The School of the Undead

by Michael Woods

  “A decade or so I guess,” he finally said with a grunt of exasperation.

  “And…” started Amanda.

  “Look, weren’t you about to leave?”

  “Just one more thing, I promise. How do you know that it was someone from the Tunnels?”

  With this question, Amanda finally caught Milch’s full attention. Indeed, the man shot up from the ground and gruffly shouted: “What the hell do you mean coming here and asking me that? You’re no different from the rest of them! Why don’t you just get out my life and get back to your damn school!”

  Amanda took several steps back from Milch. She was so shocked by his reaction to her question that she did not pay any attention to what she was doing and almost tripped over a small clump of dead animals that had built up away from Milch’s main refuse pile. However, Milch made no effort to come any closer to her and just stood on the spot, his eyes to the ground, breathing at far too rapid a pace. Though she felt a strong urge to leave the forest and Milch behind, when it became clear that the man had no intention of doing anything much, she repressed this desire and instead decided to listen again to her curiosity.

  “Sorry, Johann, I didn’t mean to suggest that I didn’t believe you…”

  “I said, why don’t just leave!” choked out Milch.

  Amanda tentatively took a step towards Milch with her hands held open before her. “Look, I honestly don’t know what this is about, I just want to get whatever information I can. I tell you what, I’ll make you a deal. Just tell me – on your own terms – why you know this guy came from the Tunnels, and I’ll do exactly what you want: I’ll leave.”

  For what seemed like a gruelling eternity to Amanda, though it was only really a few moments, Milch did nothing but remain standing, with his whole body clenched, seemingly ready to strike out. When he finally relaxed, a smile of relief emerged on Amanda’s lips as she knew he would tell her what she wanted to know. Milch once again sat down on his patch of dry earth, grumbling to himself about Amanda as he prepared himself to go over a line of reasoning he had been over a thousand times.

  “Do you know where it comes from?” said Milch in a croak.

  “Sorry?”

  “The blood, girl, the blood! Do you know where it’s from?”

  “I guess...” started Amanda and then hesitated. “Is it not from the blood banks?”

  “That’s what they’d have us believe, yes. And what do you always hear on adverts for those things, and from your friends at the school?”

  “Look, I’m not sure where you’re going with this.”

  “Just answer the questions. You said that this was on my terms; just wait for it and answer the questions!”

  “Okay,” said Amanda, concerned that the man would once again throw up his defences and force her to go without telling her anything. “I suppose they always say that they need more, that there’s a shortage.”

  “And like every other one of your kind, I guess you know what it costs? It’s not cheap, is it? But how often do you hear of attacks that result from people not being able to pay? Almost never! Anyone of you who has even a little self-worth left in you goes down to the Tunnels. We all know the hunger comes on in time; sure you can be tempted, but you can stop yourself for a while. And, if you do run out of blood, you can hold out long enough to call someone from the school to pick you up and take you away. So don’t you see, my attacker couldn’t have just have been wandering around the fields one day only to feel as if he needed a snack. Sure, there are dozens of attacks, but we all know that most of them are not done by the hungry and poor. When the man who gave me this half-life first grabbed me, he had no idea what he was doing. As soon as he regained possession of himself after satisfying his hunger, he wilted and stopped feeding. He even started to cry.”

  Despite his slightly rambling way of getting to his point, Amanda realised that there was something to what Milch had to say.

  “Did you ever tell this to anyone else?”

  “I told those miserable bastards time and time again, at that school and everywhere else. They all say the same thing. It’s impossible for anyone to escape.”

  ***

  Glad to be out of the forest and away from the damp smell of dead animal that lingered in Milch’s clearing, Amanda took a moment after entering the car park to let herself adjust back to the human world. The empty plastic bottles, crushed cans and sodden, shredded papers that had been blown over to the edge of the car park helped to some extent, as did the tired looking shopping complex. However, the strange image of Milch, among his dead, would not move from Amanda’s mind and made her feel more like a vampire than ever before. He was in some ways closer in his life to the people who worked in the buildings around her than she would ever be again. If the man was not so stubborn, she saw no reason why Milch would not be able to return to live a mostly normal life among them. What was worse, this meant that she was probably more like Packard than she would like to think. She shuddered, closed her eyes, and pushed this thought out of her consciousness by thinking about how the evening had left her in desperate need of a shower.

  “You’re out late.”

  Amanda opened her eyes to find, standing right in front of her, three of the teenage boys who she had seen hiding away from the rain earlier on. All three were wearing the sorts of hooded tops and low-hanging, blue jeans that Amanda assumed had gone out of fashion before she had even entered the Tithonus school. None of them were dressed for the weather, and one seemed to have even ended up in a puddle as he was wet through, splattered with something like mud and holding himself to keep warm. Though she wished it was otherwise, something told her that the boy who had addressed her had played at least some part in his friend’s condition of being on the way to developing hypothermia. She hoped she was wrong.

  “What the hell do you want?” snapped Amanda without really thinking.

  “Alright, no need for that!” said the boy as he took one step closer to Amanda. “We’re just, you know, wondering what a pretty bird like yourself is doing hanging around our car park in the dark.”

  One of the other boys let out a short snigger, which was quickly curtailed by a sharp look from the leader of the little pack. The leader, who was more than a head taller than Amanda, recomposed himself, stretched a grin over his teeth and moved a little closer to Amanda again. He said something else, but Amanda heard nothing of it as a familiar feeling was starting to take hold of her. She vaguely recalled, through a clouding consciousness, the sweet taste of blood that Packard had given her several hours before, the only drink that she had had all day. The idea of the blood that was coursing through the boy just before her caused her to salivate and part of her thrilled at the possibility that his life force was hers to take.

  She scrunched her eyes closed in a vain attempt to maintain self-control, and as the sound of the boy’s voice was drowned out in her ears by a fear brought on by shards of experiences from her past life and the notion of what her vampire body might do to protect itself, she did not realise how close the boy was getting to her. That was until she felt his still damp hooded shirt press against her. In a single motion, it was all over. Without fully knowing what she had done, she looked down at the boy to see blood pouring down his face and then gladly accepted the pain that started to build within her fist.

  “Stupid cow,” mumbled the boy through his own blood as he struggled to get to his feet while clasping onto his jeans to prevent them from falling down. An urge to run became apparent to Amanda, but this was diminished when she looked up to see how the other two boys had reacted. Rather than moving toward her to help their friend or attack, they were backing away. As the little leader finally got to his feet, he put his back to Amanda to rally himself by drawing on the support of his friends. But he soon discovered his former followers were already some distance away, making a line for the lights of a 24-hour garage.

  “Tony, Joel, where you going? You dicks!” shouted the boy with a quaver in his voice. />
  He swivelled to face Amanda to give her one final parting comment on how lucky she was, but the words died before reaching his lips. Instead, while still holding on to his now filthy, torn jeans, he turned a little pale, backed away and then shuffled along after the other two.

  It came as no surprise to Amanda to find Milch several feet behind her, just in front of the line of trees. She mumbled some sort of a thank you to him, and thankful she truly was as she knew that had he not been there, she might have done something that would have prevented her from ever returning to the school. Indeed, if the boys had attacked her as one, she might have had no choice but to give in to her hunger to defend herself. He stood at the edge of the forest for a few further moments, his eyes fixed on the retreating boy. Then, without a word to Amanda, he disappeared into the wood.

  Finally alone, Amanda inspected the hand she had used to strike down the boy. Though she could find no trace of his blood - after looking up once more to check whether Milch might still be watching - she brushed her tongue across her knuckles, just in case.

  ***

  While running his finger around the rim of the Match of the Day mug that contained his day’s supply of blood, Brenden struggled to concentrate on the one thought that had been constantly returning to him since David had talked of the outside world: should he return to whatever was out there, or go to the Tunnels? Indeed, he had focused on this subject all throughout the day’s lessons, not only wearing himself out in the effort but also missing almost everything that had been taught in his class. He pushed the cup a little further away from himself and, after cautiously looking around to ensure that there was no one else in the dilapidated common room, dipped his finger into the warm liquid within.

  He held his blood-stained nail several inches from his eye while wondering who had given the donation so that he could have his meal and what they might be doing that very moment. This prompted a voice at the back of his mind to tell him to stop playing with his food. He knew that the voice was his father’s, an echo from several years before when his parents were still trying to live together. It was always his dad who insisted they all sit at the dining room table in the cold Victorian house they used to live in and, as the man reminded his family prior to each meal, ‘conduct themselves properly at the table.’

  Brenden did not obey the echo of his father’s words. Instead, he continued to just stare at the drying blood. His dedication, though, to the question of the Tunnels - one that had been bothering him all day - was swept away as the memory of his father made him consider whether the man had attended his funeral. He had not seen his father in the flesh for at least two years; it had been about that time when the man had moved to practise some sort of maritime law in Singapore. The idea that his death, rather than Christmas or a birthday, might have brought the man back made Brenden’s mood slump even further down into the seemingly endless darkness.

  “Do not play with your food Brenden, it’s not becoming of a young man.”

  Brenden flinched and ended up smearing a trail of blood across his shirt with his finger. Under his breath, he whispered a couple of apologies and immediately grew anxious about the possible damage that he had done to the shirt that was not his own.

  “Oh, don’t worry about that Brenden,” said Ms Halford, who was displeased with herself as she had not meant to startle the boy, “just run it under some cold water and the shirt will soon be right as rain.”

  “But the blood!” replied Brenden.

  “Just trust me.”

  A little apprehensively, Brenden got up and made his way to the sink of the common room’s kitchenette. After removing the half-dozen dirty coffee mugs that were in the basin, he sheepishly removed his purple shirt and ran it under some cold water.

  “Oh, it’s going!”

  “Of course it is. If it never came out, vampires such as yourself - and particularly ones who can be as clumsy as our deputy – would have to throw out their clothes all the time.”

  For the briefest of moments, Ms Halford’s attention was drawn to the still healing attack scar situated near the bottom of the boy’s neck, something which had been hidden by the high collar of the shirt. She resisted the urge to react in any way, except to note - before Brenden covered the bite up once more with his now wet shirt - that the wound consisted of nothing more than a tear in the boy’s flesh.

  “It seems to me as if you may have a bee in your bonnet, Brenden,” said Ms Halford, as much to distract herself from the thought of the pain suffered by the boy as anything else.

  “Well, Miss, you know,” replied Brenden, whose mood had improved somewhat by being distracted by the relief he felt about the shirt, “it’s just the same thing that everyone talks about. It’s just that, I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it as well. How am I going to go back to school? If I can’t go back to my mum, then where do I go? Also, Adam says that it’s good for us all to stay together and that the living just don’t get us, meaning things won’t be good for me out there anyway. It all seems like, well. Does it mean I have to go to the Tunnels?”

  A spike of rage passed through Ms Halford as it appeared to her as if all her fears about this boy being in Adam’s class were being realised. Nevertheless, she maintained her calm and when she replied to the boy, she tried to ensure that her feelings were not exposed in her words.

  “Brenden, all we can try to do here at the school is inform you as best we can, from our own experiences, on how to move ahead in your new life. It is not for any one of us teachers to decide for you what you will do; my advice would be that you should listen to as many opinions as you can before you choose one path rather than another.”

  Ms Halford paused as she felt that she was about to say something that would make it evidently clear she was not only talking about Adam but that she might say something that could undermine the boy’s respect in his teacher: something that she truly felt she had no right to do, even if she did disagree with what she believed the man to be doing. However, she was aware that she could not wait too long as in that moment she had the boy’s interest and an opportunity to perhaps provide a counterbalance to Adam’s arguments.

  “Brenden, look,” she started, hesitantly, “as I said, I do not think that it is my place to tell you what to do. I will just give you my advice. And this is it: I think you need to find out for yourself what is best for you and, as is often true in life, only you can discover what this may be. Of course, this is no easy task, but that does not mean it is not worth striving for. I would say this might mean that before you decide whether or not to enter the Tunnels, you should at least venture out into the world and see if you can find a place within it. Still, I want you to see that I am making it quite clear that this is just my advice and that you should draw your own conclusions on what actions you should take in light of it.”

  The first look Brenden gave Ms Halford following these words seemed to be one of confusion. But, a different expression slowly emerged that made it quite clear that the boy had made up his mind on something.

  “Thanks, Miss. Thanks”, said Brenden, before quickly collecting his cup from the table and abruptly leaving the room.

  ***

  The faint sound of buzzing brought Amanda out of her dreamless sleep, a sound she half-recognized in her drowsy state to be the noise of a message arriving on her phone. Annoyed at having been woken up, but still settled and comfortable enough to know that if she just relaxed she could still fall back into her slumber, she rearranged herself on the slightly too soft bed and attempted to drift off. However, just as her mind was moving away from the sensation of the world around her, her phone buzzed again, louder this time, and brought her right back.

  With the second noise came the image of the foolish boy who had confronted her earlier in the morning, with his jeans heading towards his ankles as he sprawled out on the floor. This caused her to let out an unexpected laugh and wake herself all the more. Indeed, as soon as her mind registered the strangeness of he
aring Amanda’s laugh in the otherwise silent room, it concluded that the time had come to get back to business and to start pestering the young vampire with worries about the progress she had made on her case as well as what she could report back to deputy Chester.

  “Crap,” she muttered to herself, determining it was not worth bothering to fight against the tide but better to get up and distract herself by looking at whatever message she had received. Amanda expected the message just to be further nothings from the social network sites that she had signed up to replace her old ones, something she had been forced to do when a member of her family had memorialised her accounts, locking her out. However, when she lit her phone up, she discovered that the messages were actually from the deputy; what was more, the man had already tried to call her several times while she had been asleep. She opened her inbox with the hope that the deputy had just decided to call and send messages to find out how she was doing with the case and that the reason that he had contacted her in the early hours of the morning was due to the man having no sense of time. However, the two short emails - both of which were exactly the same - seemed to suggest otherwise as they read: Urgent. Call a.s.a.p. B, M.

  Reluctantly, Amanda brought up the deputy’s contact information on screen, pressed the call button and, as the ringing tones passed one by one, started to wonder if she was making a mistake in thinking the deputy really had meant for her to call as soon as she could. When she got to the thirteenth ring, she determined that it was clear enough that the deputy was not to be reached and ended the call. As she put her phone down, it started buzzing once more.

  “Amanda?” came the familiar voice of the deputy as soon as Amanda took the call. “Is that you?”

  “Morning, Mr Chester. I didn’t mean to disturb you, only…”