Rock and Roll Reform School Zombies

by Bryan Smith

  I’m not gonna laugh, he thought. No fuckin’ way.

  Somehow he managed to contain the burst of mad laughter swelling within him. But it was a close call. Luckily, the man’s attention had remained on Steve the whole time. If he knew or suspected Steve’s bank robbery ad-lib was fiction, he gave no indication of it.

  He cleared his throat and sat up straighter in his seat. “We’re going to need a cover story. Something to explain why you boys are with me.”

  Wayne had already given that some thought. “We’re brothers. An out-of-control juvenile delinquent duo. You’re bringing us in tonight as a personal favor to our parents, who are old friends of yours. You’ll process us through the proper channels tomorrow, but our parents want us off the streets as soon as possible, so you’re gonna get us situated in a room or cell or whatever tonight.”

  The man’s brow creased and his fat bottom lip pushed out as he thought about it. “Hmm.” He made an odd sound in his throat and shook his head. “Dear God, that just might work.”

  Steve cackled. “You’re a genius, bro.”

  The man rubbed his chin and nodded. “You’ll need names, though.”

  Wayne frowned. “Huh?”

  “Names. We’ll need to sign you in at the gatehouse. Because you clearly intend to commit some heinous crime once you’re inside the building, I assume you will not wish to use your birth names.”

  Wayne thought about it a moment, then a slow grin tugged at the edges of his mouth. “We’re Angus and Malcolm Young. I’ll be Angus.”

  Steve snickered. “You’ll be anus.”

  “Shut up, dude.”

  The man sighed, clearly not amused. Not an AC/DC fan, apparently. “That should be fine.” Then his eyes narrowed and his brow creased again. “I may well succeed in getting you inside the center. Do I really want to know what you have in mind once that’s accomplished?”

  Wayne shrugged. “We’re rescuing my girlfriend.”

  “I see. Might I ask her name?”

  “Melissa Campbell.”

  Something flared in the man’s eyes then. A corner of his mouth twitched twice. He shifted his bulk behind the steering wheel. Wayne peered more intently at him. How strange. But there could be no doubt about it. The man was visibly more nervous than he’d been a moment ago. Wayne was tempted to dismiss the man’s sudden twitchiness as mere coincidence, but his girlfriend was in trouble. Something bad had happened to her here. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that this man was responsible. His hand tightened around the.45’s grip. He was tempted to bust the man’s skull open with the butt of the gun.

  But he drew in a deep breath, made himself calm down.

  He didn’t know anything yet, not really. Gut instinct wasn’t enough to go on. The main thing now was to keep it together and get into the center. Then they’d find their way to Melissa, and at that point they’d find out the truth.

  He tapped the back of the man’s head with the.45. “What’s your name, old dude?”

  The man winced at the touch of cold steel on his bald scalp. “Cheney. Mark Cheney.”

  “Okay, Mark Cheney. Enough fucking around. Let’s do this.”

  Wayne settled back in his seat and tucked the.45 beneath a flap of his jacket. Mark Cheney shifted in his seat again, reached for the key that was still in the ignition, gave it a twist, and the luxury car’s big engine came to life with a rumbling purr. He shifted gears and tapped the gas pedal. Moments later they were headed down the winding driveway leading to the Southern Illinois Music Re-Education Center.

  11: PERSONALITY CRISIS

  The pain finally began to make its presence known as she made the second floor landing. Sybil Huffington grimaced and fell against the staircase wall. She let out a whimper and held up her right forearm for a closer inspection. A hunk of flesh there had been torn out by the thing she had belatedly realized was Anna Kincaid, somehow reanimated and transformed into a drooling, vacant-eyed cannibal. Never mind how that could possibly have happened. She didn’t have time to theorize. All that mattered was getting her precious ass the hell out of harm’s way just as fast as she could.

  She calmed some as she studied the wound. Though it looked awful, was, in fact, a bloody mess, the damage wasn’t lethal. She needed to clean and disinfect it, then get a bandage on it, and the sooner the better. But it wasn’t going to kill her. She lifted her tattered blouse and saw that the wounds there were superficial. Just scratches Before taking a bite out of her arm, Anna had taken a swipe at her with an outstretched hand, her long nails shredding the fabric with talon-like ease. The dead girl’s display of strength had shocked her, and she’d stood there like the proverbial deer trapped in headlights as the girl seized her arm and took a bite out of it. At that point survival instinct kicked in, a hot shot of adrenaline hitting her veins as she twisted free of the dead girl’s grip and began her retreat. But she’d gotten a look at the resurrected hookers before turning to run. Still decked-out in slut-for-hire threads, but otherwise looking like extras from the set of a cheap horror movie.

  Madness.

  These were the women she’d murdered in her office, of that there could be no doubt. She shivered and turned to hug the wall, her trembling hands clawing pathetically at the painted concrete. The sudden conviction that what was happening was a judgment from God made her whimper. Who else but God possessed the power to resurrect the dead?

  The pitiless religious beliefs she’d privately rejected years ago surged to the forefront of consciousness. Clearly this was His will.

  Just as clear was a single stark fact—she was fucked.

  She stood shaking against the wall for another long moment. Then she heard faint screams from the first floor hallway. The closed door below muffled the sound, but the terror felt by the girls she’d left behind was clear enough. Mingled with the screams was the even fainter sound of some commotion. She heard a crash, followed by what might have been the sound of breaking glass.

  A strange thing happened then—the sense of panic gripping her eased…then released her.

  And she smiled.

  Because she’d realized something. Perhaps it was true that God had set this macabre series of events into motion. It was even possible this was some form of judgment against her. That did not, however, mean she was doomed. She could survive this, but doing so would mean keeping her wits about her and finding within her the will to do what needed to be done. Okay, so God had resurrected her victims and sent them against her. They were His instrument. Wasn’t it possible this was something more than a judgment?

  What if it was a test?

  Yes.

  If she somehow managed to survive this night, perhaps she would be redeemed in the eyes of God. It was a stretch. A big one. And she knew it. But it was the only thread of hope available to her and she meant to cling to it as long as there was breath left in her body.

  To survive the trial, she would need to destroy God’s instrument.

  Kill Anna and the hookers.

  Again. Preferably in a more permanent manner this time.

  Oh, and she’d have to kill Quigley. And those girls. And Gerald, the Neanderthal guard whose semen she could still taste in her mouth, preferably after he’d already taken care of Mark Cheney for her. Lord, but there was a lot of killing to be done. Of course, it wasn’t without precedent. She thought back to stories from the bible, to the tales of bloody, terrible sacrifice. And the tiny spark of hope flared brighter as she thought of another angle. The girls and women she’d killed shared one very significant thing in common.

  They were sinners.

  So maybe she had it all wrong.

  Perhaps she was the lord’s instrument, a means by which He could punish some of those who had transgressed against Him.

  Yes!

  It was so clear to her now. It was no accident of fate that she had wound up in this place. Her career, her position of power at the SIMRC, was part of a predetermined plan, the end destination of a path she’d b
een set upon at birth. The center was a veritable warehouse of sin, the boys and girls housed here tainted in the eyes of their Creator. And it had been her sacred duty to cleanse them of that taint. Some, of course, could not be cleansed, their sinning ways as intractable as a skid row bum’s alcoholism. Anna Kincaid, for example. Killing those that were beyond saving had merely been another necessary part of her holy duty. That she had derived what many might view as “perverse” pleasures from the punishments she’d meted out was unimportant. She understood now that these pleasures had been her earthly reward for carrying out His will.

  And what a glorious reward it had been.

  Alas, the time had come to move on.

  Thus fortified by rationalization, Sybil pushed herself away from the wall and stepped toward the door to the second floor. A fresh round of screams emanated from the hallway below, but she ignored them. With any luck, the zombies would kill the girls, eliminating one small but important piece of the puzzle facing her. The thing she had to do now was get back to the other side of the building, back to her office and adjacent apartment. She would be safe from the developing chaos there and would have a chance to collect her wits and better assess her next steps.

  She opened the door, saw only gleaming tiles and a row of closed doors to either side, and took off at a run. A little gasp escaped her throat as the world slipped out from under her.

  The following occurred in less than the space of a second:

  A glimpse of white ceiling above her.

  An awareness that she was falling away from the ceiling.

  Then—impact, the hard smack of floor tiles against the crown of her skull.

  Fuzzy moments passed. At first there was numbness. Then pain, and a lot of it. Her neck felt…wrong. She tried to lift her head and the pain ratcheted up, shot spikes of agony through her shoulders and down her spine. Several feet ahead of her, propped open on the floor, was a yellow CAUTION WET FLOOR sign.

  Her head dipped backward.

  Her vision blurred.

  She understood she was badly injured and might be dying—and then knew a moment of utter, blinding terror at possibly being within moments of facing God’s true and final judgment.

  Somewhere nearby a door opened.

  Voices in the hallway. One male, one female.

  A face loomed over her, a pretty girl. Young.

  The face was grinning.

  Sybil Huffington blacked out.

  12: PRETTY BABY SCREAM

  Lindy’s frantic screams reverberated in the hallway. The screams were punctuated by desperate, wailing pleas for help. But Melissa was too busy fending off one of the dead hookers to help her. The thing’s eyes were gone and its flesh showed some evidence of decomposition, but it still had some meat on its bones and so looked less like a walking skeleton than the other zombie whore. Its legs still looked shapely encased in tattered fishnet stockings, while its largish breasts strained the filthy fabric of a skimpy top. She was a necrophiliac’s wet dream come true.

  The zombie had her pinned against the edge of the break room’s archway. Melissa’s forearm was jammed up under the dead thing’s jaw, every ounce of strength she possessed going into the effort to keep its questing mouth away from her face. With her free hand she swatted at the zombie’s groping hands, but several times its long nails gouged and scratched her flesh, shredding her clothes in the process. Her only advantage at this point was the zombie’s sheer stupidity. God help her if it ever thought to draw its head back and take a bite out of her arm.

  She tried again to use her legs against the thing, but the zombie’s closeness and unnatural level of strength prevented her from achieving the leverage necessary to deliver a kick or knee to the midsection. She couldn’t even stomp on its feet.

  Lindy screamed again. This time the sound was higher and louder than before. She’d been hurt. Melissa jerked her head to the right and saw the other girl grappling with both Anna Kincaid and the more rotted of the dead hookers. She was in the break room, where she had been circling the tables to keep her distance from the zombies. The tactic had worked for a while, but Anna and the hooker had finally managed to flank her. Now she was using one of the metal folding chairs as a shield. They had driven her into a corner of the room, but she was keeping them at bay by pushing them back with the chair each time they advanced. She was fighting hard, but she couldn’t hold them back much longer.

  Melissa’s own strength began to ebb and her forearm slipped.

  The zombie’s mouth dove toward her suddenly exposed neck.

  Melissa shifted her weight and lurched hard to her left. The move came at the exact right time. The zombie was off balance. They fell in a tangled heap to the floor. She kicked and thrashed her way free of the zombie’s embrace. Its fingernails raked at her arms as she rose, etching scarlet lines in pale flesh. Melissa backpedaled and found herself standing in the hallway. The zombie she’d just fought off was still on its back on the floor. Now it rolled stiffly to its side and began the laborious process of getting upright again.

  Melissa glanced left and right.

  To her left was an empty hallway and an open door. Well, not quite empty. David’s corpse was still sprawled on the floor amidst a wide pool of dark blood. To her right, the hallway dead-ended. There was another door there, the one through which Miss Huffington had disappeared, but it was closed. The dead maintenance man was at that door, face pressed against the window, his right hand pawing clumsily at the doorknob.

  She faced a hard choice.

  She could escape through the open door now.

  Or she could help Lindy.

  The girl’s tenacity was amazing and admirable, worthy of any soldier in combat. But she was just one girl. There were three zombies in the break room. The math was pretty simple. Abandoning Lindy now would be tantamount to sentencing her to death. Melissa wasn’t sure she could live with that. Even so, it was a tough call. She didn’t want to die. Nor did she wish to fight any more.

  A flicker of movement to her left drew her attention back that way.

  David was on his knees. The gaping wound in his neck had stopped leaking blood. He looked at her with empty eyes. Eyes devoid of recognition. Her friend was one of them now. A zombie. David’s mouth opened and a hissing moan escaped his throat. He staggered to his feet as she watched and began to lurch toward her.

  Melissa sighed.

  The decision had been made for her.

  She stepped back into the break room. The zombie hooker was on its knees now. It saw Melissa coming and opened its mouth in a hungry snarl. Melissa moved in fast, delivering a hard kick to the creature’s concave abdomen. It flopped onto its back again and Melissa sidestepped its outreached hands.

  Lindy continued to fight off Anna and the other hooker. They were getting closer between swats from the folding chair, advancing inch by inch, oblivious to any pain from the heavy blows. Soon she wouldn’t have room to swing the chair and then it’d be all over for Lindy. Melissa considered using another folding chair to mount a rear assault. If she could draw just one of them away, Lindy could slip out of that damn corner.

  She scanned the room for a more formidable weapon and her gaze locked on the counter set against the wall to her left. She saw a sink. A coffee maker. A basket filled with napkins and condiments. A row of cabinets above. A row of drawers below. Her heart raced. The zombie on the floor started to get up again. She ignored it and hurried over to the counter. She yanked open a drawer and found an old telephone book and a small stack of magazines. She threw it shut and opened the next drawer.

  Bingo.

  A cutlery tray loaded with gleaming spoons, forks, and knives.

  Including one very long—and very sharp—carving knife.

  She grabbed it and advanced on the zombies in the corner. Lindy saw what she was doing and paused between swats, eyes going wide with hope. Anna Kincaid took advantage of the momentary lapse, charging Lindy and getting past the chair. Lindy screamed and grappled with the
dead girl, holding the zombie’s head back with a hand braced beneath its chin. One of her fingers slipped between Anna’s lips and the zombie bit down instantly. Lindy screamed and thrashed. Her hand came away from Anna’s mouth with two fingers missing, blood spurting from the ragged stumps. All of this happened in the space of maybe a second. In the next second, Melissa adjusted her grip on the carving knife’s handle and swung it in a vicious arc toward Zombie Whore 2’s head. The point of the blade punched into its temple then slammed into whatever was left of its brain.

  The zombie jerked and went rigid.

  Melissa yanked the knife out of its head and it toppled to the floor. Dead again.

  And Melissa thought, Just like in the movies.

  Kill the brain to kill the zombie.

  Lindy was still fighting, despite the enormous pain she must be suffering. Her good hand was locked around Anna’s throat, with her arm fully extended, keeping the thing’s blood-flecked mouth well away. Blood still flowed freely from those finger stumps, though. All the willpower in the world wouldn’t save her if she lost too much blood.

  Melissa raised the knife again and moved to help her.

  Then she heard something to her rear and turned to see Zombie Whore 1 coming at her again. Its mouth was open, lips stretched wide in a hungry expression that looked disturbingly like a mocking grin.

  And it wasn’t alone.

  David was a few feet behind her, arms outstretched, teeth bared.

  Melissa thought, I am so fucked.

  Then she heard distant voices, adult male voices. Guards, maybe. Moments later she heard the sound of approaching feet.

  Then voices again, distinct now.

  “Holy mother…look at all the fucking blood!”

  Another voice: “What the…is that Quigley? Hey, Quigley!”

  Lindy screamed again and that brought the men running into the break room, where they pulled up short at the sight of the carnage. All that blood in the corner. A nasty-looking corpse on the floor. Two badly messed-up people advancing on a girl holding a bloody knife.