, the door leading into the stairway is always packed and not for the first time do you find yourself wishing that there was an elevator in the school. Because of this constant backup near the stair
s, the school assigned teachers to ‘standby’ at both the top and bottom of each of the stairways to make sure that an accidental bump doesn’t become anything more violent. Usually, Mr. Tibbs, one of the lower grade’s science teachers, can be found next to this one talking to Mr. Garret, the music teacher, but today he stands alone watching over the students.

  While you wait, slowly making your way closer to the stairs, you hear a knocking on one of the glass doors of the school’s entrance. Your initial reaction is that whoever it is must be pretty dumb considering there are three signs out there which all say to ring the bell to the side so that the office can buzz you in, but when you look you see that the person, an old grandfather looking type, appears to have the same chalky look in his eyes as the guy you saw this morning on the way to school.

  To your right, you notice Mr. Tibbs hears the knocking as well, and he takes it upon himself to walk over to the door and let the guy in. Letting people in isn’t unusual for Mr. Tibbs, and he commonly ends up walking them over to the main office, giving them that personal touch many schools lack in greeting visitors, but this guy really doesn’t seem all together there as he continues knocking even while Mr. Tibbs approaches.

  You pause to watch as the scene unfolds and somewhere inside you, you recognize that if this was a horror film you would already be yelling at the character on the screen not to open the door, but right now, no warning comes out of your mouth.

  “Good morning,” says Mr. Tibbs. “Is there ….,” he begins, but stops mid-sentence as the old man leans down and bites into his forearm.

  If you help Mr. Tibbs fight the man, turn to page ……… 25 If you run for help at the office, turn to page ………… 28

  Help Mr. Tibbs

  Spurred into action, you run forward and try to help Mr. Tibbs deal with the old man. You have no weapons, this is a school after all, but the idea of something happening to your favorite science teacher is too much to witness and not get involved. Rushing forward, you lift the history book you once said was so big that it must contain everything since the dawn of man and slam it down onto the old man’s back. The sudden impact jars the old man and makes him fall to his knees, giving Mr. Tibbs a second to back away. As he does so, he pulls his long sleeve sweater up from his wrist revealing another sleeve, this one part of the shirt he has beneath the sweater. Yanking it back as well, the skin on his forearm looks to be red, but it’s not bleeding. Apparently the two layers were sufficient to hold back the old man’s biting teeth.

  Unfortunately, you are not wearing two layers, and the wonderful flesh of your hand is completely exposed as the old man grabs it and shoves it into his gaping mouth. Just as you try to pull away, you feel his teeth sink into your hand, and your pinky gets trapped behind his back molars in a way that bends it in an unnatural angle. As pain shoots up your arm, you bend over instinctively trying to relieve the pressure and see your own blood pouring out of the old man’s mouth.

  Attempting to help you, Mr. Tibbs steps up behind you and takes hold of the sides of the old man’s face and tries to pull him away from you and back towards the outside. As he does so, however, you see some of the old man’s paper thin loose skin begin to peel back, and you find yourself looking away, unwilling to watch this happen before you. It’s at this point that you spot the old man’s wife, who has just shambled up to the front of the school as well, and she latches on to Mr. Tibbs, biting the back of his neck.

  Acting in self-defense, you thrust your foot into the old man’s waist and pull, in order to free yourself. The force of it is more than you expected, however, and you find yourself flying backwards towards the crowd of students who are standing behind you, watching while the old man tips backwards out the door.

  Your friend Steve, pushes his way through the crowd in an attempt to reach you, but as you start to sit up, your eyes lock on the gruesome fall of Mr. Tibbs just outside the school as he is taken down by two of the walking dead. It occurs to you that if you hadn’t rushed in, Mr. Tibbs might have made it free on his own, and you wouldn’t now be infected and doomed to be one of the walking dead.

  Your friend Steve helps you to your feet, and the crowd, still open mouthed and staring out the glass doors, begins to part as he helps you to the office.

  Once there, Steve helps you into the nurse’s office but the two of you quickly find that Nurse Jackie isn’t going to be helping anyone else today, no one except for Nathan who is helping himself to a yet another delicious bite of her flesh. Turning to leave the way you both came in, you see Steve’s exposed arm and are overcome with curiosity. “What does he taste like?”

  The End

  Running to the Office for Help

  Turning, you plow through the crowd of students and head for the main office hoping someone there can help Mr. Tibbs. When you get there, you try to explain to the school secretary what you saw, but the words come out in a jumble, falling over each other as your tongue tries to keep up, and she doesn’t understand a word of what you’re saying. Taking a breath, you repeat the important parts saying, “Mr. Tibbs is being attacked at the front door. You’ve got to help him.”

  Your words alone might have been seen as a possible prank, but the secretary recognizes the urgency in your voice as genuine and rushes over to the PA system where she says, “Mr. Jameson to the main entrance. Mr. Jameson to the main entrance,” before she gets any more details from you.

  Dropping the microphone back onto the desk, she comes out from behind her counter and asks, “Who was attacking him?”

  Attempting to explain, you say, “I don’t know, some old guy. He came up to the door and knocked. When Mr. Tibbs opened it, the dude just bit him.”

  “Bit him you say?” asks the secretary. “Okay, you head back to class, and we’ll make sure he’s okay.”

  Trying to explain the problem, and wrapping your own mind around it at the same time, you speak your thoughts aloud saying, “But the old man, he didn’t look right. I think…” and you pause before you say the one thing that will either be believed and save lives or dismissed and allow others to fall. Finally, you muster up and say it, finishing your thought, “I think he was a zombie.”

  The secretary looks you in the face, clearly not believing you, but at the same time unable to shake the fact that it’s clear that you believe what you saw. Finally, she says, “How about you have a seat here, and I’ll find out exactly what’s going on.”

  Looking over to the cracked leather chair where so many kids have had to sit waiting for their sentencing, you turn back to her and ask, “You don’t believe me, do you? You think I’m just making this stuff up.”

  “No, I believe that Mr. Tibbs was attacked, but we both know zombies aren’t real. How about you take a seat, and when Mr. Jameson comes back, we’ll get some answers.”

  Frustrated that yet again, adults think they know more than kids just because they’re older, you say, “Fine, you don’t have to believe me, just come out here and I’ll show you,” and you reach out and grab the secretary’s arm dragging her with you as you head back out into the hall.

  As you’re crossing the threshold, the secretary begins to pull back and you instinctively grip tighter, intent on bringing her with you no matter what, but then the hall erupts with screams and she stops pulling against you and follows you into the hall.

  It takes longer than normal to make your way through the mass of people who have gathered near the entrance, most of whom seem in shock by what they just saw. Several girls are crying and holding each other, while many of the boys stare on with gaping mouths. At one point, you pass two freshman boys who are talking, and you hear one of them say, “I told you. They said he used to wrestle bears in cage fighting matches before he became a teacher. This proves it!”

  Pushing past them, you spill out into the front of the crowd, and see Mr. Tibbs breathing hard as he stands over the old man who is now lying on the ground with his neck twisted around so that his face stares up at the ceiling while his chest res
ts on the floor. Looking up, Mr. Tibbs sees you, the secretary, and the kids, and his eyes go wide in in astonishment as if he can’t believe that he just did this. That’s when Mr. Jameson, the school principal, finally make it through the crowd. To the principal, Mr. Tibbs says, “It was self-defense. He was biting my arm and once I got behind him, I just pulled. I had no idea that would…” but he trails off before finishing.

  Raising his voice over the noise of the crowd, Mr. Jameson yells, “Everyone, please head to your second hour class. We will be calling the EMTs, and I want everyone to stay in their classrooms so that they can do their work.” When only a few people begin to head away from the scene, Mr. Jameson raises his voice once more and says, “Please, students, go to your classes,” and swings his arms forward in an encouraging, move-along, fashion which helps to get the students moving. Turning to the secretary. Mr. Jameson says in a lower voice, “Please go to the PA and announce that students are to be accepted into their classrooms without being marked tardy. Then we’ll call for a lockdown in five minutes once they’re all in class.”

  “Okay, Mr. Jameson. Do you want me to call 911 as well?” asks the secretary.

  “No, I’ll do that,” says Mr. Jameson. Nodding, she turns to leave, and Mr. Jameson addresses Mr. Tibbs asking, “Are you all right? What happened?”