That doesn’t stop Mr. Cromwell from making things sound relevant or entertaining. There was this one time he used the Salem Witch Trials as a warning of what false accusations can do in a closed community. Once he asked us to solve the mystery of the Mary Celeste like it was an episode of CSI on TV. My favorite was when he explained what could have happened to monarchs and dictators in the past if live-media existed during their rule.
The class is humming along in conversation, but everyone stops talking the moment Mr. Cromwell enters the room. He wastes no time with introductions, he just launches straight into a lecture on the loss of freedoms that resulted from the 2001 Patriot Act. He’s got our full attention, not because what he says is so fascinating—it’s kinda boring really. He’s got our attention because he’s getting more and more emotional as he talks. He doesn’t sound like a teacher right now. He sounds like one of those televangelist ministers yelling about fire and damnation. He pauses long enough to ask, “What examples can you think of where you’ve had to trade freedom for security?”
Before anyone can answer, a stern-faced soldier appears and informs Mr. Cromwell, “The General requests your immediate attention.”
We all gasp at once. Mr. Cromwell’s features crumble into despair, then reassemble themselves into a stoic look. We collectively hold our breath as he follows the soldier out of the room, and we do not let it out again until the soldier is out of sight.
An airhead called Stacy is the first to speak up. “What do we do now? Do we get to leave?” She’s one of the few people whose names I know, but only because she lets everyone know who she is and can’t stop talking about herself.
A nervous-looking freshmen answers, “I don’t think so. He didn’t say we were dismissed. I think we’re meant to stay here until he gets back.”
The class starts mumbling amongst themselves, but KC’s sharp tone cuts through all conversation. “Are you kidding? He’s going to the General. He’s probably never coming back!”
That’s a heavy thought, and we all fall silent as it weighs on our minds. I feel like I’m mourning Mr. Cromwell’s disappearance already. We stay like this for about two or three minutes before one of the super-smart and super-skinny kids breaks the silence. “You know what’s been bothering me about Mr. Cromwell? I like him and all, but where did he come from? I’ve been here since day one and he wasn’t here.”
One of the look-at-me male model types with not one hair out of place picks up on that thought. “Yeah, and he didn’t come in with your lot either!” I guess he means us.
“But he looks familiar to me,” KC says thoughtfully. “Maybe I remotely knew him in the Life Before. Maybe he was a teacher in my school but not my teacher and not my grade. Still, if he wasn’t here with you guys and he didn’t come in with us…”
“Maybe he used to be a soldier and got demoted!” the nervous-looking kid surmises.
We’re quiet again as we contemplate this. In the absence of evidence or explanation, it actually makes sense. And if it’s true, it might save Mr. Cromwell’s skin.
Ghost clears his throat in a “pay attention” way. “Um, maybe we should change the subject” he says, nodding in the direction of the soldier standing guard at our door. He wasn’t there before. I wonder why he’s there now.
“I know!” Stacy cries out. “KC, I’ve been dying to find out, okay, well, no. I’m not that interested, but I’m interested in the way it seems to make you uncomfortable like you’re trying to hide something…”
“Just spit it out already!” KC spits out.
“What does ‘KC’ stand for?”
“None of your business.”
“Fine, I don’t have to ask you!” Stacy turns to me and asks, “What does ‘KC’ stand for?”
“None of your business,” I say, suppressing a smile. Ghost doesn’t suppress his. KC looks over at me gratefully, but Stacy’s got something between her teeth and she’s not letting go. “Is it ‘Krispy Kreme?’”
“That’s spelled with two K’s, stupid!” KC hisses.
An unknown voice from the back of the room starts a volley of guesses, “I know; it’s ‘Kitty Crappies!’”
“Oooh, I bet it’s ‘Kiss my Caboose’!”
“Keen for Capers!”
“Keep Crazy!”
“Killer Candor!”
“How about ‘Kindness Capped’?”
“More like ‘Kindness Canceled.’”
“No, it’s ‘King Crab’!”
“Naw, she acts all smart all the time. I bet it’s ‘Knowledge Champion.’”
“Are you named ‘KC’ after ‘KC and the Sunshine Band’?”
“Oooh, maybe her mom liked Kelly Clarkson so much she named her KC after her!”
“Kelly Clarkson wasn’t famous when KC was born you idiot.”
“Wait! I know! KC’s last name is Carter, right? I bet her father was such a big NFL fan he named her so her initials would be KCC, you know, ‘Kansas City Chiefs’!”
“That’s even more stupid than ‘Kitty Crappies.’ And her last name isn’t Carter. It’s Macfarlane.”
“Maybe she was a handful when she was little so they named her, ‘Key Concern.’”
“I think she’s a handful now.”
Up till then KC had been able to pretend not to care about the needling of her name, but now she’s wildly looking around as she shouts out, “Who said that?”
There’s a hush over the room as everyone tries to avoid her oncoming bad mood. Okay, well, everyone except Stacy, who just can’t help herself. “I know what it is! I bet her mom named her ‘Kennel Club’ because she loves dogs and because KC can be such a…”
“What’s going on here?” We jump in our seats at the unexpected booming voice of Mr. Cromwell. I wonder how long he’s been back and how long he’s been listening to us. We take him in, our eyes searching for any evidence of torture or punishment. We find neither, just a teacher in a bad mood. We wait for another word from Mr. Cromwell, but he just stares us down with a stern, humorless look.
Stacy starts to open her big mouth again to say something, probably along the lines of,“Can we go or do we have to keep listening to you talk about old freedoms?”
But he ends both her babblings and the rest of the class with one word: “Dismissed.”
GHOST
KC’s in a bad mood again, but this time she has good reason to be. It’s not because we’ve been assigned to clean the downstairs locker room’s toilets and showers, we’ve had to do that before. It’s because we’ve been assigned to clean the toilets and showers with Stacy. Stacy’s one of the drifters who appears to admire every little thing the soldiers do. When it comes to the General in particular, she idolizes him, speaking of him with the same respect she would have reserved for her father. That isn’t so bad, she has her reasons to like him and when it comes to people like her I just think “each to his/her own.”
I often look at Stacy and wonder if ignorance is bliss. Now if she could only keep that ignorance to herself because the thing both KC and I cannot bear is her nonstop, incessant chattering. About nothing. Really, truly nothing.
She talks about lip-gloss, she talks about makeup, she talks about her hair. She talks about boys she has a crush on, she talks about where she used to shop, she talks about her clothes. She talks about how unfair homework is, she talks about how annoying everyone else is, she talks about what she thinks others are saying about her. And when she runs out of things to talk about, she repeats it all again.
So this is what we’re dealing with all the way to the locker room. I’m pretty good at shutting things like this out. KC doesn’t have this gift. I can see that her brow is furrowed and her lips are pressed into a thin white line. I know she wants to say something snarky, but her mother’s already had a word about how much trouble that will cause and how much harder it can make life for all of us. Pissing people off has repercussions—you can’t just walk away from your problems here.
“…and that wa
s when I said to her ‘I wouldn’t be caught dead in acid-wash jeans! You can give those to the fat stumpy kids!’ I don’t care if they’re donated clothes, unlike everyone else here, I actually care about what I look like, so I should get first pick of what comes in here because it matters to me and from the look of it, it clearly doesn’t matter to you…” Stacy doesn’t stop talking until we go through the door to the locker room. She takes one look at the stalls and urinals and squeals, “Eeeeeeew, there’s no way I’m touching a toilet! You guys have to do that. I’ll go mop the shower.” She stomps off, dragging the bucket and mop noisily behind her. We can still hear her witless words trailing behind her. “Don’t know why I’m being punished with a job like this, they would normally assign me to something better suited to me like folding clothes or hall monitor. Bet that psychiatrist is behind this, she’s always been jealous of the all the attention I get, she sees how the soldiers look at me…”
KC sighs and looks at me. “Can you do me a favor and tackle the urinals? I’ll scrub the toilets clean and then start on the mirrors. Wait, on second thought I’ll do the mirrors first, that way I can be at the toilets when Stacy’s finished.”
“Why do you want to be at the toilets when Stacy’s finished?”
“So I can flick toilet water on her when she passes by.”
I like that idea. “Aren’t you worried about her sharing her feelings about that with others?”
“Not really. She’s right, it’s not normal for someone as ‘accepted’ as her to be assigned to a job like this. She must have done or said something to get on someone’s bad side. Besides, it’ll be an accident, honest.” She gives me a genuine smile that I can’t help but return.
We start to scrub, lost in our own thoughts just like when we’re running together. If it was just KC with me this job wouldn’t be half bad. I’d like a chance to get to know what she used to be like in the Life Before. I’d also like to take another crack at finding out what her initials stand for. I can’t help but hope we know each other well enough by now for her to open up to me.
We’re not alone, but I doubt Stacy’s ever listening so I put down my toilet brush, turn to KC, and ask, “KC, were you always angry before all this went down?”
KC doesn’t answer me right away, instead she wipes a little faster. She eventually stops and without looking at me says “I’ve never been Little Miss Sunshine, but no, I was not angry all the time.” She sighs deeply and looks down at her shoes. “The thing is, I find it easier to be angry than to grieve.” She looks up through her thick dark lashes to check my reaction and goes on; “I can’t talk about grief to you because you’ve lost your whole family. Heck, I think everyone here has lost their family…I feel stupid as it is for taking so long to work out that everyone sent to Mclean was sent here because they had no one to go back to. And I felt sick to my stomach when I found out that Mclean High hit maximum capacity with those people in the first two weeks. Here I am with most of my family alive, so who am I to talk about loss?”
“Since when did grief become a competitive sport? Your pain is as real as mine.”
“Okay, point taken, but I still don’t feel comfortable talking about it to those who’ve lost more than I did, so I mourn for the friends I lost in secret. One of the last friends I saw was Gemma. She lived just a couple of blocks away and I was hoping she was running for shelter with the rest of us, but it looks like we’re the only ones who made it out of our neighborhood alive. Her dad’s an officer. It kills me to think that he was off protecting other people while his own family died at home.”
“If her father’s an officer you don’t have to worry about her. I found out from my radio that all military personnel and their families were airlifted to whatever military compound they were assigned to. Your friend Gemma is much better off than we are.”
I could tell by the look on KC’s face that this made her feel better, but then her expression turns serious. “Radio? You didn’t tell me you had a radio in your split kit!”
“That’s because the soldiers took it. I heard all this when I was listening at Eric’s house.”
“Of course.” KC falls quiet again.
I decide to probe further because I’m not sure when I’m going to have KC this candid again. “And what about your father?”
Her shoulders slump in dejection as soon as I bring him up. “I’m sure he’s dead.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I’m surrounded by people who have lost theirs, so why should I be the lucky one?”
I frown. “That’s not logical. You shouldn’t allow cynicism to turn you into a victim.”
“Easier said than done here, but again, point taken. Do you want to know the real reason why I think my father’s dead? Because he hasn’t come for us. The father I know would have stopped at nothing to find us.”
Now I understand the reason behind KC’s tempers, and it hurts to see her this down. I’m sure she’s right about her dad, but still I start to argue against reason. I tell her that he would have found her burned out home and must be checking all the refugee centers; he simply hasn’t found this one because it was declared full months ago and then cut off from the rest of the world. I stop mid-argument…something feels wrong. I take a quick look around and see nothing’s changed. I listen for something and feel a jolt when I realize what has changed. I turn to KC and whisper harshly, “KC! Do you hear that?”
“What? Why are we whispering?” She looks perplexed. “And no, I don’t hear anything.”
“Exactly.”
KC’s eyes go wide as she realizes: Stacy’s not talking.
Stacy never ever shuts up. I hear she even talks in her sleep. What has she seen that would scare her into silence? What could happen that would stop those lips?
“Do you think she’s slipped in the showers and hit her head?” KC asks.
“That’s the most plausible explanation.” It makes sense. It’s the best possibility. So why are the hairs raised on the back of my neck? Why do I feel such apprehension?
We hesitantly creep towards the shower room. “Stacy?”
No answer. There may be no response, but we do hear something as we near the corner. It’s a wet slapping sound, like something’s slipping and falling and getting up and then slipping and falling again.
“Maybe she broke her jaw?” KC whispers hopefully.
We peer around the corner and see that Stacy appears to be fine, apart from the fact that she’s having trouble staying on her feet on the slippery floor. But then I see water bubbling up through the drains, the state of Stacy’s soggy shoes, and the dead look in her eyes.
It’s no longer Stacy, and it’s learning how to walk.
I start saying “Infected water through the drains…” but KC’s ahead of me, sprinting for the door and dragging me behind her. We weren’t prepared to see a zombie inside a refugee center. All we can think of is diving through the locker room door and finding a soldier to take her/it out. We see the door, and that makes us slow down because we shouldn’t see the door. We left it open. We both know that neither one of us closed it. I grab the handle to pull it open but I can’t—it’s locked.
It’s a setup. We’re trapped with a zombie in a locker room with nothing but cleaning supplies for a weapon. How do they plan on explaining our deaths, how are they going to justify putting us down when we are infected? “We had no idea there was a freshwater leak underground…”
KC and I say nothing to each other, we already seem to be thinking as one. We look around to assess what we have, but what we have is useless: A couple of toilet brushes, a bottle of bleach, a few damp towels and in the room with the Stacy-thing, a mop and bucket. If we were fighting a human we could temporarily blind them with the bleach and strangle them with a rolled up towel, but chemicals and asphyxiation do not work on a zombie. We can’t hide in the stalls, there’s enough room to drive a Mac truck under them, so there’s no way we can keep Stacy out of them. I wonder if we can b
alance on top of the metal walls that divide the stalls with our arms and legs spread out like a spider on both sides, but then I remember watching these things climb up the Macfarlane’s tree and onto their balcony without much difficulty.
KC’s speaks up: “I think I have an idea. We need the mop.”
“The mop that’s in the same room with Stacy?”
“I’d rather confront her now while she’s learning to walk than later when she’s learned how to run. I’ll level her with a good kick to knock her on her butt and then you can grab the mop. When she gets up again you should run it into her stomach and pin her against the wall.” This is not the KC I am used to; there’s not a trace of emotion in her voice. If this wasn’t a good idea I’d assume she was in shock.
So far I almost agree. “But not in the shower room, let’s have her follow us into the bathroom…I don’t want to stick around there if there’s contaminated water pushing up through that drain.”
“That gives me another idea…” KC says to herself. She grabs her toilet brush and holds it in front of her like a machete. It’s a sight that makes me want to burst out laughing, even under these circumstances.
We slowly look around the corner, and find ourselves face-to-face with It. I jump back startled and KC screams but she doesn’t jump back—instead she lunges forward, shoves the toilet brush in its mouth and pushes it backwards with all her strength. The Stacy-thing slips on the wet tiles and falls down, but she’s not out. I scramble past her, grabbing and dragging KC along as I go, and set out for the mop. I’m worried that it’s been dropped in the infected water. I can see that a puddle has formed around the drain and it’s slowly spreading outwards. It’s an alarming sight, but I can also see that Stacy was her usual lazy self before she was taken over. She had propped the mop and bucket in a corner, probably waiting for us to finish so she could claim she was too. She must have heard the water coming up through the drain and gone to check it out. Anyone else would have run at such a sight knowing what we know about water but honestly, Stacy was that dumb. I used to wonder why we were supposed to feel sorry or surprised when people in horror films were attacked, but it’s impossible to feel either way when they run into the face of danger. Hear something being horribly murdered in the basement? Let’s go check it out! Sounds like there’s a killer in the woods? Let’s split up and find out where the noise is coming from! Hear a gurgle and see an unexplained source of water coming to get you through the drains? Let’s get real close to it and see what it is!
Notes from a Necrophobe Page 14