Zombie Apocalypse

by B. A. Frade

  I wrote in the book:

  We aren’t throwing his keys on the roof. He’s afraid of heights. Plus, he’s a teacher. You can’t play pranks on teachers.

  That’s what makes it scary!

  Not happening.

  I’ve done all the scares so far—don’t you think you should take a turn?

  I wish I had thought to take a photo of that last line. It was the proof that we weren’t behind all the scary stuff and maybe, just maybe, our friends would understand that this creepy book was doing it all. Actually, I wished I’d been taking video all along! If we had film of the spiders or the dog, everyone would know it wasn’t us pulling the pranks.

  Of course, I didn’t think of it, and now the writing was quickly fading. Plus, none of that was possible anyway, since phones weren’t allowed in school. The Scaremaster probably knew the rules and was laughing at us.

  Tyler took the pen and tried to reason with the Scaremaster.

  No more stories. We don’t like them.

  Are you scared yet?

  No. Just annoyed.

  I suppose we need more stories, then.

  We still hadn’t tried asking the Scaremaster politely to stop writing stories. I told Tyler to give it a go. He wrote:

  When will this stop?

  When you are scared.

  I looked to Tyler and said, “That will never happen.”

  After thinking about it, Tyler decided to write: Okay. You win. We’re super scared. Please stop. Tyler even added: I might cry.

  I laughed. That was absurd. Then again, why not tell him we were frightened? If scaring us was what he wanted, we could let him think he’d won.

  The Scaremaster wrote back: I don’t think so. I’m not done here yet. You will be scared soon, though. Count on it.

  It was my turn to write. Obviously, Mom’s good manners didn’t apply to supernatural demon-possessed books and their paranormal authors.

  I wrote in big letters: ENOUGH!

  The Scaremaster replied in one word.

  No.

  There was more writing that showed up in broad paragraphs, but we agreed that we didn’t want to read the story. If we didn’t know what was supposed to happen, maybe it wouldn’t. And if something bad did happen, then we could say we didn’t know anything about it, right?

  Tyler slammed the cover shut. I locked the clasp.

  We put the book into Tyler’s book bag and choked down the last cold bites of our lunch.

  “Has anyone seen my keys?” That was how Mr. Ramirez began class.

  Tyler sat at the desk next to me in the crowded classroom. He didn’t look at me but kicked my ankle instead. I kicked him back but missed.

  “¿Dónde están mis llaves?” he tried again in Spanish. No one replied. Mr. Ramirez was tall and thin, and, according to Rachel, rumored to have been a semipro basketball player in Mexico before moving here to teach. I didn’t know if that was true, but he did coach the school team.

  A small, scared voice came from the side of the room, near the exit. “Can we help you look for them?” It was Maya. She’d been at school all day, but she looked really pale and sat so close to the door in every class that I imagined she planned to run away at the slightest sign of a spider.

  Kids from around the room chimed in, in Spanish, with easily formed questions like “When did you see them?” and “Where were you at lunch?”

  He told us they had to be in the classroom and he really needed them; otherwise he wouldn’t interrupt class like this. He had an important meeting off campus next period.

  We all got up to look around. That’s how much everyone loved Mr. Ramirez.

  Tyler met me in the back of the room by the supply closet. “What do we do?” he whispered.

  “He’ll never think to look on the roof,” I said, wishing there was a way for me to secretly go get the keys.

  Tyler raised crossed fingers. “Maybe they aren’t there?”

  I snorted. Of course the keys were on the roof. We both knew it, and we both knew who put them there.

  After five minutes of looking, Mr. Ramirez finally told us all to go back to our desks. He’d start class and search again later. “I was so sure they were in my jacket pocket,” he muttered in English. He checked his coat one more time.

  “Bueno,” he said, moving on. In Spanish, he said, “Let’s review homework.”

  Tyler raised his hand. He didn’t even give Mr. Ramirez time to call on him before blurting out, “I know where your keys are.”

  Uh, as far as I was concerned, that was no bueno. First, Tyler was about to get in big trouble, and second, he wasn’t talking in Spanish. So that meant even more trouble.

  I whispered, “What are you doing?”

  He leaned over to me and whispered back, “This is my moment. I know it is. The Scaremaster was right about revealing my biggest fear!”

  I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. “What are you talking about?”

  Tyler sighed. “I’m afraid of getting in trouble.” He gave me a small smile, since “trouble” was my middle name. “No offense.”

  “None taken.” Duh. I should have known. I’ve known him my whole life! How did I miss this?

  Even when we were toddlers, when I threw my cereal on the floor, he ate every bite of his. When I knocked over a tower of blocks, he rebuilt it. Once I finger-painted on the wall, and instead of joining the fun, he got paper towels to clean it up.

  In school, he always refused to trade places with me, which I always wanted to do.

  All of the time I have spent in detention, I have spent alone.

  Agreeing to trade places at the dance had been an easy choice for him. It was Halloween. Scary things were expected. There’d be no “trouble” for what we’d planned.

  Oh, Tyler…

  I looked at his face and knew he wasn’t kidding around. His eyes were wide and his jaw hung loose. His breathing was fast and shallow. The guy was so pale he was practically see-through.

  I seriously thought he might faint like Maya did when she found the spiders.

  “You know where my keys are?” Mr. Ramirez asked to be clear he’d heard correctly.

  Tyler swallowed hard and nodded.

  It was like a brick hit me in the head. I realized in a flash that the Scaremaster’s new story wasn’t actually about Mr. Ramirez or the keys. It was a trick, meant to scare Tyler. The Scaremaster had done what he said he’d do. He dragged out Tyler’s one and only fear and revealed it to our classmates.

  What was really frustrating was that the Scaremaster caught on before me.

  I simply said, “I wish I’d known.…” All along, Tyler had been scared of getting in trouble. There was probably a phobia name for it, but I didn’t know it.

  Tyler took a deep breath and stood up. There was a spark of bravery beneath that fear. “I am going to beat the Scaremaster by facing my fear,” Tyler whispered to me as he passed by. “We have to change the story.” He nodded at me with a look that confirmed he no longer thought the book was a human invention. He’d come around to my belief that it was something otherworldly.

  I wondered how much Tyler was going to explain to our teacher. Did he know how to say “possessed journal” in Spanish?

  I made a spontaneous decision. If Tyler was going down, I was going with him. Of course, I wasn’t scared, so I had nothing to lose.

  I stood up and announced in English, “The keys are on the school roof.”

  The Scaremaster had asked if we were scared. We tried lying, but that didn’t work, so this was our way of shouting “NO.” Standing together, we weren’t scared of his stories and we weren’t scared of getting in trouble either.

  Mr. Ramirez called us both to his desk. Softly, so other kids couldn’t hear, though I knew Rachel was straining to listen with her eagle ears, he asked, “How do you know where my keys are?”

  Tyler asked permission to go to his backpack. He brought out the journal.

  We walked by Rachel on the way back
to the front of the room. The look on her face was unreadable. She stared at the book in Tyler’s hand, then passed a glance from me to Tyler and back again, like we were at a Ping-Pong match. After that, she inhaled sharply. Then she moved forward, leaning at an awkward angle over her desk.

  I knew she was listening when Tyler told Mr. Ramirez, “This book tells stories that come true.”

  I glanced back at Rachel. Her expression still revealed nothing. Could she hear us?

  I was certain she would spread whatever rumors she wanted, and I couldn’t stop that, so I put my back to her as Tyler opened the cover’s clasp.

  I was uncomfortable about showing our teacher the book, especially with Rachel leaning so far toward us that she was going to get a neck cramp. But he seemed genuinely interested, and if any teacher could help us figure out how to make the stories stop, it was Mr. Ramirez.

  Tyler opened the book. The first page was blank. My stomach fell. The story about his keys should have been there.

  “When we write in it, the Scaremaster answers back,” Tyler said, for the first time admitting out loud there was something more to the author than a prank. And to prove it he wrote:

  Tell us a story.

  Nothing.

  We want to hear a scary story.

  Nothing.

  Mr. Ramirez frowned. “Sorry, guys,” he said. “This smells like a pretty big Halloween prank. I heard about Maya, Eddie, and Soon-Yi.” His eyes darted from me to Tyler. “Are my keys really on the roof?”

  I nodded.

  Tyler wasn’t ready to give up on the book yet and was now scribbling Where are you?

  “All right.” Mr. Ramirez gave Tyler a cool, steady stare. “No more fooling around. Put the book away.” He told the class to work on the next page in our workbook, then told us, “Come on. Let’s go.” He stomped into the hall, clearly furious. We quietly followed.

  I could tell that Tyler was a wreck inside. His eyes were dragging the floor, and his breathing was out of control. He was truly scared.

  I whispered, “Detention isn’t so bad. It’s a nice quiet time to catch up on homework.” Which was good since I was always behind. Of course, that wasn’t helpful to Tyler, so I added, “You could get ahead, or start learning advanced calculus, or take up another language.” I showed him how to hold his head high and stare down anyone who might be looking at us.

  He glanced at me, clearly unconvinced that detention was a positive thing.

  At first, Mr. Ramirez headed toward the principal’s office, but then suddenly he paused. He stopped so fast that I nearly ran into his back. “We’re going the wrong way,” he told us in a strange, flat voice.

  Huh?

  “Come along,” Mr. Ramirez said, rotating one hundred eighty degrees on his heel. “We need to go in this direction.”

  To our surprise, he led us away from our punishment, down the hall to a small janitor’s closet, where there was a long ladder attached to the wall.

  In another surprise, the closet door was unlocked. It was never unlocked; believe me, I checked all the time.

  “You two stay here,” Mr. Ramirez told us. He started up that ladder only to stop partway. He came back down. His face was ghostly white, and his hands were shaking. “I can’t do it,” he admitted, putting his head into his hands.

  “Fear of heights?” Tyler asked, though we already knew it was true.

  He nodded. “I got stuck on a roller coaster when I was a kid. Ever since then, I’ve avoided high places.”

  “I’m not afraid,” I told him. “I’ll go.” I stepped up onto the first rung.

  Just then a woman’s deep voice resonated through the small closet. “I heard there was a problem.” Mrs. Clancy popped her head into the room. She shooed us all aside. “If those keys are on the roof, I’ll get them.”

  Three minutes later, I found out what happened at the end of the Scaremaster’s story.

  Mrs. Clancy fell off the roof. She dropped thirty feet onto the school bushes with a crash. When she landed, her leg was bent at an awkward angle.

  “It’s our fault,” Tyler said. His voice was filled with regret. “I wish she hadn’t gotten hurt. I wish I knew how to end this before someone else has to go to the hospital.”

  “I wish that stuff too,” I told him.

  As far as anyone knew, we’d been the ones to set this disaster in motion. We threw the keys, we took the blame, we were at the ladder when Mrs. Clancy climbed it, and we were on the lawn watching her scoot down the slanted roof toward the keys when she fell.

  “What’s the longest you’ve ever had detention?” Tyler asked me, though I was pretty sure he knew the answer.

  “A few days,” I said, thinking this time we might be in for it until we graduated middle school.

  Seeing our janitor all crumpled up in a bush, with her coworkers tending to her, was heartbreaking. Again, not scary but very cruel. We felt bad for whatever our role had been, even if the real villain here was the Scaremaster.

  “The Scaremaster wanted to scare me by getting me in trouble,” Tyler reasoned while the ambulance sirens approached in the distance.

  “Are you scared?” I asked. Maybe if the Scaremaster got what he wanted, this story-game could end here and now.

  “No,” Tyler said. “I’ll never be afraid of getting in trouble again. It’s better to face what I’ve done and take the punishment.” He paused. “I think tonight I’ll tell Mom I broke her kitchen knives, grater, and potato peeler.” At least for now, Mom thought they were just missing.

  I was really proud of my brother. Tyler wasn’t going to let the Scaremaster scare him anymore, even if it meant detention at school and being grounded at home.

  “So what happens next?” I asked him.

  Tyler gave me a pathetic look. “You positive you don’t know what scares you most?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, then we can’t prepare for it,” Tyler said. “We can’t break the book apart. We can’t ditch it around here. So there’s just one option: Together, we are going to have to face whatever is coming.”

  I wasn’t sure I liked that option, since I was the target, but the lesson here was, when the Scaremaster tried to frighten me—and he would—I needed to stand up to it, like Tyler had done. Head-on. That was the only way to change the story. But what if I did that and the Scaremaster pivoted, just like he’d done today—injuring someone else in the process?

  I didn’t know what to do!

  Mrs. Clancy was lying on a stretcher when she called me and Tyler to her side. She looked petrified and stared at us with unblinking eyes. Her hands trembled when she gave me Mr. Ramirez’s car keys.

  “I have barophobia,” Mrs. Clancy said, her fearful face scrunched up in a grimace as she fought against the pain in her broken leg.

  I had no idea what that one was, so I looked to Tyler. As the paramedics rolled the stretcher into the back of the ambulance, he sighed. “Fear of gravity… as in falling.”

  The Scaremaster had ended another story.

  Chapter Six

  When Tyler’s alarm went off, we should have started getting ready for school, but neither of us really wanted to go.

  It wasn’t because of detention. Our punishment wouldn’t start till Monday, since the faculty was all too busy planning the school dance to stay after and supervise us for the next two days.

  It wasn’t because of the dance either. We’d gotten lucky with that too. Even after Tyler showed Mom the damaged knives, avoiding an explanation of how it had happened, she still said we could go. And the principal agreed.

  Neither of us wanted to go to school because of the Scaremaster. I was solidly convinced that he was behind the delayed detention and had somehow manipulated things for us to go to the Halloween dance. He wanted us there. But why?

  Before bed, we’d opened the book to check for a new story that might give us a hint of what to expect, but the pages were blank.

  Tyler hit snooze, and I cuddled deeper into my
covers, stalling.

  “Are you afraid of what might happen today?” Tyler asked me.

  “Afraid?” I echoed, my voice muffled by the blankets. “No. I’m not scared, but I don’t want to walk into a trap either.”

  “I’ve been thinking… we need to find out more about this book,” Tyler told me. “The dance is tomorrow. Who knows what the storyteller has in mind between now and then?”

  I was about to ask him what he thought we could do, but Mom popped her head into our room. “You guys aren’t up yet? What’s going on? You’ll be late.”

  I heard Tyler mutter softly, “Just add it to the list of things we’re already in trouble for.…”

  I started to laugh but didn’t want Mom to think we were joking around. I choked on the giggle, and the laugh morphed into a moan. I didn’t mean for it to be so loud, but Mom took it as if I was moaning because I was sick.

  She pulled back the curtain between our beds and rushed over to me. She put her hand on my head. “I don’t think you have a fever.”

  I sat up, saying, “I’m fine.”

  If we were sick, that could be the thing that would make us miss the dance. There was no way I was missing it, even if no one but Tyler talked to me all night. Even if the Scaremaster did his worst to frighten me. I was going to dress like a boney zombie and dance until my feet fell off!

  I dragged myself up. “Come on, Ty, we gotta get ready for school.” I started running around, looking on the floor for something clean to wear.

  “I have an idea. How about you two stay home and rest today?” Mom looked at me, then Tyler. “I want you two healthy for Halloween.”

  I got the sudden chills.

  Oh, Scaremaster, what were you up to? There was no way that in a normal world Mom would want us to stay home sick from school and still go to a party tomorrow.