by Shawn Kass
“That’s great. I’m glad it’s working out for you, but I really just came to get some food.”
Shaking his head, Andrew says, “That’s what I was about to say. Now that you’re in here, we can’t let you go back out.”
“Why not? I’m the one risking my neck.”
“Every time you climb through, you expose us that much more. Right now they don’t know we’re back here, but if they see you climbing around, they might figure it out.”
“These are the brain dead, shuffle around, flesh eating zombies. They’re not capable of climbing over things and figuring things out. This isn’t Hollywood. They aren’t going to start running up the side of walls to get to us.”
Shaking his head again, Andrew says, “I’m sorry, but we can’t risk it. You’re not one of them, and you have no idea what they may or may not be capable of. Personally, I have no intention of getting bit to find out what they can and cannot do,” raising his voice a little louder at the end.
Remaining calm, you say, “Well, you’re going to find out sooner than you want to if you keep raising your voice like that. Hollywood or not, these things seem to be attracted to sound as well as the sight of prey.”
“We’ll keep that in mind,” says Andrew in a lower voice. “You figure out anything else, like maybe how to get rid of them?”
“Aim for the head. Whatever happens, you have to destroy the brain. It’s the only one consistent thing we know about zombies from any book, movie, or TV show.”
“Okay, looks like we’re going to need some weapons,” says Andrew.
“I agree, but like I said, I still need to get some food and get out of here. I’ve got people upstairs counting on me,” you say. At first it looks like he’ll protest, but hearing that there are other survivors who are counting on you gives him pause. Seizing the opportunity, you play on this factor and add, “I also need to get some weapons and a first aid kit. They’re counting on me.”
Across the kitchen, Trevor says, “How about we use these?” just before he tries to jump up and unhook a large frying pan from the rack hanging above the workstation. He doesn’t have enough height, however, as he grabs hold of one, and he ends up pulling the heavily loaded rack down when it proves unable to hold his weight in addition to the fifteen or so cast iron pots and pans. The cacophony of noise in the room is deafening, and you immediately reach up to cover your ears as the pots and pans continue to bounce and clatter their way across the tile floor.
When they finally stop, all eyes fall on Trevor, and the first words out of your mouth are, “What the …?” but you’re cut off before you can finish by the two guys from the barricade, now dressed, thankfully, running into the room.
Trevor tries to squeak out a weak sounding apology, but you barely hear it over the big guy’s words, “Whatever you all did, I think they heard it.”
From just beyond the dining area, a hallow moan comes through the door and slices into your soul. Looking to the big guy, you ask, “H-h-how many of them?”
Thinking for a minute, he says, “I…uh…ain’t so good at math and stuff, but it’s a lot. I guess, maybe, all of them.”
“Good job, Trevor,” begins Cable sarcastically.
“Stow it,” barks Andrew. “We don’t need to be going after one another. There are plenty of monsters out there to do that for us.”
Picking up one of the pans, Trevor says, “Can’t we use these to defend ourselves? I mean, we could just bash them in the head as they come over the wall.”
Shaking his head, Andrew says, “The wall is more for cover than actual defense. Nothing is screwed together or attached to anything. It’s all just stacked up out there. With that many zombies coming, it’ll fall like a kid’s sand castle when the waves come crashing ashore.”
“So, what are you thinking?” you ask.
“I’m thinking this sucks, but I’ve got an idea,” says Andrew. “It’ll take me a second to get it going though. You all think you can buy me a little time?”
Everyone but you in the room nods. You notice that there is something off in Andrew’s look. Something about it makes him seem a little crazy, just like when St. Mary’s played Heavenly Child in the homecoming game earlier in the year, and he pulled an illegal move which hyperextended the knees of two players on the other side. He got booted from the game, but St. Mary’s won, thanks to him incapacitating two of Heavenly Child’s best.
When he looks at you, you know you have to make a decision.
If you make a break for it and run, turn to page ……… 309 If you help buy Andrew some time, turn to page ..….. 311
Make a Run for It
You’ve seen too many movies and TV shows over the years, and a look like this always means someone is going to get hurt. It’s the same look that the Chance character is described as having in those Allons-y adventure books you read or that Michael Talbot gets before he rushes in with some halfcocked idea in the Zombie Fallout series. It’s the look of crazy right before someone gets stupid. In the books, it usually marks a turning point and pays off, but right now with zombies everywhere, you’re not willing to wait and watch as things play themselves out.
Instead, you turn and head for the door,
sidestepping the giant football player who is busy bending down to pick up one of the oversized pieces of cookware Trevor knocked down. You’re at least ten feet into the dining room before you hear the big guy question where you went.
Heading for the only exit, you make a beeline for the wall and begin to climb. From somewhere behind you, you distantly hear one of the guys from the kitchen yell out, “No, don’t do it,” but it’s too late, you’re already at the top and poking your head through to the other side. There to greet you are faces and outstretched hands of the undead, each one with their mouth agape as if begging for you to feed them.
Seeing this, you try to scramble backwards, but your shirt gets caught on an upturned table leg, and it scratches your skin. There is no telling whether it’s the scent of blood or just the simple fact that you’re the only thing visible that’s still alive and moving, but the entire horde of zombies seems to simultaneously turn and focus its attention on you with the closest of them already reaching out to pull you into their embrace.
Frantically, you tear your shirt and try to retreat, but it’s too late. One of the zombies assumes a vice-like death grip on your wrist and pulls. Trying not to be taken down into their hellish mass, you hook your foot into the furniture and try to pull your wrist free, but all this does is bring the wall down with you, destroying whatever defensive capabilities the group in the kitchen might have had.
Some of the zombies, the closest ones to you, seem to be momentarily satisfied with using you as a sacrificial offering to Limos, the god of hunger and starvation. The rest of the horde, however, knew that you would not be enough.
As the first zombies’ teeth begin to tear their way through the muscle and tissues which were once your arm, you feel the excruciating pain of your nerves set on fire by the virus which begins to immediately race through your veins. You hear the screams and prayers of those behind you which you helped to die by your selfish act, and their deaths weigh heavily upon your soul in those final moments of life.
The End
Help Andrew and the Others
Shrugging your shoulders, you figure whatever his plan is, it has to be better than yours, because you’ve got about diddlysquat right now and a horde of flesh eating zombies ready to charge their way in here to eat you. Looking to Andrew you say, “Give me a pan.”
Picking one up, the big football player closest to you hands over a large black cast iron thing you could probably cook an omelet in that would satisfy Andre the Giant and asks, “You think you can swing this one?”
Feeling its bulk, you answer, “Not very well, but it will do.” Then looking to Andrew, you ask, “How much time do you need?”
“Just a couple of minutes, then I want you to fall back and lead them up to the servin
g window here. That’s where we’ll make our last stand,” says Andrew.
“Couldn’t you have used a different phrase? Last stand sounds a little too final for me. I mean when did you ever hear of someone’s last stand ending positively? The Alamo, General Custer, Dan Turpin.”
“Dan who?” asks Andrew.
“In the best episode of Superman: The Animated Series ever made, Detective Dan Turpin tells this alien dictator guy, Darkseid to get off the planet. This is after Superman has already been enslaved, and Turpin is hopelessly outnumbered. Anyway, humanity is saved at the last minute by the New Gods, but Turpin pays the price for his boisterousness when Darkseid literally destroys the man. My point is, last stands never turn out well for those trying to defend themselves.”
“Sure they do,” argues Trevor. “The Gandalf dude in Lord of the Rings when he wouldn’t let the fire demon cross the bridge. He stopped the guy by collapsing the bridge and letting him fall.”
Correcting him, you ask, “And what happened next?”
“I don’t remember.”
“The demon grabbed Gandalf with his whip and dragged him down, too. Look, I’m just saying, call it something else.”
From out in the dining room, a clattering noise can be heard, and you know that the wall of furniture is beginning to fall. Hearing this, Andrew says, “Whatever, just get out there and buy me a couple of minutes and take down as many of those things as you can.”
Nodding, you turn and head out the door with the rest of the group, curious about his plan, but knowing that for whatever it is to work, you need to be focused for the next bit.
The two big guys who were on guard duty stand on your right while Trevor and Cable stand on your left, and no matter what you wish this was called, it feels very much like a last stand. Waving your hands to each side, you tell everyone to spread out so that they don’t accidentally hit one another with their Martha Stewart makeshift weaponry. Just as Trevor takes two steps to the side, the rest of the wall collapses, and you find yourself staring into the soulless hungry eyes of the corpses beyond.
There is no organized attack, and they don’t try to evade anything as they approach. They simply overwhelm whatever is in their way with their mass and numbers. Each of you continue swinging away, but nothing stops them. It seems that for every one of them you put down, two more spring up behind it like a twistedly sick game of Whack-o-Mole.
In the kitchen, you find out later that Andrew is pushing the giant stove oven from the wall. While the thing is on wheels, they are wheels which haven’t been moved in decades and have who- knows-what caked up around them on the ground. It takes every bit of his strength to get the behemoths out of the way so that he can get to his prize and set his plan in motion.
With the zombies continuing to pour in, you and the group are forced to take a step back with almost every swing just so that you won’t be trampled and eaten. At some point, Trevor and the big guy who was at the other end get peeled off from your line and go down in the maelstrom which is the zombie horde. You are sad to see them go, but with the onslaught continuing, you have no time to mourn them. Interestingly enough, you actually find yourself a little thankful at one point when you realize that the zombies pressing in from each side ease up a bit, but then you realize it’s only because those immediately around the fallen have dropped to the ground to fight and tear at their flesh like rabid coyotes savaging a carcass. You make a mental note to chastise yourself later for that inconsiderate thought as well as the one that says you should push someone else down if the zombies get any closer.
From behind you, Andrew screams over the sound of the fighting, “Get down!”
Obeying, you drop to the ground and roll backwards trying to get out of the way of whatever insanity he came up with while also attempting to make your way towards the kitchen door. When you’re out of the way, you risk poking your head up and regret not asking him more about his plan earlier.
Standing at the serving line window, Andrew holds in one hand a long flexible metal tube which runs back down towards the wall behind the ovens and in his other hand is a lighter. The area in front of the tube, including his hand and the lighter, look a bit blurry as the air in front of it distorts the light waves, and you realize it’s the gas line. You attempt to scream, “No!,” but it’s already too late. Andrew’s thumb has already begun to roll the sparker across the lighter’s flint.
The stream of natural gas fumes ignites in a huge ball of flames and shoots out in a blinding ball of fire burning through the closest zombies, destroying their clothes, skin, and muscle almost instantly. At the same time, Andrew’s eyes light up with what can only be described as madness as he yells, “Suck on this you disgusting zombies!”
Seeing the closest zombies fall, you begin to believe that Andrew’s plan might actually work. Then the rest of reality comes crashing in, and the difference between Hollywood and the real world makes itself startlingly clear. The fire which ignited the gas and took out the initial wave of zombies crawls back along the invisible line to the gas line in Andrew’s hand and quickly down the tube. There is no time to react, no moment where you might be able to save him, the fire is too quick for that. One minute he’s standing there proud as can be that he is defeating the undead creatures. The next, the entire kitchen seems to be engulfed in flames as the gas line bursts.
Andrew’s death is quick, as are the zombies immediately around him, but yours, yours is not. The fireball which consumed the kitchen and everything near the window isn’t enough to kill you. Instead, it simply melts your clothes and flesh into one mass, and second, third, and fourth degree burns now cover over eighty percent of your body. You are just able to put out the last of the fire which licks across your destroyed flesh, not by any conscious decision but rather just by the violent thrashing you’ve been doing for the past thirty seconds as the pain racks your body. That’s when the first zombie comes up on your left side.
If you had any sanity left, you might say a prayer or ask God to watch over your family, but instead the only thing that passes through your burnt lips is directed at the crispy zombie who is kneeling down next to you. “Well, at least you got yourself a warm meal,” you say, and then you laugh the laugh of those gone completely insane as the creature begins to dig into what’s left of your leg.
The End
Vending Machines
You consider your options and figure besides the fact that the food in the kitchen probably hasn’t been cooked yet, and the cafeteria really only has one good way in or out and you don’t want to be trapped if a zombie comes in, you decide to head for the vending machines. On top of all of that, a bag of bar-b-que flavored Fritos sounds way too good to pass up right about now. The only thing better would be a package of Oreos, but those darn things seem to sell out five minutes after the dude restocks the machine.
The quickest way you know to get to the vending machines from here is to get back downstairs and head around to the back. There are, however, two staircases, and the one further along the hall will put you closer to your goal. With that in mind, you head back up the hall you just came down as quickly and quietly as possible. Along the way, you hear the soft pitiful cries of someone crying, but when you move to check the door and find it locked, you hear the hungry moan of death and the crying replaced by shrieks of pain. With no way in, you move on as quickly as possible, hoping the thing inside will be satisfied with its meal or at least trapped long enough that it won’t be able to delay your progress.
Just as you reach the stairs near your previous class, you notice a door begin to swing open across from Miss Millstone’s room. Not knowing who or what could have pushed the door, you silently slip into the stairwell and wait. After twenty seconds, you are tempted to poke your head out to find out more, but that’s when the smell of the creatures assaults your nose, and you realize there is no way anything came out of there alive.
Careful not to run so fast as to attract attention by making noise or slip and fa
ll to injure yourself, you make your way down the stairs to the first floor. Once there, you poke your head around the corner and survey the situation. The hallway leading around to the back of the school seems too vacant, but just as you are about to go for it, you hear a yell. From where you are, you can’t see who it is, nor can you tell by the sound of the voice, other than the fact that it sounded female. The direction the yell came from was definitely from the athletic wing of the school. Whoever is down there, you hope they are taking as many of these creatures down as they can.
Unfortunately, you also know that the yell itself, whether intended as a war cry or not, will only serve to attract more of the walking dead to that location. Your best bet is to go now before the creatures start heading in that direction.
With one more quick look around the corner, you break out into a run and head for the back of the school. Along the way you notice several lockers hang open, but there don’t seem to be any zombies waiting to ambush you from inside them and right now that’s all you’re worried about. When you get to the end of the hall, you stop at the corner just long enough to peek around the corner and then continue towards your objective.
At the end of the hall sit two large vending machines. One has a display window showing all the goodies inside, and the other, being a drink machine, has its familiar soda logo all lit up. Approaching the machines, you notice that there is a fresh covering of nearly dried liquid across the front face of both machines, and you recognize the disgusting spray of dark red for the only thing that it can be, blood.
Digging into your pockets, you come up with two balls of lint and the five quarters your mother had left out on the table this morning for you to get a drink. The five quarters are only enough to get one soda or a bag of chips or something. Looking in the display case you can see that there is much more in there, and all of it would help you and the people in the teachers’ lounge make it through a day or two, if need be, till help arrives. The top shelf has several varieties of chips. This is something you have never understood because if they’re at the top that means they have the furthest to fall and consequently you end up with the most broken chips. If it were up to you, you would put the packs of gum, which are on the lowest level, at the top. They, at least, can’t break. In the middle, there are cookies, Little Debbie cakes, and Sour Patch Kids. Then, right in the center, is the one thing no one in the school ever had the courage to try. It was supposed to be part of some government initiative five or ten years ago to bring healthier food options into schools, but no one bought it, and as far as you know, they have sat there ever since. There were bets, and double dog dares amongst the students to buy one and eat it, but to your knowledge no one ever had. Thinking about it, maybe someone did, and that’s how the whole zombie apocalypse started. Someone paid money to peel open the ancient dust covered wrapper and eat the broccoli Pop Tart with the spinach flavored frosting.