by Shawn Kass
Considering that they all probably had to take the same health class as you, the two questions that come to mind then are whether or not the people inside the teachers’ lounge are already hurt and need something simple like this stuff, or if they expected there to be something else in the kit. Reviewing the things you know consider the idea that this is some sort of highly communicable virus that is being transmitted from person to person by bites. If that’s the case, then perhaps some hydrogen peroxide or alcohol might kill the virus in a bite wound if administered quickly enough.
With this thought in mind, you consider the fact that there are probably two places in the school where you can find these things. The nurse’s office, like the girl upstairs recommended, or the back room in the science labs.
If you head for the nurse’s office, turn to page ……….. 104 If you head for the science labs, turn to page ………….. 155
First Aid Kit After You Have Weapons and Food
Thinking that while you now have a means of defending yourself and some food for yourself and the people upstairs, it would be really great if you could help others in case they get hurt. You realize that it’s time to go get a first aid kit. You try to think back to your health class with Miss Prego whose real name is Miss Jefferson, but whom the students secretly nicknamed because she managed to get herself pregnant every school year for the past three years, and remember what is in a standard first aid kit, and if it’s going to be enough. You know most standard kits have compress dressings and bandages, not to mention aspirin and antibiotic ointment. This stuff will help if someone scratches themselves or gets a cut, but if it’s a bite from a zombie, it’s not going to do much good. Rubber gloves, you figure, are probably in most kits nowadays, and those might help you from getting someone’s infected blood on you. Other than that, the only things you can remember are breathing barriers for CPR and gauze. None of it sounds like it will do much if a zombie attacks.
Considering that they all probably had to take the same health class as you, the two questions that come to mind then are whether or not the people inside the teachers’ lounge are already hurt and need something simple like this stuff, or if they are expecting there to be something else in the kit. Reviewing the things you know consider the idea that this is some sort of highly communicable virus that is being transmitted from person to person by bites. If that’s the case, then perhaps some hydrogen peroxide or alcohol might kill the virus in a bite wound if administered quickly enough.
With this thought in mind, you consider the fact that there are probably two places in the school where you can find these things: the nurse’s office, like the girl upstairs recommended, or the back room in the science labs.
As the author of this adventure, I find myself asking how you made it here. There is no story line or thread which could possibly lead you to this option, so I can only assume that you have cheated. Therefore, I am revoking your privileges to continue from here, and insisting that you go back to the beginning and start again.
The End
Nurse’s Office
Deciding to head to the nurse’s office first, you turn and head for the stairs at a light trot, making sure to slow down a step or two as you approach any classrooms in case a zombie comes staggering out. Encountering no opposition, you pray that your luck will hold out a bit longer as you descend to the first floor.
On the first floor, you poke your head out and check the area while keeping the majority of your body well within the relative safety of the stairwell. Looking left, you spot a zombie ambling up the hall away from you, but the hall to the right seems clear. Good for you since the nurse’s office is down that hallway.
Waiting for another thirty seconds to go by, you check the halls again, and the zombie up the left direction seems to have stopped and is now just standing halfway up the hallway with its nose two inches from the wall. He might be looking at the mural painted on the wall of Jesus’s Last Supper, perhaps something about the figures poised over a table full of food has captured his intense interest, but it could just as easily be the colors of the paint itself which entrance the nearly brain dead creature into a stupor.
Willing to take the chance, you quickly and quietly step out of the stairwell and head for the right towards the nurse’s office. As you approach, you pass the windows which look into the main office. You see that they are smeared with a dark red splattering of fluid. Rising up on your tiptoes, you are able to see past some of the blood and the room looks deserted of life.
If you go in the main office, turn to page ………………… 106 If you continue to the nurse’s station, turn to page … 111
Go in the Office
In hopes of finding a working telephone or perhaps even a computer with which you can call for help or send a message, you decide to check out the main office first. Stepping over to the door, you press your ear up to it for a few seconds and listen, hoping you don’t hear any of the desperate moans of the zombies on the other side. Gratefully, you hear none, and so you decide to go inside.
Turning the handle, you gently ease the door open and look around the room. Aside from the blood, the office seems to be normal. Slipping inside, you close the door behind you and make your way around the counter to the secretary’s area. One the floor, behind her desk, the secretary lies on the ground. She was clearly chewed on by someone, as you can see the bite marks, but somehow during the attack she must have hit her head against the desk as you quickly spot the clump of hair and scalp on the corner of the desk. Figuring that’s the reason she didn’t reanimate, you try nudging her with your foot, just to make sure she’s not going to attack you before you reach for the phone across her desk.
Picking up the handset, you lift it to your ear but hear nothing: no dial tone, no voice message, nothing. You try to rattle the phone’s hook to see if anything happens and press the 9 button in hopes of discovering an outside line, but nothing works. The phone doesn’t seem to have the option of multiple lines, so you hang up and look to the computer for help.
Not sure what to do, you decide to call up Google and type in 911 hoping that there will be a message option or something you can use. As the Google homepage came up, the familiar icon wore a red banner with the words, Apocalypse Strikes, and below that, a list of cities all around you. Clicking on one of the links, you see that the State Police along with the U.S. Military have somehow quarantined the area and are not letting anyone through. Further down the page it says that the military is launching a coordinated effort to clear the zombies from the streets, but you stop reading as you suddenly realize that your parents both work outside the quarantine area, and there is no way for them to come save you. If you want to survive, you’re going to have to do it here.
Returning to the Google homepage, you type in 911 with shaky fingers, and press enter. You have to scroll past several pages dedicated to September 11th, but finally you find an official police help page. Clicking for a live operator, a new text box comes up, and you begin typing your name, your situation, and your location here at St. Mary’s Catholic School along with a plea for help. You mention that there are at least ten of you, hoping that despite not knowing how many people are in the upstairs teachers’ lounge, that a few extra people on this report might mean that they send someone. When your message is done, you press the Enter key and hope that it goes through even though no one seems to have answered the Live Chat on the other end. With that done, you take one last look around spotting nothing that looks like it would help in a fight and then move out of the office and back into the hallway.
The nurse’s office is just two doors down from where you are, but as you approach, you find that your worst fears are confirmed. Through the small window in the door, you spot several people milling around, and all of them look like they have the same vacant stare in their eyes and blood stains on their shirts. Going in there seems crazy, but you know you need to have a first aid kit if you expect to get in the teachers’ lounge, and knowing w
hat you do now about the rest of the city, you figure you’re going to need the help of someone to get through this.
If you negotiate with the zombies, turn to page ……. 109
If you want to try and sneak in, turn to page …….. 112
If you want to return to the office, turn to page …….. 118
Negotiating with the Undead
As you approach the door to the nurse’s office, you try to consider what to do. Somewhere from deep below the IQ level of good ideas, you come up with the thought that you should try to negotiate with the creatures. You figure pacifism is a viable option, and you should be able to talk things out with them.
Really?! You want to negotiate with the zombies? What book, movie, or TV show made you think this was even a possibility? They are essentially walking corpses intent on consuming your flesh and converting you into one of their legion. Nothing will convince these soulless demons to not eat you. There is nothing you have that you can bargain with, and no matter how much charisma you think you have, you cannot convince a zombie to go vegetarian.
As the author of your adventure, I honestly have no idea what to say from here out. You have officially stumped me, and I make up stories for a living. Congratulations, you managed to choose an option so stupid I have no words for it. This plan of yours, if that is what you call it, a plan, is so horrible, I can’t even come up with an appropriately bad ending.
That’s it, I quit. I’m not writing you an ending for this. You don’t deserve it. You’re dead.
I hope you are not one of those people who held their place in this book with their finger, because I hereby sentence you to go back to the beginning and try again, and this time, start with the title. If you didn’t catch on, these are zombies. You cannot talk your way out of anything with them.
The End
Go to the Nurse’s Office, Skipping the Main Office
The nurse’s office is just two doors down from where you are, but as you approach, you find that your worst fears are confirmed. Through the small window in the door, you spot several people milling around, and all of them look like they have the same vacant stare in their eyes and blood stains on their shirts. Going in there seems crazy, but you know you need to have a first aid kit if you expect to get in the teachers’ lounge. Knowing what you do now about the rest of the city, you figure you’re going to need the help of friends to get through this.
If you negotiate with the zombies, turn to page ……….. 109
If you want to try and sneak in, turn to page ……………. 112
If you return to the main office, turn to page ……………. 118
Sneak In
As you approach the nurse’s office, you realize that you have no weapons and nothing to defend yourself with. Unfortunately, you know that you have to have a first aid kit before the people upstairs in the teachers’ lounge will let you in. Somewhere in the back of your memory, you recall a scene in a cheesy zombie movie where the protagonist pretended to be a zombie for a short time in order to get through a particularly sticky situation. Hoping that these zombies will be just as dumb, you decide to sneak in while acting like one of them.
Trying to act like a stupid zombie from the movies, you break character just long enough to hook your limp wrist over the door handle and pull it open. None of them seem to notice your slight alteration from the standard as you bump your way into the room and begin to mimic the groaning sound you heard from them earlier. You hold still for a few seconds, but when none of them leap to attack you right away, you lift your arms out back out in front of you and begin a staggered walk across the room towards the nurse’s desk in hopes of finding the first aid kit.
The first few steps in, things seem to going well for you. Sure, the place is disgusting, and many of the reanimated corpses that are stumbling up against walls and filing cabinets are other students who you recognize from your classes or at the very least from seeing in the halls around school, but you’re making progress.
All of a sudden, you notice one of the zombies lying on the ground who seems to have had its entire lower body somehow detached from its upper torso begin sniffing the air. As it cranes its neck up to look at you, the movie that gave you this crazy idea suddenly rewinds in your mind, and you remember the part you forgot. In the movies, the protagonists always smeared zombie blood and guts on themselves before they entered these situations to cover up their living scent.
Seeing the half-zombie on the ground begin to crawl towards you, you have to decide what to do.
If you want to kill the zombie, turn to page …………….. 114 If you want to turn around and leave, turn to page ..… 115
Kill the Crawler
You have no idea if the zombies have some way of communicating with each other, but you don’t want to give it a chance to find out either. Raising your foot high into the air, you stomp down as hard as you can on the back of the zombie’s neck and hear an audible crack for your efforts. Beneath your foot, the zombie’s face sags to the tile floor, and its arms go limp on either side of you.
That is the good news.
The bad news is that as you look up from the thing that you just killed, you notice that all eyes, including that of the zombie with only one good one remaining after someone or something chewed off half its face, are on you. You blew what little cover you had, and as you turn around to run for the door you see that three of them are in your way and advancing towards you.
As the teeth of all the zombies begin to bite into you, one thought crosses your mind: With this many of them attacking, at least there won’t be enough of me left to reanimate as one of them.
The End
Turn and Leave
Turning to leave, you find that several other zombies, upright ones who can do more than just crawl after you, are already beginning to sniff the air. The jig, as they say, is up. You know there is no way to sneak your way out of here.
Cold hands wrap themselves around your leg, and you look down to see the half-zombie clinging to you, pulling itself closer as its entrails continue to drag out along behind it. Somehow, it makes a sound like a starving creature despite having no stomach left, and its mouth opens wide as it prepares to bite you. The teeth that are coming for your skin appear to be stained red, and you become frantic as you try to get free of its grip. Lifting your leg, you try to shake him off, but it seems like he has a vise-like death grip on your leg. The zombie cranes its neck and moves closer, and you look around quickly trying to find a weapon. To your right, you spot a fire extinguisher and lunge for it, taking your leg momentarily out of range of the zombie’s teeth but still not able to get out of its grasp. As the zombie’s teeth snap down on nothing but air, your fingers close around the handle of the fire extinguisher.
In all your years at St. Mary’s, you have yet to see a fight in the high school. Something about the fact that it is a religious school, or perhaps because people honestly care more here, no one seems to carry that anger around with them. That is, until now. Lifting the fire extinguisher high overhead, you let loose a primal scream and bring the smooth metal canister down on the zombie. Unfortunately, you miss its head and the heavy metal smashes down into one of its forearms. The bone snaps audibly under the blow, but the creature doesn’t seem to notice. Swinging again, the fire extinguisher glances off the zombie’s head, cracking it open, allowing dark black blood to ooze from the wound. The sight sickens you, but then you hear its whine. It’s not a whine of pain, however, it’s more like a whine of frustration as it continues to try to bite your leg.
Lashing out, you kick him in the face, and are shocked at how easily it seems to cave in on itself. Whatever this virus, or whatever, is that is turning people into zombies, must be accelerating the decay process exponentially. When you pull back and look, you see that the zombie’s jaw has been ripped off and hangs by a few threads of tissue on one side. Lifting the fire extinguisher one last time, you smash it into the cracked skull and feel it sink into the squishy m
ass that was once the person’s brains. The zombie immediately goes limp, all signs of animation gone.
Chest heaving as you try to draw in enough oxygen, you consider yourself lucky for a moment. You just took down a zombie. Then you look around and realize if it took that much work for one of them, destroying the rest is going to be near impossible.
Unwilling to give up, you pull the pin on the fire extinguisher and squeeze the handle while pointing the hose at the closest zombie. As you do, a cloud of cold white fog comes pouring out of the nozzle, and you desperately hope it will in some way buy you enough time to get away. At the very least, if the canister is a bit lighter, you hope you will be able to swing it into their heads easier. Unfortunately, you never get the chance. Zombies don’t care about the gasses pouring out of the fire extinguisher. They have no use for oxygen anyway. They just want your flesh.
Within moments, you find yourself at the bottom of a pile of ravenously hungry zombies, and you are the main course. With any luck, they’ll kill you quickly, and not make you suffer as they strip the flesh from your body.
The End
Returning to the Office