The Zombie Playground

by Brian Rowe

  She peered up and tried not to scream. She didn’t have time to contemplate the situation.

  Two zombies started crawling over the top of the fence—and at least forty were making their way up.

  “Shit!” Brin shouted. “Come on! Everyone inside the school! Everyone inside the school!”

  Paul struggled standing up, but finally did so, and shuffled toward the rest of the group.

  “Anaya,” he said in a high girly voice. “How much do you weigh?”

  “Shut up,” she said. “I’ve probably already shed ten pounds with all this freaking running!”

  Ash reached the back door. He pulled on it. Locked.

  “Damn it!” he shouted.

  Brin pushed him aside and tried the door. It was indeed locked tight.

  “Crap,” Brin said. She turned to her left. “Come on. Let’s run to the front of the—”

  She couldn’t believe her eyes. A zombie leapt from the fence to the ground, and was now blocking the path to the left side of the school.

  She turned to her right. Another zombie had jumped off and was now blocking the other side. The group was trapped.

  “Oh no,” Brin said.

  She turned back toward the door and started pounding real hard.

  “Help! Somebody, help us!”

  “Brin!” Ash said. “It’s Sunday! Nobody’s here!”

  She continued pounding her hands against the door, anyway. “No. Come on, there has to be somebody here. There has to be somebody inside who can hear us!”

  She turned around to see more zombies leaping toward the ground. The two creatures on the sides started zoning in on the remaining quintet.

  “You need me to fight them off?” Paul said. “Remember, they can’t hurt me!”

  Crispin looked up at Brin quizzically. “The zombies don’t harm Paul?”

  “OK, we’re not gonna discuss this right now.” Brin pounded her right hand against the glass, hoping it might break.

  Anaya started jumping up and down. “We can’t just stand here! They’re gonna take us down one by one!”

  Brin turned around again to see more creatures falling off the fence, turning their attention to Clyde’s severed body rotting in the sun—but the corpse would only buy them another minute at most.

  Ash darted his eyes at Brin, and she darted her eyes at Ash. They knew they didn’t have a way out of this mess.

  “Ash,” Brin said.

  He nodded. “I… I know.”

  “Ash, I—”

  The zombies were feet away. She closed her eyes. Any hope she had left had vanished.

  It was all over now.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Brin opened her eyes when she heard an unexpected voice.

  “Hello?” a young male said from inside the school.

  Brin and Ash both turned to the double doors at the same time.

  “Help!” Brin screamed, bashing her fists against the door.

  “Come quickly!” Ash added.

  Twenty zombies were closing in. They were seconds away.

  “Hurry!” Brin said.

  “Who’s in there?” Anaya said. “Is someone in there?”

  “I don’t care who’s in there! If they have a hand and five fingers and can just open up this freaking door, I’ll be happy!”

  Ash peered through the glass as the figure came into view.

  “Is that… is that who I think it is?”

  The zombie moaning echoed across the entire school grounds. Brin thought her eardrums might burst. She could feel their touch on her shoulders, their breath on her neck. They were five seconds away. Four seconds. Three.

  The figure inside kicked the door open.

  “What in the hell is going—”

  “Everyone, get in!” Brin shouted, and she and Ash and Crispin and Anaya and Paul rushed inside before a single zombie could start clawing at someone’s back.

  Anaya was the last to stumble inside, and Brin quickly slammed the door shut and locked it. A horde of zombies slammed against the door, pounding with their fists and moaning with raging hunger.

  Brin took a few steps back, slammed her hands against her knees, and caught her breath.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “That was… that was…”

  “Close,” Ash said, taking a seat on the dirty hardwood floor of the hallway.

  Anaya and Paul took seats, too, and Crispin approached Brin, like she was his newfound mother. He wedged himself under her arm and pushed his cheek up against her boob.

  Brin looked up and shook her head. “I can’t believe it. Thank you, Dylan. You saved our lives.”

  Dylan, dressed casually, his hair a mess and his eyes a bit bloodshot, stood before her, tapping a pen against his pants pocket. “No problem,” he said. “I’ve been working all day on the new issue of the paper.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Brin said. “I forgot you’re the A&E editor.”

  “Yeah.” Dylan stared forward over at the door and shook his head. “Are those… uhh… zombies outside?”

  “Yup,” Anaya said, stepping forward. “You gonna tell everyone in the state about those, too?”

  Anaya pushed Dylan, unexpectedly. “Hey!” he said. “What’s your problem?”

  “Am I the only one who remembers what you did yesterday? Your little psychotic breakdown when you told all of Grisly about the vampires in Bodie?”

  Brin grabbed Anaya and said, “Now’s not the time.” But Anaya pushed Brin away, too.

  “You should be thankful, gay boy, that I don’t pummel your face in right now.”

  Dylan ducked, right before saying, “I’m sorry! I couldn’t help it! I was suffocating!”

  “You’re gonna suffocate when I wrap my hands around your neck and press down real hard,” Anaya said.

  Brin stormed forward and pushed Anaya and Dylan away from each other. “Shut up! Both of you! Now is not the time!”

  The zombies were pounding hard against the door. Brin didn’t think it possible, but it appeared as if they had enough strength to knock it down.

  “Come on, guys!” Brin said, motioning for Crispin to follow her. “We can’t stay here!”

  They all started walking down the hallway, as the zombies continued to pound against the door in the background. Brin kept hold of Crispin’s hand as the group reached the center of the Grisly High campus. They could turn left and run toward the math wing, toward two computer labs and a flimsy side door. They could go forward and head toward the main office, and the four giant entry doors. Or they could make a right and run toward the science hall with all the large two-story classrooms. Brin wanted to run toward the front doors, for obvious reasons, but even this far away, she could see zombies starting to crowd in front of the entrance.

  “Oh God,” Brin said. “They’re on every side of the school.”

  They turned to the left and right to see zombies at every door. The group was surrounded. If they had any chance of escaping with their heads and fingers and toes in tact, they needed to get to a phone.

  Ash stopped and spun in an entire circle, looking down each hallway like he was trying to choose the least painful walk of impending doom.

  “Brin?” The panic from before returned to his face. No matter what they did, the zombies wouldn’t let them go. “What do we do?”

  Brin turned to her left to see the creatures bust through the back door, the front five zombies getting slammed to the ground by the stronger ones behind them. The six humans stood in the center of the school, all looking for a leader to tell them what to do.

  When one of the zombies finally crashed through the main entrance, Brin knew their time was limited. They had to hide. Quickly.

  And to ensure the maximum chance of survival, the group had to split up.

  “OK,” Brin said, trying to remain calm as all the zombies marched toward them.

  “OK?” Ash said. “OK, what?”

  “Here’s the plan. We can’t all stay together. We can’t all get c
ornered. We need to split up. It’s each of us for ourselves now.”

  “What? That’s your plan?”

  She grabbed Ash. “Hide. Fast. Before one of them follows you.” Brin took a step back and addressed the entire group. “And for God’s sake, someone find a phone and call the police!”

  Brin grabbed Crispin’s hand and dragged him down the corridor to the right.

  “Wait! Brin!” She turned around to see Paul addressing her. Ash, Anaya, and Dylan had already started running—Anaya ran right past her toward the nearest science classroom—but Paul wasn’t moving a muscle.

  She smiled at the vampire. “You’re going to be fine. I’m not worried about you.”

  “But I’m worried about you,” he said, leaping toward her before she had a chance to stop him. “What if something happens to you. What if—”

  She shook her head, keeping a tight grip on Crispin’s hand. “Nothing’s going to happen to me. We’re going to survive this. We both will, I promise.”

  He leaned in close. He wrapped his fingers around her arm and looked down, showing, for the first time, a true human side. “I don’t want to lose you.”

  Brin could hear the zombie steps coming from mere yards away. They had to move. “I can’t do this now, Paul. I have to go.”

  She took a step forward but Paul stopped her and pulled her close. She couldn’t even react as Paul kissed her on the lips. She opened her eyes wide, thought she might emit a tiny scream; this was a different kind of kiss than the one he planted on her in the bowels of Bodie after getting the wind knocked out of her.

  Paul broke away a second later and started running the opposite direction, not even taking the time to look back at her before disappearing down a hallway.

  Even though she was seconds away from getting torn to shreds, and even though she had a child to save, Brin took a moment to savor the unexpected romantic gesture.

  “Whoa,” she said.

  Crispin started yanking on her hand. “Brin! What are you doing? Let’s go! They’re coming!”

  And coming they were; Brin looked ahead of her to see a zombie turn around the corner and lock eyes with her. He smiled, eerily.

  “Shit,” she said, and she immediately started running. “Crispin! Stay close to me!”

  Brin passed the giant science classrooms, the janitor’s closet, and faculty restrooms, and kicked open the last door on the right. She turned toward the side door, where five zombies were shoving their lips up against the glass and pounding their slimy hands against it. Any second, the glass could break. She had to move fast.

  “Where are we going?” Crispin said.

  Brin nodded her head forward, toward the open door, toward the long staircase ahead that descended into blackness.

  “We’re going into the basement,” Brin said, “where we can hope to God one of the others gets to a phone.”

  Crispin narrowed his eyes in terror. “We’re going down there? In the dark?”

  “I’ve been down here before,” she said. “Don’t worry. We’ll be safe. They can’t get us in here.”

  A hand busted through a window to the left, and a zombie pressed his head inside and started moaning straight at Brin. She shook her head in disgust and properly drop kicked the yellow creature directly in the face.

  “OK,” Crispin said, watching as the zombie fell hard against the concrete outside. “Now that was awesome.”

  “Had to kick one of them in the face,” she said with a quick grin, and she pulled Crispin onto the first step of the cold, archaic staircase.

  She locked the door behind her, and the unlikely duo started making their way down into the depths of Grisly High.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Dylan raced into the downstairs journalism room and locked the door. He couldn’t believe it. He’d only had ten more minutes of work to complete before heading home. He’d been at school since 9 A.M., working hard to complete his two arts and entertainment pages for the school newspaper, The Grisly Details. He’d completed his film review of the new Oren Peli movie Area 51 and pasted it on page eleven. He’d edited and revised all the stories for his pages—the food review of the nearby Kreeper Noodles, the book review of Stephen King’s latest, the TV review of the latest teen vampire show, and a preview of the upcoming Grisly High musical Macbeth: Beyond the Grave.

  “How fitting,” Dylan said.

  He had been working all day and was almost done. Twenty minutes ago he could’ve run to his car and found his way to safety. He would’ve been sad about not being able to save Brin and the others in time. But at least he wouldn’t be dead meat. At least he’d live long enough to see the newest issue of the newspaper printed and on stands throughout the school.

  “Britney, Danielle,” he said, rushing to the back of the room, where all the students were working diligently on the finishing touches of the paper. Britney was the News & Views Editor, and Danielle was the Editor-in-Chief. Neither one looked up from her computer.

  “What is it, Dylan?” an angry Danielle said.

  “I was just upstairs—”

  “If you have something to say, make it fast.”

  “We’re under attack!”

  “No, duh, Sherlock,” Britney added. “We’ve got two hours before the deadline. We’re under an attack of mega proportions!”

  “No, I mean, a literal attack. Zombies have entered the school!”

  The girls still didn’t look up from their computers; they laughed instead. “Very funny, movie boy.”

  “No, really! I just saw them!”

  They shook their heads and continued typing. Neither of them took him seriously.

  “I believe you, Dylan,” a male voice said from the other corner of the room, where the beautiful Brent was busy working on the back page of the newspaper. Sports Editor since September, he was most assuredly heterosexual, with a new girlfriend every month, but with the kind of gorgeous, blond, all-American look that made even the straight boys swoon.

  Dylan smiled at him. “Thank you, Brent.”

  But then the boy laughed, even louder than the girls. “Those horror movies in that Film class finally getting to you?”

  “No, hey, I’m being serious.”

  “Well be sure to lock the doors then. I don’t feel like dying today.”

  He snickered at Dylan, mocking him, but Dylan knew he was going to be the one with the last laugh when fifty zombies crashed through the door and started juggling Britney’s pancreas, Danielle’s liver, and Brent’s throbbing heart up into the air.

  Dylan checked the door on the left of the room. Locked. He re-checked the door on the right. Locked. They were safe. Nobody, certainly no thing, could get inside.

  He ran toward the teacher’s desk to find the phone. He needed to get help. As he raced across the room, feeling his feet becoming heavier with each wimpy step, he tried not to start crying. He had survived the tragic events of Bodie, only to have to survive a new Grisly attack. He was still trying to forget about the vampire sightings; now he was supposed to see a thousand zombies and feel like all was normal with the world?

  Dylan was scared. No—he was terrified.

  He grabbed the phone but didn’t get a chance to press a single digit. He looked forward to see two zombies pressed against the teacher’s desk, staring up at him with hungry eyes.

  Dylan screamed and raced toward the back of the journalism room.

  “Oh my God!” he shouted. “Everyone, get out!”

  He ran toward the back door and turned around just in time to see Britney and Danielle drop down to the floor from their chairs as the two zombies jumped over the desks and leapt for the two girls.

  “Oh my God!”

  “He was right! He was—”

  The two zombies started slashing through the girls, just as the tall, cute Brent jumped over his computer and smashed himself against Dylan.

  They both peered down at the doorknob.

  “What are you doing?” Brent said. “Why are you ju
st standing here? Let’s go!”

  “I was just…” Dylan said, wrapping his arm around Brent’s. “I was just waiting for you.”

  Brent smiled at Dylan in a way that suggested maybe he did have a little gay in him.

  But Dylan didn’t know if he’d ever find out if he had a chance at a future romance with the dreamy Sports editor.

  He kicked the door open and screamed when three more zombies raced toward him, their hands reaching for his throat.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Anaya slammed the science classroom door shut and locked it. She turned around, tripped, and nearly screamed, when she saw the spook of a decoration above her.

  She backed up against the door and tried to catch her breath. A giant skeleton hung over the second floor bannister.

  “No way,” Anaya said, thankful she hadn’t emitted a loud cry for the whole school to hear. “I’ve screamed enough for one day.”

  She didn’t take time to bolt every window or investigate every corner of the large classroom; she had a more important destination in mind. She ran toward the other side of the room and grabbed the phone from the wall.

  “OK, OK, uhh…” Anaya didn’t know what to do for a second, but then she snapped out of her stupidity and dialed 9-1-1.

  She waited for an answer. But nothing happened. She didn’t hear a voice-mail, an automated voice, nothing.

  “What the—”

  She tried again. Still nothing.

  She dialed 0 to see what would happen. She finally heard a dialing noise, then the sound of ringing on the other end.

  “Oh, thank God.”

  But no one answered. After five rings, an automated voice came on and said, “You have reached Grisly High School outside of our normal business hours. We are open from 7 A.M. to 3 P.M., Monday through Friday—”

  Anaya shoved the phone back on its handle and brought it back to her ear again. “Goddammit, this isn’t happening! How do you call out? There has to be a way to call out!”

  She scanned the wall for instructions. She thought maybe she had to dial 1 first, or a 9. But neither worked. She tried 2, then 3. But she didn’t get to try 4.

  Anaya spun around when she heard a knock on the classroom door.