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  SCHOOL IS OUT

  “School’s out forever!”

  - Alice Cooper

  “Motherfucker I’ll be back from the dead soon.”

  - Awolnation

  four

  Three banks of fluorescents lined the ceiling and shone down on the two white tables that had been placed together end to end. They sat waiting as Samir took his seat, beaming widely. “Well, this is a bigger turnout than I expected.”

  “Yeah,” the British chap, Ian said, “The only one we’re missing is the Jewish kid. Oy!”

  Marina laughed.

  “You like that one do ya?” he asked her. She simply nodded and grinned, having given him all the acknowledgment she’d intended.

  “We have a newcomer,” Samir said, ignoring them. “He was here last week for the first time. A few of you have met him, but some of you haven’t.” He waved his hand, “This is Jomo. Jomo, if you’d be so kind as to introduce yourself.”

  He stood, addressing the rest of them by turning to each individually as he spoke. “My name is Jomo, which I understand means burning spear. Jomo Michuki. I am from Kenya. I am nineteen years of age and I am pleased to be in your company.”

  “Hi Jomo!” everyone said.

  “So what’s today’s topic my good man?” Klaus inquired of Samir, impressed by both the young man Jomo’s mastery of the English language and his proper etiquette.

  “Well, today we’re going to be covering Chinese culture,” Samir said, “So Xinga, you’ll feel right at home.”

  “Thank you,” she nodded. She was afraid to say anything more, as she didn’t want the others to fixate

  on her. Kamara watched her with interest. She was like a Japanese animation character come to life, although of course, she was Chinese. She wasn’t a lesbian but that, coupled with Xinga’s accent, made her cute and charming. Her friend Lupe, sitting next to her spoke.

  “So shall we proceed Sam-ur Sharon?” Guadalupe asked.

  “Haha, very funny,” Samir said.

  A loud noise, like a desk falling over and then a scream interrupted their patter.

  Heads went up and eyes went wide.

  “What was that?” Marina said. You could almost see her reaching for one of her guns, if she’d had any on her. They shook their heads. That noise was followed by more crashing, the thud of things falling over, more screams, and then running. Whatever it was, it had quickly caused panic.

  “Dear God, do you think it’s a shooter?” Klaus said.

  “Let’s hope not,” Samir answered.

  As it was, they hadn’t heard any gunfire, or even a fire alarm, so there wasn’t a fire.

  “What should we do?” Jomo asked.

  “I suggest we stay put.”

  “I second that,” Ian agreed.

  Soon they saw through the glazed glass inset in the door the shadows of students in flight. What at first appeared like a small crowd running was now a stampede, as it seemed half the school was trying to get away from someone, or something.

  Xinga shivered, suddenly cold.

  “What the holy hell?” Guadalupe said.

  “I don’t know,” Kamara replied.

  “Shhhh,” Samir said. “Let’s stay quiet until we figure out what this is.” They’d already consented to stay where they were, hopefully until it was all over, whatever that meant. It seemed an eternity until it was, if it was. At least, the running had stopped. The school had quieted down. The door made a minute creak as Samir opened it and poked his head out; looking both ways down the hallway. “The coast is clear,” he said.

  The eight of them stepped out quietly, filing languidly into the hall. The halls were empty. The school seemed empty. But there were papers and books scattered all over the hallway, and further down, toward the end, what might have been a body, and small puddles here and there of what looked like blood, which was also smeared on doorways and lockers.

  “What the fuck just happened here?” Marina said.

  “Beats me love,” Ian answered the Russian in his charming British way, “But a good time was not had by all.”

  “This is no time to joke,” Klaus said.

  “He’s right,” Samir said.

  “No,” Kamara said, “This is probably a good time to get the hell out of here.”

  Her back was to Ian, and he let his eyes wander down to her ample buttocks. “Agreed. Ladies first please.”

  “You’re a pig,” Marina said, watching him, as she backhanded him across the chest.

  He tried to laugh it off, but said, “Owwww,” under his breath. The girl packed a wallop. She wasn’t overtly muscular but in terms of impact she was built like a tank. “This coming from the lady who’s always showing off her tatas.”

  “I think you meant to say tattoos,” Marina winked.

  “Yeah, those too,” he said, rubbing his chest.

  They walked cautiously toward the end of the hall. “Is that a...?” Jomo began. Body, he wanted to

  say, but couldn’t finish. The student lay there under the double windows. They were on the fourth floor, the fourth of five floors to the building they were in. They had to pass the body to get to either the stairs on the left, or the elevators on the right.

  It was a girl, maybe late teens, early twenties, in a pleated skirt and a halter top. Her back was to them, only her profile visible. She was a bleached blonde, and had no visible wounds on her, but Marina was the brave soul to turn her over, which was when they saw the pool of blood. Something had opened her up, her guts spilling out from her bare midriff.

  Samir squeaked, nearly fainting. Kamara grabbed hold of his arms and righted him.

  “What on God’s Earth?” Klaus exclaimed.

  “She looks like she’s been...” Marina paused, “gnawed on.”

  “You mean someone did -THAT- with their teeth?” Lupe said.

  “Appears so. Someone or something. Maybe some sort of animal,” Ian said, “I don’t...” He was unable to finish his train of thought, as the dead girl began to groan, and slowly picked herself up off the floor. The group stepped back, watching the impossible happen before their eyes. The girl’s eyes were glassy, the icy blue of a corpse that had been dead for a long time. She shambled toward them, reaching out with her arms, her teeth gnashing, while her intestines dangled from her stomach in ropy trails. Marina was closest and she saw the girl’s intent. She raised one booted leg and kicked her hard in the chest as the girl’s greedy hands got within an inch of her shoulders. The girl crashed through the

  windows, falling four floors down to the ground below.

  There was silence for about a second, and then the German said, “What I just witnessed was

  empirically impossible.”

  “Yeah,” Marina said, “Tell that to the girl I just killed for the second time Klaus. I hope.”

  The sound of the glass shattering had drawn attention to them, possibly by more creatures like the dead girl. Moans arose from other parts of the building, some sounding way too close for comfort. They dashed for the stairs, but the stairs were heaped with bodies, tangled in a jumbled mess of groaning, whimpering, and silent. They saw movement from some of them, but it was hard to tell what was dead, alive, or otherwise.

  “Try the elevator!” Samir shouted.

  They did. The doors swished open and four of those walking dead things shambled toward them.

  “Close the doors! Close the doors!” Jomo shouted.

  They had to shove the corpses back in while the elevator doors slowly shut on them. One of them had its fingers tangled in Xinga’s hair, and the girl shrieked something fearful until the door shut on its arm, severing it just above the wrist. The hand still danced in her hair, and Xinga screeched and flailed about until she managed to fling it away from her. It skittered about the floor like a spider, crashing into walls, sightless, but still incredibly alive.

  “Not nice!” Xinga shouted, unsure if she’d chosen the right words. She was right, Klaus thought, but if anything,
that was the understatement of the century.

  “Where to now?” Kamara asked Samir.

  “I don’t know,” he said. He taught an

  International Studies group, sure, but that was just

  like any of the many clubs at the college that one could join. He didn’t have any real credentials. He certainly didn’t have any experience with something

  like this. Instead of answering, he began to try doors to different rooms.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Seeing if anyone else is here, hiding, or if there’s another way out.”

  The first classroom they entered was littered with papers, desks overturned. There was a torso with arms slithering up the middle isle, guts coming out from the severed trunk like tentacles, painting wide bloody swathes across the floorboards; nothing below the waistline, and nothing above the neck. The headless torso pushed itself forward by its forearms and elbows, blind as the hand they’d encountered moments ago. Which meant the man’s head was somewhere else in the room, and no one was enthusiastic about finding it. They left that room.

  Other rooms were similarly in disarray, but no bodies, alive or otherwise, and no other way out but through windows which were four floors up, leading to hard concrete below. They came to one room where although the room was in upheaval, on the teacher’s desk sat a stack of books undisturbed, an apple sitting atop them as if the teacher had intended to eat it before class. The books were splattered with blood so that the titles were illegible. Blood splattered the chalkboard behind the desk as well, and someone had written in that same blood: NOT SAFE. When they walked a little further to look behind the desk, they saw the body of the girl that had scrawled that message, her arm raised; her fingers still poised on the chalkboard, back arched forward, her face smashed against it. She had been brained, and the back of her head was an open wound.

  Soon, the thing she had tried to hastily warn them and others about shuffled out of the supply closet. Some one had tried to shut them in, but three of the dead things walked out, having either mastered turning a knob or accidentally having done so. And

  they were headed toward their group. There was no means of escape, other than the way they’d come, and the walking corpses were blocking that exit. Without anyone having to say a word, they already knew, they’d have to fight their way through.

  ***

  This is not good, Samir thought, but there were eight of them versus three. It was the killing part he didn’t want to think about.

  “They’re already dead,” he heard Lupe say, as if she had read his thoughts, but he realized she was just psyching herself up when he heard her repeat this several times under her breath.

  “Yeah, they are,” Kamara said and grabbed a pencil from the teacher’s desk, marching up to one of them, even as it reached for her, and stabbing it in the eye.

  “Now that’s what I’m talking about!” Ian said, grabbing the heaviest hard cover book he could find off of the floor in both hands and swung it at the head of one of the others. That seemed to drop it cold, at least for a few seconds until it started rising again. Besides what looked like bite wounds, the three men seemed to exhibit no other outwardly signs of distress which might relate to how they died. The only thing that defined their lack of life with clarity was their glassy desaturated blue eyes, awkward gait and monosyllabic groans.

  The one with the pencil in its eye was still

  squirming on the ground. Marina kicked the pencil in with the heel of her boot, jamming it in at an angle into the thing’s brain. It stopped moving.

  Ian swung the hardcover book again at the other’s head, bashing it repeatedly. The last one was headed for the rest of the group.

  Xinga crouched down behind the desk next to the dead girl. After the creepy crawly hand incident in her hair she felt no where close to battle ready. They were all older than her. Jomo was closest to her in age and closest to her in the fish out of water department, and it was Jomo who went to her behind the desk.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  Xinga nodded, though unsure if she really could be. When she saw the thing getting closer she plucked the apple off of the stack of books on the desk and lobbed it at the thing’s head. It was a direct hit, which was pretty good considering her eyes were only just poking out over the lip of the desk and the rest of her was hidden. It seemed to hurt it. It let out a groan of at least discomfort. But mostly it just seemed to annoy the crap out of it.

  Lupe and Samir was the wall of defense between them, and they gathered every hardcover book they could find and hurled it at the creature.

  Klaus Hertzog watched on the sideline as Ian continuously whacked the other thing’s head. He was atop it on the ground, now bringing the book’s weight down with all his might from the front instead of the side. The continual hits eventually caused its head to cave in, reducing its brains to mush. The thing was finally, truly dead.

  Klaus gagged, nearly vomiting. Marina rifled through the desk as Samir and Lupe continued to throw books at the last dead thing. Xinga and Jomo

  looked up at her with hope.

  She said, “No worries, I got this,” and winked at the two of them. She found a heavy gold plated letter opener, asked Samir and Guadalupe to step aside as she went up to the thing and jabbed the opener into its temple. It keeled over, its moans cut abruptly short.

  Xinga and Jomo rose from behind the desk. They looked around at each other.

  “Now we know for sure what these things are,” Marina said.

  “Zombies,” Kamara said.

  “Yeah,” Lupe said.

  “Yeah,” Ian echoed, and then a wide grin spread across his face. “Zombie apocalypse baby!!”

  “I can’t believe this. This is un-fucking believable!” Klaus said.

  Ian clapped him on the shoulder. “Cheer up mate! It could be worse. It could be bloody were-wolves. Now those are damned hard to kill.” A crease of worry spread across his brow, and he looked at his watch. “Oh shit, I’ve got to call my girlfriend!”

  ***

  They made their way back to the hallway, having found no other way out. The elevator was no longer working. The zombie arm that had gotten caught in it must have caused it to malfunction. They figured if they could take out three zombies in a classroom then they could take out four in an elevator. At least they knew how to kill them now. But that was no longer an option; which left the stairwell, the worst of all possible scenarios.

  Ian called his girlfriend Ashley on his cell phone. She would be heading to class about now and

  he called to tell her to stay home. She answered, happy to hear from him, and he was happy she was okay, until she said, “I think there’s someone in the house.” Someone, or something? He heard a sound, like something getting knocked over, and then Ashley screamed, a scream like he’d never heard before, and then the phone went dead. He tried to call back several times but the line went directly to voice mail. All his good humor was gone.

  “I’m sorry,” Lupe said.

  “That means it’s not just here, in the school,” Samir said, “It’s everywhere.”

  “My mom, my sister!” Kamara said.

  All those who had parents and loved ones in the states called them. Everyone was fine, but something was happening in the streets. News reports were telling people to lock their doors and stay inside.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Jomo said. He worried for his family. Klaus worried for his wife.

  “Yes, I agree,” he said. “Is the stairwell really our only option?”

  “It looks like it,” Samir said.

  “I worry for everyone,” Xinga said shyly.

  “Thank you,” Samir said. He knew she spoke of their families, but in a broader sense it was everyone that they had to worry about now. He mentioned to the others the strange news he’d heard coming out of India. That was when Xinga put a hand to her mouth and told Jomo and the others what she’d heard about Kenya. It was also somethi
ng to do with cows.

  “Oh no, this is not good,” Jomo said. “Most of my family is here now, but I still have friends and cousins there.”

  “Jesus, it’s already spread beyond what they can contain,” Klaus said.

  “We don’t know that yet,” Samir said.

  “We don’t? Look what’s happened here, at the school, in just a matter of hours.”

  “Poindexter’s got a point,” Marina said.

  “Please refrain from calling me that.”

  “Case in point,” she said. “Personally, I think

  it’s charming, in an uptight German sense, but charming.”

  “How exactly are we going to go about getting down the stairs?” Jomo asked.

  “Well, I think we’re going to need weapons,” Lupe said.

  “Definitely those,” Kamara agreed.

  “And we’re going to have to step very carefully,” Xinga chimed in.

  “Obviously,” Samir agreed, not in a demeaning way. “We’re going to have to protect our legs somehow. We know what could happen if they bite us.”

  “I’m good,” Marina said, tapping on her boots. “Their chompers ain’t getting through these.”

  “All right, any ideas?”

  ***

  Going through each of the classrooms the group gathered whatever they could find to use as weapons- erasers, scissors, rulers, metal hole punchers... Ian grabbed a mop from the supply closet, taking off the mop head to use the wooden stick. They found bubble wrap and wrapped their legs from the knees down in it.

  “Are we ready?” Samir asked. They nodded.