Zombie School

by Aaron Jenkins

council. The mayor would condemn me to become a Stiff, just like the human sympathizers.

  I could just leave her. Assume she was dead, or would be soon enough and pretend like it hadn’t happened. Just go about my zombie life and let the human die. That would be the easy answer. But we needed humans. And I had cost us the only ones our community had. I had to make amends for that somehow. And the human I had found was smart and resourceful. She’d be great stock. She might even make a good Wake. She was smart enough. She’d probably be a good human tracker.

  The only other option was to bring her in myself. And that’s what I was going to do. I had been thinking about it for the last week. And listening to Big Jake talk up his big Stiff kill all week made me more determined to go through with it. Stiffs were harmless if you didn’t draw attention to yourself. I just had to be careful and I would make it out without so much as one Stiff grunting in my direction. I just hoped she was still alive.

  I waited awhile after my mentor left. Then I grabbed my backpack and skated off to Mrs. Kushner’s farm. Trevor was waiting for me in the field. He tossed my safety gear at me. The left arm was still torn where the Stiff had bitten into it a week ago, but Trevor had cleaned the dried blood off for me. I quickly stuffed the gear into my backpack and Trevor led me around to the cargo van, a plain white van with a long, empty rear, parked in the driveway. He opened the driver’s door and sat down. Holding the car key in his hand, he slipped it into the ignition.

  “Luckily my mentor’s a heavy sleeper,” he said. “I swear she could sleep through a Stiff stampede.”

  He turned the key and the engine groaned. He turned it again and it sputtered for a minute again before it finally roared to life.

  “Come on,” he whispered. “Before I change my mind.”

  I rushed to the passenger’s seat and climbed in, slamming the door behind me. Trevor carefully shifted the gear to reverse. “I’ve never done this before,” he offered. Then he carefully brought the van down the driveway, ambling slowly down the hill. He struggled to keep the car straight using the side mirrors, and we started to get so far off the road that I got out and directed him. After a while we were able to pull it out into the street.

  I climbed back into the van. I glared at Trevor and he shrugged modestly. He put the van into drive and we began forward slowly. “Just go the same way the bus did,” I said.

  “I don’t know if I remember the way,” he said.

  “We’ll figure it out.”

  It took us much longer than it should have. We got lost a few times and I had to get out and ask for directions, claiming I had gone to zone C and gotten off at the wrong stop and gotten lost, and needed directions back to zone F. Eventually, though, we found our way to zone F’s bus stop, where we had gotten off a week before to go human tracking. From there I was able to guide Trevor to the Stockade. It was a rough ride. Trevor was not a good driver. He got better as we went, but he was jerky and tentative, and laid on the breaks too much every time he needed to make a turn. I tried not to complain too much. After all, he was helping me when he didn’t have to, and I wouldn’t be able to do this without him.

  Finally we drifted up to the front gate of the Stockade. He shut off the car’s engine and we climbed out. A few Stiffs had roamed toward the gate when we pulled up, hearing the car’s engine, but had wandered off again after the noise of the engine was silenced. We threw open the back doors of the van, ready for the human to be coralled inside as soon as I got her out of the Stockade.

  We gazed ahead at the large prison compound. It was a sprawling building that stretched off in both directions for blocks, wide and gray. A tower sat near the entrance, overlooking the high-standing gate. It was made of thick concrete and stood two stories high.

  “Ready?” Trevor asked me. His face was stern, his skin glowing against the light of the moon and stars.

  I nodded.

  “Okay,” he said. “Be careful.”

  He raised his arm toward me and I connected mine with it.

  I turned and faced the gate surrounding the Stockade. I drew in a breath, my dead lungs expanding as I did. It was time.

  I was breaking into the Stockade.

  22. WELCOME TO ZOMBIE HELL

  I kneeled at my backpack and pulled out my safety gear. I quickly dressed myself in it as Trevor hovered near me. The plan was simple. Get in the Stockade and quietly search the grounds for the human or her remains. I would move through the building carefully and undetected by the Stiffs. If I avoided any sudden movements they wouldn’t even register that I was there. Once the girl was found, I would use some ether gathered from my mentor’s tracking supplies to knock her out and safely carry her across the grounds and over the gate.

  Throwing my backpack over my shoulder, I gave Trevor a thumbs up and scrambled quickly up the gate, taking care not to get caught in the swirling barbed wire on the top, and lowered myself as quietly as possible to the ground inside the compound. The Stiffs had drifted from the gate once the noise from the van had ceased. I moved slowly across the compound so that I didn’t attract any of the roamers’ attention.

  I slipped inside the main door without any Stiff’s awareness. A hallway stood before me. On either side ahead was a door. About a dozen Stiffs wandered the corridor, occasionally bumping into a wall and jolting back a few steps, only to turn and continue their aimless ramble. Sometimes a Stiff would stumble into another Stiff. They would grunt at each other, stare each other up and down, determine that the other was not an animate being, and turn and continue on. It wouldn’t take much effort on my part to avoid an attack, but in the darkness, with her very hum 20/20 vision, I wasn’t sure the girl would have found it so easy.

  I went forward slowly, examining the floor for any signs of the human’s remains as I went, pausing at the first door I passed to glance in through the window. It looked like an old laundry room, a line of washers and dryers extending from the far wall and turned over wheeled laundry carts littering the floor. No Stiffs seemed to be inside the room. I slipped in quietly and began creeping around, carefully exploring the room to see if the human had holed up in it. The walls were chipped and the room smelled musty. I checked every washer and every cart. The human was nowhere to be found. I slipped back out into the main hallway.

  I shuffled by a heavyset Stiff in a plaid hunter’s jacket and jeans. Its head, fitted with a cap, hung to one side as it stumbled awkwardly past me, like it was having trouble lifting its legs. It seemed like it would topple over with each movement. I sidled past it and it barely grunted in my general direction as I went. I moved to the next door in the hall and peered into the window. It was a cafeteria. Dozens of Stiffs were inside, pacing the large room, bumping into each other or overturned tables, grunting and moaning. The tiled floor was faded, cracked, and moldy. The walls were gray, with windows set high above the floor, where the second floor would be, and splattered with dried blood. If she had gone in there she was as good as dead. I certainly wasn’t going to risk my life to bring her out.

  I left the door and came to the end of the hall. It went off in two directions. One led to an opened gateway and the other to another hall. I went down the hall, finding other rooms to explore, including a library, exercise room, visitor’s room, and a chapel. I inspected them all. Only the library had any Stiffs inside, so I avoided it. The rest were too small and weren’t inviting to roaming Stiffs. The exercise room and the visitor’s area showed no signs of her dwelling. I entered the chapel. For humans it was a safe place, a haven. It would be a good choice for her. There were no Stiffs inside. I walked quietly toward the front of the room, past lines of pews, which housed a figure of Jesus on a cross at the head, near a preacher’s podium. The figure’s head, covered in thorns, drooped to one side, and it looked sad and defeated. It looked so much like a human. The inscription read:

  “And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.

&n
bsp; Luke 23:46”

  I wondered if this meant that when he died, Jesus had given his spirit to Heaven, leaving his body soulless. And when he reawakened, if that meant his soul was no longer with him, and if that meant that zombies no longer had souls, too. Then I laughed. I laughed louder than I should have, and my laughter echoed back at me within the little empty desolate chapel. I silenced myself, managing to swallow my laughter into a choke. A few Stiff grunts answered me, but for the most part it hadn’t attracted any unwanted attention. I hadn’t been able to help it. Because I didn’t believe in that. I didn’t believe in any of it. Not Jesus or zombie Jesus, not souls, not Heaven. I reminded myself that I was in zombie Hell. Not even zombie Jesus himself could save me.

  I turned and left the chapel. The human girl wasn’t in any of the rooms. There was only one room I hadn’t looked in yet. The infirmary. I peered inside the window of the door. There were no Stiffs inside. I slipped in. I began searching the room, passing a line of sick beds that rested against the far wall. The room stunk like feces. I passed a cabinet and went to the closet. I pressed myself against the wall and, jiggling the doorknob, opened the closet door carefully. I looked in.

  The human sat with her back pressed