by Grivante
Jonah reached down and grabbed Judas by the shoulder, pulled him up, and shoved the blades of the scissors into the girl’s ear, silencing her. As he pulled them out, a green slime covered the blades and oozed out of her ear. Jonah’s eyes shot open and he dropped the scissors, which clacked onto the floor.
Judas, just regaining his footing, looked down at the ooze. “Oh crap. Is that what I think it is?”
“It sure looks like it. Don’t touch it and make sure none gets on you.”
“This just went from bad to worse,” Judas said. “I thought all of that green poison had been destroyed!”
“I thought so too, but there must’ve been more than what was at the plant when we—” he turned and shouted at Judas. “Look out!”
The conference room zombies were right next to them. A short, dark haired woman with half her face missing, loose skin flapping against her cheek bone, grabbed Judas’s arm and lunged at it, teeth bared.
Judas fell back, colliding into Jonah, and both brothers tumbled into the cramped space behind the receptionist desk. The dark haired zombie fell with them, mouth open, gnashing at the bill of Judas’s baseball cap. A half dozen more recently turned and very hungry dead were fast on her heels.
She pulled forward, trying to dig into his flesh, but only managing to pull the cap off his head and cover his face.
“Push up!” Jonah shouted, “I’m pinned under you!”
Judas shoved upward on the woman’s small frame, lifting her and his hat off him. She dropped the hat from her teeth and growled. He rolled to his side taking her with him while scooping his hat up and freeing Jonah from underneath.
Jonah scrambled to his feet, pulling Judas up too. “Keep her away from you!”
Judas put his hat on backward and grabbed the biting woman and spun her around to face the oncoming dead.
They were now trapped behind the receptionist’s desk. The group from the conference room pressed directly behind the short dark haired woman, grasping around and trying to get a piece of the brothers.
“What are we gonna do Jonah? I don’t like being the middle of this sandwich!”
Jonah looked around. From the other side of the desk to the door, it was wide open. The desk was tall, littered with forms and the large paper cutter. “If we can get over the counter, we can get outta here!” Jonah shouted in his brother’s ear as he helped push the woman away.
“We can’t both make it, Jonah! Go for it, I’ll hold them back.”
“No way I’m going without you, brother. On three, let’s give her a shove and see if we can push this crowd back.”
“You got it,” Judas said, straining as sweat dripped down his forehead.
“You’re closer to them, so you go first, Judas. Slip under my arm then over the counter.”
“But—”
“One!” Jonah shouted.
“Jonah—”
“Two!”
“You—”
“Three!”
They shoved forward into the woman and met the weight of half a dozen hungry flesh-eaters pushing back against them. Only creating about a foot of space from where they had been, but it was enough.
“Go!” Jonah shouted.
Judas didn’t hesitate to do as he was told. Judas knew not doing so would mean death for them both, but fear for his brother kept him from going far. He ducked down under Jonah’s arm and jumped onto the receptionist counter, but instead of jumping off it to safety, he stormed down it, yelling and kicking at the zombies massed there.
Jonah found himself pushed back against the wall, the dead woman and the force of those behind her pinning him. He could feel hands tugging at his coat, trying to dig into his flesh. He had one hand pressed against the woman’s back and the other pushing her head forward so she couldn’t turn and bite him.
“C’mon, get off him and get at me!” Judas yelled.
The weight shifted as those crowded behind turned to grasp at Judas on the counter top. Jonah found he could push the woman back to an arm’s length, then Judas was shouting beside him.
“Put her head in here!”
Jonah looked over and saw Judas turning the large paper cutter so that the blade side was closest to Jonah. He got what his brother was doing and smiled. He tightened his hands on the woman’s blouse and slammed her head to the side, smacking it against the green metal platform of the cutter, her neck lying underneath the blade.
Judas’s boot came up and slammed down on the handle.
K-thunk!
The woman’s head, still gnashing and biting, rolled off the side of the counter.
“How’s that for a science project?” Judas grinned. “Homemade guillotine! Wouldn’t Mr. Benson be proud?”
Jonah laughed despite the peril of their situation, remembering their middle school science project that had almost gotten them expelled. One of many, actually, that had gotten them into trouble. He shoved the lifeless body back and made some space.
“You sure got his attention when you exploded our beer-fueled volcano all over the classroom.”
“Hey, that wasn’t my fault, I was distracted!” Judas jumped down from the counter, narrowly missing the zombie head. He kicked it out of the way and it rolled toward the small doorway that separated the office from the lobby. The group coming down the hallway split in two, pushing the half door open and knocking the woman’s head back toward Judas.
“Distracted?” Jonah yelled as he climbed up on to the counter. “We were at the most important step!” He jumped down and turned back, grabbing the sharpened pencil off the counter.
“Yeah, distracted,” Judas said, kicking the head away from him again. “By Bobbie, remember her?”
Jonah shook his head. “You mean Bobbie Burns?”
“Yeah, you remember she always teased me and introduced herself as ‘Bobbie’ with one O and then she’d squeeze her tits together and say ‘and two B’s’.”
“Oh yeah, how could I forget her?”
They moved toward the office door.
“Well, she’d turned around in her chair, she’d dropped one of those lollipops she was always sucking on and bent over; I poured the whole can in before I knew it.”
Jonah opened the door and was greeted by the lunging form of the dead brunette they’d left in the hallway. He collided with her and swung the large pencil up, shoving it right through her eye. They tumbled forward in a mass of limbs and noise. “Close the door, Judas! Close the door!”
Judas turned and grabbed the door handle to swing it closed, but as he did so, the head of the dark haired woman shot forward, kicked by the mass of zombies. It rolled right into the doorway and stopped the door from closing. Before he could do anything, the dead rushed through the opening. He turned and pulled Jonah to his feet. They scrambled away to the intersection where the school halls connected.
The angry rolling head followed close behind as it was once again, kicked, in their direction by the approaching zombies.
Part V - The Lunch Lady Special
The lopped off head rolled to a stop at Jonah’s feet, biting at his boot.
“We need to find some weapons!” Jonah said, kicking the dead head back toward the zombies coming at them.
“If only we had more of those giant pencils, they did the job!”
“We’re gonna need better weapons than that.”
“Yeah, but where are we gonna find those inside a school?”
“I don’t know,” Jonah said, “but I’m gonna call JJ and see if she can get over here stat.” He reached toward his back pocket where the shape of his flip phone bulged out.
“HEY!” a loud voice rang out behind them.
The brothers turned to see a heavy-set woman in a blood-smeared apron coming toward them, a rolling pin in her meaty hand.
Primal fear took over as their minds processed the image before them. A moment in time from long ago played out in both their heads.
Jonah, Judas and their friends had sat huddled around the lunc
h table, talking, laughing and eating. Someone challenged Judas to see how high he could fling a grape with the trebuchet he’d made. No one remembered who had made the challenge, but it had actually been Judas’s own suggestion.
He’d made the trebuchet for the school science fair and had been dying to show it off. He’d gotten it out of his locker to take to Mr. Benson’s class after lunch. It was the first of their experiments to go wrong, but not the last.
They’d started by flinging a grape across the room. It had gone high and bounced off the far wall to uproarious laughter from their friends. A second grape delivered similar results, but by the third Judas knew he would have to kick it up a notch.
“This is getting boring,” he said. “What else can we launch?”
Everyone spoke, offering pieces of their lunch and declaring how great it would be to see this or that fly through the air. Then Allan, a ninth grader, handed over his dessert. “I dare you to see how far you can fling this.”
The table grew silent. Everyone knew it was a bad idea, but Allan had used the one word guaranteed to get them into trouble: ‘Dare’.
Jonah grabbed his brother by the collar and whispered in his ear. “Aim it toward the bathrooms.” There was no one over in that area, the rest of the room was packed with kids, eating, laughing and enjoying themselves.
“Good idea Bro!”
He balanced the cup of pudding in the bucket and pulled the lever back until it clicked into place.
“Ready?” he whispered as the whole table fell quiet around him, followed by other tables as they sensed something happening. Little did the brothers or their friends know but part of the reason was because Beatrice Putnam, school lunch lady, having witnessed their grape-scapades, was lumbering up behind them. Her large form didn’t allow her to move too fast, so she didn’t make it in time to stop him.
Click!
Judas hit the lever that released the bucket’s catapulting arm.
The arm flung the pudding, but not up and away like they had hoped, just straight up and over a little. The container flipped end over end, spraying out its contents into a giant brown puddle. It struck the tiled ceiling and hung there for just a moment before raining down in large globs.
Kids from the table next to them cried out as the pudding landed like chocolate water balloons on top of them, splashing across the table, covering their hair and faces and ruining what remained of their lunches.
Judas’s friends busted out laughing and the kids from the pudding-bombarded table glared in their direction. They pointed at Judas and his trebuchet and then picked up handfuls of their own food, fists raised.
It was on!
In moments, the cafeteria was pandemonium as everything imaginable became a messy missile in a war that most hadn’t even seen start.
A hot dog, sans bun, but slobbering catsup, whirled past Judas, followed by a half dozen potato projectiles, before Jonah grabbed him.“Get down!” Jonah yanked his younger brother by the sleeve. They ducked beneath the table as all around them the floor became littered with half eaten debris. A bologna sandwich there, half a banana, peel-and-all there, random gummy bears everywhere and then a pair of cold clammy hands wrapped around each of their juvenile necks.
They were lifted so fast and the rush of air in their ears was so loud, they felt like they were being abducted by aliens.
“Jonah and Judas Zee, what the hell have you done? You pair of good-for-nothing troublemakers!” She jerked them towards the cafeteria exit. “You’re going to the principal’s office!” She dragged them face first, doubled over, as the food-storm they had unleashed continued in a downpour around them.
Once outside the chaos of the lunchroom, she bent down and pulled both of their faces in close to hers. “Do you boys believe in Jesus?”
“Yes ma’am,” they sputtered.
“Good, cause after that god-awful mess you just made in there, you better start praying you never end up on school assistance and have to have hot lunch, cause if you do, I’m gonna serve you The Lunch Lady Special!” She stopped there and looked them both in the eyes, one after the other, deliberately raising her eyebrows as she did so, then she burst out in a cackle.
Jonah tried to shake free of her vice-like grip, resulting in Miss Putnam squeezing even harder on their necks.
“Wanna know what it is?” she asked.
“No,” Jonah said, face flushed.
“Too bad,” she spat and pulled them in tighter, whispering into their ears.
Their faces grew paler until finally Judas turned away, his mouth hanging open. “That’s disgusting,” he said, shaking his head.
They got suspended for a week and didn’t eat lunch in the cafeteria the rest of the school year. They only saw Miss Putnam one other time in the final days before school let out, it was in the hall near the administration office. She stopped and smiled at them with her face split from side to side in a wide and toothy grin.
“Is it lunch time yet, boys?”
The woman standing behind the now grown Zee Brothers was not Miss Putnam, but the outfit and general similarities in size and stature was enough to send the primal part of their brains into a panic.
“Who are you and what are you doing here?” the woman barked, raising the rolling pin.
The mass of zombies was just coming into view at the intersection behind them.
Stammering, Jonah said, “We’re zombie exterminators.”
She squinted at them and then glanced up as the first few dead PTA members rounded the corner. “Not doing a very good job of it, are you?” She paused a moment and backed away from them. “Follow me.”
Part VI - Nantucket
They ran down the hall putting a dozen yards between them and the slow moving zombies, catching up with the woman in the lunch lady uniform who, despite her bulk, was quite fast.
“We need weapons, ma’am!” Jonah shouted at her.
The woman glanced over her shoulder as she hustled away from the dead. “If you’re the exterminators I called, where’s your equipment?”
Jonah glared at Judas and answered. “We left it in the car, ma’am.”
She shook her head in disbelief. “Why would you do that?”
Jonah opened his mouth to answer, but Judas interjected. “It’s illegal, ma’am. I saw all the signs posted outside. We didn’t want to get in trouble.”
Janet stopped short, right next to a series of vending machines. One for sodas, another for snacks and the final one for school supplies. A big poster was pasted to the side of the first with a headline reading, ‘Eat Energy-Os every day to get smarter faster!’. Underneath that in smaller print, it read, ‘Energy-Os and Energy-O Drink Additive are recommended for daily use by students by the Incorporated American Education System, A U.C.A. subsidiary.’
She looked the brothers up and down.
Judas still wore the clothes he’d woken up in; dirty jeans with a ripped out knee on the left leg, a wrinkled t-shirt and his ancient, oil stained jean jacket, plus his Diamondbacks hat. Jonah’s attire, while newer and a little cleaner, was pretty much identical, minus the hat.
“You two don’t look like following rules is a priority.”
The brothers glanced at each other; neither had even put on their combat vests before rushing from the house to get to the school.
“We didn’t think things would be this far out of control,” Jonah said, with a look back.
The zombies came right for them, but slowly, and there was enough distance to leave some breathing room. It looked like at least twenty of them. Not too many, but without the proper equipment the brothers wouldn't be able to handle them.
“Most classrooms will be in lockdown,” Janet said. “There’s stuff you can use in the kitchen to deal with these things.” She turned, walking past a room marked ‘Computer Lab’, where a young girl cowered underneath a desk.
Judas stopped in front of the snack machine pointing. “Hey Jonah, they got peanut butter cups for only fifty ce
nts! We should get some for JJ!” He grinned.
Jonah raised his eyes. “Really? Now?”
“Well, she said they’re her favorite after...” Judas trailed off, blushing.
Jonah shook his head, “Judas, I—”
“Hey, look Jonah. This one has school supplies in it. Even some of those giant pencils. We could sharpen more of those if we need to.”
“Ahem,” Nurse Janet interrupted from behind them. “We have a kitchen full of knives,” she hefted the rolling pin, “and tons of other implements you can use - if you two will quit yammering and follow me.”
Jonah glared at Judas again then looked at the cafeteria lady and said, “We’re right behind you, ma’am.”
Janet turned and stormed away.
Jonah grabbed the hat off Judas’s head and smacked him with it, Gilligan-style.
“Let’s go,” Jonah growled, handing his brother his hat back.
They passed the computer lab and were hot on her heels when a scared voice cried out from behind them.
“Help!”
The trio spun to find a short, dark-skinned girl, with long black-braided hair and wearing white-rimmed glasses, sticking her head out of the door to the room marked ‘Computer Lab’.
“Crap,” Nurse Janet said. “The automated lockdown only works on designated classrooms, ancillary rooms don’t lock.”
The zombies drew closer but were far enough away that there wasn’t a need to panic, quite yet.
“Judas, go get that kid.” Jonah barked at his brother and turned to the lunch lady. “Ma’am go on, we’ll catch up or...” he glanced back at the approaching crowd.
“I’ll load up and come back, just hold them off,” Nurse Janet said, then turned tail and hustled her bulk down the hall.
Jonah turned to see Judas approaching the girl. She'd come far enough out the door to peer past the vending machines and down the hall, seeing the mass of dead adults coming to feast on them.