Rock and Roll Reform School Zombies

by Bryan Smith

  “I am injured and require immediate medical assistance.” Her voice was invested with the usual steely authority. It never failed to snap her underlings into instant action. “Summon a doctor at once.”

  Hector didn’t move. Didn’t say a word.

  Sybil seethed. She propped herself on an elbow, gritting her teeth against the surge of pain. “Hector! Stop standing there like a useless lump and do as I say!”

  Hector continued his maddening impression of a statue. This further stoked the embers of her incipient rage, but she dismissed him for the moment, shifting her focus to the girl, who still wore that leering grin. She ached to slap it off her face. “You’re Cynthia Laymon, correct?”

  Cynthia sucked in a quick breath, slapped a hand to her chest. Her eyes bugged out and her jaw dropped open. An exaggerated level of mock astonishment. “Oh, Miss Huffington, I am so honored! You remembered my name! Me, little miss nothing” She shook her head and grinned broadly again. “Will wonders never cease?”

  Sybil wanted to wrap her hands around the little bitch’s slender throat and squeeze hard. Squeeze until her eyes bugged out for real and her pale flesh turned purple. She did a calculation of how much physical effort it would require and balanced this against the pain such an effort would cost her.

  She cursed inwardly.

  Not possible.

  Not yet.

  She bit her lip, forced herself back to a level of relative calm before speaking again. “Think about this, Miss Laymon. Your friend the mop-pusher risks only his job by disobeying me. But you, young lady, you risk a good deal more.” A corner of her mouth curled some, a malignant half-smile empty of humor and loaded with dark promise. “How does a month in an isolation room sound? Just for a start, of course.”

  What happened next stunned her.

  The girl’s big grin vanished. Her eyes went dead. Her jaw quivered. She curled a hand into a fist and a moment later Sybil felt a crash of knuckles against her nose. Cartilage snapped. Blood gushed. The back of her head thumped the floor and pain burned in every nerve-ending. Then the girl was straddling her, screaming at her, her fists coming down again and again, a blur of motion as violent rage possessed her. Her face was so twisted with raw fury that she barely looked human, more like a vengeful demon in humanoid form. After a while, Sybil stopped feeling the barrage of blows. Her vision blurred and the girl was just a pale blob atop her.

  Then she was gone, pulled away in mid-shriek by Hector Romero.

  Cynthia flailed against the janitor for a few moments, then collapsed sobbing into his arms. Sybil’s vision cleared some and she watched the brown-skin man stroke her hair and whisper soothing things into her ear. There was something between them. An emotional connection, at least. Could be they were even lovers. It made her sick, the idea of a pretty thing like Cynthia Laymon finding solace in the arms of a filthy little foreigner. She vowed to see him deported back to his shithole of origin as soon possible.

  Of course, she would have to survive this insane night first.

  Which was seeming less likely by the moment.

  But that was no reason to just give up. The girl was distracted, lost in the swell of some ridiculous emotional storm. The time to act was now.

  Sybil bit her lower lip hard, drew blood as she raised herself to an elbow again. Wave upon wave of pain coursed through her, caused hot tears to spill from her eyes, but she kept pushing herself. In a moment she was sitting upright. She glanced over her shoulder. The doors to these rooms locked from the outside, but this one was open by the slightest crack. She felt the first euphoric rush of impending triumph. She could do this. It was really possible. She just had to get to her feet.

  She steeled herself against the pain one more time and began to rise…only to topple backward again as something hard slammed into her stomach. A foot. She’d been kicked. Then Cynthia Laymon was hovering over her again, eyes gleaming with a rage that bordered on madness, face twisted in a bitter sneer.

  The girl was screaming again, raging at her, but measuring her fury just enough to render her words intelligible: “GODDAMN YOU FUCKING CUNT BITCH FROM HELL! SINCE YOU’VE GOT SUCH A GOOD FUCKING MEMORY TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED TO KATHY RUSSO! COME ON BITCH! YOU REMEMBER KATHY I FUCKING KNOW YOU DO!”

  The pain was astonishing. Like a hyper-ravenous virus or parasite poisoning her blood and burning through every nerve in her body. Despite this, the name the girl invoked did register. She’d killed two SIMRC girls. Anna Kincaid, of course, and earlier in the year she’d strangled Kathy Russo with a twisted length of nylon hose. But…how could this stupid girl know anything about that? The cover-up had been executed with great care and precision. Officially, Russo was a runaway, and there was nothing—not one teeny iota of lingering trace evidence—to point a finger at Sybil Huffington.

  Somehow, Cynthia Laymon suspected her anyway. It made her question whether she’d truly been as circumspect in her trysts with the girls as she’d imagined.

  As if sensing her thoughts, Cynthia supplied the answer in a more subdued voice: “This is my second time here this year, Syphilis. Your stupid heavy metal cure didn’t take the first time and my shitbag parents sent me back. Kathy was my roommate first time around. She told me about those late night counseling sessions in your office.”

  Sybil felt something cold slide down her gullet and slither around her heart. A whimper escaped her throat and tears began to leak from her eyes. The display of emotion had nothing to do with anything as ridiculous as remorse, of course. It was all self-pity. She didn’t deserve to be in this situation. Didn’t deserve to have her carefully constructed house of cards crashing down on her this way. She was better than this. A member of the social elite. The scorn this white trash trollop was directing at her was an affront against everything she believed about herself.

  Something wet splashed her chin.

  She swiped at the moisture.

  Saliva.

  The nasty little bitch spit on me!

  Before she could begin entertaining more fantasies of revenge, the girl was on top of her again, straddling her midsection and leaning close, voice dropping to a fierce whisper as she said, “Girls talk, Syphilis. Don’t you know that? She told me every sick little detail. The spankings. The stupid costumes. All the strange things you made her say and do. What kind of freak are you?”

  Sybil’s jaw quivered. She prayed for the girl to lean closer. How she’d love to take a bite out of that pretty face. The thought triggered a tingle of strange desire. She imagined chewing and swallowing the girl’s flesh and felt her nipples stiffen. Strange. She thought of the bite the zombie had taken out of her and felt that same odd tingle. The wound was pulsing. Her whole arm felt raw with infection.

  Cynthia leaned an inch closer.

  Sybil opened her mouth, licked her lips. She saw the girl’s pulse tick in her throat and squirmed beneath her. That throat…that beautiful throat…how tender it looked…

  How…exquisite.

  The flesh-lust began to consume her, so much so that Cynthia’s next words barely registered: “Then one night Kathy went up to your office and never came back.” She sneered again. “I never believed that runaway bullshit. Kathy wouldn’t do that. She really wanted to please you, believe it or not. Yet for some reason she was gone forever. You killed her, didn’t you, Syphilis?”

  Sybil smiled. The pain was fading fast, replaced by a sensual warmth that simultaneously stimulated multiple appetites and filled her with a feeling of well-being. It was marvelous, like the way she’d once imagined it would feel to bask in God’s light.

  She laughed. “Yes. I killed her. It felt…sooooo…goooooooooodddd…”

  The confession felt better than good.

  Ecstatic. Yes. The feeling was so all-consuming it never occurred to her to wonder what—short of a super-sized injection of morphine—could have erased the pain so completely in so short a time. If someone had told her she was in the process of dying—and transforming—she wouldn’t have
been concerned. It would have seemed a price worth paying to feel this way.

  Her odd behavior inflamed Cynthia’s righteous rage again. “Hector! Give it to me!”

  Sybil laughed at the unintentional pornographic undertone in the girl’s words.

  But then the girl had something in her hands and she stopped laughing. A pillow. Encased in one of the crisp white pillowcases the SIMRC’s maid staff changed out every day. She frowned, not understanding what the little bitch had in mind. Then the pillow was on her face, its softness pressing hard against her, sealing off all air passages. A burst of panic penetrated the sense of euphoria and she began to thrash beneath the girl, bucking hard, her fury and energy a match for any rodeo bull fighting to dislodge a rider.

  The girl slipped. The pillow slid away from her and Sybil gasped for air. One of her arms came unpinned, and before the girl could situate the pillow atop her face again, Sybil seized her by a wrist and pulled her close.

  The girl screamed, this time from terror rather than rage.

  Sybil snarled, opened her mouth wide, and sank her teeth into that tender, sweet flesh. The sense of euphoria returned as hot blood flowed into her mouth. The violence, coupled with the feel of the blood and raw meat on her tongue, increased the feeling tenfold.

  She chewed the girl’s flesh.

  And moaned.

  Scratch that, a thousandfold.

  The girl screamed some more, but it was a more ragged sound. A dying sound. She tried to pull free, but Sybil held her tight. Pulled her close again. And buried her teeth in one of the girl’s cheeks. She wrenched her head and a big flap of flesh pulled loose, exposing muscle and sinew. The girl sobbed weakly and fell against her. Then Hector was there, come to his young lover’s aid at last. A little too late, alas.

  She tossed the dying girl aside and jabbed fingers into the janitor’s eye sockets, the digits punching through the orbs with astonishing ease. When she had finished with Hector, she tossed him aside and staggered out of the room.

  By then she was no longer really Sybil Huffington.

  She was something better.

  Something stronger.

  Something very, very hungry.

  15: MY AIM IS TRUE

  The guard jerked away from Quigley. Blood fountained from his shoulder as he staggered to his left and fell against the other guard, who recoiled in disgust and shoved his badly injured comrade away from him—back into the outstretched arms of the reanimated maintenance man. The man had time to scream one more time before Quigley tore open his jugular vein.

  The other guard stumbled backward, struck the edge of a table, and lost his balance. As he toppled to the floor, instinct caused him to hold a hand out in front of him, presumably to absorb the brunt of the impact. But the hand landed at a bad angle and took the free-falling guard’s full weight. There was a sound like the snapping of a branch, then a wail of agony. The sharp angle of the break caused a shard of splintered bone to pierce the man’s flesh. Zombie Whore 1 fell upon him and buried her teeth in the side of his neck. The guard shrieked again and his body spasmed. He made a last-ditch effort to dislodge the zombie as he got his good hand beneath him and pushed himself to his knees. But the zombie held tight and tore loose a hunk of bloody flesh. The guard wobbled and the zombie bore him back to the floor. He was finished moments later.

  Melissa observed the display of total incompetency from a prone position several feet away. The bullet had winged her shoulder. She’d lucked out. Although it stung like a bastard, the wound was minor. A graze, nothing more. But luck would only get her so far. She needed to get off her ass—pronto—and run like hell.

  Lindy screamed again.

  Get up and help her, you fucking idiot!

  Melissa braced her hands against the floor and started to push herself up.

  Then David was standing over her, his good-looking, faintly effeminate features awash in blood and flecks of meat. His mouth opened wide and he bared his teeth at her. A sound like the low warning growl of a guard dog rumbled out of him, followed by an altogether different sound that might have been funny under drastically different circumstances—a very loud, and very protracted, burp.

  More of a belch, really.

  Zombie Belushi.

  Starring in Animal Living Dead House.

  She drew her legs back and kicked out at David’s kneecaps. He flew backward and struck a reanimated guard. The guard stumbled backward several steps but managed to remain upright, while David landed in an awkward heap on the floor. Melissa got her feet beneath her and levered herself upright. She scanned the floor for the knife, but spied something better—a nickel-plated automatic, its barrel wedged in the narrow crack between two snack machines. She hurried across the room, sliding for a moment in a slick of blood, and knelt to retrieve the discarded weapon. She pulled it free and whirled about in time to fire a shot at the guard who’d only moments earlier used the same gun to wound her. He was a zombie now. The bullet punched a hole through his belly and knocked him back a step. She raised the gun’s barrel to aim the next shot at his head.

  Then she heard Lindy wail and turned in that direction instead, her finger frozen on the trigger. Lindy had her hands splayed flat against Anna Kincaid’s busty chest. Her head was turned away from the zombie, one cheek pressed against the brick wall. The zombie’s lips stretched wide as it extended its teeth toward Lindy’s scrawny neck. The last of Lindy’s strength ebbed as Melissa watched. The battle was lost. Sensing this, the zombie reared its head back, preparing to strike.

  Melissa scampered across the floor again, knocking over a chair and sliding for another precarious moment in the blood slick before arriving at the last possible moment to jam the automatic’s barrel against the zombie’s temple. She jerked the trigger and experienced an instant of primal satisfaction as its head blew apart. But her breath caught in her throat as she saw she’d been too late after all. At some point in all the confusion the zombie had managed to partially disembowel the spunky young girl. A loop of intestine hung out of a bloody rent in her flesh. Melissa sobbed as she watched Lindy’s eyes go blank. Lindy’s body began a slow, horrible slide toward the floor—and then stopped. Her chin lifted from her chest as a new kind of pseudo-life dawned in those glassy eyes.

  So it’s just me now, Melissa thought. Alone in a room full of zombies.

  This is so fucked.

  At what point had her life turned into some sleazy late night cable movie?

  Lindy’s mouth opened and emitted that graveyard hiss she’d heard issuing from the other zombies. The dead girl pushed herself away from the wall and took a tentative step in Melissa’s direction. Then another, longer stride, but this time she slipped in a pool of her own blood and viscera and crashed to the floor. The misstep didn’t faze the newborn zombie. It rolled over and began to crawl toward Melissa, one hand extended toward her ankle.

  Melissa sighed.

  “Goddamn.”

  She aimed the gun at the back of Lindy’s head, averted her gaze, and pulled the trigger. She didn’t see the girl’s head erupt in a spray of blood, bone fragments, and brain matter, but she knew her aim had been on the money. Otherwise that grasping hand would have seized her ankle by now. Would, perhaps, have yanked her to the floor.

  Then it would have been all over.

  And given the hopeless, empty feeling consuming her, maybe that would have been for the best.

  She turned away from the dead girl and faced the remaining zombies, who were converging on her from seemingly every direction now, eight arms reaching for her, four stupid eating machines intent on devouring her warm flesh. She stepped backward over Lindy’s corpse, retreating into the same corner where the girl had made her ill-fated last stand against Anna Kincaid. She glanced at the shiny gun clenched in her fist as she tried to quickly assess her situation.

  Basic fact number one—she didn’t know shit about guns.

  Other than point, squeeze, BANG!

  She didn’t know how many bul
lets a full magazine would contain, much less how many remained. It was just possible she might have enough time left to take careful aim at each undead motherfucker’s head and pull the trigger. But would there be enough bullets?

  Moreover, would there be one left for her if things went wrong?

  Only one way to find out.

  She aimed the gun at Zombie Whore 1’s forehead, extending her arm and bracing the butt of the gun with the palm of her left hand in imitation of a shooting stance she’d seen actors use on shows like Miami Vice. Maybe it was the right way to do it and maybe it wasn’t. Did it really matter at this point?

  She drew in a breath and held it.

  Then she squeezed the trigger and the gun jumped an inch or so as the bullet discharged. The round buzzed over the top of Zombie Whore 1’s head, but failed to even nick her scalp.

  Lesson number one—blowing away zombies was easier up close and personal.

  “Fuck it.”

  She stepped out of the corner and took aim at the dead hooker again, this time training the gun’s sight dead-center on the thing’s blood-specked face. She squeezed the trigger again and this time the bullet slammed through the bridge of the dead woman’s nose. The zombie hit the floor and this time the dead bitch didn’t get back up. Adrenaline kicked Melissa into a higher gear.

  She thought, GET IT DONE.

  She turned slightly and took another quick step to her left to aim the gun at the next-nearest zombie.

  Too late, she felt her feet slide through the blood slick again.

  This time, though, her luck ran out and she crashed to the floor. Again. Her and this fucking floor, man, they were getting intimately acquainted.

  She turned onto her back with a groan and saw two zombies looming over her.

  Reaching for her.

  The gun was gone, lost in the fall.

  She thought, THIS IS IT.

  Then she heard new voices in the hallway. Frantic voices. Her eyes went wide as she recognized the achingly familiar timbre of one of them.

  A zombie guard dropped to a knee beside her and reached for her throat.